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A curiosity arising out of my ignorance

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Souriraja Ramadurai • September 22, 2000 


Dear Sri madhav vasudevan swamin,
Thank you very much for your enthusiastic reassurance about my ability to
be a good student of Srivaishnava Works, in spite of lack of
Sanskrit-knowledge. I agree with you that Vedam Tamizh Chei Maran and
other Azhwars have made our tasks easy by distilling their erudite
scholarship of the Vedas into the great Divya Prabhandam. My regret is due
to the fact that some of the finest knowledge/conclusions about the
Universe as found in the Prabhandams are so pithy that I thought Sanskrit
knowledge would have allowed me to delve into their source and understand
better. One such thing which is agitating my mind for several years is
with respect to the following beautiful two lines which almost every
Srivaishnava is familiar with as they form the first two lines of the
Satrup-Pasurams of Tiruvaimozhi:
 `Choozhnd-aghanr-azhnd-uyarnda mudivil perum pazheyo
  Choozndadanil peria viya nanmalarch choteeyo...'
This describes the structure of the universe and this is actually the
picture of the universe which was discovered observationally a decade ago
by using the most powerful telescopes after several years of hard work. I
am very curious to know how this knowledge was revealed to Nammazhvar
several centuries ago. I am interested in knowing the source of this
knowledge -where exactly is this mentioned in the Vedas? As far as I know
the Purusha Sooktham is supposed to talk about the creation of the
universe. My knowledge acquired from the English translation of the
Purusha Sooktham published by the Ramakrishna Mutt tells me that such a
clear picture about the structure is not found in Purusha Sooktham. Now
perhaps you can see the reason for my regret of lack of knowledge of
Sanskrit. I hope I am not wasting your time by bringing up my 
ignorance. The only reason I bring this up is the hope that some of the
great scholars in the Srivaishnava e-group may enlighten me on my
curiosity about the source of the knowledge about the Structure of the
Universe revealed by Nammazhvar. Regards 
Adiyen Ramadurai Dasan



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