dakSiNAmUrti stotra, and Tamil and Kashmir zaivisms

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan <Palaniappa at AOL.COM> wrote:

>As far as the pre-zankaran texts I have checked, there is no explicit
>description of the age of the teacher vs. the age of the students.
One should not discount the historical influence of Sankara himself as a
young guru teaching old disciples. The Sanskrit texts that mention the
relative ages of teacher and disciples are almost all post-Sankaran I think.
That Sankara was equivalent to (if not an incarnation of) Siva is a notion
found even in the works of his immediate disciples, padmapAda and sureSvara.
In later times, there is an explicit notion that dakshiNAmUrti abandoned his
silence and came down to earth as Sankara, in order to teach human beings.

But I
>think, it probably was to be expected. One does not find Hindu gods
>depicted
>as old men except in some specific episodes of stories as in

Except for brahmA, the pitAmaha, who is always an old man.

......
>As for his nature of teacher or creator, CT texts call him "kaTavuL" and
>even
>"ton2mutu kaTavuL". Moreover, we have the following tEvAram of campantar:

I may have overstated the case of dakshiNAmUrti as the guru and not the
creator. Siva-dakshiNAmUrti is indeed regarded as the creator, but  the
emphasis is more on the aspect as teacher.

Vidyasankar


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