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Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
- Introduction
- About this translation of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
- Printed edition of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
- E-book copy for free download
- Spanish translation of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
- Sri Arunachala Pancharatnam
– commentary by Sri Sadhu Om
Introduction
ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல ஸ்துதி பஞ்சகம் (Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam),
the ‘Five Hymns to Sri Arunachala’, which is a collection of the
principal devotional songs composed by Sri Ramana, is the first section
of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு (Sri Ramana Nultirattu), the
Tamil ‘Collected Works of Sri Ramana’. The following are the five main
songs that comprise it:
- ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல அக்ஷரமணமாலை (Sri
Arunachala Aksharamanamalai), the ‘Bridal Garland of Letters
to Sri Arunachala’, is a song composed in the metaphorical language of
bridal mysticism or madhura bhava (the affectionate
attitude of a girl seeking union with her lover, the lord of her heart)
and consists of 108 couplets, each of which begins with a consecutive
letter of the Tamil alphabet and ends with a vocative case-form of the
name ‘Arunachala’.
In the title of this song,
akshara is a Sanskrit word that means both ‘imperishable’ or
‘immutable’ and a ‘letter’ of an alphabet, manam is
a Tamil word that means ‘union’, ‘marriage’ or ‘fragrance’, and malai
is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word
mala, which means
a ‘wreath’ or ‘garland’, particularly one made of flowers, so the
compound word akshara-mana-malai means the
‘marriage garland of letters’, the ‘garland of immutable union’, the
‘fragrant garland of letters’ or the ‘garland of imperishable
fragrance’.
In these 108 verses, Sri Ramana pours out his intense love for God in
the form of the sacred hill Arunachala, praising his boundless grace
and praying to him for the imperishable state of absolute oneness with
him, which can be gained only by means of true self-knowledge, since
the true form of God or Arunachala is nothing other than our own
essential self, the pure consciousness of being that we always
experience as ‘I am’.
Though Sri Ramana had actually surrendered himself and merged
completely in the egoless state of true self-knowledge at the age of
sixteen, on the day in 1896 that he was overwhelmed by an intense fear
of death, which was about eighteen or nineteen years before he composed
Sri Arunachala
Aksharamanamalai, in many of these verses he sings from the
perspective of a devotee who is still struggling to overcome his ego
and its finite desires and thereby to surrender himself entirely to the
infinite love of God.
However, though many of these verses are therefore prayers, in some of
them Sri Ramana clearly praises the grace of Arunachala for destroying
his mind or ego and thereby absorbing him completely in the non-dual
state of immutable union or true self-knowledge.
- ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல நவமணிமாலை (Sri
Arunachala Navamanimalai), the ‘Garland of Nine Gems to Sri
Arunachala’, consists of nine verses composed in different metres at
various times, which were later collected together to form this song.
The first three of these nine verses are praises, in the first two of
which Sri Ramana reveals certain aspects of the spiritual significance
of the form and name of Arunachala, and in the third of which he
assures us that if in our search for the clarity of true self-knowledge
we long for the grace of Arunachala, we will certainly attain his grace
and thereby drown forever in the ocean of infinite happiness. The next
four verses are heart-melting prayers for the grace of Arunachala and
for the blessed state of ever-increasing love for him, and in the last
two verses Sri Ramana reveals his own personal experience of his grace,
which had bestowed upon him ‘his own state’ (or the ‘state of self’)
and thereby saved him from drowning in the deep ocean of worldly maya
or delusion.
- ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல பதிகம் (Sri
Arunachala Patikam), the ‘Eleven Verses to Sri Arunachala’,
was composed by Sri Ramana after the opening words of the first verse,
கருணையால் என்னை யாண்ட நீ (karunaiyal ennai y-anda ni),
had been persistently arising in his mind for several days. Finally he
composed a verse beginning with these words, which mean ‘you who by
[your] grace accepted [took possession of, ruled over or cherished] me
[as you own]’.
