12 names

 The ten names of Arjuna are:

Dhananjaya: The Conqueror of immense wealth. Here wealth stands for all valuable things, including the most valuable qualities of personality.

Vijaya: Ever victorious in war, the vanquisher of invincible kings.

Shwetavahana: The Warrior with snow white horses, clad in gold plated armor yoked to his Chariot. The snow white horses symbolize purity of character.

Phalguna: The Exterminator of enemies, born under the asterism Uttara Phalguni.

Kiritin: As a resplendent diadem was placed on his head by his father, Lord Indra after the destruction of the “Nivaatakavachas”, a powerful class of netherworld demons. These demons were said to be invincible and undefeated even by Indra and the gods. Exemplifies that the Crown of success adorns the courageous and self-believing man or “Fortune favors the brave!”

Vibhatsu: One who never performs an act unworthy of himself.

Savyasachin: The Warrior who can draw the bowstring using either hand with equal ease, highly and equally skilled with both hands. This name illustrates the value of skill development through hard work.

Jishnu: The irrepressible one, of lofty and unapproachable standard, the tamer of adversaries, the son of Indra. The hero always has high standards and principles in his life.

Krishna: Dark like a mass of rain clouds, the one who attracts everyone.

Arjuna: Bright, possessing a high character and famed for his pure and stainless deeds.

Influence.

 Bhartrihari, also known as Jogi Sant" Bharthari, in many parts of India, is the hero of many folk stories in North India. He was the ruler of Ujjain, before renouncing the world and abdicating in the favor of his younger brother Vikramaditya.

Bhartari was the elder son of King Gandharva Sena, who received the kingdom of Ujjain from The celestial god Indra and the King of Dhara.

When Bhartrhari was king of 'Ujjayani' (modern day Ujjain) , there lived a Brahman who got the fruit of immortality from the celestial wish granting tree, Kalpavriksha, as a result of long austerity. He decided to offer it to King Bhartrhari. The king wanted his beloved queen, Pinglah or Ananga Sena (as per Maha Kavi Kalidas), to be youthful, and thus gifted her the fruit. Raja Bhartrhari's last and youngest wife. However, the queen had a secret love affair with army chief Mahipaala, she desired him to be immortal and the enchanted fruit was given to him, he in turn passed it to his beloved, 'Lakha' the head mistress. Eventually, the fruit returned to the king. Having completed the circle, the fruit revealed the downsides of infidelity to the king, he summoned the queen and ordered her beheading, and ate the fruit himself. After that he abdicated the throne, to his younger brother Vikramaditya, and became a religious mendicant.

He later became a disciple of Pattinathar (Swetharanyar or Pattinathu chettiyar is poorvashram name of this saint from Poompuhar,Tamil Nadu) who first indulged in an argument about samsari and sanyasi with king Bhartrhari later during the conversation pattinathar said that all women have 'dual mind' and it might be the true case even with parameswari. King conveyed this news to rani Pingalah and she ordered Pattinathar to get punished and to sit in 'kalu maram' (Tree, whose top portion would be sharpened like a pencil and whole tree is fully painted with oil, person who are allowed to sit in the top will split into 2 pieces), they tried pattinathar but kalu maram started burning and nothing happened to Pattinathar, the king came to know this news and went directly to Pattinathar and asked him to get ready to die the next day, but Pattinathar replied i'm ready even now to die. The next day king came with tears in his eyes and released saint from jail because he actually noticed queen pingalah in love with horsemen that night, He threw away his empire, wealth, even his full dress coat and dressed in a simple kovanam (loin cloth). The king became a disciple of Pattinathar and got mukthi (salvation) in the Kalahasthi temple. King Bharthari, or Bhadhragiri (as he is called in popular Tamil folk culture) wrote a collection of Tamil poetic verses called Meignana Pulambal.

There is a very famous song sung by the bards of Chhattisgarh in the memory of Raja Bhartrhari. The story says that Queen Pingala and Raja Bhartrhari did not have a son and the queen was very sad as a result of that. A saint came to the door of their palace one day and asked for alms. When Rani Pinglaa went down to give him alms, he said, "I know you are sad and I have brought some holy water for you. If you drink this water with faith, you will have a son in twelve months' time." Rani Pingala had the water and as promised by the Yogi, she had a son after twelve months.

