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Date: Wed Jun 21 2000 - 10:42:06 PDT
PART-2 : kAnchi Sri prati-vAdi-bhayankaram aNNangar-AchArya svAmi
(1891 - 1983) ~~ a short memoir ~~ (by tirumanjanam S. Sundara Rajan)
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BIRTH: vikrti-meena/panguni-viSAkham (March 1891)
EXPIRY: rudhirOdgAri-mithuna/Ani-Sukla-EkAdaSI (June 21 1983).
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The Sri-vaishNava religion has its commodious gallery of scholars, each
of them with a signal accomplishment of his own. kAnchi svAmi stands out
among them as one who liberated cloistered scholarship and reached the beauty
and message of religion to those who could not pursue learning or spiritual
observances for a career, and above all, as one who established proper
standards
of research based upon historical verification and internal evidences of our
classics
as correlated to corroborative externals. Shri kAnchi svAmi was the
twentieth
century's rare polymath scholar of the Tamil and Sanskrit languages, and of
the
Sri-vaishNava religion. In this, he ranks with the savants like
~~ gO-vardhanam rang-AchArya who raised (around the year 1857) the
Sriranga-nAtha shrine at the SrikrshNa's sportland of gOvardhanam and the
mammoth temple of gOdA-Sriranga-mannAr (referred to as 'rang-ji mandir')
at vrndA-vanam (district Mathura in Uttar Pradesh State), and who made a
Sanskrit translation of the extensive 'bhagavad-vishayam' commentary on
tiru-vAi-mozhi scripture;
~~ gAdhi anant-AchArya who raised the SrivEnka/TESa temple in Fanasvadi,
Mumbai; and besides authoring several works of his own, had got the
Sri Venkatesvara Steam Press set up and published the entirety of the
eighteen mahA-purANa, and the variorum edition of the various 'vyAkhya'
on Sri-rAmAyaNam;
~~ vAna-mA-malai jeeyar Sri chinna-kaliyan svAmi who toured all over the
country and installed shrines and won a considerable Sri-vaishNava following
in far-flung areas, including Nepal.
kAnchi aNNA svami's parents were Sri aNNA-rang-AchArya and alar-mEl-mangA.
The putative ancestor, prati-vAdi-bhayankaram hasti-giri-nAthar-aNNA, was
remembered in our kAnchi svAmi for learning and skills of studious research
and
disciplined debate, and for the worship of the archA-vigraham of
vEdAnta-dESika
which had been presented to the ancestor by svAmi-dESikan's son and had
come down to him as a centuries-old sacred heirloom.
kAnchi svAmi had his education successively under his own father, the
celebrated
gAdhi svAmi and his own maternal grandfather, shashThi azhakiya-maNavALa
jeeyar. He started on, and mastered, his instruction in the vEda as late as
his
22nd year under the celebrated tirumalai vinjamUr mAmpaLLam sudarSan-AchArya.
His life-long career of unflagging authorship (with as many as 1276 known
titles)
was inaugurated at a precociously young age with the Sanskrit work
'divya-prabandha-vivEka:', establishing the Tamil hymns of AzhvAr-s as
'Sruti-pramANam' (scriptural authority). On the works and themes of
SrivaishNava
religion which was his natural passion and sustenance, none wrote more
prolifically
than aNNA, more to purpose, more authentically, and more rewardingly for the
reader of literature and 'sampradAyam'.
In the year 1907, when he was sixteen, aNNA made his first pilgrimage to
Srirangam and came to the notice of kuvaLai-k-kuDi Singham aiyangAr who was
drawn to aNNA's ringing recital of the surpassing hymn Sriranga-rAja-stavam.
(This represents a poignant moment of the festival of irA-p-pattu /
tiruvAi-mozhi-t-tiru-nAL when the 'stavam' is rendered lustily in the
'gOshThee'
/ psalmody every day as the Deity Beautiful, namperumAL, emerges from the
parama-pada-vASal, strolls along the southern bank of chandra-pushkariNee
tank,
turns right and strides into the enchanting spread of sand,
maNal-veLi-azhakiyAn,
to gather in His arms, so to say, the ardent AzhvAr hurrying towards Him).
