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other dieties: ref dileepan's article

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Krishna Kalale • February 16, 1995 


It is sort of strange that dileepan mentioned that:

 *On the contrary, I have heard in more than one upanyaasam
*that Siva must be respected as one of the aachaaryaas of sri
*vasihnava faith. 

I read in rahasyatrasaram by vedanta desika and also one sreevaishnava
pundit's view, that sivan is left out of the acharya lineage of vaishnavas.
I would like to know whose upanyaasam is dileepan referring to.

One other view supports this view point: show me any sreevaishnava temple,
which is orthodox, which has a siva's  idol just like the idols of other
acharyas and alwars along with the vishnu and his retinue.  except in 
some strange svayam vyakta kshetras and 108 kshetras : particularly 
in badri and saligram (nepal) you can see other dieties right beside 
vaishnava dieties.  but in recent temples the orthodox ones do not have
any dieties other than the some bhaktas : such as hanuman, garuda, vishwaksena
etc.  
One other support to this view is that in vaishnava acharya parampara we
pay respects to all the acharyas of vaishnavas but leave out siva! (this is the
list of acharya tanians : a remembrance of acharya parampara a devoted sree
vaishnava has to adhere to atleast twice a day)
in fact, in the smartha tradition siva is included (sometimes as the ultimate
diety or sometimes as a slightly subbordinate diety.)  In fact shankaracharya
in his Gita bhasya, last verse of 6th chapter distinctly reserves the highest
place for the devotees who pray to vaasudeva as the ultimate God, as opposed
to those who pray to Rudras, Adityas etc. By the way, this view is a true
to the words of sri shankaracharyas' bhasya on Gita.

Nonetheless, even rahasyatrayasara and other sreevaishnava texts do state:
that all other dieties should be respected as elevated souls and hatred should
never be entertained since it is against the nature of a true bhagavatha.
everything belongs to the almighty narayana so nothing should be despised.
every other diety should be treated as the glory and (vibhuti) or roughly the
wealth of narayana.

strangely, even sort of contradicting vedanta desika's views, sreemad
bhagavatam states: vaishnavanam yatha sambhuhu:  which regards siva as one
of the foremost vaishnavas!!.  How come then,   remembrance of siva or a verse
in devotion to siva (as an acharya . not as para devatha )is not included 
in the sreevaishnava list of acharya
parampara??

May be the practice in sree vaishnavism sort of was over cautious to 
avoid mistaken perception that some people may assume siva to be the 
ultimate diety? (which is not acceptable to the vedic view or to the
alwars)

It is interesting to note that in SMS Chari's book "Vaishnavism" in the
introduction he has mentioned that "SAivism" is sort of independent of
the vedic origin.  In fact a saivite guru named "Aghora shivaacharya" is
quoted to have stated that " the recent line of pundits have mistakenly
mixed up saivism, particularly because of their vedanta vaasana (or familiarity)
in fact, saivism is not vedic in origin and saivism has independent 
origin.  

Of course, there may be tons of other view points from other saivite scholars.
my request to dileepan and the prabandham folks was to know straight from the
alwars' works what their views were as opposed to recent scholars.  Of course
the views of recent scholars would be helpful but should be dealt independently from the views of alwars to retain their true view.

krishna