The Maharshi

III. VASISHTHA GANAPATHI MUNI: THE GURUGITA

Of the hundreds that have come in closer contact with the great sage of Tiruvannamalai, there have been some, easily to be counted among the cultured, some brilliant in their own way, very up-do-date in modern thought and culture, others occupying high positions, lawyers, doctors, journalists, judges, scholars, yet quite unassuming, with a quiet devotion while approaching the Maharshi for guidance, for help, for peace and enlightenment. In the minds of the Maharshi’s devotees one name stands and has always stood foremost; indeed he is an ornament to the circle of disciples or devotees of the sage and will ever be remembered for having recorded the views of the Maharshi on some very intricate questions related to spiritual life in book-form entitling it the RAMANA GITA.

He is Vasishtha Ganapati Muni (Kavya Kantha Ganapati Sastri). Students of the growing literature about Sri Ramana Maharshi are well aware of the Sastri’s devotion to the Maharshi and of his high ideals and extraordinary brilliance and scholarship. But mention may be made here of some aspects of the personality, before we give an English rendering of his Hymn to the Guru-sung in praise of his spiritual preceptor, the Maharshi, long ago.

He is a master of Sanskrit literature, and though rhetoric and poetry was his special field, he had studied the shastras before he came to the feet of the sage to learn the secrets of tapas. A brilliant personality—some one in a conference remarked his fore-cut resembles a Roman statue’ --with a bewitching voice holding the hearers in thrall, when reciting the Sanskrit verses; an extempore poet who can address an audience in Sanskrit prose or verse, creating an atmosphere for the assembly to breathe and soak their being in the melting melody and sweetness of the spiritual force emanating from him; an ardent son of the land with love and admiration for the saints and sages of ancient India, yet an uncompromising critic of meaningless conventions that have eaten into the vitals of the society; a good thinker, with frequent inspired thoughts illumining the passages of the hymns of the Rig Veda to the earnest seeker in him; of extraordinary intellectual independance, yet ever bowing to the authority of Revelation, of scripture, of the word of the Guru, of the utterance of one to whom are revealed truths that transcend the normal reason.

It is this last trait that is most remarkable,-true humilitythat came to the forefront of this magnificent man when he sought the great seer’s feet for enlightenment.

“It was the 9th day of the Krittika festival (Monday 18th Nov. 1907),” as the Sastri has told us, “when I fell at the feet of the Maharshi, with both my hands clasping his feet, the right hand grasping the right foot, the other, the left.” He considered it an unholy act to touch the Master’s right foot with his left hand!

Is it a wonder that such a rare scholar, thinker, poet and critic -all in one and much more—with remarkable gifts, falling at the feet of one who was practically uneducated or a little educated in the parlance of the so-called cultured, has had a moving effect upon those of the learned people who were not indifferent to a life beyond the confines of their narrow rounds of daily life?

The Sastri is the author of many works the most important of which are all in manuscript, but there are a few of them connected with the Maharshi’s teachings that have been published. His commentary on the Upadeshasara of Maharshi, his translation of Ulladu Narpadu, SATDARSHANA and the RAMANA GITA are all now available and so very useful to those interested in the teachings of the great seer. But among the devotional poems of the Sastri there are many devoted to his Guru, the Maharshi, and of these only one hymn is published finding a place in the GITAMALA, entitled the Gurugita.⁶⁶

We give below an English rendering of this “Hymn to the Guru” not as a specimen of the Sastri’s poetic compositionto that none can do justice in a translation into a foreign tonguebut because the devotion and fervour of this great disciple has an example for us, and associating overselves with the author of the hymn, we pay our homage to the great sage, on this auspicious day of his Jayanti⁶⁷