Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Post 2/?



Now for the stuff that begins with the line:

The circumstantial evidence for the Buddhist nature of Lord Ayyappan is compelling.

Really?

(This is going to be long.)



3.

For one, the devotees chant: "Swamiye saranam Ayyappa," so close to the Buddhist mantra: "Buddham saranam gacchami, Sangham saranam gacchami, Dhammam saranam gacchami."

Mantras are a concept that Buddhism got from Hindu religion (just like Mudras, etc). In fact, the forms (and in some cases even exact words) of certain mantras used in Buddhism are of Hindu origin. (Also: just because Buddhists in, say, Japan also use OM doesn't mean "OM is therefore Buddhist in origin".)



However, we're not talking of any general case of mantras, but of the clinching evidence necessary to prove that the famous one-line mantram for Ayyappa is in fact somehow intimately or peculiarly related to the Buddhist mantra given above, and not just yet another in a whole stream of Hindu mantras to Hindu Gods.



So, in what sense is it considered similar? Obviously not in the exact words used, nor their number: one is 3 words, the other 9 - or a set of 3 triplets, each ending in gachChaami. Not only does swAmiye sharaNam ayyappa not end in gacchami as the triplet of the Buddhist mantra consistently does, but considering just one triplet then: the number of syllables and feet don't match. 3+3+3 syllables to Ayyappa's mantra, 2+3+3 syllables to each of the 3 triplets in the Buddhist mantra. Surely it is not about the syllable 'lengths', they don't match either. Nor is it any matching assonance or alliteration that I can see.



I may be missing something deep here, but the only aspect that I can see as matching is the word "sharaNam" being in the middle of a set of 3 words making up (a portion of) the mantram in both cases. Apparently this is all the evidence that such speculation demands?



In that case, I will simply say this: raamam sharaNam mama

(from the raama rahasya upaniShat I think, yet to be confirmed).



Maybe they will next argue that Rama is "therefore" a character from Buddhism too?



OK: turns out the "raamam sharaNam mama" mantram from the raama rahasya upaniShat apparently belongs to the Atharva Vedam. (Would the theorisers next be arguing that this upaniShat or even the entire Atharva Vedam - or even by extension the Trayi too - "must therefore be" Buddhist text?)



More simply, the fact that there is already a mantram of the form <word> sharaNam <word> in Hindu religion - such as the very famous "rAmam sharaNam mama" - means that we need not at all look to Buddhism etc in desperation for the origins of "Swamiye Sharanam Ayappa".



Alternatively, one can try using Rajeev's sort of logic to show that the form of Ayyappa's mantram actually proves his Hindu nature/identity: Raama being Hari being Mohini the Mum of Ayyappa (and everyone else), it makes perfect logical *sense* that Ayyappa's mantra would be of a similar form - in the sense I imagine Rajeev looks to find it similar - as this mantram of Raama's.





4.

"Furthermore, the very sitting posture of the Ayyappan deity is suggestive: almost every Buddhist image anywhere, including those sometimes unearthed in the fields of Travancore by farmers, is in sitting position. Whereas practically no other deity in Kerala is in that posture."

The argument is absurd.



First of all, where Buddha is seen depicted sitting on the ground (which is most of the time), it is as far as I can tell usually the Padmaasanaa Yoga position. You can Google for Buddha pictures if you can't remember how the Buddha is generally shown sitting.



There are images of the Buddha in other stances, including standing up, but we were concerned with Buddha's most oft-seen sitting pose:



- While the sitting posture of Buddha most frequently depicted is the padmAsanA, what Ayappa is doing *isn't* the padmAsanA. And I've never seen the Buddha depicted doing Ayyappa's pose.

But then, it's one of the defining features of the Ayyappa moorty. Just like various other Hindu Gods have their iconic poses.



