AGAMAS- WHICH SHAPED BHARAT

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AGAMAS- WHICH SHAPED BHARAT- part 1Have you ever given a thought why the religious landscape of Bharat remainedalmost intact even after a thousand years of suppression by Muslim and Christianinvaders ? Do you think it was the power of Vedas , Upanishads and the Gita andour peopleÂ's knowledge in our fundamentals ? NOPE.. It was by the singularattachment of the lay Hindu towards HIS God, that we are still alive as heirs toHinduism.How did the common man develop so much attachment to his God, silently sufferingunder the brutal suppression of the worst enemies of Humanity then and now ? Itwas by the Agamas.I now present to you all a forgotten heredity of us all which has helped shapethe spiritual landscape of Bharat. The essence of this heredity are a series ofdivine scriptures. They are AGAMAS.When you propose to build a house, (especially in South India), the plot ischosen by its straightness, the length and width. They have to be in certainmeasure of feet. Then the direction of the site. Then the house plan. Speciallyhere, the location of the sump, the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom arefinalized only after consulting vasthu. Vasthu science was given to us by theAgamas.All the temple rites are given to us by the Agamas. Even your daily arathi andthe Murthis and photos you worship are given to us by the Agamas. In shorttemple worship was started by the Agamas only.Agama literally means coming down.Agamas were built into the society rather than accepted and studied. Such hasbeen their subtlety. For example, the adage , Â"do not reside in a village thathas no templeÂ" is a direct Agamic edict that is followed to this day by everyHindu without himself studying anything about it. The society itself is built upon such edicts.Have you ever wondered why you stand up in front of the deity with your palmsjoined and raised to the level of the chest in such a way that the lower jointof the thumbs point towards the solar plexus ? Also , why do we go around theprakara of the temple in a particular way ? Why do we adorn specific religioussymbols such as Vibhuti, kumkum , Chandan and Gobi on our foreheads ?The answers to all the above are in the Agamas .The three major sects of Hinduism have separate agamas. In fact each have many.Saiva sects have as many as twenty eight agamas( Tamil and kashmir sects).Vaishnava sects have two main agamas namely pancharatra and Vaikanasa. SimilarlySaktha sects have their own.The power of Agamas is so great that, though these sects treat the vedas withrespect, they do not consider the vedas to be their authority in their sect.Saiva Siddhantha people will resent if you thrust vedic thoughts on them. In the10 th century AD, Yamunacharya, the founder of Vaishnavism as a sect wrote atreatise explaining why Vedas do not matter for his sect.Agamas are self sufficient literature in that they cover the man's life fromcradle to grave. Even minute details such as brushing the teeth, selection ofsticks for brushing etc are given. If you ever see some rites in a funeral ,never laugh anymore. They are the direct links of the man and his antiqueforefathers.These agamas are principally in Sanskrit. The Tamil people developed the granthalipi for writing the Sanskrit Slokas and till today they are in Grantha form andnot in Devanagari !Today, the granthas are known only to a class of temple archakas known askurukkal. I interviewed one kurukkal a few days back and what he told me shookme. He said that he studied for five years in a patashala to learn Agamas alone.And also he told me that he had nothing to do with Vedas. Remember , thearchakas are also brahmins, who do trikala Sandhyavandanam with gayatri.But the fact remains that Agamas only use Vedic mantras for most rituals. n factthey can be considered as the watered down version of Vedas. They havesegregated many Vedic Gods among themselves to form sects of their own. All theVedic Kriyas like Achamanam, Arghyam, Padhyam, Proshanam etc were simply adaptedto suit temple worship. In short Vedism was fully Yagnic and Agamas were templebased. Hence it can be safely concluded that the Agamas can be dated after theupanishadic and Mahabharatic period since no temple was mentioned in thesetexts.Incidentally the 'Indus Valley Civilization' - also called Indus SaraswatiCivilization was also an Agamic Hindu culture where they worshipped Shiva Linga.Saiva sect can be called the oldest Agamic sect. Thammanna Chettiar, a saivascholar and writer opines that the symbology of Lord Nataraja of Chidambaramcame from the Indus Saraswati Civilization. The Dixitars are some KashmirSaivites.These sects had the same Vedic varna system, the same Sanskrit language and thesame Guru- Shishya parampara. Only in Agamas, the initiation was called aDhiksha. This Dhiksha is mainly Tantrik. Agamas also adapt a diluted SandhyaVandanam and Nama Japam.He further said that they are proficient in grantha and have writtenexaminations in grantha ! The only people allowed to do consecretion of templesare kurukkals and the only mantras chanted are Agama mantras.The Indonesian Hindus call themselves as Agamic Hindus.Seasons change, lives are altered for whatever reason, and nature holds aboveour heads the promise and the threat of what may be and what will be. Thepresent is really all we can count on with any certainty, and we are allchallenged to use that time effectively.- RVR