This first verse ended with the word அன்பே (anbe), a
vocative case-form of அன்பு (anbu), which means
‘love’, and the next day the words அன்புரு வருணாசல (anburu
v-arunachala), which mean ‘Arunachala, the form of love’,
began to arise persistently in his mind, so with them as the opening
words he composed the second verse, which ended with the word இறையே (iraiye),
a vocative case-form of இறை (irai), which means
‘lord’ or ‘God’. The next day a series of words beginning with இறை (irai)
began to arise persistently in his mind, so with them as the opening
words he composed the third verse, which ended with the word ஊழி (uzhi),
which means ‘aeon’ or ‘world’.
In this way for nine consecutive days he composed one verse each day,
and on the tenth day he composed two verses. Each of these eleven
verses began with the last word (or more precisely, the first metrical
syllable of the last foot) of the previous verse, thus forming a song
in a style of concatenation that is called antadi
or ‘end-beginning’.
In this patikam or poem of eleven verses that thus
poured forth from the heart of Sri Ramana, the first nine verses are
beautiful prayers, and the last two are powerful assurances, in which
he reveals how Arunachala will unfailingly destroy the soul or separate
selfhood of anyone who is attracted to him, thinking him to be the
supreme reality, by drawing his or her mind selfwards and thus subduing
all its mischievous activity and making it motionless like itself.
- ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல அஷ்டகம் (Sri
Arunachala Ashtakam), the ‘Eight Verses to Sri Arunachala’,
was composed by Sri Ramana as a continuation of Sri
Arunachala Patikam. On the day that he composed the last two
verses of the patikam, he started for giri-pradakshina
(circumambulation of Arunachala hill) accompanied by a devotee, who
took with him a piece of paper and a pencil, thinking that he may
compose some more verses, and on the way round the hill Sri Ramana
composed the first six verses of this ashtakam or
poem of eight verses.
Soon after this, when a devotee decided to publish these seventeen
verses, Sri Ramana composed two more verses to form two separate poems,
one of eleven verses and the other of eight verses. Whereas the eleven
verses of the patikam are composed in a metre that
consists of four lines with seven feet in each line, the eight verses
of the ashtakam are composed in a metre that
consists of four lines with eight feet in each line.
Like the patikam, the ashtakam
is composed in the antadi style of concatenation,
and not only does each verse begin with the first metrical syllable of
the last foot of the previous verse in the same poem, but even the
first verse begins with the first metrical syllable of the last foot of
the final verse of the patikam, namely அறி (ari),
which is a verbal root that means ‘know’.
Though the ashtakam is composed in the outward form
of a hymn praising God in the form of Arunachala, most of its verses
are actually a clear and extremely profound expression of the
philosophy and practice of the non-dual science of true self-knowledge.
- ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல பஞ்சரத்னம் (Sri
Arunachala Pancharatnam), the ‘Five Gems to Sri Arunachala’,
is the only song in Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
that was not originally composed in Tamil. Sri Ramana composed it first
in Sanskrit, and only later in Tamil.
One day in 1917 a devotee asked Sri Ramana to compose a Sanskrit verse
in the
arya vritta metre, in answer to which he composed the verse ‘karunapurna
sudhabdhe …’ in flawless arya vritta.
Soon afterwards this verse was shown to Kavyakanta Ganapati Sastri, a
Sanskrit poet and scholar, who on seeing it at once requested him to
compose another verse in the same metre. Sri Ramana accordingly
composed the verse ‘tvayarunachala sarvam …’, on
seeing which Ganapati Sastri asked him to compose three more verses on
the subject of the four yogas — one on jnana
yoga (the path of knowledge), then one on raja yoga
(the path of mind-control), and lastly one on karma
and bhakti yoga (the paths of unselfish action and
devotion) — in order to form a poem of five verses. Accordingly in
continuation of the ideas expressed in the first two verses, Sri Ramana
wrote the next three verses.
Five years later, in 1922, when a devotee was printing the first four
songs of the present Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam,
someone asked Sri Ramana to translate Sri Arunachala
Pancharatnam into Tamil, so he did accordingly.