- Besides, padmAsanA isn't unique to Buddha. Nor was he the original to strike the pose (so it wouldn't have proven anything had padmAsanA been the case here). It was done by the Hindu Gods since long before (and by Hindus too), since it's part of Hindu Yoga: e.g. Durga IIRC is in padmAsanA (?)* when she transcends the three guNas after killing the asuras described in the DM [Durga = known as "yogaje (alt: yogagnye) yogasambhoote"]. Certainly her husband Shiva, when seated in Yoga at ground-level, is in that yogic pose.



As for Kovil vigrahas: The legs folded in padmAsanA is the very pose of the kAmAkShI moolamoorty. (Uma sits and stands in different poses in different Kovils. They are her *iconic* sitting and standing poses, each specific to the moorty of a manifestation, all famously described.)

*And umA in padmAsanA seems to me to also be confirmed by kAlidAsa in his SD.





On that, and before I continue, Rajeev's statement "whereas practically no other deity in Kerala is in (sitting) posture" is a red herring. Kerala is not a vacuum. It has been an entrenched Tamizh Hindu view that Ayyappa is "Tamizh", i.e. belonging to or associated with the ancient territory that had Tamizh presence which included some parts of all 3 other southern states. Or some kind of claim from ancientry and ancient familiarity. In fact, precisely since this assumption was always considered a given in TN, even the dravoodian chauvinists of TN claimed the God as being *Tamizh* ("ancient dravoodianism" in DMK parlance is Tamizh, not Malayalam- or Kannada- or Telugu-speaking, sorry, it's a very particular angry clique) - even when they merely tried to use Ayyappa as a prop against other Hindu Gods/religion.

In any case, while possessive Malayali Hindus can expend inordinate amounts of energy trying to stop the Greedy Tamizh Hindoos from boldly eyeing the magnificence that lies in the now-properly-delineated Kerala, it's still not going to change anything. The point is: don't just look in Kerala, look across the border into TN to see what type of vigrahas Tamizh Hindus have.



So now, on to the more interesting case for this situation: the famous pose of Yoga Narasimha when he meditates (i.e does Yoga) after he kills the rakshasa is - as his moorty name also implies - a *Yoga* pose. (Narasimha does Yoga to neutralise the krodha he had to first generate in order to rid the world of the villainous rakshasa. Same as with Durga after she kills the Asuras.) There are temples of the Yoga Narasimha in TN. In this pose, his knees have elevation from the feet/ground level. And this pose is Far Closer to that of his son Ayyappa's than the padmAsanA is.

Here, you can judge for yourself. To the left is a traditional Tamizh Hindu rendition of the Yoga Narasimha in the style that TN moorties get carved - and, as I said, moorties of him in this pose are to be found in Kovils in my home-state. To the right is a traditional (and famous) Tamizh Hindu rendition of Ayyappa - it's a Shastraic depiction of not so much the live presence of the vigraha as the live form, but with the moorty still in his famous position:



Magnificent. As always.



Note Ayyappa's customary moorty pose. (The other famous depiction of him that I know of is paintings of him sitting on Indra-as-the-Tiger, surrounded by other Devas-as-Tigers. Edited: Lion corrected to Tiger. Was thinking of the striped big cat, of course, but stopped thinking when it came to typing.)



And now do a comparison between the pose of my Diamond-Nails Father and that of his Son Ayyappa - and compare them again with a Google pic of Buddha's usual sitting pose.

Notice how the Yoga Narasimha's sitting posture is intermediate to that of Ayyappa and Buddha. (E.g. Narasimha's feet are at least crossed, which - although it's not crossed upwards - is slightly closer in that respect to the padmAsanA than Ayyappa's feet which aren't even crossed at all.)

Still, this doesn't make either Narasimha or Ayyappa any more Buddhist though - just like it didn't kAmAkShI or other seated Yoga moolamoortis of umA. They're still just Hindu Gods in a range of Hindu sitting poses, with Ayyappa fitting in that range.



But again, to use Rajeev's particular logic in this: Yoga Narasimha being Hari, it makes perfect logical *sense* that Ayyappa's posture would be very similar in form (in the sense Rajeev finds it similar) to his parent Hari's posture.





To be cont. Another day probably. What a drag, I don't have time for this.