OM
The
English Version of Bhaktaranjini
There are quite a number of commentaries for
Srimad Narayaneeyam, in Malayalam, Tamil and English . Even in English, there have been many, with
word for word meanings, but paraphrased as per the prose order in Sanskrit and
a short gist of the contents of the sloka in English. Such word for word meaning given in English, when read alone, does not
always make for a coherent reading, as the prose orders in Sanskrit and English
are different. For instance,
for the sentence, "Rama killed Ravana", the prose order in Sanskrit
would be corresponding to "Rama Ravana killed". In order to allay this sort of language
deficiencies, we have rearranged the words of the prose order in Sanskrit (the
anvaya) to match the syntax in English for the word for word meaning so that
even for a person who does not know Sanskrit, a one-time reading of the English
part alone will make complete sense. The presentation of each sloka
would be as follows:
1.
A preamble (wherever necessary) for the sloka.
2.
The text of the sloka in Sanskrit in Devanagari
script.
3.
Transliteration to English.
4.
The Anvaya (prose order) in Sanskrit. The difficult
words have been broken with hyphens to make reading easier.
5.
The word for word meaning tabulated to have the
Sanskrit words on the left and the corresponding meaning in English on the
right. Even those who are not well up in Sanskrit but would like to go through
the Sanskrit text, could do so with a degree of comprehension, if they follow
the words in the correct sequence.
6.
A detailed commentary in English.
7.
A glossary of terms, alphabetical index for the
slokas, list of abbreviations etc.,
8.
Sources given for quotations, with meaning in
brackets.
9.
Every dasakam ends with a prayer on the last line
of the last sloka, There are a few exceptions where the prayer is not in the
last sloka, but in an earlier one.
Such prayer has been used as the “footer” for every page in that
dasakam.
As stated earlier, the work is done by a group of four
like-minded friends, comprising Shri.
T.P. Sivasubramani, Shri. G. Sankaran, Smt. Parvathi Sankaran, and Shri. K.V.
Gopalakrishna. Of these, except Smt. Parvathi Sankaran, the other three are
officials retired from service in Central Government / Public Sector. All the four have been students of Sanskrit
in the earlier part of their career. Smt. Parvati Sankaran has been a student
of philosophy and has been doing a critical study of Srimad Narayaneeyam as
well as teaching the epic to groups of devotees. All the four are sincerely
dedicated to the stupendous and challenging task which they have taken up as an
offering of love and devotion to Guruvayoorappan.
The work is edited by Shri. S.N. Sastri, a retired Central
Government official, an erudite scholar in Sanskrit and Vedanta Philosophy, and
a totally dedicated and devout Narayana-Bhakta, who has authored another commentary
on Narayaneeyam published by the Chinmaya Mission in 1988. Please visit the
website http://www.geocities.com/snsastri
for his articles on Vedantic topics and the works of Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada
with English translation.