Getting hold of the great Guru Vachaka Kovai

I have not seen any new Ramana Maharshi materials at Mylon Trading for quite some time until today. They finally brought in some new stock of books from India and among the gems there was the wonderful Guru Vachaka Kovai by the great devotee, Sri Muruganar

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History of the Guru Vachaka Kovai:

In the late 1920s Muruganar, an accomplished Tamil poet who had lived with Bhagavan for several years, began to collect the verbal teachings of his Guru, Ramana Maharshi. He recorded them in four-line Tamil verses. No questions were recorded, just the answers and statements on a wide variety of spiritual topics. By the late 1930s, Muruganar had completed over 800 of these verses, virtually all of which recorded a direct teaching statement that Bhagavan had uttered. In 1939 a decision was made to publish these teachings in book form. Bhagavan then asked Sadhu Natanananda, a Tamil scholar and devotee, to arrange the verses by subjects since there was no particular order or sequence in the material that Muruganar had amassed. After Natanananda had done this work and shown it to Bhagavan, Bhagavan himself thor oughly edited the work, modifying the sequences and adding many revisions. In addition to making these textual corrections, Bhagavan also composed new verses that he added at appropriate places in the text. Because of the care and attention that Bhagavan put into checking and revising these verses, we can be sure that their contents have his full approval.

     Many of Bhagavan’s verbal teachings were recorded during his lifetime, but few of them were reviewed and edited by him. Guru Vachaka Kovai is the biggest collection of Bhagavan’s spoken teachings that was thoroughly checked and revised by him during his lifetime. As such it has a unique place in the Ramana literature.

     A second edition of the Tamil work was brought out in 1971. This contained many additional verses that Muruganar had composed since the first edition of the book came out in 1939. This new edition of the work contained a total of 1,284 verses, 1,254 composed by Muruganar and the remaining twenty-eight by Bhagavan himself.

     Muruganar passed away in 1973. In 1980 Sadhu Om, Muruganar’s literary executor, brought out a new edition of Guru Vachaka Kovai in which he rendered the original Tamil verses (which are often very difficult to decipher unless one has a good knowledge of Tamil literary conventions) into Tamil prose. He also added explanatory comments to many of the prose renderings. This book is the basis of the version I am including on this site.

     In the late 1970s and early 1980s Michael James and Sadhu Om worked together on a translation of Guru Vachaka Kovai. Although all the verses were translated, along with many of the commentaries, the work was never published since Michael was not satisfied with the accuracy of some of the verses.

In a conversation I had with him many years ago he told me that he wanted to revise many of the early verses since he felt that some of them were somewhat loose paraphrases of the text, rather than literal translations.

     After Sadhu Om passed away in 1984, Michael suspended work on his translation of Guru Vachaka Kovai.

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The book was finally published some years back I believe and it is great to finally get a copy of this rare gem! Ironically, this happens after Suresh Anne talked about how a book comes to you when the time is right to read it just last night.

Verse 507:
Only in order to turn inward the minds of less mature aspirants, which will be favourable for the aforesaid enquiry, [the Vedas] added the other two words ‘That’ [tat] and ‘Art’ [asi] to the word ‘Thou’ [tvam], thereby forming the Mahavakya ‘That Thou Art’ [tat tvam asi]. Thus should you know.

Verse 508:
Verily the enquiry done within oneself to know the real import denoted by the word ‘Thou’, ‘What is it?’ [‘Who am I?’], is the proper means to know the correct import of the other two words also.

My Humble salutations and prostrations at the feet of  the great Guru Ramana and his disciple, Sri Muruganar.

The second scipture I managed to get hold of is Tripura Rahasya.

A favorite work of Ramana Maharshi, from which he often quoted, "Tripura Rahasya" is an ancient Sanskrit work and one of the greatest classics of Hindu spirituality.

The Tripura-rahasya (The Secret of [the goddess] Tripura) is believed to be an abbreviated version of the original Datta Samhita or Dakshinamurti Samhita traditionally ascribed to Dattatreya. This more lengthy work was summarized by Dattatreya's disciple Paramasura, whose disciple, Sumedha Haritayana, scribed the text. Thus, this text is sometimes referred to as the Haritayana Samhita.
The Tripura-rahasya is divided into three parts. The first part, the Mahatmya Khanda or section on the goddess is concerned with the origin, mantra and yantra of the goddess Tripura, also known as Lalita or Lalita Tripurasundari. The Jnana Khanda or section on knowledge elaborates on the themes of consciousness, manifestation, and liberation. Unfortunately, the last part, Charya Khanda or section on conduct, has been lost and some believe destroyed.