Unlike the last three of these five verses, which he composed on the
subjects specified by Ganapati Sastri, the first two verses were
composed by Sri Ramana without his being asked to write on any
particular subject. In the first verse he prays to Arunachala, the
light of self-consciousness, to make his heart-lotus blossom fully, and
in the second verse he then reveals that the word ‘heart’ is a name for
Arunachala, our own real self, which ever shines in our heart as ‘I’.
As Sri Sadhu Om explains in the introduction to his commentary
on Sri Arunachala Pancharatnam, when we carefully
consider the meaning of these two verses, we can clearly see that in
both of them Sri Ramana is drawing our attention only to the clear
light of self-consciousness, which is the true form of Arunachala and
which is ever shining within us as ‘I’. From this we can understand
that when he was asked to write or say something on no specific
subject, he would talk only about the clear shining of our real
consciousness ‘I’.
After understanding the meaning of the first two verses in this light,
if we consider the meaning of the last three verses, we will clearly
see that even when he was asked to write on various specified subjects,
he would always connect each of those subjects to the one subject that
alone really interested him, namely knowing the real light of self and
merging in it.
That is, in the third verse he says that when we turn our mind inwards
to face self alone and thereby scrutinise the source from which our
false ‘I’ has risen, we will clearly know the true form or nature of
‘I’ and will thereby merge in Arunachala, ceasing to exist as anything
other than him, like a river that merges and is lost in the ocean. Then
in the fourth verse he says that when a yogi gives
up knowing external objects and meditates only upon Arunachala, who
shines in the heart [as ‘I’], he or she will see the light [of true
self-knowledge] and thereby attain greatness [by merging] in
Arunachala. And finally in the fifth verse he says that when we
surrender our mind to Arunachala and thereby see him always and love
everything as his form without any sense of otherness [that is, without
experiencing anything as other than ‘I’, which is his true form], we
will drown in him, the form of true happiness.
Besides
these five principal songs, several other verses are also included in Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam, among which are two groups of
verses that form a preface to it, namely the two verses of Sri
Arunachala Tattuvam and Deepa-Darsana Tattuvam
and the seven verses of Sri Arunachala Mahatmyam.
ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல தத்துவம் (Sri Arunachala Tattuvam), the
‘tattva [truth, reality or inner significance] of
Sri Arunachala’, was composed by Sri Muruganar, but records an
explanation that was given by Sri Ramana. Since he composed this verse
on 24th November 1931, which was the day on which the festival of karttikai
deepam was celebrated that year, he asked Sri Ramana to
compose another verse explaining the tattva or
truth signified by deepa-darsana, seeing the light
that is lit on the summit of Arunachala every year on that day, so in
the same metre Sri Ramana composed தீபதர்சன தத்துவம் (Deepa-Darsana
Tattuvam), the ‘tattva of deepa-darsana’.
This verse composed by Sri Ramana is deeply meaningful, because [as I
explain in more detail in a separate article, The truth of Arunachala and of ‘seeing the
light’ (deepa-darsana), in which I discuss
the meaning of these two verses] in it he reveals the profound
spiritual significance of an act of seemingly dualistic devotion —
namely deepa-darsana, reverentially seeing the
light that is lit on the summit of Arunachala — explaining that it
signifies the absolutely non-dual experience of ‘seeing’ or knowing the
மெய் அக சுடர் (mey aha-cudar) or real light of ‘I’,
which is our own essential self-consciousness.
ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல மாகாத்மியம் (Sri Arunachala Mahatmyam),
the ‘Greatness of Sri Arunachala’, is a collection of seven verses that
Sri Ramana composed at various times, each of which is a translation of
one or more verses from Sanskrit texts (such as Siva
Mahapurana, Skanda Mahapurana and
Siva Rahasya) that contain accounts of the greatness of Arunachala.
In the introduction that I wrote for this English translation of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam, which is contained in the printed book
and in the e-book
copy of it (and also in a separate article in my blog,
Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
– English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James), I
have explained how these five hymns and the seemingly dualistic
devotion that is expressed in many of the verses in them are relevant
to the non-dual practice of
atma-vichara or self-investigation, which is the principal
teaching of Sri Ramana.