Singham svAmi was a philanthropist of Srirangam and had established in
East Chitra street an ubhaya-vEdAnta-pATha-SAlA which became renowned for
turning out a large and distinguished band of scholars. Singham svAmi
recognised
the young prodigy in aNNA and he gave him a prompt cash reward of rupees
one hundred, this in the year 1907. aNNA svAmi has recalled in his
autobiography
how ecstatic this made him; he had money and would travel. He rightaway set
out
on a pilgrimage of Sri-villi-puttUr, AzhvAr-tiru-nagari, tiru-k-kurunkuDi,
vAna-mA-malai to worship the deities and acquaint himself with the eminent
scholars of the places. This was a fulfilment he had sought for ever since
he
started remembering things.
aNNA was barely 20 when he married kOmaLammA, daughter of tirumalai
anant-AN-piLLai vEnkaTa-varad-AchArya. kOmaLamma passed away quite
young leaving behind her husband and two daughters. T.A. krshNamAchArya and
gOpAlAchArya, the scholar-brothers (who, happily, are still in their long
years of
invaluable service in the tirupati-sannidhi of Sri gOvinda-rAja, are the sons
of
kOmaLammA's brother.)
aNNA's life was entirely devoted to restoring and vigilantly protecting the
ancient
systems of worship in the temples, and to his extraordinary career of
authorship.
He wore his scholarship lightly, and to purpose. He happened to the
definition of
what a scholar be, learning informed by a critical faculty ~~ " vidvAn
vipaS-chit
dOsha-jnah". To cite just two instances of his skill of verification. He
proved
that the well-known and beautiful hymn 'mukunda-mAlA' cannot be attributed to
kula-SEkhara-AzhvAr, as is fondly believed. The second one is in the
context
of svAmi-dESika's well-known allegorical play 'sankalpa-sooryOdayam' which
was in refutation of the precedent vaishNava-advAita allegorical play
'prabOdha-chandrOdayam'. The fact that the two works are of a common genre
and that the 'sooryOdayam' actually contradicts the 'chandrOdayam' led to a
popular assumption that the authors of the two works were contemporaries.
This was not so, and kAnchi-svAmi established (as though he was adopting the
best critical tools of the Oxford Indologists) that krshNa-miSra, author of
'chandrOdayam' lived in the 9th century and hence not a contemporary of
dESika.
The same date of miSra ~~ long after kAnchi svAmi's finding,~~ had been
arrived at independently by a lady professor of the Delhi University in her
edition of 'chandrOdayam' published in the 1960's. His reasoned expose`s
remind
one of Dr Samuel Johnson's exposure of the spuriousness of an ostensible
medieval
Latin classic, Hessian, as published by a pseudo-scholar Macpherson. Also,
kAnchi-svAmi indeed never took a holiday from his favourite task of textual
purification which he pursued not out of any pedantic conceit but from an
outgoing concern for preserving the salutary thoughts of the noble
philosophers
of the 'sampradAyam'. He did it for the classic 'AchArya-hr.dayam', and for
a
certain reading of the celebrated gOvinda-rAjeeyam gloss on Sri-rAmAyaNam.
An evaluation of his contributions in these two respects cannot be
accomplished in a single life-time. aNNA indeed belonged to a bygone era when
writing flowed from research, research was supported by scholarship,
scholarship
was built through long apprenticeship and preserved in integrity, and
integrity
was matched by a love of learning. The prolificity of his writing never
suffered
the predictable banality of hack-writing. His prose had its own sap and
fibre
and organic vitality like the writing of, say, Francis Bacon and Ralph Waldo
Emerson, an all-time demonstration of the qualities of good writing, "mitam
cha sAram cha vachO hi vAgmitA" (brevity and essentiality). Suffice it for
a
short account as this to identify some milestones of his career as would
speak
of this colossal personality.
aNNA had digested the entirety of the divya-prabandham exegesis and written
excellent and reliable synopses under the comprehensive title
'divyArtha-deepikA'.
This apart, he published consolidated critical editions of the complete works
of
vEdAnta-dESika, maNavALa-mA-muni and rAmAnuja. He also wrote precious
commentaries on the hymnal works of Sri-vatsAnka (=koora-t-tAzhvAn) and his
renowned prodigy-son, parASara-bhaTTa. aNNA's minor Tamil works
'Sri-bhAshya-sArAmrtam' and 'Srimad-bhagavad-geetA-sAram' are clear capsule
expositions of Sri Ramanuja's source works. His 'dramiD-Opanishad-prabhAva
-sarva-svam' highlights the specific instances of Sri rAmAnuja's indebtedness
to the Tamil scripture, divya-prabandham.