There is one more very interesting story related to Raja Bhartrhari and Rani Pingla. It is said that Raja Bhartrhari was out for a hunt one day and he saw a woman jump into the pyre of her husband (Sati) as her grief would not let her stay alive. Raja Bhartrhari was moved and this incident stayed in his mind. When he returned to his palace, he told the story to Rani Pingala and asked her if she would do the same. Rani Pingala said that she would die on hearing the news itself and there would be no chance of her staying alive until the funeral ceremony. Raja Bhartrhari decided to test her and went on a hunt once again and sent the news of his death back to the palace. The Mahaaraani died on hearing the news as she had promised and Raja Bhrithari was grief-stricken. Guru Gorakhnath heard about the grief of the King and came to help him overcome his grief. It is said that Guru Gorakhnath created 750 copies of Rani Pingala to demonstrate the illusory nature of the world to Raja Bhartrhari. Even though Rani Pingala was brought back to life, Raja Bharthari decided to renounce the world and became a follower of Guru Gorakhnath. He became a very famous saint and is also known as Sant Bhartrhari by the people of North India. Bhratahari is famous in Alwar of Rajasthan. Astami is the worship day celebrate as a festival. The fair of bhratahari grouped by lakhs of peoples of Alwar, Jaipur, Dausa near Sariska in Alwar.

influence.

The life and works of Bharathari is so influential a lot many story's and plays influencing life's of people especially in North India. One such is a story of Latoori Singh. He is the  Landlord having lots of land. during the chaturmasa no work goes on so they employ their time doing different work. Chaudhry Latoori singh too used to take part in acting plays and entertain the village town folk. one such time he ws playing the role of Bharathari the play was enacted for nine days. on the eight night he called his wife and told her that she should not be a spectator on the ninth day the family can come and watch but she must stay at home. however the curious wife was anxious and dressed up with a big gunghat and went to the play but this time she sat with the audience at the neighbouring house from where the play could be watched. her husband was enacting the part when bharathhari renounces his kingdom and family and becomes a medicant. as he completed his acting a lady who was also watching from where his wife was seated laughingly said your wife is here and you are renouncing everything. Chaudry Latoosing too decided to renounce his family life and continued in the same acting garb and landed at his house stood outside and asked for bikshu. his wife and children pleaded with him to come back his wife cried and asked forgiveness. He then told he seriously was acting with pledge to Lord Shiva so he could not be a family man again. he has later in life was instrumental in building educational institutions and medical colleges.

an interview.

 “If America told us Sanskrit was great, India would love it,” says Professor Lakshmi Thathachar, “we love everything that comes from the West.”  Instead it is up to people like the professor to extol its virtues, which he does with a series of disarming smiles and rhetorical questions.

Descended from the one of the Melkote devotees of the great 12^th century philosopher Sri Ramanujar,  Professor Lakshmi Thathachar was a Professor of Sanskrit at Bangalore University before setting up the Academy of Sanskrit Research at Melkote.  He now runs the nascent Samskriti Foundation which takes a holistic approach to the ideal lifestyle, combining sustainability based on the Sanskrit farming treatise of Rishi Krishi Paddati with an emphasis on fusing traditional knowledge systems with technology.  Sanskrit and the literature it has spawned are clearly his passion, but this brief biography does little to prepare you for a discussion which ranges from jokes about busy husbands outsourcing the production of children to TS Eliot to the reasons for the mental disorders of today’s youth (the lack of maternal attention and affection).  You may not agree with all he says but you cannot help but be fascinated.

“The modern world”, Professor Thathachar declares, “needs Sanskrit,” because Sanskrit is such a systematic and scientific language.  Lord Macaulay, the British politician who famously foisted an English-medium education system upon India, thought it a dead language.  Now that Panini’s grammar is recognised almost as a meta-grammar for the world by those such as the American linguist Noam Chomsky, the professor welcomes Sanskrit’s ascendant star in the IT era.  He has himself done much work in this field, developing computer programmes and languages for Sanskrit using Sanskrit.  “I never looked to the West, what would be the point?  Our systems are totally different.”  He advises those working on Indian regional language software tools to use Sanskrit too. “I admire English and am a great lover of English literature, but it is an illogical language.”  Why, he asks, do the ‘u’ in ‘put’ and ‘but’ not sound the same? Indians should not view their own languages through the prism of English, as many are now doing. 

But more than just the language, it is the “ocean of knowledge” present in Sanskrit literature that Professor Thathachar enthuses about.  According to a survey by the National Mission for Manuscripts there are approximately 1 million manuscripts in India.  Only about 10% of these have been documented and deciphered.  “There is so much information and we’re not using any of it.”  The professor has spent many years dipping into various texts to research unlikely things such as food technology.  He found 300 texts on metallurgy alone, and came across an interesting alloy in one treatise on aeronautical engineering.   Some texts may contain little or nothing useful for the modern world, but we should at least read them and check.  “Our predecessors wouldn’t have preserved things that weren’t worth preserving.”

