[Advaita-l] Ashwamedha Yajna in Hasan. No Vamachara Tantrika practices

Vidyasankar Sundaresan svidyasankar at hotmail.com
Thu Mar 8 09:34:06 CST 2012


 
> They cannot be done by decent people in Kali Yuga. In other Yugas it
> was allowed because people had very strong will power and very pure
> mind. But now everybody is weak and will always think bad and negative
> of the rituals. Another reason there is no King now. The Ashwamedha is
> banned in Kali Yuga.

Venkatesh,
 
I am neither finding fault with your citations of what is allowed or prohibited
in kali yuga, nor am I justifying what anyone may or may not have done. The
one thing I will find fault with is your usage of the term vAmAcAra tAntrika
to describe acts done as part of a vaidika ritual. It reveals a marked lack of
understanding of both vaidika and tAntrika rituals.
 
All I am saying is that in the kali yuga, the gupta rulers performed aSvamedha
and later some Rajput rulers too performed it. And I am further saying that 
these rulers under whom dharma and other aspects of our culture flourished,
must have sought advice of dharmaSAstra experts who obviously thought in
a different way from what you present. That is all. It is a matter of historical
record.
 
I am sure you are aware that the same brahmavaivarta purAna verse that
says aSvamedha should not be done in kali yuga also says that saMnyAsa is
prohibited in kali yuga. And I am sure you can find arguments about why men
of today lack the strength of character and will power to be saMnyAsin-s. You
will thereby be castigating all the vedAnta traditions today, in their entirety.
Sankara himself lived in the kali yuga and gave great impetus to the vigorous
tradition of saMnyAsa in advaita vedAnta. madhva lived many centuries after
Sankara and there is a vigorous tradition of saMnyAsa in dvaita vedAnta also.
rAmAnuja lived in between these two in time and there is saMnyAsa in the
SrIvaishNava tradition too, although of a different kind than seen in the advaita
and dvaita schools.
 
The lesson is, do not view these purANic pronouncements in isolation, as if
they were etched in stone. AcArya-s of various traditions, whose knowledge
of dharma was far superior to yours and mine, have demonstrated otherwise,
by their lives, teachings and actions. Please do not venture to judge what is
dharma and what is not, without first getting all the facts and without taking
SishTAcAra into account.
 
Vidyasankar
                  		 	   		  


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