Munro and Shri Raghavendra Swamy

Shri Raghavendra Swamy is revered as a great saint all over southern India. It is said that he had miraculous healing powers and also granted the prayers of his devotees. He was born in 1601 in Bhuvanagiri in Tamil Nadu. His temple and Math stand even today at Mantralayam in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh.

The story goes that, when he wanted to leave the world, he asked his devotees to construct a ‘Brindavan’ around and over him. He sat there playing the veena and singing the Kannada hymn ‘Indu enege Shri Govindha’ in raga Bhairavi invoking Lord Krishna to dance before him. He then controlled his breathing and a Brindavan was constructed as he had wished, placing 300 ‘Saligramas’ over his head. It is believed that he is alive inside the Brindavan, performing miracles.

In 1800, when Sir Thomas Munro was the Collector of Bellary, the Madras Government ordered him to procure the entire income from the Math and Mantralaya village for the state. When the revenue officials were unable to comply with this order, Sir Thomas himself visited the Math for investigation. He removed his hat and shoes and entered the sacred precincts. Legend says that Shri Raghavendra Swamy then emerged from the Brindavan and conversed with him for some time about the resumption of endowment. The saint was visible and audible only to Munro during this period. The Collector went back and wrote an order in favour of the Math and the village. This notification was published in the Madras Government Gazette in Chapter X! and page 213 under the caption ‘Manchali Adoni Taluka’. This order is still preserved in Fort St. George, Chennai and Mantralayam.

Source: http://forum.spiritualindia.org

Sir Thomas Munro and His Thoughts on British Rule in India

Sir Thomas Munro was the Governor of the Madras Presidency during the British Raj. He was a person who understood the dynamics of British occupation of India and the role of the Company and the Crown in Indian lives.

Mr. Muthiah, the famed historian of Madras, quotes Sir Thomas’ comments on British rule:

“Your rule is alien and can never be popular. You have much to bring to your subjects but you cannot turn India into England or Scotland. Work through, not in spite of, native systems and native ways, with a prejudice in their favour rather than against them; and when in the fullness of time, your subjects can frame and maintain a worthy Government for themselves, get out and take the glory of the achievement and the sense of having done your duty as the chief reward of your exertions.”

Sir Thomas was an able administrator, dealing with problems with compassion and justice. It is no wonder that villagers named their first son in his memory as ‘Munrolappa’. Even today, the city of Chennai pays tribute to this unusual ‘Empire builder’ with a equestrian statue right in the middle of Mount Road, as it emerges from the Fort.

Source: http://chennaimetblogs.com

Munro Miscellany

In 1820, he was appointed the Governor of Madras Presidency, where he founded systems of revenue assessment and general administration which substantially persisted into the twentieth century. His official minutes, published by Sir A. Arbuthnot, form a manual of experience and advice for the modern civilian.

An equestrian statue of him, sculpted by Francis Chanterey, stands in Chennai city. Sitting proud and straight on his horse, in the middle of Chennai’s famed Island, is ‘The Stirrupless Majesty’. Either due to an oversight, or depicting his affinity for bareback riding, Sir Thomas Munro’s statue shows him without saddle and stirrup.

The Tirupati Tiremala Devasthanams still hold a huge cauldron gifted by him called Munro Gangalam, in which food for Lord Venkateswara is prepared, even though Sir Munro never visited the temple.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Munro

A TRAGIC  MUGHAL PRINCE

Dara Shikoh, whose death anniversary fell on August 30, was more than a Sufi-prince, scholar and translator. He was also a hands-on editor-publisher of translations

Every Indian who has ever translated a text into English owes something to a Mughal prince who lies buried in the compound of Humayun’s tomb in Delhi. The anniversary of his death, August 30, is a date we should remember with national melanchol y. The school-room facts are well known: in the struggle for the Mughal throne 350 years ago, Shah Jahan’s eldest son Prince Dara Shikoh was defeated, and brought to Delhi where he was led through the city in a disgrace-parade on an old and unwashed elephant.


Chief charge

What is significant for us today is not that there was a war for kingship — in itself nothing unusual — but that one of the chief charges Aurangzeb brought against the rightful heir was that in publishing the Majma-‘ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of the Two Oceans) Dara had openly committed to the truth in Hinduism. Like his great-grandfather, Dara tried to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Islam. The Emperor Akbar had strongly believed that his Mughal nobles needed to understand their Hindu subjects and had set up a translation bureau to render the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata into Persian. Prince Dara Shikoh went much further.

Dara Shikoh, whose name means “the glory of Darius”, was born to Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal in 1615. He was the heir apparent and his father’s favourite son. As he grew up, and began to display very special qualities of scholarship and a deep interest in mysticism, which he researched relentlessly, it became clear that he was no ordinary man. In 1640 he was introduced to Lahore’s famous Qadri Sufi saint, Hazrat Mian Mir who had urged both Jehangir and Shah Jahan to be kind to all their subjects. In the same year, Dara published his first book, Sakinatul Auliya, a collection of biographical sketches of Muslim saints. His interests took a steep turn when he met Baba Lal Bairagi, a Hindu gnostic, conversations with whom he recorded in a little book entitled Mukalama Baba Lal wa Dara Shikoh.

He befriended Hindus, Sikhs and Christians and his spiritual explorations led him to a great cross-language venture. In seeking to find a common mystical language between Islam and Hinduism, Dara Shikoh commissioned the translation of many Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian and even personally participated in some of these renderings. He believed in joint scholarship and, amazing though it sounds, encouraged by Dara, learned men both Hindu and Muslim, worked together. His translation is called the Sirr-e-Akbar (The Greatest Mystery) and in his Introduction he boldly states that the work referred to in the Holy Quran as the Kitab al-maknun or the “hidden book” is none other than the Upanishads. If his brother needed evidence against him, it is easy to see how Dara himself gave Aurangzeb sufficient material.


Famous work

Dara’s most famous work, Majma-ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of the Two Oceans) was also devoted to finding the common links between Sufism and Hindu monotheism. When it was published, the book sealed his doom and Aurangzeb used the conviction of religious groups and the ambition of political ones to overcome Dara, making out a strong case that he was unfit to rule. In June 1659, for his work in translating Sanskrit texts, Aurangzeb had Dara declared a heretic who deserved to die. Dara had already been defeated in battle and was Aurangzeb’s prisoner. In the end when his killers came for him, Dara was cooking a meal for himself and his young son. The deposed prince fought like a king, using a kitchen knife against the swords of his assassins. Just as the translators of the Bible into German and English met with fatal opposition, so too did the first translator of the Upanishads. He was buried without ceremony, his headless body dumped in a hastily dug grave.

A hundred and forty years after Dara Shikoh was murdered, his translation of the Upanishads, which had lain forgotten and unread, were translated into a mix of Latin, Greek and Persian by the French traveller Anquetill Duperon (1801) and was the very text that caught the attention of Schopenhauer who wrote those unforgettable words nine years later, “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life. It will be the solace of my death”. This sudden discovery of a vast body of literature in a sophisticated and advanced language that had remained unknown for so many centuries sent a tremor through the libraries of Europe and scholars there began to view India with new eyes.
In being the first to make the link between two entirely different — even hostile — traditions, it was the ideals and work of this Mughal prince that launched Indian thought in the Western world. The motives behind his linguistic border-breaches led to Dara’s ruin; but eventually, the translation of his translation formed the road to cultural ties between civilisations. The distinguished historian Sathyanath Iyer wrote, “He is to be reckoned among the great Seekers of Truth who can appeal to the modern mind.”