![]() ![]() After this prayer the chapter starts with a prayer for the divine elements embedded in the waters. The one who chants the prayers is mostly a brahmin but his prayer is for the entire world. Recall that the Gayatri also uses the same plural. Note the plural (shown in italics) on the part of the reciting individual used here. The very first prayer says: ‘With our ears may we hear what is good, with our eyes may we behold thy righteousness …’. As is said of ‘women’ in the erotic literature of Sanskrit, translations which are faithful may not be beautiful and translations which are beautiful may not be faithful! We shall only see some flashes of the originals here and there. We shall not be presenting a word-by-word rendering of the meanings of the full text. ![]() We shall now come to the text of the Surya-namaskara prashna. Behind every form and object of Nature there is the Ultimate Supreme which is the One Reality present everywhere and at all times. Thus it should be clear that the religion of Hinduism is not Nature Worship. This does not preclude a Hindu scientist praying to the BhUmA-devi every morning when he gets up from bed and invoking her pardon and forgiveness for his day’s activities to start, with all the pollutions of the Earth that they involve. We stand, sit and sleep on the Earth and we do all sorts of contaminations on it. Why go so far? The Earth is always worshipped as BhUmA-devi. But that cannot deny the status of the Moon-God to the Moon and its status as the seat of the pitr’s (the ancestral souls ) which is part of the Hindu culture, religion and tradition. Whatever object we worship whether it is the waters or the fire or the wind or the Earth, or even the Sun, there is always an abstraction into a divine element behind the physical element or object and that abstraction is the object of our worship. (III – 7-9) In fact if we understand this principle of Hindu worship well we will discover that no amount of scientific advance and breakthrough can ever upset the esoteric philosophical foundation of the religion called Sanatana Dharma. “He who inhabits the Sun but is within it, whom the Sun does not know, whose body is the Sun and who controls the Sun from within, is the Inner Controller, your own immortal Self” says the Brihadaranyakopanishad. That is what we are supposed to be worshipping. So behind the physical Sun there is the sUrya-devatA, the Sun-God. “Whatever cannot be seen by the eyes, but by which the eyes see, that is brahman – not the one that you physically see and worship”: (Kenopanishad: I – 6): The Kenopanishad makes this very clear in no uncertain terms. The external manifestation is only secondary, the Absolute Supreme which is behind is primary. In this context it must be noted that what we are worshipping is not the physical Sun before us. One so firmly believes in these benefits, both physical and spiritual, that one does this ritual even by proxi – if one is incapable of doing it either because of ill-health or incapacity or because of the lack of training in the scriptural text – that is, one engages a professional pundit to do it for him! Their real benefit is esoteric in terms of spiritual evolution. The benefits of physical exercise that one derives from the performance of this ritual are only incidental. The mantras of this chapter have great spiritual significance. That is why this chapter of the Vedas is called Surya-namaskara prashna. It has been the tradition among brahmins educated in the Vedas to recite this chapter and make a full prostration to the Sun towards the East at the end of each panchAshat, particularly every Sunday (the day of the Sun) morning. The entire matter is a compendium of information on the Sun as was ‘seen’ by the Vedic Seers. Of these two the Taittiriya ShAkhA has a chapter (= prashna) which has 32 anuvAkas divided into 132 sub-paragraphs (panchAshats), each of which has ten sentences except when it occurs at the end of the anuvAka. Of the 101 branches (ShAkhAs) of the Yajur Veda only two are extant now. But the Sun was revered not just for these – because man recognized these very much later –but because the Sun was and is the only visible symbol of the Infinite power, majesty and glory of the Unseen Almighty. It is true that the invisible rays of the Sun can kill bacteria and give life to the plant world. Ever since the Vedic times the Sun (Surya) has been worshipped adored and revered. 28.1.4: SURYA NAMASKARA PRASHNA FROM KRISHNA YAJURVEDAĪs an expression of the divine power there is nothing to beat the Sun. ![]()
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