Letter 155

29th October, 1947
(155) KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER LANGUAGES

This afternoon at 2-30, Bhagavan Ramana was reading a Malayalam book and was speaking to a devotee seated near him. The devotee was asking, “Did Bhagavan learn to read Malayalam in his younger days?”
“No,” Bhagavan replied, “while I was staying in Gurumurtham, Palaniswami* used to be with me. He had a copy of the Adhyatma Ramayanam and was often reading it aloud. Every Malayali who knows how to read, invariably reads that book.

“Hence, even though he did not know how to read well, he somehow managed to read it, albeit with many mistakes.

I was at the time observing silence, and so I used merely to listen. After we shifted to the palmyra grove, I took the book and found it to be in Malayalam script. Having already learnt that script, I easily learned to read and write.”

“When did you learn Telugu?” asked someone.

“When I was in the Virupaksha Cave,” said Bhagavan, “Gambhiram Seshayya and others asked me to write some stanzas in Telugu and so I transcribed letter by letter from Sanskrit into Telugu script and practised them. Thus I slowly learnt Telugu in the year 1900.”

I asked him when he had learnt the Nagari script.

“That must also have been about the same time,” said Bhagavan. “Muthurama Dikshitar and others used to come frequently, as they had books in Nagari script, I used to copy the letters and in that way got used to them.” Someone said, “We had heard that you learnt Telugu only after Nayana came to you.”

“No,” said Bhagavan, “I learnt it much earlier, but I got used to speaking it freely only after he came, that’s all.” “We had heard,” said another, “that you learnt Telugu in your boyhood days.”

“I did not know how to write or read Telugu at that time,” said Bhagavan. “My grandfather’s younger brother knew Telugu; he used to keep me by his side on the cot and teach me Telugu alphabet. That was all. I learnt Telugu only while writing the stanzas. Subsequently, when I wrote ‘Upadesa Saram’, Yogi Ramiah wanted it in Telugu, so I wrote it in couplets (dvipada), closely following the Tamil metre. I then showed it to Nayana who said that it was not a correct Telugu couplet and he taught me the metres (ganas) of the Telugu verses. I wrote them down in Tamil script and then made the required alterations. When I showed it to Nayana, he said it was correct and could be given to the printers. Later, when Balarama Reddy got me a copy of the Sulakshana Saram, I learnt the metres of the other verses, copied them on two pages of paper and pasted them in our copy of the Telugu primer. That has been sufficient for my purposes. Now, if anyone reads a verse, I can easily find out in what metre it is and what mistakes, if any, there are. I learnt one language after another in the same way. I did not purposely learn any language,” said Bhagavan.

(* Sri Palaniswami was one of Bhagavan Ramana's first attendants) See Devotees.

Letter 118

(118) WHERE IS THE KING AND WHERE IS THE KINGDOM?
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19th May, 1947
This afternoon, during a conversation regarding old Sankara Vijayam, Bhagavan asked one devotee whether it was not a fact that amongst all books on the life of Sankara, Sankara Vijayam of Vidyaranya was the best. “He was a great scholar and so his book is taken as an authority by all,” said that devotee.

Bhagavan said, with a smile, “Yes, his mental powers were very great. He was a great votary of Sri Vidya, you see. He therefore wanted to create a city in the shape of Sri Chakra (wheel) and started doing it in Hampi but could not complete it. So he said that an emperor in future would rule the country and would be able to build a city in the shape of a Sri Chakra. When I told Nayana (Ganapathi Muni) about this while I was on the hill, he made a peculiar comment, namely: ‘Sri chakrakriti sona saila vapusham, sri shodasarnatmakam occurs in ‘Arunachala Ashtaka Stotram’ written by Sri Sankara.



Besides this in Arunachala Purana, it is stated that this hill is reputed to be in the shape of Sri Chakra. Hence, without searching for it, we have been lucky in getting this place which is in the shape of Sri Chakra. Bhagavan is the Chakravarthi (Emperor).

If about ten houses are built around the hill, this itself is a great empire. Sankara must have intended this only,’ so said Nayana. He followed it up by arranging the whole administrative set up by saying, ‘Here is the commander- in-chief, that man is the treasurer, he is this, he is that.’ It used to be very amusing when he was here. All used to sit together and say, ‘What are the refreshments today for our Durbar?’ Then they used to draw up a programme, cook, and eat. They used to conduct the programme as if they were ruling an empire. This Sundaresan and that Kalyanam, were they like this then? Oh! Each person used to be highly active and hilarious. They used to think that they were great warriors,” said Bhagavan.