About this translation of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
Before 1976, when I first met Sri Sadhu Om, he had already translated
all the verses of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
into English for the benefit of other friends. However, because I often
asked him about the various meanings that he had explained for these
verses, I was able to help him to improve the expression of these
meanings in English, and also to note down certain fresh meanings that
he explained to me.
Almost every day I heard from him a great wealth of profound
explanations and insights into the teachings of Sri Ramana, so I was
able to note down only a fraction of what he explained to me.
Unfortunately, therefore, I did not make a note of all the meanings of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam that he explained to me, but the
insights that I gained by listening to him often come back to me, and
when I think about them I am now able to understand what he told me
with fresh clarity.
Some of the explanations that I heard from him were incorporated in a
Tamil commentary on the first forty-four verses of Sri
Arunachala Aksharamanamalai, which I helped one of my Tamil
friends to compile from various sources that recorded his explanations.
I hope that one day I may be able to complete compiling this commentary
on the remaining verses, and that it may be published in both Tamil and
English.
Though this present book does not contain detailed commentaries on the
verses of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam, it does
contain word-for-word meanings for each verse, which will help readers
to reflect more deeply over these words of Sri Ramana. If we think
deeply and repeatedly about the meaning of his writings, we will each
not only be able to understand his teachings with increasing clarity,
but will also be able to cultivate and reinforce our love to practise
what we have understood. This is the true fruit of manana
or musing upon the teachings of our sadguru,
Bhagavan Sri Ramana.
Although I (and before me other friends) helped to phrase the
translations contained in this book, their principal translator was Sri
Sadhu Om, because his role in their translation was to explain (first
to other friends and later to me) the meaning of each verse as a whole
and of each individual word within each of them. My role in their
translation was just to question him in detail about the meanings that
he gave me, to express them in clearer English, and to transcribe them
in notebooks. I did all this primarily for my own benefit, but I also
hoped that one day these translations would be published, because I
knew that they would benefit many of Sri Ramana’s devotees who do not
know Tamil.
No translation can be perfect, because it is impossible to convey in
one language all the subtleties and shades of meaning that are
expressed by the words of another language. This inevitable inadequacy
of any translation is even greater in the case of a translation from
one language into another language whose syntactical structure and
manner of expressing ideas is completely different, as is the case with
translations from Tamil into English. Therefore for those who do not
know Tamil, a word-for-word translation of each of Sri Ramana’s verses
is a very valuable aid to a better understanding of the depth and
subtlety of meaning which he conveyed through each and every word that
he wrote.
However, a mere literal translation of each of his words cannot
adequately convey the meaning that he intended, because in Tamil as in
any other language the same words can be understood and interpreted in
different ways. This is particularly true of words that express
extremely subtle truths, as the words of Sri Ramana do. Therefore, to
understand his words correctly and adequately, we should understand not
merely the vachyartha or literal meaning of each of
them, but more importantly their lakshyartha or
intended meaning.
Because Sri Sadhu Om had surrendered himself entirely to Sri Ramana,
who shines within each one of us as the absolute clarity of
thought-free self-conscious being, ‘I am’, by the grace of Sri Ramana
his mind had merged in and been consumed by that clarity, and hence
from his own experience of true self-knowledge he was able to explain
the true lakshyartha of Sri Ramana’s words — the
meaning that he actually intended to convey through them.
Moreover, because Sri Sadhu Om was himself a great Tamil poet, and
because he spent many years working closely with Sri Muruganar,
preserving, editing and classifying all his then unpublished verses, he
had a thorough understanding both of the rich classical style of Tamil
in which Sri Ramana composed his verses, and of the unique manner in
which Sri Ramana expressed the truth in words which, though seemingly
very simple, actually convey much deeper and richer meaning than they
superficially appear to convey. Hence not only from the perspective of
his own true spiritual experience but also from a literary perspective,
Sri Sadhu Om had an extremely deep and clear insight into the wealth
and depth of meaning that Sri Ramana conveyed through his verses.
