Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 22

The twenty-second verse continues verse 17's no name is inferior claim and applies it to mantra-pedantry. The Sanskrit mantra-śāstra tradition prescribes specific letter-combinations, syllable-counts, breathing patterns, and prānopāsana practices for each mantra to be spoken correctly. The verse, in plain Malayalam, sets the worry aside. The combination and matching of letters is strongly unnecessary. Among the crores of divine names, no single name is inferior to any other. The Krishna Priya gloss is unequivocal: every letter is powerful by itself, and the seeker does not need to check the rules before reciting.

If you have come to this verse worried that you are doing the practice wrong, that you are mispronouncing, that your mantra lacks correct initiation, the verse is for you. The verse closes the door on the pedantry. The Name is what carries the Name. The seeker only has to say it.

The Living Words

Lujjam-ādi cērttoru porutham ninaykkilum. Even though one might think the matching of Lu, Chj, Ma and other letters is necessary. The verse names the orthodox mantra-pedantry by listing some of its sample letter-combinations.

Itu ajitante nāma-ganam atu iniṅṅu venda dṛḍham. Now, for the unconquerable Lord's divine names, this is firmly not needed. Ajita is unconquerable, an epithet of Viṣṇu/Krishna; nāma-gana is the assemblage of names; dṛḍham is firmly.

Oru koṭi-koṭi vaka tiru-nāmam-uḷḷavayil. Among the crores upon crores of varieties of divine names. The Sanskrit-Malayalam koṭi is ten million; the verse claims the Lord's names number in the hundreds of millions.

Aruta āttatil-illa Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. In none of these is there aruta-āttu, prohibition or unsuitability. The verse closes by asserting that no rule of unsuitability applies to any of these names.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

The Sanskrit mantra-śāstra literature is large, technical, and rigorous. It distinguishes between bīja-mantras (seed-syllables), māla-mantras (long composite mantras), namaskāra-mantras (salutational mantras), and many other categories. It prescribes initiation by a qualified guru, specific times of day, specific seats, specific nyāsa (placing of syllables on the body), specific breath-counts, specific accents. For the orthodox practitioner, these rules are real, useful, and demanding. For the everyday devotee, they are intimidating, often unattainable, and (this is the verse's claim) unnecessary.

The verse is not refuting the mantra-śāstra. It is refusing the gatekeeping the śāstra has, in the bhakti tradition's experience, often been used to perform. The Krishna Priya gloss is honest: In mantras, letters are used in specific combinations to invoke power. For a common man, it may be difficult to understand the meaning of such mantras, method of pronunciation and practices to follow in the recitation. Then the gloss makes the bhakti move: Contemplating deeply, one could understand every letter is powerful, and so it is needless to worry about the combination and matching of letters to select Lord's divine names for recitation. Each letter is, by verse 15's recognition, an akṣara, an imperishable. Each name made of these letters carries the imperishable. The combinations are real ways of arranging the imperishable; they are not the only way.

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, in the Ajāmila episode (verse 11's reference), made the same claim by example. Ajāmila called Nārāyaṇa without any mantra-initiation, without the right breath-count, without the right time, without thinking of the Lord at all. The Name still worked. The Bhāgavata's lesson is not that mantra-śāstra is wrong; it is that the Name is bigger than the rules the śāstra has built around it.

If you have come to this verse with a quiet shame about your practice (I am not pronouncing it right, I do not know the bīja, I have not been initiated), the verse refuses the shame. The shame is a leftover from the gatekeeping. The Name does not require the gatekeeper's permission. Crores upon crores of divine names; not one of them is closed to the seeker who calls it.

The verse's closing word is aruta āttatil-illa: there is no prohibition, no unsuitability. The double-negative Malayalam grammar is doing the same work as Caitanya's nāsty eva nāsty eva nāsty eva: closing every door except the one that is open.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Three saints who lived this verse-22 freedom from mantra-pedantry.

Sant Narahari Sonār, thirteenth-century Maharashtra, was a Vārkari goldsmith who, the legend records, was a Śaiva by upbringing and refused for years to acknowledge Vitthal as the form of Śiva himself. Vitthal at Pandharpur visited him in disguise, asking him to make a gold ornament for Vitthal's image. Narahari, taking the measurements, found that they were the same as Śiva's; the deity's two forms collapsed into one. He composed abhangas in plain Marathi from then on, refusing the Śaiva-Vaiṣṇava sectarian distinction. The body image is the goldsmith at his bench, the small deity-image in his hand, the recognition that the form did not match either Śaiva or Vaiṣṇava rule and was, in fact, both.

Sant Bahinābāī (also in verse 21) composed in Marathi a famous abhanga on the question, what should I recite? Her answer: whatever name; whichever Lord; my tongue cannot wait for the rule-book. She wrote without classical Sanskrit training and, despite household opposition, the abhangas spread.

Kancipuram Pillai-Lokācārya, late thirteenth-century Tamil Śrīvaiṣṇavism, was the ācārya who articulated the prapatti doctrine of effortless surrender against the more elaborate bhakti-yoga of his guru's school. His Mumukṣupaṭi and Śrī-vacana-bhūṣaṇa compress the verse-22 teaching into Tamil-Sanskrit Maṇi-pravāḷam: the orthodox mantra-discipline is real, but the surrendering soul does not need to wait for it. The Lord is satisfied with the surrender itself. Body image: the ācārya at the temple of Aḻagar at Madurai, the seekers gathered in the corridors, the Tamil-Sanskrit pāsurams refusing to require what the seekers could not yet give.