[Advaita-l] Ganesha

Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com
Wed Jun 23 10:45:47 CDT 2004


Kerala is somewhat unique in the South. Most Kerala Namputhiris are
actually .rg vedins. In the other 3 states, most are K.r.s.na
yajurvedins. Have "sa.mkara and sure"svara mentioned which veda they
belonged to in their works or is it from tradition/the "sa.mkara
vijayams? If we are going by probability, "sa.mkara was probably a .rg
vedin.

Another unique thing about the namputhiris is the way they chant the
vedas. For example, the puru.sa suuktam would be chanted
(approximately by sound) sahasra"siir.saa puru.s*aha* (note the
ending) by other South Indians. The namputhiris employ an actual
visarga even at the end of the sentence, so it would be puru.sah, just
like in the middle for example adbhyasambhuutah p.rthivyai rasaacca. I
was somewhat suprised when I heard it being chanted this way.

BTW, there are "sukla yajurvedins in South India also. They are just
much fewer in number.

Rama

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:45:24 -0400 (EDT), Jaldhar H. Vyas
<jaldhar at braincells.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Siddhartha Krishna wrote:
> 
> > Let me tell you here that Bhagavan Adi Shankaracharya belonged to the Kanva
> > Shakha of the Shukla Yajurveda and his main disciple Shri Sureshvaracharya
> > (the first master of the Shringeri) belonged to the Taittiriya Shakha of the
> > Krishna YajurVeda.
> 
> Wasn't it the other way around?  Shankaracharya belonged to Taittiriya
> shakha and Mandana Mishra (who became Sureshvaracharya according to
> tradition) belonged to Kanva shakha.  This would make sense as
> Shankaracharya came from Kerala in the south where Krishnayajurveda is
> more prevalent, and Mandana Mishra came from Mithila which was Maharshi
> Yajnavalkyas' homeland too.



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