Therefore Sri Sadhu Om was perfectly qualified to interpret the many
meanings contained in these verses, though he never claimed to have
expressed all the possible meanings. In fact, he sometimes used to tell
us that a new meaning for a certain verse had suddenly struck his mind,
so this book certainly does not contain all the meanings that he ever
saw in any particular verse.
During the lifetime of Sri Sadhu Om, he and I had written all these
word-for-word meanings, translations and a few explanatory notes in
some notebooks, and we intended to revise them later, because what we
had written was only an unpolished draft. Unfortunately, before his
passing away in March 1985, we did not have time to do this or many of
the other similar works that we intended to do, and after that I was
busy with other work, so I not yet had time to undertake our intended
revision of this unpolished draft.
Therefore in 2007, when Sri N. Sankaran and other friends of mine in
Tiruvannamalai decided to publish this draft translation as a book,
they arranged for it to be copied from our notebooks and typeset for
printing. Unfortunately I was not involved with the copy-editing,
typesetting or proofreading, so in the printed book there are many
copying, editing and printing errors, particularly in the
transliteration and some of the word-for-word meanings, which I hope to
rectify later if I ever have time to revise, polish and improve this
old draft.
Printed edition of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
This translation of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
has been published by Sri Ramana Kshetra, and it can be
obtained from Sri Ramanasramam Book Stall, Sri Arunachalaramana Book Trust, Sri Ramana Kshetra or the Buy Books page of David
Godman’s website, as explained in more detail in the How to buy books by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael
James section of the Books page of this website.
E-book copy for free download
Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
is also available here for free download as a PDF e-book. In order to
download this PDF version, you can either left-click on the following
link to open it in your web browser, after which you can save a copy of
it, or you can right-click on this link and select ‘Save Target As…’
from the pop-up menu:
Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
– e-book
When
I first received this PDF copy of the printed book from the press that
printed it, it contained many defects, because on account of some
technological error certain characters in it were displayed wrongly.
Fortunately my friend John Manetta was able to correct most of the
Latin characters and punctuations that were wrongly displayed, but
neither he nor I were able to correct any of the Tamil characters that
were wrongly displayed. For example, the frequently occurring character
ந் (n) in the printed book appears in this PDF copy
as மூ (mū), and the less frequently occurring
character மூ (mū) in the printed book appears in
this PDF copy either as void or as a box surrounding the following
character [as for example in the first foot of verse 81 of Sri
Arunachala Aksharamanamalai, which should be மூக்கிலன் (mūkkilan)
but which appears as க்கிலன் with a box surrounding the letter க்].
I would like here to express my gratitude to all those friends who
helped me to make this PDF copy of the printed book available here,
especially N. Sankaran, who supervises the publication of most of the
Tamil and English books of Sri Sadhu Om; S. Pandurangan of Aridra
Printers, who printed the book and created this PDF copy of it; M. V.
Sabhapathy and Vasuki Seshadri, who encouraged him to create it; and
John Manetta, who rectified many of the technological defects in it.
Spanish translation of Sri
Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
This English translation of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam
has been translated into Spanish by Pedro Rodea, and his translation is
available on his website, AtivarnAshram, both as a PDF e-book and as a printed book
(listed along with other books on the Sri Ramana Maharshi page of the Ignitus
section).
Sri Arunachala
Pancharatnam – commentary by Sri Sadhu Om
During the lifetime of Sri Sadhu Om, I compiled with his help and
guidance a detailed commentary in English containing many of the
explanations that I had heard from him about Sri Arunachala
Pancharatnam, and this was first published in five issues of The Mountain Path
from September 2003 to September 2004.
An e-book copy of this commentary is
currently available on David Godman’s website, and can be
accessed there from the Sri Arunachala Pancharatnam
page.
This commentary has also been translated into Spanish by Pedro Rodea,
and his translation is included at the end of the PDF e-book
containing his translation of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam.
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