Each manuscript takes two man years to properly preserve and document.  It is a gargantuan task and one that may fast become impossible as people lose their ability to read the scripts in which these texts are written.  He mentions a library in Jammu which houses several thousand manuscripts written in the Sharada script.  None of the handful of Sharada script adepts knows Sanskrit, so the manuscripts will stay there “until they disintegrate”.  The government made a law that any manuscript over 200 years old must be declared, but it is hard to see how the law will be enforced.  The professor was developing a speech recognition software which would allow scholars to read the texts out loud and then capture them digitally, reducing the time it takes by about 20%.  But, “there’s no money now”, he says cheerfully.

Professor Thathachar is also interested in the preservation of India’s oral heritage.  “The government wants to make everyone literate, but what does that mean?  If I have learnt to form the characters to write my name does that make me literate?  Does that make me more literate than a villager who can’t read or write but has by heart reams of folk songs?”  People need to be exposed to this literature, to imbibe it, whether via the written or oral tradition.  We discuss how translation, particularly into English, can help.  “I prefer the new Western term, ‘transcreation’.   Translation isn’t about the words but the thoughts of the poet.  To translate a poem you have to get into the heart of the poet, to understand exactly what he was trying to express”, for which the professor advocates reading a text “10, 15, 100 times”,  before translating it.  He cites a comment in a commentary which is itself a commentary on the Mahabhashya commentary on Panini’s Ashtadhyayi.  The author writes that his own commentary is useless if the reader knows the Mahabhashya, and if the reader doesn’t know the Mahabhashya then his own commentary is useless.  “Similarly, if you know the original you don’t need a translation and if you don’t know the original why would you want a translation?”  Despite this seemingly harsh judgment on the very concept of translation, the professor does value the reach it affords a text, and has translated several texts himself.   And he very much agrees that these literary works ought to be broadcast abroad, because “in England I don’t think you have a Mahabharata”.  But he closes with a shloka which, although intended merely to illustrate the virtuosity of Sanskrit poets, also demonstrates just how untranslatable Sanskrit poetry can be.  It would be unwise to attempt a translation, so suffice to say that each line of the shloka below can be broken up in such a way that it both asks a question and is the answer to that question. 

कंसंजघान कृष्णः।

काशीतलवाहिनीगङ्गा।

केदारपोषणरताः।

कंबलवन्तनबाधते शीतम्॥

karttanE

 pallavi

chittam eppaDiyO ayyA nin

anupallavi
uttamanAga ennai uyartiDUvAyO
karttanE nI ennai kai viDuvAyO

charanam
vADi nondEnE mei jnAna kaN mUDi naindEnE
nADi ALvAi enDRu nambi vandEnE
pADum vEdanAyakan parugum sen tEnE

Translation

What is your intention, O Lord?

Will you uplift me as a virtuous man? Or, Oh Doer, will you abandon me?

Alas, I was wilted and wounded! Closing my true eyes of wisdom, I became frayed! Believing that you would search me out and rule me, I came here. O the pure honey that is imbibed by this singing Vedanayakan, what is you intention?

Tiruvarutpa of Vallalar, Tirumurai-VI part I , verse 3369

paTTuvittAl pADuginDREn
paNivittAl paNiginDREn
padiyE, ninnai kUTTuvittAl kUDuginDREn
kuzhaivittAl kuzhaiginDREn
kuRitta UNai UTTuvittAl uNginDREn
uRanguvittAl uRanguginDREn
uRangAdenDRu ATTuvittAl ADuginDREn
andO, ichchiRiyEnAl Avadu ennE!

If you allow me to sing, I sing. If you allow me to serve, I serve. O Lord, if you allow me to join you, I join you. If you allow me soften with love, I soften. When you allow me to eat appropriate food, I eat. When you allow me to sleep, I sleep. When you forbid me to sleep and make me dance instead, I dance. Alas, what is in the control of this lowly being.

Bharath,s attachment

 Bharath,s attachment started much before chitrakoota.

During the wedding celebrations as is the custom in Indian weddings the friends of the bride bring a well decorated thaal covered with silk cloth to Rama and offer requesting him to see what was offered. Rama,s well whishers requested him to not abide by the request. The girls then go to Lakshmana he also refuses to oblige Satrugna also does the same the girls are disappointed they approach Bharata with a fresh request saying that what is offered is very dear to Rama. Bharata obliges and is shown the slippers of Paducah of Rama what greater joy for the best bhakta of Rama the pleasure he experienced was rooted in his heart. 

