Towards your cultural orientation

I am pleased to send a congratulatory message to the 13th Saiva Conference of The Federation of Saiva (Hindu) Temples, UK, to be held on the 4th and 5th of September 2010.

You are engaged in a task of retaining the identity of an immigrant culture. You have a tolerant situation. You are in the midst of cultured people. They are providing you refuge and residence. I thank the British for their hospitality and support. Most of you settled there not willingly but because you had no other option.

My mind has always been with you. Your concerns ever fill my mind. I want to be as supportive to you as possible. It is my duty to provide you with necessary material so as to help you continue maintain your time honoured culture and identity.

When Dharmapura Adheenam assigned me the project of producing 16 volumes of the Panniru thirumurai in 1996, I undertook the work with dedication and with the objective of a larger audience and broader reach.

To each and every home of the Tamil migrants, thirumurai is the holy text. Many of them had little access to it. Only few of them were able to obtain anthologies from thirumurai.

Tamil migrant population was in my mind during pre-press preparations. I had seen for myself the thirst they had for thirumurai, the difficulties they encountered with erroneous text, their yearning for authenticity and their quest for detailed meanings. In Tamil Nadu and Eezham, accessibility to scholarship in thirumurai is not rear. In alien situations Tamils suffer without such adequate support.

During the late nineties, internet had eventually become a reality. It became an invaluable tool. It was my duty to convince Dharmapura Adheenam to have the entire tirumurai and Meikada sastram included in a website for universal viewing.

www.thevaaram.org was launched in January 2005. It had the entire text of 18,246 hymns under 1,254 titles of the 12 thirumurais.  Subsequently, Meikanda Sastra (thiruneri) texts of 1,115 hymns under 14 titles were added.

All the hymns have direct meanings followed by interpretations. For the benefit of the Tamil Diaspora, all the 18,246 thirumurai hymns are provided with English translations. Translations for selected hymns are also available in Telugu, Kannadam, Hindi and Sanskrit.

In the transplanted environment, most children grow with scanty or no knowledge of the Tamil language. Such children require transcriptions to read Tamil texts. To facilitate these children, thirumurai and thiruneri have been transcribed into 12 international scripts.

A type to search facility is available to search using the first word of a hymn or using any word in the hymn.

All 658 hymns of thiruvasakam, 193 hymns of thirumanthiram, 393 hymns of 11^th thirumurai and 3,728 hymns of 12^th thirumurai are available in the traditional pann music for listening in the website from the audio recordings of scholarly othuvaars.

283 Sivan temples have been directly glorified by the authors of thirumurai. A detailed account of these temples is available with addresses and telephone numbers of the temples. Video clippings of 274 temples are also available. These video clippings will also appear in the 8500 situations of reference in the thevaaram.

27 authors, beginning with Nakkeerar (300 BCE.) to Sekkizhaar (1150 CE) spanning over a period of 1,500 years composed these hymns. Their detailed life history with images has been included for the benefit of the Tamil Diaspora.

The work completed so far in this site www.thevaaram.org is complimentary to your efforts in the UK.

Many contributed to the construction of this website. Proof readers made the error free text for you. Computer programmers structured this viewer friendly site. Data entry operators compiled the data. 185 donors from all continents met the expenses. Around 20,000 hits a day from 700 cities in 70 countries makes this project an ongoing operation supported by a team of committed staff. All these efforts are directed towards your cultural orientation.

I visualize my efforts in the efforts of the organizers, speakers and the participants at the conference. I am there with you even though circumstances beyond my control keep me physically away. I wish all of you a successful conference.