Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Post 1/2

a. tamilandvedas.com/2013/07/24/who-was-tiruvalluvar/

b. jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.co.in/2012/01/thiruvalluvar-wore-sacred-thread.html



No endorsement of the blogs themselves - have just skimmed the articles at the above pages - but the images and some statements caught the eye.



Both images are taken from the first link, though the first image is also there in the 2nd link, which latter sources the image as:

Source:- Iravatham Mahadevan's article in www.varalaaru.com/Default.asp?articleid=539

1. 14th century statue of Tiruvalluvar (who wrote Tirukkural) shows him wearing the yagnyopaveetam.

Valluvar Staue with Brahmin's sacred thread;14th century, Chennai

caption reads: mayilAppUril akazhndeTikkappaTTa tiruvalLLuvar silai [Sorry for any typoes, I'm not good at this whole "transliteration" gig.]

(TN Mylapore temple's Tiruvalluvar moorti)



Note especially also his mudra - and how different it is from the modern depictions that seem to have come out of nowhere.

The mudra matters, right?



2. In the British era, printed books showing traditional Tamil depictions of him still show him wearing the thread.

From the book The Sacred Kural by H.A.Popley, year 1931

Note the caption describing this colonial era depiction of Tiruvalluvar: "Traditional figure of the poet".



Again, the mudra - same as that in the 14th century moorti, but different from the modern presentation - is noteworthy.



Note also the other Hindu markings still visible on Tiruvalluvar in the colonial era depiction. No surprise, when long-standing Tamil Hindu traditions still invoke Tirukkural as a repository of Hindoo-dom, and all can show the proof in the detail. (E.g. Hindu traditionalists still lecture on how Krishna's Gitopadesham was essentially parroted by Tiruvalluvar in his Tirukkural and how the Gita-via-Tirukkural was then parroted by Kambar in his - still very Hindu/Vedic - retelling of Ramayanam. Note that Kambar is firmly in Hindu tradition. That is, his Ramayanam - like that of all traditionalist Hindus - is authentic following authentic tradition as it does, unlike the Buddhist/Jain/Bahai spins on the Ramayanam and MBh. <- The difference should matter to heathens.)





tamilandvedas.com/2013/07/24/who-was-tiruvalluvar/

[...] He (Tiruvalluvar) mentioned only Hindu Gods such as Lakshmi, Indra, Vamana avatar (adi Alanthan), Thamarai Kannan (Vishnu), Brahma etc.



In his very first chapter on Prayer to God, he mentioned Pada Namaskaram in 7 out of 10 couplets. This is typical Hindu. He used lot of Puranic, epic and Pancha tantra stories in his couplets. Tamil Nadu Government's Date for Valluvar: 31 BC



Singaravelu Mudaliyar's Abhidana Chintamani (Tamil Encyclopaedia, page 849) gives the following details:



Father of Valluvar: Bhagavan



Mother's name: Adhi



Patron and Friend: Elela Singhan, a business man





Another name of Valluvar's father :Yali Dutta, a Brahmin (according to Gnanamirtham)



Valuuvar's Wife: Vasuki who did several miracles because of her chastity



Valluvar clashed with Madurai Sangam Tamil poets who refused to accept his Tirukkural ( a book of moral ethics with 1330 couplets). At last they accepted his book.

BTW, I think all 4 Hindoo varnas or at the very least 3 of them - the vaishyas, kShatriyas and brAhmaNas - traditionally wear the yagnyopaveetam. Including in ancient TN. (My father knows Gujarati merchants who still wear them. I assume they are of Vaishya varna: their gotras sounded unfamiliar to my father, but they definitely had gotras as many Hindoos do, whether they tend to remember or not.) I think I came across something about shUdras having worn the yagnyopaveetam also, but can't swear by the memory. In any case, the yagnyopaveetam is not by itself an indication that the matter concerns a brAhmaNa, but it is a *yagnyopaveetam* i.e. indicating the person is of Hindu=Vedic religion (despite eventual occasional Buddhist and Jain meaningless copying of the thread*). And then there's also the mudra which is specifically Vedic and related to Upanishadic knowledge.