Thus later when he was disappointed when Rama refused to budge he was given the same footwear. Which immediately connected to something deep in his heart and he was able to return to Ayodhya and took up the management of the kingdom.

float.

 Rama worships the god of the ocean, Varuna and requests him to make way. When Varuna does not appear before Rama, Rama starts shooting various weapons at the sea, which starts drying up.

A terrified Varuna pleads to Rama. Though he refuses to give way, he gives Rama a solution. He tells Rama that Nala, the son of Vishwakarma - the architect of the gods, is amongst his vanara army.

Varuna suggests that Rama construct a bridge across the ocean to Lanka, under the supervision of Nala.

In some versions, Nala is said to have the power to make stones float and, thus, easily makes the sea-bridge.

In other versions, another Vanara called Nila is also said to have this power and both Nala and Nila are described as builders of the bridge. Known as Adam’s Bridge.

It was built in the Span of Five days:

1st day : fourteen Yojanas

2nd day : twenty Yojanas

3rd day : twenty-one Yojanas

4th day : twenty-two Yojanas

5th day : twenty-three yojanas.

Length and width of Rama Setu: Adams bridge:

The celestials and Gandharvas, the heavenly musicians saw Nala's bridge, having a width of ten yojanas and a length of hundred yojanas and which was very difficult to be build.

two more additions to this was very interesting.

While the bridge was being built It is said Rama too picked up a stone and put in the sea but that did not float. Rama saw Hanuman looking at him and smiling. so he asked him why did that happen Hanuman smilingly said when Rama only leaves the stone how then could it float. we already know that each stone was inscribed with Rama Nama.

People ran to Ravana and said The Rama army had succeeded to built a bridge and the stones were floating. to re assure them Ravan said even i can do it and threw a stone into the river which floated. Ravan knew that it did so because he had taken an oath on the name of Rama that this stone should float so it had floated.

is this true but lessons to learn.

 "...Lord Rama wanted to do be victorious in battle against Ravana, and for that He wanted to establish a Shivalinga and worship it. Now to do this, a priest was needed, but in those days there were no priests found in Rameshwaram. So Lord Rama was in dire need of a good priest to perform the rituals.

Ravana was a staunch devotee of Lord Shiva and was also a Brahmin by birth. So Ravana’s brother Vibhishana (who was on Lord Rama’s side), told Lord Rama that Ravana was very well-versed in the rituals. So Lord Rama sent an invitation to Ravana to come and preside as the priest for the pooja at Rameshwaram.

Ravana accepted the invitation and came. But then he told Lord Rama that the pooja would be incomplete without his wife being present. No pooja or yagna can be performed without the wife’s presence. So he told Lord Rama, ‘Since you are a married man, both you and your wife have to sit together for the pooja, otherwise you cannot perform the pooja’.

Then Lord Rama said to him, ‘It is the duty of the priest to provide an alternative for anything that is missing. Since my wife is not with me (having been kept in captivity by Ravana at that time), please tell me what the alternative for this problem is. Can we keep a doll in her place as a substitute?’

Then Ravana said, ‘I do not believe in alternative. I would want everything to be present for the worship of Lord Shiva. So I will call your wife here for the pooja. After the pooja, please send her back to Lanka’.

So Ravana brings Sita for the pooja. After the pooja, when Lord Rama and Sita bow down to touch the feet of the priest, that is, Ravana, to take blessings, then Ravana blesses Lord Rama by saying ‘Vijayi bhavaha’ (May victory be yours!). He had no choice but to do so.

When someone touches the feet of a priest, he is left with no choice but to bless that person. So Ravana had to give that blessing to Lord Rama for which He had organized the pooja. He also blessed Sita by saying ‘Sumangali bhavaha’ (May you receive all that is best and auspicious always!) Such was Ravana’s magnanimity. After blessing both of them, Ravana took Sita back to Lanka with him.

This is a very exciting story. We always perceive Ravana as a villain, but even Ravana had many good qualities in him. This is why when Ravana was counting his last breaths and was at his death bed on the battlefield, Lord Rama told Lakshmana to go and touch the feet of Ravana and receive knowledge from him as he lay dying on the battlefield. Lord Rama said, ‘If I go to him (Ravana) then he will leave his body and his soul will merge into Me. So before that happens, go and learn all that you can from him’.

Do you know, there is a Gita by the name Ravana? It is called Ravana Gita.

Of the five Gitas that are present, it is one of them. Just like you have the Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, Udhhava Gita, and Guru Gita; there is another Gita called Ravana Gita (the song of Ravana). In it, Ravana teaches many sermons to Lakshmana..."

there is a Rama Geeta too between Rama and Lakshman to answer why he sent Sita to the Ashram.