The admirers of aNNA would severally have their own choice of what they
regard
as aNNA's magnum opus. Of such varied identified works would be prominently
aNNA's Sanskrit version of the entirety of divya-prabandham, besides the
Sanskrit
translation of cardinal 'rahasya' classics Sri-vachana-bhUshaNam and
mumukshu-p-paDi. (The late Dr Krishna Datta Bharadwaj, a professional
teacher
of Sanskrit who had headed the elite Delhi Modern School, was also a
passionate
viSishTAdvAita scholar and SrivaishNava savant. He had remarked to me with
great feeling that he was admitted into the portals of the unique
divya-prabandham
literature only after he acquired copies of the kAnchi svAmi's Sanskrit
translations.)
aNNA has rendered each verse of divya-prabandham into a Sanskrit SlOkam with
metric correspondence to the Tamil original, and has thereunder given the
dEva-nAgari transliteration of theTamil verse, and has also written a concise
and
succinct summary in Sanskrit of the classical commentaries on each verse.
This is
the unique achievement of aNNA, and is something so non-pareil that one has
to
consider it as only of divine dispensation.
Near the western gate of Sri varada-rAja temple is the majestic nampiLLai
shrine
(consecrated in the year 1940, in tribute to the 13th century aesthete par
excellence
and author of the precious commentary ~ eeDu ~ on the scripture
tiru-vAi-mozhi).
This will be regarded as the outstanding institutional achievement of aNNA.
(The original shrine of nampiLLai is in Srirangam in the middle of the
stretch
between tiru-manjana-kAvEri and the lofty southern gOpuram edifice built by
achyuta-rAya of the vijayanagara empire. It is over this edifice that the
44th jeeyar
of Sri ahObila-maTham had got the massive gOpuram raised.) Much earlier,
around the year 1916, he set up in the eastern mADa street of vishNu-kAnchi
the vEda-pAThaSAlA named 'vEdAnta-vaijayantI'.
aNNA's discourses on 'tiru-p-pAvai' constituted an unfailing annual festival
of
the month of mArkazhi in the city of Chennai over a span of 22 years
(1931-83).
In the last year of the discourses, aNNA rendered the Day's Verse in the
idiom of
'aRaiyar-sEvai'. His 120-day-long exposition of the 'AchArya-hrdayam' (in
the
year 1939) right in the sacred site of AzhvAr-tiru-nagari must have been one
of
his most prized memories. On his regular visits to Srirangam, he made it a
point
to begin with a brief talk in Sanskrit before switching over to his
substantive
Tamil discourse (arranged in the kuvaLai-k-kuDi pAThaSAla).
The SrivaishNava religion has the core concept of ukandu-aruLina-nilangaL,
meaning the Chosen Seats of the Lord, and are referred to as 'divya-dESam'.
There are 108 divya-dESam hymned by the blessed AzhvAr-s and located across
the length and breadth of the country. The svAmi had led groups of devotees
and scholars on memorable pilgrimages to these hallowed places.
The svAmi had in his time written and issued several periodicals, viz.,
manju-bhAshinI, vana-mAlika, brahma-vidyA, amrta-laharI, and Sri-rAmAnujan
(all in Tamil), vaidika-manOharA (Sanskrit), Sri-rAmAnuja-patrikA (Telugu)
and SrivaishNava-sudhA (Hindi).
Honours came copiously to this versatile, humanist genius. tiru-nArAyaNa
aiyangAr of the scholarly journal Sentamizh (Madurai) admired him as the
Sentamizh-c-chelvar. Sivananda of Hrsheek/ES called him vyAkhyAna-vAchaspati.
The President's Certificate of Honour for Sanskrit Scholars was awarded to
him in
1965, followed by the Republic Day civil award of Padma-Bhushan in 1967.
In the year 1971, the Vice-President of India, G.S. Pathak, presented to him
the title
'mahA-mahimO/pAdhyAya' on behalf of the bhArati parishad of prayAg
(allahabad).
The svAmi submitted to the worldly honours as instances of service to
religion,
but nonetheless used to repeat that he had the distinction that he never did
miss
participating in the adhyApaka-gOshThee recitations in the Sri-varada-rAja
temple
in his native kAncheepuram.
Any tribute to Sri aNNA svAmi would ever fall short of his eminence and
humanity.
John Dryden's adoration of William Shakespeare could be all of the
description that
would fit aNNA, as "that large and comprehensive soul". The geet/AchArya,
SrikrshNa,
declares "I appropriate the Wise unto Myself !" (jnAnee-t-vAtmaiva mE matam).
kAnchi-svAmi could well be of the Wise thus identified.
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