Naaraaya.nasuuktam

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>I was told that nArAyaNa-sUktam describes Shiva as red
>and Naaraayana as "krishna piGgalam" in its last line.
>
>a) Is this correct?

No. There are two references to ziva in this sUkta. In
the first, nArAyaNa is described as Izvara, zAzvata,
ziva, acyuta, mahAjneya and vizvAtmA. In the second, the
paramAtmA is equated with brahmA, ziva, hari, indra and
akshara. Neither verse associates a red color with ziva.

Perhaps the above interpretation comes from virUpAksha.
It is a stretch to read the color red into this word,
but there are those who think that Urdhvaretas implies
red (bloodshot) eyes, and hence virUpAksha.

As for the color of nArAyaNa himself in the sUkta, it
is like a yellow (pItA) flash of lightning (vidyullekhA)
in the midst of a dark blue cloud (nIla-toyada). kRshNa-
pingala comes after this reference. The text is online,
at http://sanskrit.gde.to/doc_vishhnu/doc_vishhnu.html.

>b) where does N.suktam belong
>in the Vedic corpus?

taittirIya AraNyaka. rAmAnuja gives almost a central
place to this hymn, which he calls nArAyaNa-anuvAka.

While on the subject of Vishnu, there was a question
about suffix -sAyi in anantasAyi, rangasAyi etc. Well,
the words are anantazAyI, rangazAyI, zeshazAyI. The
suffix is derived from root zI (to sleep). Verbal root
si (to bind) and the possible sI (to draw a line) are
not meant here, and would anyway conjugate differently.
Voiced and voiceless sibilants are not interchangeable.

Vidyasankar