* In time, Buddhists and a few Jains copied the wearing of a yagnyopaveetam (e.g. seen in Buddhist imagery, at least of Bauddhified devas - perhaps because Buddhists were copying the authentic Hindu devas; even so, there is a difference in the yagnyopaveetam and the Buddhist copy of the thread). Will try to find examples of Jain cases too. It's like how Buddhism/Jainism copied a thousand other things from Vedic religion, before suddenly pretending to be originals. But the practise of wearing the thread has no meaning in Buddhism or Jainism (for obvious reasons - actually obvious even in the *name* yagnyopaveetam), despite them inventing mirror-meanings/re-interpreting the reasoning for the Hindoo practice in Jain terms. And the practice does NOT have its origins in the later Indic religions, having meaning and origins only in the ancestral Hindu=Vedic religion. Same as how Jain Minority Forum types accidentally admitted that Jain temples derived from the concept of "yajaneeya devata" - another giveaway of the Vedic origins of temples. And seen in how the historical founder of Jainism (Mahaveera) spoke of homas and tried to parrot the esoteric conclusions of the Upanishads but left out the Vedic rituals that are the necessary precursor/pre-requisite. (Selective copying.)



Though, having said that, ur-Shramanism will tomorrow no doubt start peddling that "wearing a yagnyopaveetam must have originally been a Shramanist tradition, blablabla" to hide their embarrassment for yet another instance of blatant mangled copying from Vedic religion. Except there's the problem of how the ancient Iranians used to wear a sacred thread too, echoes of which are seen in how even the later Zoroastrians wear a thread. After all, the Ur-Shramanists did claim that Vedic religion was an alien/oryan invader to India, and that jainism/buddhism were the native dravoodianism. I'm merely noting that if Vedic religion was an oryan invader, then ancient Iranians and Iranian religion - being more northwest than northwest India - are surely more oryan, even if less invasive? Which would again prove that the Shramanisms are good at copying and then absurdly claiming originality (an act which ultimately reduces to lying/asat, and which word has started to define the Shramanisms.)





Anyway, to get back. The only real important point in all this is that Tiruvalluvar - and Tirukkural - was=is Hindoo onlee.

Not just from tradition, but as also seen in the unearthed 14th century moorti.



And all the Jains who imagine Tiruvalluvar was quoting Jain ideas don't seem to realise that their claimed semblances are also (and originally) Vedic ideas. That is, statements in Tirukkural that are allegedly "Jain" as per Jains are *entirely* owing to Jainism having 'adopted' Hindu ideas and which ideas aren't really "Jain" at all but simply Hindu, but which Jains had selectively 'borrowed' from Hindu religion. <= You know, the way the historical Jain teerthankara Mahaveer made explicit references to homas (and brahmanas etc), and his ideas simply parroted the pre-existing Hindu Upanishads, but without Mahaveer bothering with the pre-requisites=exoteric Vedic rituals (which act of bypassing them actually makes no sense).





The other link has more interesting things to remark on, as to when the idea arose to make it popular to peddle Tiruvalluvar as a Jain instead:



jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.co.in/2012/01/thiruvalluvar-wore-sacred-thread.html

[About the 14th century img of Tiruvalluvar linked in point 1 above:]

The truth is that Thiruvalluvar wore the sacred thread. This is known from the statue of Thiruvalluvar that was unearthed from the temple of Thiruvalluvar in Mylapore, Chennai. This statue dated at 14th /15th century AD, shows Thiruvalluvar like a Rishi wearing a sacred thread.



Source:- Iravatham Mahadevan's article in www.varalaaru.com/Default.asp?articleid=539



(The above varalaaru link also) has the pics of gold coins with the image of Thiruvalluvar made by the Madras collector, Francis Whyte Ellis (1777'1819).

[Img of 18th/early 19th century British-govt minted coin]

Thikruvalluvar is shown as a Jain in this coin!



Before someone goes to praise Ellis for minting the coin on Thiruvalluvar, I wish to point out that any Christian who praises Tamil and Thiruvalluvar would have an agenda. Ellis was no different man. He towed the line of Caldwell by meddling with Tamil with an agenda to help evangelists. Portrayal of Thiruvalluvar as a Jain also could have been his handiwork. But fortunately his further attempts to project Thiruvalluvar as a Jain through the gold coin did not materialise as a new rule by the British government barred the minting of gold coins.



It takes decades and even a life time to understand and grasp Vedic wisdom and the best of wisdom from Tamil sangam texts and Thirukkural. But people just go by a few concepts that they know and claim that they have mastered them. Particularly I just can't understand how people like Ellis and Caldwell could have learnt the languages which were foreign to them and claimed to trace the history of Tamils and personalities such as Thiruvalluvar. While Thirukkural is entirely a Hindu concept, these 'scholars' , with some Jain words here and there matching with some words of Thirukkural claimed that he was a Jain . Even today this trend is continuing but the difference is that this rishi who was portrayed as a Jain by the British period Christians is now being 'converted' in to a Christian by empty scholars having the sole agenda of conversion.



