In one of the lectures, Swami Vivekananda starts like this:
"The subject is very large and the time is short; a full analysis of the religion of the Hindus is impossible in one lecture. I will therefore, present before you the salient points of our religion in as simple language as I can.”
And he proceeds to explain and extract the salient integral features of the great living system, viz., Hinduism. Once upon a time I was so mad after this book. Then when I embarked on the studies of the traditional schools and their works, I developed a strange audacity to think 'after all Swamiji has done oversimplification, perhaps out of his enthusiasm.' When I did enough home work on my own, it dawned slowly on me, a realisation with an embarrassment, that Swami Vivekananda has drawn out the creamy essence of Hindu scriptures, which nobody else could have done so effectively. The realisation was a punch in my nose and of course, I began to know the value of his thoughts in first hand.
And coming to what I am trying to say - towards the end of his lecture he is stressing something, the value of which is so immediate and again immeasurable.
”1 have finished what I had to say about our religion. I will end by reminding you of the one pressing necessity of the day. Praise be to Vyasa, the great author of the Mahabharata, that in this Kali Yuga there is one great work. The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practised in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others.
What is meant by dAnam ? The highest of gifts is the giving of spiritual knowledge, the next is the giving of secular knowledge, and the next is the saving of life; the last is giving food and drink. He who gives spiritual knowledge, saves the soul from many and many a birth. He who gives secular knowledge opens the eyes of human beings towards spiritual knowledge, and far below these, rank all other gifts, even the saving of life. Therefore, it is necessary that you learn this, and note that all other kinds of work are of much less value than that of imparting spiritual knowledge. The highest and greatest help is that given in the dissemination of spiritual knowledge."
Gift of knowledge is the very need of our age. Has not Bharati coming in the line of Vivekananda, Nivedita sung?
"Should we indeed develop knowledge
for the sake of all the people
and all the people as one"
Again what is spirituality? Is it any big show? or any intellectual fanfaronade? Never.
”Talking is not religion ; parrots may talk, machines may talk now-a-days. But show me the life of renunciation, of spirituality, of all-suffering, of love infinite. This kind of life indicates a spiritual man.”
And what should be avoided?
“And above all, one thing is necessary. Aye, for ages we have been saturated with awful jealousy; we are always getting jealous of each other. Why has this man a little precedence, and not I? Even in the worship of God we want precedence, to such a state of slavery have we come. This is to be avoided. If there is any crying sin in India at this time it is this slavery."
(The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Part III, 3rd Ed., 1922 pp 133, 134)
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Some event in history becomes a sort of magnet-event, attracting the enthusiasm, efforts and involvement of contemporary and succeeding generations. Swami Vivekananda's speech at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago was one such event. Otherwise why should the owner of Anandabodhini journal Mr N Munisamy Mudaliyar ask the Tamil teacher of National College High School in Trichy, Mr E S Varadaraja Iyengar, to translate the Chicago speeches of Swamiji. This was happening in 1929. The Tamil teacher was living in Uraiyur, Saraswathy Nilayam.
Anandabodhini was given its name by His Holiness Karapatra Swamigal, who was at Sadhu Nilayam, Vyasarpadi. From 1915 it was running as a monthly, attracting a subscription of 20000, as the blurb in the backpages says. And when the translation of Chicago addresses was coming out in 1929, in the same year Sri Ramakrishna Math Chennai was bringing out a selection of Swamiji's words bearing on Nationalistic themes and about our country as .Namadu Thainadu, selected and translated by Ra Krishnamurthy, with the foreword of Swami Yathiswarananda. In the munnurai Swami Yathiswarananda says that the complete works of Swami Vivekananda was yet to come out in Tamil at that time, 1929 and opines that the said selection of Swamiji's words will well fill the gap in the meantime.
Already in 1921, Mr M S Nateson of Trichy brought out the Tamil translation of the paper on Hinduism by Swami Vivekananda, which forms part of Chicago speeches through The Vivekananda Publishing House, Teppakulam, Tiruchi.
I think even this itself will form a good research theme. i. e. various translations in various regional languages both during when Swamiji was living and after his time in the following decades. And also what were the reactions, informal and written or some comments occurring in some other places.
Yea .. An event having reverberations through time.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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