How Did the Sage of Kanchi Extol the Vedas?
Sri Chandrashekharendra Saraswati wrote, “The Vedas are eternal and are the source of all creation. Their greatness is to be known in many ways. Their sound produces in our nadis (subtle nerve channels), as well as in the atmosphere, vibrations that are salutary not only to our own Self but to the entire world—to the good of mankind as well as of all other creatures.”§
Sri Chandrashekharendra Saraswati [1894–1994], 68th pontiff of Kanchi Kamakoti Pitham, depicted above, walked throughout India teaching of the Vedas. Here he is shown before an image of Siva as Dakshinamurti, the silent guru seated beneath a banyan tree. Above left, an earthen mandala on a wall of Muktinath Temple in Nepal.§
HE CONCERN FOR ALL CREATION THAT FINDS expression in the Vedas is not shared by any other religion. Shanno astu dvipade shanchatushpade—this occurs in a mantra. The Vedas pray for the good of all creatures including bipeds, quadrupeds, etc. Even grass, shrubs, trees, mountains and the rivers are not excluded from their benign purview. The happy state of all these sentient creatures and inert objects is brought about through the special quality of the Vedas.§
“The Vedas are also notable for the lofty truths expressed in the mantras. The tenets of these scriptures have aroused the wonder of people of other lands, of other faiths. They are moved by the poetic beauty of the hymns, the subtle manner in which principles of social life are dealt with, the metaphysical truths embedded and expounded in them, and their moral instruction as well as scientific truths. §
“There are mantras that are specially valuable for their sound but are otherwise meaningless. Similarly, there are works pregnant with meaning but with no mantric power. The remarkable thing about the Vedas is that they are of immeasurable value as much for their sound as for their verbal content. While they have the mantric power to do immense good to each one of us and to the world, they also contain teachings embodying great metaphysical truths.§