Monday, July 15, 2019

Sri Varadaraja Ashtottara Shata Namavali

Dear All,

Greetings and Namaste. It has been quite sometime since my last posting due to preoccupation with my day's job. Hopefully I will be able to post more frequent in the days ahead. I missed many important occasions during this time and apologies. 

Just last Friday, Pandharpur in Maharashtra celebrated Ashadhi Ekadashi (Sayana Ekadashi) with huge crowds thronging the holy city. Many of you might have seen a 100-year old lady dancing to the abhang bhajans while trekking 300 km route to Pandharpur. Definitely it makes us reevaluate our own intensity of devotion to the Lord and obviously the conclusion must be similar - insignificant.

There is another rare once-in-40-year event happening in Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. The old deity of Lord Varadaraja made of fig tree root is taken out from the temple tank after 40 years and is open for public darshan for 48 days. Millions have had darshan in the last two weeks and many millions more will be blessed with the darshan in the coming weeks.

If this is missed, the next occasion is 40 years later in 2059. For mortals like myself who might miss this occasion to have darshan in person, we have the option of praying to Lord Varadaraja with the attached Varadaraja Ashtottara Shata namavali (rare 108 names of Lord Varadaraja). This was taken from a very old Telugu manuscript (that too a very ancient version of Telugu alphabet) and translated into Devanagari by my ex-colleague's father, Sri Haranath Jayanti. Thanks to him for this valuable service. 

I am not able to understand some of the names - they are either grammatically incorrect or incomprehensible. Please revert to me if you could decipher some/all of them. 

May we pray to Lord Varadaraja with this unique 108 names.

With best wishes/regards,
K. Muralidharan Iyengar (Murali)

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