Swami Sri Adi Sankaracharya's BHAJA GOVINDAM : 1- INTRODUCTION - 6 : Swami Chinmayananda

25/02/2019
1. INTRODUCTION : 6.

6.1
Taking the opening stanza as a refrain or chorus to be chanted for emphasis at the end of following verses, tradition has it that the immediately following twelve stanzas were given out by the Acharya himself.

They together go under the name Dwadasa Manjarika Stotram.

Very contagious must have been the Teacher inspired mood and the exploding poem, that each of his followers, at that time in his company, considered a stanza of his own, and they together stand under the title Caturdasa Manjarika Stotram.

After listening to all verses, Sankaracharya blesses all true seekers of all times in the last four stanzas.

6.2
This set of thirty one stanzas, together titled Moha Mudgara, has been very popular in our country. It is but natural that it gets published again and again by various institutions and, slowly, different types of readings get to be equally popular. Some of the alternative readings we have noted here and there in our commentaries.

In some editions of this poem Moha Mudgara, we have less number of stanzas; in some, the sequence of the stanzas is different; in some the second half of one stanza is read with the first half of another stanza - sometimes lines are interchanged, and sometimes the words are slightly changed. And yet, in none of them, nowhere is the essential spirit of the verses found to have been noticeably tampered with.

6.3
The first 1-12 verses of this poem as it now stands is together called Dwadasa Manjarika Stotram ( a bouquet of 12 Stanza-flowers ). A bouquet of fresh blooms is beautiful and rewarding even to look at from a distance. Similarly, even to hear these stanzas chanted is thrilling enough, and for the industrious bees that are capable of courting the flowers and entering deeper into them, there is always the sweeter honey as a speciaL and extra reward. So too, to the students who are capable of entering beneath the superficial joys of the metrical rhythm and thus delving deeper into the philosophical implications suggested in these verses, there is real nector- a consoling philosophy, a satisfying view of life, in the poem Bhaja Govindam. 

 To be continued ...