Sankarananda was a great 'Mahaan' of 13th - 14th CE. He was said to be the teacher of Sri Vidyaranya Swami, who has written Panchadasi, a work explaining Advaita tenets. Swami Sankarananda was also a great Yogi. He was said to be keeping himself under the earth by the feat of Lambika yoga. He wrote a rare work called Atma Purana. The ultimate import of even all the Puranas is said to be the knowledge of Atman. So it is in a way more fitting to write Atma Purana. Are we not all, adepts in 'I' Purana? Day in and day out, every second we are extolling our ego, unabated. Perhaps he thought of teaching us a new way of talking not about oneself but about one's Self, to be involved more deeply into our Atman.
A couple of centuries ago one great person translated this Atma Purana into Hindi. We do not know where he was born, when and all that. But his name was Swami Chidgananandagiri. Perhaps he was born in Sindhu Desa as people used to say. In his Brahmacharya stage he learnt Grammar residing in Kankal and went to Kasi to learn Vedanta under Paramahamsa Swami Uddhavanandagiri. He was initiated into Sanyasa by the same Swami. He was then for quite some years deep into Samadhi and then it was perhaps divinely communicated to him his mission in life. He started Theerthayatra and while at Bavanagar in Kathiyawad, due to earnest requests of Diwans SriGaurisankar and Vijayasankar, who were highly matured Sadhaks in spirituality, he stayed there for thirteen years and composed a lot of works. The Diwans requested him to venture upon a project. It was to compose compendium-like works in Hindi, one Atma Purana, two, SriGudartha Deepika on Gita, three, a work on Brahma Sutra, viz., Thathvanusanthanam, four, a summary of all the views in both old and new schools of Nyaya called Nyayaprakasa. His Nyayaprakasa was also a comparative summation of both Nyaya and Vaiseshika systems.
Perhaps you may be taken aback if I say all these four Hindi works of Swami Chidgananandagiri have been translated into Tamil, even by 1917 itself. Atma Purana has been translated by Sri Veera Subbaiyya Swamigal of Kovilur Math. Again Sri Veera Subbaiyya Swaamigal has also translated Sri Gudartha Deepika on Gita. The work on Brahma Sutras viz., Thathvanusanthana has been translated by Sri K Aranganatham Pillai. Nyaya Prakasa, which is a thousand pager has been translated by Sri Nagarathina Nayakkar of Sadhu Rathina Vedantha Vicharanai Sabha, Chennai, ably published by Sri Murugesa Mudaliyar. From 1907 to 1917, all these four great works of translation from Hindi to Tamil have been brought out. All the four together numbering more than 3500 printed pages !. Are not all these illustrious, our forefathers? Have they not done what best they could in their times to advance the cause of Hinduism and the betterment of Hindu society? Coming after them will we just be bickering and quarrelling, definitely not. With all our added technic comforts how much we can do ! Is it not?
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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