Friday, February 10, 2017

Umaya saha devesah shankarah chandrasekharah




Umaya saha devesah shankarah chandrasekharah 
Takka vadhya ninaadena rakshthu twaam maheswarah
उमया सह देवेशः शङ्करः चन्द्रशेखरः।
टक्का वाद्यनिनादेन रक्षतु त्वाम् महेश्वरः।
umayā saha deveśaḥ śaṅkaraḥ candraśekharaḥ|
ṭakkā vādyaninādena rakṣatu tvām maheśvaraḥ |


This is indeed a  special sloka. 
It is attributed to Kalidasa when he was  in his formative years when he remained  uneducated verging on being an Idiot.
There was a princess in the country where Kalidasa spent his earlier life as an illiterate goatherd. 

The princess was learned and equally arrogant. 

She challenged all the kings, scholars etc., that she would marry only the man who defeated her in literary debate. 
All the kings and scholars had to face defeat. 
They were humiliated. 

They hatched a plan by which they could get the princess married by an illiterate and idiotic person. 

After much search they stumbled upon a doubly distilled idiot who was sitting on a sprouted branch of the tree and cutting with his axe the connecting portion of the tree with the trunk without knowing that he would fall down and perish once the branch is cut. 

They immediately caught hold of the fellow and gave him a bath and adorned him with costly clothes and ornaments and took him to the palace on the promise that he would get good food to his hearts content.

They had also instructed him that he should never utter even a single word. 

But in the courtyard of the king he saw Camels and he started screaming Ushtra, Ushtra (sanskrit name of Camel) . 

The king who happened to hear him asked why a great scholar was screaming like this.

The scholars accompanying him had a ready-made reply. 
The great poet had penned a great sloka and was just uttering the first letters of the four lines U, sha, ta, ra. 

The meaning of the sloka is “ May Lord Sankara
 who is the protector of all Devas and who is wearing the crescent moon in his head, accompanied by his consort Uma, bless you all with the playing of his takka vadhya (udukku} . 

The explanation hit the right target.
And 
The idiot married the princess and later on became Kalidasa, it is history

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