Ranganayaki

Ranganayaki, is the presiding Goddess of Ranganatha Swamy temple at Srirangam. Affectionately called ThAyAr ("Holy Mother" in Tamil), she is the consort of Lord Ranganatha, the male deity of Srirangam. She is regarded as the manifestation of Lakshmi. She is also called Ranga NAchiAr.

Ranganayaki is held in high reverence by the people of Srirangam and by Vaishnavites. Acharyas that sang the grace of Ranganatha venerate her. She is the feminine aspect of the universe and Vaishnavite traditions regard her co-equal to Ranganatha himself; she is both the means and the end of worship to them.All Vaishanvites revere her as ThAyAr.

Temple

As with Hindu tradition, the shrine has both a Moolavar and an Uthsavar (presiding deity). Unlike other temples, the Uthsavar of Thayar never leaves her sannathi (shrine). It is a temple custom that the goddess of the temple takes her place beside the god of the temple during processions. In Srirangam, however, Thayar never leaves her shrine. All others, including Ranganatha himself, come to see her.

Once a year, in the month of Panguni Uthiram, the day in the Tamil month of Panguni when the star Uthiram is in ascension, Dhivyadhampathigal, the divine couple (Lord Azhagiya Manavalan and Thayar), come together for a day. (This day is not fixed, but falls sometime in the Western months of March or April.)[1] This Darshan is called "SErthi SEvai." In Tamil, SErthi is alongside/together and SEvai is Darshan.

Unlike many temples, Srirangam does not have a Thirukkalyana uthsavam, The Marriage Festival, between Namperumal and ThAyAr. They are regarded as Divyadhampathigal (divine couple), existing beyond mortal confines or limitations.

In the Srirangam Ranganatha Swamy temple, along with the goddess Ranganayaki, one can also find, just behind her, Bhudevi and Sridevi, in sitting posture.

There are many Shlokas composed about the goddess Mahalakshmi but the "Sri Gunaratna Kosam," a Sanskrit Shloka composed by Parasara Bhattar, is exclusive to Sri Ranganayaki. However the traditional Lakshmi Astothram is recited in the temple during rituals. Apart from this, Sree Sthuthi composed by Vedanta Desika and Kanaka dhara Sthothram given by Adi Shankaracharya are chanted by devotees of the temple.

All Acharyas of Hindu tradition, irrespective of their philosophical positions, have visited and continue to visit the Srirangam to pay their homage to Ranganatha and ThAyAr.

gollark: See, while the FX-4100 is allegedly a fairly high-clocked quad-core, this is misleading. AMD's Bulldozer architecture used "clustered multithreading", instead of the "simultaneous multithreading" on modern architectures and also Intel's ones at the time.
gollark: (as this is based on a tower server and not a rack one, you might not even have ridiculously noisy fans in it!)
gollark: Anyway, I don't think this computer is worth £300, inasmuch as you could buy an old server with a Sandy Bridge era CPU for let's say £120, buy and install an equivalent GPU (if compatible, you might admittedly have some issues with power supply pinout) for £100 or so, possibly upgrade the RAM and disks for £50, and outperform that computer with £30 left over.
gollark: I did *not* just pluck £90 out of nowhere, since even if there wasn't the whole silicon shortage going on, used prices aren't conveniently documented by the manufacturer somewhere.
gollark: I checked eBay. If I wanted one, I could buy it for £90, and there are a few for those sorts of prices.

References

  1. "I need to know the significance of Pankuni uttiram and Kalyana utsavam". Sri Vaishnava Home Page. 28 March 2002. Retrieved 21 November 2011.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.