[Advaita-l] Notes on sha.nkaras usage of vishhNu, iishvara, etc.

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Jaldhar's explanation was very good. Other than that,
it's quite common to have two deities joined together
in various vedic rituals. For example, we have varuNa
and suurya joined together in the suuryanamaskara
ritual performed with the aruNa-prashna. 

In various places vishhNu is identified with the
sacrificial altar. So it's possible that the joint
invocation with agni is because of that. 

BTW, vishhNo.h paramam padam has a simple explanation.
The paramam padam is the turiiya, which is beyond the
"lower" three - jaagrat, svapna and sushhupti.

Rama

--- "M. S. Ravisankar" <ravi at ambaa.org> wrote:
> I recently saw a quotation (while studying
> chamakam[1]), which said that
> among the devata-s agni is the lowest and vishhNu is
> the highest [2]. This
> was used in the context of agnAvishhNu in the
> starting of chamakam -saying
> that the term agnAvishhNu  represents all devata-s
> starting from the lowest
> to the highest.
> 
> Should this be interpreted differently?
> 
> TIA.
> 
> Ravi
> 
> [1] Book on mahaanyaasam published by mylapore veda
> adhyayana sabha. It is
> good book (Sanskrit+Tamil) and distributed free of
> charge. They also have
> very nice booklets on brahma yaj~na, upAkarma etc.
> 
> [2]
>
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/ind/aind/ved/rv/ab/ab001.htm



	
		
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