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श्रीः

श्रीमते रङ्गरामानुज महादेशिकाय नमः

श्रीमते श्रीनिवास रामानुज महादेशिकाय नमः    श्रीमते वेदान्त रामानुज महादेशिकाय नमः    श्रीमते श्रीनिवास महादेशिकाय नमः

श्रीमते निगमान्त महादेशिकाय नमः    श्रीमते भगवते भाष्यकाराय महादेशिकाय नमः

श्री सीता लक्ष्मण भरत शत्रुघ्न हनुमत् समेत श्री कोदण्डराम परब्रह्मणे नमः

श्री पेरुन्देवी नायीका समेत श्रीदेवादिदेवराज परब्रह्मणे नमः

श्री अलर्मेल्मङ्गानायीका समेत श्री श्रीनिवास परब्रह्मणे नमः

श्री रङ्गनायिका समेत श्रीरङ्गनाथ परब्रह्मणे नमः

श्री रङ्गनाथ दिव्यमणि पाधुकाभ्याम् नमः

श्रीमान्   वेङ्कटनाथार्यः  कवितार्किक  केसरी  ।   वेदान्तचार्य  वर्यो  मे  सन्निधत्तां  सदा  हृदि  ॥

We commence this introduction seeking the Grace and invoking the Blessings of His Holiness Sri RangaRamanuja Mahadesikan, Srirangam Srimad Andavan Ashramam. We are His sishyas. We were all blessed to witness His ShatAbishekam from around the world  which took place in May this year in Srirangam and we had the bhAgyam to conduct His pAdhukArAdhanam at our home.

We launched www.aradhanam.org website on Vijayadashami in October but it took over a month to design the site and finalize the standards and initial contents. The inspiration to launch this website for the shrI vaiShNavA community at large came from the 400-page book titled “श्रीभगवदाराधनम्” that adiyEn was blessed to release it on the ShaShtiabdapUrti day in September. We sincerely thank U. Ve. Sri. A. Venkatavaradhan Swamigal and Ashramam staff in arranging Srimad Andavan’s Anugraham and His SriMukham for the book. We owe our deep gratitude, respects  and sincere thanks to U. Ve. Sri. Malola Kannan Swamigal of Thiruvahindipuram for his guidance in shaping the structure and contents of this book centered around our core shrI vaiShNava nitya kai~Nkaryam, “श्रीभगवदाराधनम्”. The one and only  chapter in this book is titled the same and describes the entire 108-step procedure in English. The bigger portion of this book is the compilation of ‘select 60’ stotrams/shlokams in Sanskrit, English and Tamil/Telugu from the Vedas, the Divya Prabandham and our dear AchAryan Swami Desikan’s monumental works.

The main reasons in building the shlokams/stotrams in this  book and now this website were to overcome a few reading difficulties many of us commonly encounter.

• Our desire is to hear an expert’s audio rendition of a prayer while being able to easily read along and follow the words in the text that matches the audio. But that is not generally the case. In Sanskrit, conjunction (sandhi) is used extensively and hence we end up often distracted trying to extract the ‘audio’ words out of very long, unbroken lines of text and quickly going out of sync between the audio and the reading. But sandhi is also there to keep the original meter intact in poetic texts. Hence this challenge in shlokam learning.
• adiyEn is one of many of us whose education in the modern world has been unfortunately English-based only and who does not have a good, formal background in Sanskrit and ironically even in one’s own mother tongue.
• A single line of a pAsuram in Tamil is oftentimes broken across 2 or more printed lines identified  by a ‘*’ tag at one or both ends.

Please note that adiyEn is no language expert. The only genuine intention here was to prepare shlokams in this book with some basic, yet hopefully consistent, documentation standards and easily readable words strung in individual lines matching what is rendered in audio by an expert. It may not be perfect by any literary and language standards but we pray that this truly helps in accelerating the learning/recitation process.

adiyEn has developed 3 Unicode-based text translation macro utilities for the English-2-Sanskrit, English-2-Tamil, and English-2-Telugu combinations that can be used directly in Microsoft Word (and in other Office tools) to convert the source English text to the target language. Sanskrit shlokas are presented in Sanskrit only and it is our prayer that it encourages everyone to become familiar with Sanskrit language and script.  It is only the Tamil pAsurams that have been translated to Telugu for our Telugu-speaking friends. One particular difficult and unique consonant in Tamil (ழ) has been converted to composite unit (య్ళ) in Telugu. The best way to get acquainted with this consonant is to simply hear it from a Tamil-speaking friend.  Sanskrit text is in OmkArAnanda Ashram’s Sanskrit 2003 font, Tamil in Microsoft’s Latha font and Telugu in Microsoft’s Gautami font. The only exception in our list of 60 stotrams is Swami Desikan’s amazing Achyuta Shatakam which was originally written in प्राकृत (PrAkrit) language. It is presented in English in this book for a speedy learning.

We have tried our best to validate typed-in English texts and the generated Sanskrit and Tamil stotrams against printed books we have in our collection and various online resources over a few iterations. Yet, mistakes always creep in. Kindly pardon us for these mistakes. Our eyes wouldn’t believe where they are. But, as avid and critical readers, yours can. Please do give us your corrections wherever and whenever you find them.

We hope this website serves as a good reference material for your recitation and/or learning purposes.

Pray God Bless us all.

कवितार्किक-सिंहाय  कल्याणगुणशालिने  ।   श्रीमते  वेङ्कटेशाय  वेदान्तगुरवे  नमः ॥