Stanza 17

upendro vaamanah praamsur-amoghah suchir-oorjitah
ateendrah samgrahah sargo dhritaatmaa niyamo yamah.

 Upendrah -The younger brother of Indra. In His Incarnation as Vaamana, He was born to Aditi, who was the mother of Indra, and hence, the Lord is known as the “Younger brother of Indra”. In Sanskrit the prefix upa denotes ‘Above’ in the sense of ‘superior to’; therefore, Upendra may also mean “One who is superior to Indra”, the king of gods. Such an explanation we find in the Harivamsa (76-47).

Indra, the king of the sense-organs, is the mind and the Consciousness, which is the Self, is the One factor that dynamises the mind. Since life is that which controls even the mind, certainly It is superior to the mind and this Self is the Maha Vishnu.

 Vaamanah -Of the ten great incarnations, the fifth one is Vaamana; and the very name indicates ‘One who has a small body’. It was in the form of a child (vatuh =A child student in a gurukula) that Vaamana approached the divinely righteous Emperor Mahaabali to beg of him a little land, of the length of his tiny three steps-and the Lord measured in His three steps all the three worlds and thus conquered Mahaabali. He checked (Vamayati) the rising pride of possession in Bali, hence He, in that incarnation as a Vatu, is called Vaamana.

The term Vaamana also means ‘worshipful’: “Him, the Dwarf, sitting in the middle of the heart, all gods adore”, so we read in the Kathopanishad (5-3). However, here the emphasis should be upon the meaning “short statured” because of the contrast it makes with the following name.

 Praamsuh -One whose body is vast is called Praamsuh. Vaamana, when He got the promise from the righteous King, and when He started measuring, the Lord took His Cosmic Form, and with each step measured the earth, the interspace, and the heaven. In Harivamsa (262-263) there is a beautiful description of the little Vaamana growing into His Total Form. The rate of His expansion is described with reference to two fixed factors the Sun and the Moon. When He took the form, the Sun and the Moon were His eyes; as He measured the earth, they came to His bosom; as He was measuring the space, the Sun was at His navel and as He lifted His feet to measure the Heaven, the Sun and the Moon were just below His knees.

 Amoghah -One whose activities are ever a fulfilment of some great purpose. Even insignificant actions, which, ordinarily, people would think are empty and purposeless, are never really so, when they spring from Him. Even when He punishes, it is only for inaugurating a greater evolutionary blessing.

 Suchih -One who is spotlessly ‘clean’, and therefore, Ever-Pure. Impurities in a substance are things other than itself; when dust is on the cloth, the cloth is impure, unclean. Since the Self, the Aatman, is the Non- Dual Reality, having nothing other than Itself in It, Ever-pure alone must It always be. And Suchih is One who gives this purity to those who contemplate upon Him constantly.

 Oorjitah -One who has infinite strength and vitality. Wherever, in the organism, we meet with any strength and vitality they are all the strength and vitality of the Self. The Infinite Vishnu is the One All-Pervading Self, and therefore, He is the very springhead for all strength.

 Ateendrah  -One who is beyond Indra in knowledge, glory and strength. Since Indra represents the ‘mind-intellect’ equipment, Aatman, the Self is denoted here as that which transcends the mind.

 Samgrahah -One who holds the entire world of beings-and-things together in an indissoluble embrace unto Himself. Just as the hub of a wheel holds the rim unto itself by its endless spokes, so too the Aatman, the Self within, lends Its vitality to every cell in the body and to every thought in the inner-equipments.

In none can anything happen which is not a glory borrowed from Him. And, the Self, being the same everywhere, in all existence, in both the movables and immovables, gross and subtle -in the manifest as well as in the unmanifest - He certainly is the One who holds the world of phenomena unto Himself in a vast embrace of Love and Oneness.

 Sargah -One who has created out of Him- self the whole world. It therefore must also connote One, who has the whole created world as His own form, since the creation is His own manifestation as the Subtle and the Gross.

 Dhritaatmaa -One who supports Himself by Himself. In the previous epithet Samgrahah, He was shown as the Cohesion of Love in the world of matter and energy, and in Sargah, He, as the One material and efficient cause of creation, was shown as also the very supporter of the manifested world. But who supports Him? He is Dhritaatmaa - He is established in Himself.

 Niyamah -The Appointing Authority: It is He, who orders all the mighty forces of nature and prescribes for each the Laws of their conduct, the ways of their behaviour and the methods of their functions. The Sun, Moon, Air, Waters, Dik-Paalakas, Death etc. are all appointed and ordered by the Lord.

 Yamah -One who is the mighty Power that administers all the forces of Nature under His Law. Everything in nature strictly obeys ever all His Laws.

Songs as divine intervention