Vishnu Sahasranamam- How did it come to us- Mahaperiyava

Once way back in 1940s or 50s someone was having an interview with Maha Periyavaa. (Jagadguru Chandrashekara Swami of Kanchipuram). That gentleman recorded the interview in a tape recorder.

Periyavaa posed a question to all present there; “Does anyone know which is the oldest known tape recorder?” There was no response.

Then Maha Periyavaa asked another question. “How did Vishnu sahasranamam come to us?” Someone said that it was given to us by Bheeshma. All present there agreed to this answer. Then Maha Periyavaa posed another query . “When all of them were listening to the glory of the Lord; did anyone take the notes at the battelfield of Kurukshetra?

There was silence again.

Then Mahaperiyava himself answered the following to the devotees.

When Bheeshma was glorifying Krishna with sahasranama; everyone including Krishna and Vyasa were engrossed in listening to him. After he finished the 1000 Namas; all of them opened their eyes. Yudhistra was the first to speak up.  He said pithamaha had chanted 1000 glorious names of Vasudeva. Everyone listened but nobody bothered to note the names down and the sequence was lost. All turned to Krishna and asked him. Krishna also said that he too listened just like the others and did not note anything down.
Then all prayed to Krishna to help them out. Merciful Krishna told them that it could only be retrieved by Sahadeva (one of the pandava brothers) and Vyasa should write it down.

Everyone was curious to know how Sahadeva could do it?

Lord Krishna responded;

“Sahadeva is the only one amongst us wearing SUTHA SPADIKAM. If he prays to Lord Shiva and  does dhyan (meditation) then he can convert the SPADIKA into waves of sound and Vyasa can write it. As per the Lord’s instructions;  Sahadeva started the dhyan to get the sound waves from Spadika. The nature of Spadika is that it will capture sounds in calm environment which can be retrieved by proper meditation of Lord Maheswara who is Himself the Swethambara and Spadika.

So world’s earliest tape recorder is this Spadika which gave us the wonderful Vishnu sahasranama.

When Maha Periyavaa explained this; all were stunned…

From the Spadika recording the grantha came to us through Veda vyasa.

Courtesy- Fb share