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Ramanuja List Archive: Message 00015 Feb 2003

 
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/aUm namO/nArAyaNAya|

/namastE Sri Lakshmi Narasimhan.

About /periy/AzvAr's pAcuram No. 328, your question is about the sudden shift 
in the /pAcuram from a praise of /SrI rAmaH to one of Lord /nara/simhaH. What 
is the significance of this?

I will attempt to answer the question.

/pAcuram No. 328 is the first of ten songs, where /periyAZvAr wants to leave 
for posterity proof that he and many of his contemporraies have seen the Lord 
in person. How? The /pAcuram is No. 336, where he says that there are people 
[in his times] who have seen the wedding of the Lord to /SrI /bhUmA/devi. The 
reference is to /SrI ANDAL. Notice the reference to /vaRAga avatAram in 
/pAcuram No. 336. Since Mother Earth is the One who was a participant to the 
(rescue)saving of the World during /varAha avatAram, seeing /bhUmi/avatAram and 
the Lord's personal wedding to her in his life time is proof of his having seen 
the Lord and his /varAha avatAram. 

It is known that /SrI ANDAl was wedded to the Lord and that she just walked 
into the Lord's "Hands" in /SrIranGgam. 

/periy/AZvAr wants to leave for us this personal appearance of the Lord in his 
lifetime. It is not of an /avatAram, but an appearance of the form of an 
earlier /avatAram to send a message, which is through /tirup/pAvai, for 
example. /periy/AzvAr wants to make sure that he narrates it personally and 
that it be not a hearsay. What better way to weave it than in his work? Of 
course, the new form is of /SrI krishNA, but it seems fair to say that the form 
that appeared set up the connection of /SrI ANDAL with the Lord's /varAha 
avatAram beyond doubt.

The song you quote and the next 8 songs are part of the definition of the set 
of pairs (/one act or one form of an avatAram, the subsequent appearance of the 
same or different /avataram in another context). He gives eight examples to 
show the correspondence between, say, "a" and "f(a)", where f is the function 
defining the pairs. The "a" is a form that may be hard to believe, but f(a) is 
a form witnessed by people for which there is personal testimony. He is at a 
loss to define the concept involved, and so starts with an example, about which 
you have raised a question. It will be interesting to give a name to this 
concept. [Compare Jesus's mention of John the Baptist as the reappearance of 
the Prophet Elijah???]. 

Looking at your example, it may be hard to believe that a person (Lord /SrI 
rAmaH) is one with emitting light of a thousand suns and that He was present 
here on Earth. But there atre people who have seen Lord /narasimhaH and have 
left records. And this despite the faat that Lord /narasimhaH can hardly be 
seen with human eyes. In fact /in /tiru/maGkai AZvAr the Lord is only presented 
as One Whose Face is in the midst of a fire ball where one sees only a forehead 
(/eyiRRu) and a mouth resembling a box of jewels, the jewels being the teeth. 
Please see /pAcuram 1009 that begins with, "alaitta pEZ vAy". A very good way 
to imagine the scene is a similar scene from the movie "Wizard of Oz". 

/vantanam.

/nalam tarum collai nAn kaNTu/koNTEn, nArAyaNa ennum nAmam.

Visu





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