Translated by Sri Ramanan Rajagopalan

Relatives are like us ? What about Other Deities?

Other Devatas:

All the relationships on this earth come only till the lifespan. There are some souls, devatas that have been vested with fulfilling certain wishes. These devatas can be invoked by proper yAgams and by offering certain dravyams to them. Vayu can amass lot of wealth for one. Similarly, agni is supposed to lead anyone by taking things forward. Now, Pillai Lokacharyar continues with the same question-answer session kind of narration in explaining how these devatas also cannot protect us.

Sun and Moon

ivargallelum rakshakargal agamAttagaiyAl nAttaaru kannai irukkum surya chandrargal pakkal kurai en?

Pillai Lokacharyar posts a question as an analysis starting point by saying that the relationships fail to protect us, but sun and moon are glowing in day and night respectively to give light and cool ambience. What is the flaw in them?

He himself answers that:

ennil chandra suryarkal SarvEswaranuuku kattupattavargal.

Sunlight is the main source of energy for any activity on earth. Lots of scientific actions revolve around sunrise and sunset. In fact, the entire span from sun rise to sun set is divided into 5 periods for carrying out various activities. Similarly, moon gives cool light in the night. It soothens one after a tiresome day. The key point here is that the rising and setting time and their motion are not under their control, but under the control of Perumal. An incident in Mahabharata is an example for this aspect.

In order to protect Pandavas, Krishna advanced the amAvAsyA by one day from the actual date that Sahadeva had recommended to the Kauravas. Seeing Krishna performing tharpanam, sun and moon came and stood before him for justification. Krishna rightly answered them that He was correct because both sun and moon were together so that one's shadow fell on the other.

Hence, it could be concluded that even sun and moon are under the control of Perumal, and so they cannot protect us completely.

Let us continue with the case of Indra in the next posting.