On April eighth this year we would be celebrating Sri Rama
Navami, the birth day of Rama. Rama , the Maryadha Purushothama , the ideal of man hood is respected and revered by very large number of people in India. In fact the most popular epic is Ramayana and not Bhagawatha or Mahabharatha. Possibly you will find only a rare Hindu who does not know or heard about
Ramayana. Ramayana, the story of Rama
has been translated(rewritten?) in almost all languages in India .It is
also true that Ramayana is revered in all parts of India. Because of this , it
is natural to expect that worship of
Rama being most popular. But this is not true at least in
Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The list
of big temples in Tamil Nadu includes
only about 9 temples and a survey carried out by a college in Madras
reports that only 5% of people in
Tamil Nadu worship Rama. The great Vaishnavite Bhakthi movement in Tamil Nadu lead by The Azhvars concentrated itself
on Lord Ranganatha, Lord Venkateswara and Lord Krishna. Raghu Veera Gadhyam of Vedantha Desika(story
of Rama) and Pasurappadi Ramayanam of
Periyavachan pillai (again the story of Rama)
were the most famous works on Rama by
the Vaishnavites of Tamil
Nadu. The school of Bhakthi started by sage Raghavendra a Madhwa saint in Tamil Nadu concentrated itself on Rama. Another such Movement is lead by Saint Thyagaraja , who wrote several Carnatic music Krithis on Rama who was chosen God.
Almost the same
situation prevails in Kerala also.Though Ezhuthachan’s
Adhyathma Ramayanam is almost daily read in the homes of Kerala, The temples dedicated to Rama are few in number compared to other temples. There are not
many Malayalam prayers addressed to Rama. The Bhakthi movement in Kerala mostly
concentrated itself on Lord
Krishna and Lord Vishnu as Padmanabha.
In case of Andhra
, I understand that the Bhakthi
movement started by Badrachala
Ramadasa was very strong and popular. However
the Bhakthi movement addressed to Lord
Venkatachalapathy appears to be more popular.
I do not know much
of North India but as far as I know the BHakthi movement there is concentrated on Lord Krishna , Lord Shiva and Lord Hanuman and not on Rama in all places except Ayodhya.
In my search for stotras on different Gods, I have found
the number of Stotras addressed to Rama
are comparatively less with most of them finding their origin
in Adhyathma Ramayana.
I would like to
know about the thoughts of learned
members about these points.
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