TattvavAda
literature has been
plagued by several problems down the centuries – preservation and easy
access. This web-site hopes to address these problems with the blessings
of Sri Hari, vAyu and
guru.
When the evil pervasive
influence of kali was corroding eternal vedic values, and deluding good
souls into wrong paths, the Lord ordered vAyu, his principal execution arm
to take birth on Earth and show the correct path to good souls.
Accordingly, vAyu
incarnated as Madhva,
as foretold in the baLiThTha sUkta, and rejuventated sanAtana, vaidica,
dharma.
Whenever vAyu
incarnates, the rest of gods incarnate to serve him, and thus render their
service to the Lord. This time too the same thing happened. The gods and
heavenly saints incarnated as sanyAsis and haridAsas and propogated the
concepts of shrimadAchArya. Unfortunately, their works have not been
preserved to the extent they should have been and so we have lost many of
these works. Let alone works in the previous centuries, we have lost quite
a few of the works of great scholars in the twentieth century too. This is
a matter of great distress and shame. We take great pains to preserve even
small artifacts and articles belonging to our forefathers but have not
shown the same diligence in preserving literary works of great savants.
It takes good deeds in
hundreds of births to be born as a madhva. And several more to be born as
one who has truly understood the concepts of tattvavAda. To become an
erudite scholar in these concepts and to be able to expound these concepts
in the form of literary compositions calls for a lot of accumulated puNya
and yogyata. Such scholars are verily gods or demi-gods who have
incarnated on earth for the benefit of people like us. Obviously their
works are invaluable and need to be preserved for posterity. The chances
of such great souls incarnating again or producing works of such quality
and stature are indeed extremely slim and are reducing with the passage of
time. Such being the case, it becomes our sacred duty to preserve every
single thing that they have said or written, so that this is never lost.
So that future generations may derive the same sAtvika anAnada from them
as we have done. By not doing this, we are indeed failing in our duty and
dharma, and nothing else we do can make up for this. Indeed this is a loss
that is irreversible and very widespread in its impact.
Another aspect that we
fail in is proper dissemination of information. We do this only through
books but that is an inherently flawed mechanism for a variety of reasons.
Book publishing has its own economics and unless it makes business sense
nobody publishes books. This straightway means that a lot of rare
manuscripts that have a limited audience will never get published. Let us
say that this hurdle is crossed and some noble soul spends a lot of money
to publish a book. Very soon the book is out of print and nobody bothers
reprinting them since it is a losing proposition. We can give you
thousands of examples of literary classics that out of print and not
available for purchase today. A few rare copies are available, but they
are available in some obscure place that nobody knows about, or are in
some form that is not easily accessible.
What all this means is
that a sincere jignAsi who wants to study shrimadAchArya’s shAstra has
very few resources to help him. There are very few books, teachers and
guidance whatsoever. This becomes even more extreme when one crosses the
borders of Karnataka and India. This reflects very poorly on us and does
not do justice to the greatness of the subject matter. Works of our
AchArya and his learned followers are literary gems that we should be very
proud about. They are like crown jewels that should be proudly displayed
to everybody. Thus it becomes every mAdhwa’s sacred duty to ensure that
these concepts are as widely disseminated as possible and we show to show
the greatness of tattvavAda to the rest of the world.
The sole ray of light in this gloomy
picture is the wonderful work that a band of dedicated people at the Cyber
Madhva Sangha (operating out of dvaita.org) have been doing to preserve
tattvavAda literature. We hope to supplement the wonderful job
they are doing, by focussing on works in Kannada.
The organizers of this
web-site promise that they will make every effort to collect whatever is
humanly possible and legally feasible to collect and store in this
website. We will approach every mAdhwa writer, well known and not so well
known, and request them to give us permission to store their work in an
electronic form in this website. We will beg, plead, request and grovel
and show them our ‘jolige’.
Whatever they put in our jolige, we will protect and preserve and widely
dissemintate to the best of our abilities.
It is our hope and
prayer to Sri Hari and vAyu that someday we will reach a state so that
anybody, anywhere in the world, at any time can look up our major works
and understand and admire the greatness of – shrimadhvAchArya.
ShrI krishNarpaNamastu.
|