Narasimha Saraswati - Life and Work

Life and Work

In Shri GuruCharitra Chapter 11 onwards is the description of life story of Shri Narasimha Saraswati. After he was born the first words he said were OM which are considered very holy. However, until he was 7 he did not utter any other word other than OM, so his parents were worried about his speech ability. However, he showed by hand gestures that after his Upanayana (Munja) he will be able to speak. In fact after his munja was performed he was able to speak all the vedas and even started delivering lectures on it. This was remarkable for a 7 year old kid and many senior learned Brahmins in the village started coming to him for learning!

He left home and went for Kashi-pilgrimage and took Sannyasa at Kashi from Shri Krishna Saraswati. The second part of his name comes from this guru, who eventually named him Shri Narasimha Saraswati. This is a Sanskrit name. Now he became the Guru. After visiting several holy places he returned to Karanja, met his parents. He was possibly of age 30years that time. After that he further visited various places and finally settled in Ganagapur (now in State Karnataka) for the last few decades of his life. All of this is reported in Shri GuruCharitra.

One of the event in his life (towards the end) was the meeting with the Muslim king (Sultan) of Bedar who is possibly Allauddin-II of the Bahamani Sultanate who was ruling that area that time. These rulers were different from the Delhi Mughals and there were four such states which were existing that time. Many times "chahu rashtra" term occurring in

Shri GuruCharitra possibly points to this. The king visited Narasimha Saraswati because he was suffering from a blister which was not curing. No one was able to cure, so he was advised to visit Narasimha Saraswati, and after visiting him he was cured. Among the Bahamani kings, only Allauddin-II is supposed to have died due to the blister as per the records of his court historians. This king was very moderate and did not destroy temples or old monuments. He also was supposed to be quite friendly towards the Hindu communities.

The work of Narasimha Saraswati has to be seen in the context of the time he was born and social turmoil the society was facing that time. The Muslim attack was imminent and the famous Vijayanagar empire was destroyed. The Brahmins of this time had started working for the new rulers and were losing all the past traditions. The revival of the Sanatan Dharma (the old Hindu Religion, as revived by Jagatguru Shri Adi Shankaracharya) was to be revived again. The main teaching of Narasimha Saraswati has been that the life of Brahmins is fully covered by the rules given in the old scriptures and they are to be strictly followed by them in their daily lives to achieve happiness and ultimately moksha (the final attainment of soul where the soul is liberated from the cycle of rebirths). He insisted on his disciples to follow these routines. This improved their confidence and self-esteem which was very essential at the time the attack of a foreign culture was going on. This feeling penetrating through the generations, gave a special sense of self-esteem and pride which eventually resulted in the coming up of the fighters like King Shivaji and Peshwas in later years in Maharashtra. Narasimha Saraswati helped all the people from all the communities and can be seen in his life stories.

After the meeting with the Muslim king, he thought that his fame has gone to such an extent that now all types of people will start coming in, and will start troubling him and his disciples. Thus he decided to take samadhi. He left for the jungle of Kardali (a type of tree). Shri Swami Samarth of Akkalkot, who is considered as his Avatar, is supposed to have come from Kardali-van (Jungle of Kardali). Although the time difference between them is a few centuries. The Datta-sampradaya people believe that Narasimha Saraswati re-incarnated as Swami Samartha of Akkalkot .

Datta-Sampradaya, many Muslim fakirs or Pirs are also accepted as devotees of Lord Dattatreya. However it is not clear how Muslims (other than sufis and to some extend shias) viewed it. Some of them were declared as apostate by wahabi/salafi/sunni Muslims. Facebook Fan Page : www.facebook.com/dattganagapur