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Sikhs & Navratri: When Guru Gobind Singh Wrote About Durga
1. A Retelling Of Markandeya Purana
Taking a moment for Afghan Sikhs. There are now only 43 Sikhs left in Afghanistan. I wanted all of us to dwell on India bringing over 20,000 Sikhs back to safety, back to Motherland.
It's not too quaint to think and spend a moment for Sikhs and Sikhism during the Navratri.
Didn't Guru Gobind Singh pen the Chandi Di Vaar, a composition about the Goddess slaying the demons?
The very first part of the composition is about Devi killing Mahisasura, the very reason we celebrate Navaratri.
Verses from the Chandi Di Vaar are even today a core part of Sikh liturgy and are invoked daily.
Even the Nihangs and Namdharis recite the Chandi D Vaar.
A prayer: As we save the last of the Afghan Sikhs may Devi keep Sikhism safe from monotheistic tendencies and may the Sikh tradition flourish in the mainstream of Bharat's cultural life.
Amar
2. She Does Not Blink, Because A Mother Is Ever-Watchful Of Her Children
Vaktralakshmi-parivaaha-chalanminabha-lochana: Her eyes are like fish playing in the tank of the beauty of Her face. This is the 18th name of the Goddess in the Sri Lalitha Sahasranama.
Meaning behind the meaning: More than a description of Her face, this name is an insight to an extremely touching aspect of Divine Motherhood.
Her eyes being compared to fish not only means that the eyes are ever-moving—looking everywhere—but that they never blink.
The Mother always watches over Her children, without blinking Her eyes.
But in Puranic lore, celestial beings are said to have wink-less eyes. Is this the same? No. In fact, according to another name in the Sahasranama (281), she does wink.
Unmesha-nimishotpanna-vipanna-bhuvanavalih—entire series of universes arise and disappear in Her wink.
It is in the period in between the creation and dissolution of the Universes—the period of sustenance—that She does not wink.
And so, to us mortals on Earth, Her eyes appear wink-less, sustaining the universe as we understand it.
The core of the meaning: This protective nature of her wink-less eyes is described thus in the Saundarya Lahari of Adi Sankaracharya—
“Daughter of the king of Mountains! Seers reveal that the universe goes through dissolution and emergence by wink of Your eyes. But, I think that the whole universe is protected by You keeping Your eyes from winking”
When Tagore said the same in ‘Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata’: The fourth stanza of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s five-stanza poem, Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata, makes a reference to the same wink-less eyes.
The stanza speaks of a ‘dark night enveloping the nation’. But even in such times, there are the ‘auspicious, ever-wakeful, downward-looking, wink-less eyes’ of the Mother providing protection.
In case it didn’t strike you till now, the first stanza from the same poem is taken as India’s national anthem, Jana Gana Mana.
Read Aravindan Neelakandan’s original article on the 18th name here.
Arush
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