“When was all that?” asked Sivanandam. “That was while we were in Virupaksha Cave. Nayana actually drew up a plan on paper for the city to be built. A special place was allotted for me in that plan. Afterwards he used to draw up plans suitable for the administration of the empire. No king, no kingdom — plans, however, were got ready. Many plans were prepared like that. Where was the king? Where was the kingdom?” asked Bhagavan.

Subba Rao, a disciple of Nayana, said, “Why, was there no king? He is just opposite to us. Only this king wears a loin cloth. What is wanting? Haven’t houses been built around the hill? Isn’t the place where Bhagavan sits, like a king’s palace? The whole administration here is going on like a king’s household. Only there are some differences between an ordinary kingdom and this. That is all.” “That is all right. Nayana also used to say that the position of a Maharaja and a Mahajnani is the same. When astrologers predicted that Tathagatha (Buddha) would become either an Emperor or a sannyasi, full of wisdom and knowledge, his father prevented him from going out anywhere, kept him in the palace and tried his best to interest him in the pleasures and luxuries of the palace. At last when he (Buddha) somehow managed to go out on some pretext, he saw all the sufferings of people in the world. So, he ran away and took sannyasa. One of the two empires, material, or spiritual,” said Bhagavan.

Letter 111

(111) DIVINE VISIONS
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18th April, 1947
This morning at 8 o’clock, Bhagavan looked at an old man who was coming into the hall and asked me, “Do you know who this is?” I said ‘No’. “He is the husband of my cousin sister who, it is stated in my biography, was suckled by my mother along with me,” said Bhagavan. (His name is Manamadurai Ramaswamy Iyer).

“What is her name?” I asked. “Meenakshi,” said Bhagavan. Saying that I had seen that gentleman from time to time but never known the relationship, I asked another devotee sitting nearby whether he knew him. He said, “Why? I know him well. Bhagavan gave darshan to that lady at the time of her death.” “Is that so?” I asked Bhagavan with some surprise.

Bhagavan replied thus: “Yes. It happened in her case the same way as in the case of Nayana at Tiruvottiyur. It seems I went near and touched her. She got up startled and said, ‘Who is it that has touched me?’ That is all. She woke up immediately after that.

It transpired subsequently that this happened in the last moment of her life.” “Did she tell anyone there about this experience?” I asked. “We enquired about that but she was not at that time in a condition to speak,” said Bhagavan. “That means, you had blessed her with your darshan in the same way as in the case of Nayana. Would the privilege of the drinking of milk from your mother go to waste?” I said. “Yes, that is so. Mother used to give her breast milk to both of us. I was drinking mother’s milk till I was five years of age. If my father saw, he used to scold her, saying, ‘What is this giving of milk to a grown up child like that?’ So I used to wait until he had gone and then drink milk. Mother had plenty of milk,” said Bhagavan.

A devotee asked, “Why does Bhagavan call Ganapati Sastri ‘Nayana’ (Nayana means father)?” “There is a reason for it,” he replied, “it is my custom to address all people with respect. Moreover, he was older than me. I therefore always used to call him Ganapati Sastri Garu. That was very distressing to him and so he begged me times out of number not to do so, saying, ‘Am I not your disciple? You should call me by a familiar name. This is very unfair.’ I did not pay any heed to his protests. At last one day he insisted on my giving up the formal way of addressing him and adopting a familiar one.

All his disciples call him ‘Nayana’, you see. So I made it an excuse and said I too would call him ‘Nayana’ like the others.

He agreed to it because ‘Nayana’ means a child and a disciple could be addressed as one’s own child. I agreed because ‘Nayana’ also means ‘father’ and hence it would not matter so far as I was concerned. I was still addressing him in respectful terms. Whenever I asked him to come here or go there he was still uncomfortable because after all that he had done, I continued to talk to him with the respect due to elders,” said Bhagavan.

I said, “You stated that Meenakshi was not in a condition to tell others about the darshan she had. That is all right, but Nayana did tell others about the darshan he had, didn’t he? In Vedantic language, what do they say about similar experiences that two people have at the same time?” Bhagavan said, with a smile, “ They are called ‘divya darshanas’ (divine visions).”