Sanatan Archive

Nava Tirupathi is a set of 9 temples of Lord Vishnu located between Tirunelveli and Tiruchendur in the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu. Nava Tirupathi is part of the 108 Divya Desam temples revered by the Alvars, the 12 Tamil poet-saints who lived 2500 years ago.

In the early summer of 1819, a British hunting party was heading through the thick jungle near Aurangabad, in Maharashtra, western India, when the tiger they were tracking disappeared into a deep ravine. Leading the hunters was Captain John Smith, a young cavalry officer from Madras. Beckoning his friends to follow, he tracked the animal down a semi-circular scarp of steep basalt, and hopped across the rocky bed of the Wagora river, then made his way up through the bushes at the far side of the amphitheater of cliffs.

Sringara Prakasa (शृङ्गार प्रकाश – Śṛṅgāra Prakāśa) is a voluminous set of Sanskrit poetry consisting of thirty-six chapters, documented in 1908. It deals mostly with Alamkara-Shastra (rhetoric) and Rasa, and is claimed to have been authored by Raja Bhoja, the king of Paramara dynasty in the early 11th century A.D. A large extent of this magnum opus is dedicated to Sringara Rasa, which according to Bhoja's theory: "is the only one Rasa admissible.”

Even thousands of years before, India had become famous and reached its pinnacle in astrological and astronomical sciences. Ancient Astrological works had been translated into many foreign languages. Ibn Batuta and Al Baruni were two prominent Arab travellers who had visited ancient India specially to pursue Astrology.

The Arthashastra is so much a part of modern Indian vocabulary on politics, economics, and society that it is hard to imagine that this was a book unknown to the English-speaking world until an old manuscript was discovered in 1904. It was translated and presented to the world by R. Shamasastry of the Mysore Oriental Research Institute in Sanskrit, in 1909, and in English in 1915.

Hinduism is a diverse tradition and very different from other monolithic religions. In the monolithic sense, it is defined by The Four Pillars. Faith (sraddha) is individualistic whereas religion (dharma) is collective, and so Hindus are encouraged to explore their faith, which is why there are more Hindu scriptures and textual opinions on spirituality than any other religion. There isn’t a single scriptural or spiritual authority to define matters of the faith for Hindus, unlike in some other religions with a central pontiff.

It was Mahapralaya—the night of Brahma when nothing existed. There was neither night nor day, no light or darkness, neither joy nor sorrow. All animate and inanimate creation had merged into the infinite essence. There was neither sun, nor moon, nor planets. The whole firmament was one complete void, pulsating with life.

In the bewildering galaxy of gods of the Hindu pantheon, Lord Shiva stands out as one of the oldest and best-loved. He is as old as the Indian culture, perhaps even older. At the time of the cosmic dawn, before the creation of man, he appeared as the divine archer, pointing with his arrow to the unrevealed Absolute. The world is his hunting ground. The universe resounds with his presence. He is both sound and echo. He is intangible vibration as well as an infinitesimal substance. He is the rustling of the withered leaves and the glossy green of the newborn grass. He is the ferryman who ferries us from life to death, but he is also the liberator from death to immortality. He has innumerable faces and eleven forms as described in the Vedas. The sky and the seasons vibrate with his intensity and power. He grips, supports, releases, and liberates. He is both the disease and the destroyer of the disease. He is food, the giver of food, and the process of eating. His divine majesty and power are depicted through symbolic, yet highly realistic descriptions of an awe-inspiring figure, far, distant, and cold in his remote Himalayan fastness as well as close, kind, and loving, a living, throbbing symbol of the Divine.

Most people are perplexed about the Vedas. Very few have read them, and those who have found them difficult to understand. They can’t make sense of its many divinities, sacrifices, rituals, riddles, and paradoxes.

Brihadeeshwara Temple (Peruvudaiyar Kovil) is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva located in Thanjavur in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is also known as Periya Kovil, RajaRajeswara Temple and Rajarajesvaram.