(The Jainism peddlers - which are Jains, Buddhists and even some Hindus - still peddle Tiruvalluvar as a Jain. As do many Tamil crypto-Buddhists and crypto-Jains by the way. To christianism's chagrin: christianism never intended for the subvertibles among Tamils to convert to Jainism or Buddhism. Christianism only intended that Jainism/Buddhism be a waystation for ex-Hindu Tamils before their conversion to christianism.

Christianism is merely being impatient: the crypto-Jains and -Buddhists will soon convert to christianism. Or their next generations will.)



In this background, the surfacing of this statue of Thiruvalluvar is a significant one. But unfortunately those in the know of it are turning away from the fact of Thiruvalluvar's Hindu identity and instead are speaking on trivial matters.

So the colonial era started the trend of turning Tiruvalluvar into a Jain for the entire Tamil public.



BTW: It is actually entirely irrelevant were Jains ever to have claimed amongst themselves that Tiruvalluvar was a Jain - the way it is irrelevant that Jains and Buddhists have both claimed (using backprojection) that Ramayanam had anything to do with Buddhism/Jainism, or that the Vedic Rishi Agastya had (as per 11th century Tamil Buddhist back-projected fictions) suddenly learnt Tamil from Buddhism's invented Avalokiteshwara, instead of the earlier and original Hindu tradition of Agastya having learnt Tamil from Shiva. Buddhist and Jain claims are no different from christianism's equally (in)valid - though merely more recent - spin that Tiruvalluvar and hence Tirukkural were christian. Or christianism's other inculturations (many of which curiously follow in the footsteps of the Indic missionary religions. Is it just a feature of all missionary religions, or is christianism consciously copying them?)



Again: what matters is not what Jains/Buddhists/christians teach among themselves to keep their converts happy. What matters is what the Tamil public at large holds to, as the native masses of TN (and all India) were always Hindu (as many have remained). And so it seems that the colonials were the first to try to re-invent and impose Tiruvalluvar as a Jain on all the Hindoo masses of Tamil Nadu.





Another set of interesting paras (with self-explanatory images at link):



jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.co.in/2012/01/thiruvalluvar-wore-sacred-thread.html

In this post, I want to point out that Karunanidhi promoted Thiruvalluvar who has sported a sacred thread!!



(referring to the 14th century moorti of Tiruvalluvar

Take a look at the right hand of Thiruvalluvar that shows Chinmudra ' which is a popular mudra shown by Yogis and teachers.



(=Same mudra as Krishna when teaching the Gita, and of Dakshinaamoorti=Shiva when teaching the 4 Rishis. I.e. the mudra of all teachers of Vedantam and which indicates the realisation that leads to moksham and which shows the relation between paramaatman and atman, which is exclusively a Vedic notion.



Of course Buddhism later copied the mudra etc etc. But then Buddhism copied lots Hindu mudras and then gave new names and Bauddhified meanings to them.

But the forefinger touching the thumb has its origin and original=proper meaning in Hindoo religion onlee.)



Compare this with what Karunanidhi did in the Thiruvalluvar statue that he erected at Kanyakumari.

(Karunanidhi's reinvention of Tiruvalluvar has the 3 longer digits pointing up and pinky and thumb touching each other.

Ironically, weather and wear seems to have made an almost naamam-like marking on even Karunanidhi's Tiruvalluvar statue. How appropriate.)



This is something which no gyani or teacher of our land of Bharath had ever shown!! This carries no meaning. But this is Karunanidhi's idea and that is why found like this. People may say that this symbol represents the 3 chapters of Thirukkural. Then also they are wrong, for, the 3 chapters of Thirukkural are infact part of 4 Purusharthas, of which the 4th one is Moksha. He did not write on Moksha, nor did anyone who speak about these 4, because that is something which one could not and would not narrate.



The Moksha mudra will be seen in deities with right hand showing the feet of the lord as a message to surrender in His feet. Thiruvalluvar said that in words in his last verse in Kadavul vaazththu. The Chin mudra in his hand (in the statue recovered in Mylapore) is a mark of wisdom (of Moksha).



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More at link. And a whole bunch of comments too that I'll just have to read some other day.