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My father was a fairly orthodox South Indian brahmin although he never wore a tuft (shikha) on a tonsured head which was de rigueur for brahmins of olden times.
My Shakespeare Uncle, the eldest of Father's four brothers (Father was the youngest), used to sport a pigtail hidden in his otherwise well-cropped fashioned hair as a lame excuse for the original thing.
Whenever Father used to sit down for his thrice-daily sandhyavandanam, he would fetch a used LG Hing box and recover from it a spherical object which he used to call Vibhuti Pandu (vibhuti fruit). Well, it was not a fruit, by no means. It was a whitish grayish hard ball of sacred ashes.
And Father would start his ritual by rubbing this vibhuti pandu on his forefingers and smear the resulting ash on his forehead and chest and bare upper arms, and chant the verse:
When I was 8, I made bold and asked him one day what this ritual is meant for. And he explained:
He was supposed to take bath every time he sat for his sandhyavandanam and other rituals. But he was either too lazy or there wasn't enough water in the backyard well. So smearing the sacred ashes is equivalent to (and superior to) taking bath by the dirty water in the buckets.
And it is called the Vibhuti Snanam.
And the mantra chanted is known as the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra appealing to Lord Shivjee to release the chanter from the grip of mortal coils, like a ripe cucumber is released from its parent creeper, but never from immortality.
During Shivjee's times, the vibhuti used to be made from the ashes of cremated bodies at midnight in the cremation ground which was his favorite haunt. By Father's time, folks selling vibhuti fruit got too busy and scared and, as a simplified version of the original thing, used to make it from the burnt ashes of cow dung. I guess nowadays Hyderabadi stalls that sell the vibhuti fruit by its innumerable temples make it from solidified talcum powder since I find it comes in various scents.
Talking of shloks like the one quoted above (which I chant daily in the morning since I like its meaning and sound), Readers' Digest was not the originator of Condensed Books...we had Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in our school texts.
For those folks who don't have time to read their daily Ramayan since they had watched the football matches past midnight (and started dozing in Lok Sabha), there is this Eka Shloki Ramayan (Ramayan condensed into just one single shlok):
And Adi Sankara did one better...he compressed the entire Advaita Vedanata into half a shlok:
Very like the Abstracts of my guru SDM's papers...
...Posted by Ishani
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My father was a fairly orthodox South Indian brahmin although he never wore a tuft (shikha) on a tonsured head which was de rigueur for brahmins of olden times.
My Shakespeare Uncle, the eldest of Father's four brothers (Father was the youngest), used to sport a pigtail hidden in his otherwise well-cropped fashioned hair as a lame excuse for the original thing.
Whenever Father used to sit down for his thrice-daily sandhyavandanam, he would fetch a used LG Hing box and recover from it a spherical object which he used to call Vibhuti Pandu (vibhuti fruit). Well, it was not a fruit, by no means. It was a whitish grayish hard ball of sacred ashes.
And Father would start his ritual by rubbing this vibhuti pandu on his forefingers and smear the resulting ash on his forehead and chest and bare upper arms, and chant the verse:
tryambakam yajamahe sugandhim pushti vardhanam
urvarukamiva bandhanat mrityor mrikshiya maamritaat
When I was 8, I made bold and asked him one day what this ritual is meant for. And he explained:
He was supposed to take bath every time he sat for his sandhyavandanam and other rituals. But he was either too lazy or there wasn't enough water in the backyard well. So smearing the sacred ashes is equivalent to (and superior to) taking bath by the dirty water in the buckets.
And it is called the Vibhuti Snanam.
And the mantra chanted is known as the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra appealing to Lord Shivjee to release the chanter from the grip of mortal coils, like a ripe cucumber is released from its parent creeper, but never from immortality.
During Shivjee's times, the vibhuti used to be made from the ashes of cremated bodies at midnight in the cremation ground which was his favorite haunt. By Father's time, folks selling vibhuti fruit got too busy and scared and, as a simplified version of the original thing, used to make it from the burnt ashes of cow dung. I guess nowadays Hyderabadi stalls that sell the vibhuti fruit by its innumerable temples make it from solidified talcum powder since I find it comes in various scents.
Talking of shloks like the one quoted above (which I chant daily in the morning since I like its meaning and sound), Readers' Digest was not the originator of Condensed Books...we had Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in our school texts.
For those folks who don't have time to read their daily Ramayan since they had watched the football matches past midnight (and started dozing in Lok Sabha), there is this Eka Shloki Ramayan (Ramayan condensed into just one single shlok):
aaadau raama tapovanadi gamanam, hatva mrigam kanchanam,
vaidehi haranam, jatayu maranam, sugriva sambhashanam,
vaalee nigrahanam, samudra taranam, lankapuri dahanam,
paschat raavana kumbhakarna hananam, etad hi ramayanam.
And Adi Sankara did one better...he compressed the entire Advaita Vedanata into half a shlok:
shlokaardhena pravakshyaami yad-uktam granthakotibhi: |
brahma satyam jagan-mithyaa jivo brahmaiva naapara: ||
...Posted by Ishani
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