New Book On Sri Ramanuja Philosophy

From the Bhakti List Archives

• May 27, 1999


Dear friends,

We are happy to announce that a new book has reached the completed 
manuscript stage.
This book was written by Dr. N.S. Anantharangachar, who has written roughly 
about 40 books on Visistadvaita both on Tamil and Sanskrit works. 
 Incidentally, I have personally studied under Dr. N S Anantha rangachar. 
He is a  softspoken modest person though is one of the remaining few great 
Ubhaya Vedanta Vidwans today. He has trained dozens of people in 
upanishads, bramhasutras, bhagavadvishayam and several works and continues 
to do so even today.  He is about 80 years old.

The work "Ramanuja sukti muktavali", the most recent work of Dr. N.S 
Anantha rangachar contains about five
hundred statements of Ramanuja selected from all of his works.These
statements expound the philosophy of Ramanuja in his own words.These
extracts are classified into 12 heads as follows-

1]Tattva swaroopa - nature of reality
2]pramanas 3)creation 4)nature of jivatman5)nature of paramatman
6)karma yoga 7)jnana yoga 8)bhakti yoga 9)prapatti 10)Tattvamasi 11)the
nature of moksha 12) general sayings


THis book will be written in both Kannada and English.
The present scheme is to give the original extracts
with their kannada translation initially, since this version is already 
complete.The book may come up to about 480 pages
in kannada.The kannada edition may cost about Rs.62,000/- including cost
of paper,type setting,binding etc.

An english edition will be brought out as soon as possible.  All the 
extracts have to be printed in devanagari script along
with an english translations of those passages.The cost of bringing out
an english edition may come upto Rs.90,000/- or more.The kannada edition
is now ready for print.This is for your kind information.There will be a
short introduction to each section summarising the teaching contained in
the statements.


DEAR FRIENDS,  I requested Smt Nagu Satyan and she suggested that we should 
raise some funds to support this work under the auspices of SMSA ( which is 
same as SVSS).

Lord Krishna says in Gita " shreyo hi dravya mayat yajnat jnana yajnah 
parantapa" -  an offering of knowledge is superior to material offerings to 
God.  Further, Gita states that "na hi jnanena sadrisham pavitram iha 
vidhyate" - there is nothing more sacred and auspicious here in this world 
than "jnana" or knowledge.  Considering these ideas, it is quite clear 
that, we need to do something to protect our system of thought.  The only 
way we can protect our system of thought is to bring out more and more 
books on our system of thought and publish them widely so that our 
generation can have access to them and pass them over to our next 
generations.  Only by learning and teaching of these principles we can 
protect visistadvaita.  The protection and preservation of our ancient 
visistadvaitic culture and philosophy cannot be done using any other means 
.  We need to support these publications.  Kindly support this noble cause 
undertaken by Dr. N.S. Anantha rangachar by appropriate donations.  We will 
try to bring out several books in our siddhantam.  THe kannada version of 
this book "Ramanuja sukti muktavali" costs about $1500 and the english 
version costs about $2250.

UNITED STATES & CANADA:

  Please send  Checks payable to
    "SMSA, Inc"

    Sri Vaishnava Seva Samithi
    c/o Smt. Nagu Satyan
    7821 West Alder Drive
    Littleton, CO 80128-5522

thanking you,

Krishna Kalale