India’s past is so ancient and goes back to several millions of years that these events that
have been recorded in the form of deities represented in various temples have
been discarded by history as belonging to mythology. For instance, the deity Nataraja, of the temple of Chidambaram, where Lord
Siva had blessed His devotees Patanjali and Vyagrapada with His
cosmic dance cannot be dated historically. Carbon dating and other scientific
methods can apply only to the physical matter connected with the temple
structure. It can in no way affect the
concept enshrined in the temple that motivated the building of the temple and
this concept is older than anything that history can speak of. There are
innumerable temples that baffle us like
this in the entire Indian subcontinent. Every non-resident Indian, in addition
to exposing his or her children to
books that speak about India, its culture and its temples, should also be able
to take them, with pride, through the length and breadth of the country mainly to look at and understand the concept
and mythology behind the several temples.
As a first step they should be able to spend time on the internet with
sites that show these temples. One such massive site is the Templenet site.
The multitude of temples where we find ourselves in
the presence of a fantastic atmosphere of architecture, sculpture, frescoes,
exuberance of idols, the calm serene times when the temples are isolated and we
are left alone with the deities, and in contrast the plethora of festivals with
their glamour of celebration, majesty,
pomp, crowd and noise -- all these
cannot but have a cultural impact on the children. It is unfortunate that when
such tours are attempted and planned, the parents sometimes leave the children
behind because of various real and imaginary inconveniences, allegedly to the
children, but in reality to themselves.
Besides the ritualistic pUjA, which is the
classical expression of an individual’s bhakti, the most well-known
expression is that of nAma-samkIrtana,
collective or individual. The
repetition of God’s names can be very rewarding in terms of the elevation of
the mood and the spiritual awakening of the mind. In Samskrit one finds that
every proper name has a meaning. It is
usually a meaning that is derived from the root syllables that go into the
name. To repeat ceaselessly the names of God is to be immersed in the ecstasy of
identity with the glories of God as encompassed by the name we chant.
He is ‘Siva’
because He is the auspicious among the auspicous. PavitrANAm pavitram is
the scripture. He is Sankara
because He gives you the ultimate auspiciousness, He makes you happy. He is kesavah
because kah means brahmA; ha means VishNu;
and Isah means Rudra and kah + IsaH + ah
gives the meaning: The One of whom all the three Gods of the Trinity are only
subtle manifestations. He is Krishna
because He attracts everybody; the root krish contains attraction in it.
He is Krishna also because Krs stands for existence and na
stands for bliss and so Krishna stands for the union of the two. He is nArAyaNa because He pervades all
appearances that come out of the five elements.He abides in them and they in
Him. Nara is Atman and from it arose all the five elements, the
effects and these are naaras.He pervades them as their cause, both the
efficient cause and the material cause; because He is the one who brought them
into existence and He is also the One who Himself became the effects or appears
as the effects. Therefore He is nArAyaNa. He is VishNu
because He pervades everywhere. The
root syllable for Vishnu is to pervade.
He is Raama because the
two syllables raa and ma indicate one in whose memory men revel
in joy and happiness, because brahman itself is indicated by the word
Rama and brahman is the source
of all happiness. The syllable raa erases all impurities of the mind
whereas the syllable ma insulates the mind from any further impurities.
It was because of the importance of the name that Sage VasishTa chose
that name for the godly son of King Dasaratha. The name ‘Rama’ is more
important than the character ‘Rama’ of the Ramayana.
There is no end to the depth of meanings which are
succinctly embedded in the myriads of names of God that Hinduism and the
Samskrit language are capable of. The entire gamut of Hindu religion and
philosophy goes into these names. For a lot more on this go to Names ad infinitum
for the Nameless.
May 1, 2002 ©Copyright V.
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