Sri Bhashya is the commentary written by Sri Ramanuja on the Brahma Sutras of Maharishi Vyasa, explaining and establishing the VisishtAdvaitic theory of Vedanta. After Sri Ramanuja, a great follower of the Acharya, Vyasaacharya as called by Periya Perumal (VyAsAcharyA's real name was Sri Sudarsana Bhattar) wrote a commentary on the commentary of Sri Ramanuja. It is called SrutaprakAsikA. SrutaprakAsikA explains word by word, phrase by phrase Sri Bhashya of Sri Ramanuja. So the two commentaries together make the meaning of Brahma Sutras clear and distinct and establish the Visishtadvaitic school of interpretation.
Needless to say, the commentaries, the text everything is in Sanskrit and that too in very terse and technical parlance. That means every word is seen in its etymological, grammatical, linguistic-philosophical and logical senses. In my young age I have seen many scholars studying this great Library of Vedanta every day at fixed hours sitting before a teacher, who used to meticulously explain line by line, passage by passage, para by para, i e taking the meaning-units into focus. It is a great way of close and intense reading of the texts. The study runs into years and when one batch of students finish their course, the next batch is ready, sitting on the same old Thinnai. Their 'read-aloud, repeat and explain' rigmarole accented by only the notes of the sparrows picking at grains and the daylight growing into midday. Sometimes our pebble-play used to irritate the scholars and we used to get chastening hisses silencing us.
I was telling about the Kaarappangaadu Swami. Yea. And those who were regularly hearing his lectures given at Udayavar Sannidhi were becoming terribly interested in Sri Bhashya. They thought of a great project. People who were well-versed in Sanskrit and people who did not know that language, all of those came together and decided to bring the great system of learning accessible to all anxious persons, solving the problem of language by translating the Work into Tamil.
Sometime before 1930, during one Iraappatthu festival, a great committee of savants and important people of the town of Srirangam and other Divyadesams was formed. And who was the Chairman?
'SriBhashyam Tamizh Mozhipeyarppu Sangam' so was the name of the committee called and its President was Prapanna Vidwan Sriman T D Ramaswamy Naidu of ThiruppuRambiyam. He was so earnest that he put in a great part of his money into the project along with many like-minded donors. As the initial part of the project, the first four sutras of Brahma Sutra were taken for translation into Tamil, SriBhashya along with the supra-elaborate commentary on that viz., SrutaprakAsikA. The first four sutras or aphorisms of BS forms the introduction part of the Vedanta Sutras. The said four as a group is called UpOdgAtam, preface or foreword. And every sutra in the first four forms an adhikarana by itself. An adhikarana is so to say 'a topic'. Usually many sutras form one addhikarana. But in the case of the first four sutras or aphorisms, every sutra by itself is a topic apart.
The first sutra or the first topic is explained very elaborately and as a result, you have a whole book-size portion of commentaries attending to the first. Translated, the commentaries SriBhashya and SrutaprakAsikA for the first sutra comes to more than 800 pages. And the book is large size, microprint, the Tamil translation occupying all the space in the pages. And this for the very first sutra alone. The translation of SriBhashya in a bigger font-size and the SrutaprakAsikA in a smaller font, the translation is stupefying and extraordinary. The first sutra was translated by Mahamahopadhyaya Srimat U Ve T V Srnivasacharya, Head of the Department of Sanskrit in St Joseph's college Trichy. All these happened in 1930.
And it is not the end of the story. Sri Villiputhur Kanthadai Srimat U Ve Srinivasacharya of Nampillai Sabha, Tiruchi conducted a continued Kalakshepa based on the Tamil translation, perhaps to make a test run of the Tamil book.
And enthusiasm is contagious you know! Seeing these people deep into the project, a Trichy Advocate Mimamsaratnam, Srimath U Ve A V Gopalacharya joined the project. He at a stroke finished the commentaries for the remaining three sutras in the Introduction part of four sutras. The second volume containing 2nd, 3rd, and 4th adhikaranas came out in 1937. What a glorious decade ! 1928 to 1938. And who will say that He is a Sleeping God! No never.
And who collated, fair-copied, collected and streamlined the regular installments from the translators? He was a silent giant. Srimat U Ve N K Raghavacharya, a teacher in Srirangam Boys High School. He was Prapandha Upadhyaya in the School. And another great silent soul who took charge of publishing and other managerial matters related was Sriman R A Bangaruswami Naidu, Honorary Magistrate, Srirangam at that time. And it was printed in SriVilasam Printing Press by Srimat U Ve S M Sundararaja Iyengar.
No details as to whether the project ran its full course completing the whole canon. At least as to my knowledge of the matter so far. But the work done, even though it is only for the Upodgatham of first four sutras, 840 + 390 pages of a large size book of micro size print, for the first time translation into Tamil was done, test run and the project for the introduction part of four sutras completed.
Are they of a different race, giant and extra terrestrial ! And all sections of people coming together in a great project... is it not what is signified by all common social worships and celebrations !
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