Ramana Didn't Write Them! ;)

[vasudevaram]

Not entirely true. By ‘he didn’t write them’ I mean that he didn’t sit down at a desk with the express purpose of composing Forty Verses which explain the purpose of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
It happened like this:

“One day Muruganar said that
some stray verses composed by me now and then on various
occasions should not be allowed to die, but should be collected
together and some more added to them to bring the whole
number to forty, and that the entire forty should be made into a
book with a proper title. He accordingly gathered about thirty
or less stanzas and requested me to make the rest to bring the
total to forty.

“ I did so, composing a few stanzas on different
occasions as the mood came upon me. When the number came
up to forty, Muruganar went about deleting one after another
of the old collection of thirty or less on the pretext they were
not quite germane to the subject on hand or otherwise not quite
suitable, and requesting me to make fresh ones in place of the
deleted ones.

“When this process was over, and there were forty
stanzas as required by Muruganar, I found that in the forty there
were but two stanzas out of the old ones and all the rest had
been newly composed. It was not made according to any set
scheme, nor at a stretch, nor systematically. I composed different
stanzas on different occasions and Muruganar and others
afterwards arranged them in some order according to the
thoughts expressed in them to give some appearance of
connected and regular treatment of the subject, viz., Reality.”

(The stanzas contained in the old collection and deleted by
Muruganar were about twenty. These were afterwards added
as supplement to the above work and the Supplement too now
contains 40 verses).”

From Day by Day with Bhagavan,
7th December 1945

[mackie]

sounds a little hard to believe.
As they run, the verses make perfect sense!

[vasudevaram]

Aug 23, 2008 7:59:11 GMT mackie said:

sounds a little hard to believe.
As they run, the verses make perfect sense!

Indeed. But true.
Of course, we think of "The Forty" as the main course and a supplement as something tacked onto the end.

However, looking at the extract from Day by Day again, we can see that the Supplement really came first!

anbudan

John

[gabriele]

Great story. I don't remember someone else told it so clearly.

This here is what Nagamma says in her Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, entry 28th August 1946:
****************************************************

I then asked, "How was `Unnadhi Nalubadhi' written?"
"I had to write that also in Tamil at Muruganar's pressing request. Yogi Ramiah too was there at the time. He requested me to write at least the bhava (purport) in Telugu and so I wrote it in prose. After that Madhava said, `What about Malayalam?' I said yes and wrote it in that language also in kili (metre). That will be like a seesamalika verse. That also I wrote in the Telugu script. You may make a copy of it if you like," said Bhagavan.

"Why didn't Bhagavan write it in Sanskrit?" I asked.

Bhagavan said, "At that time, Nayana, Lakshmana Sarma and others were here. So I left it to them. Why should I worry, I thought, and so kept quiet."
I asked, "Did Nayana write the Sanskrit slokas for `Unnadhi Nalubadhi' at that time?"
Bhagavan said, "No, at the time of writing the verses, Muruganar and myself were arranging them suitably when Nayana gave us his advice but did not write the slokas. He went away to Sirsi after that. While he was there, Viswanathan and Kapali went and stayed with him for some time.
Meanwhile, Lakshmana Sarma wrote slokas for `Unnadhi Nalubadhi'.
The same were forwarded to Nayana, to return them duly edited. Seeing that, Nayana said he could as well write the slokas himself rather than correct them, and so returned them as they were. Subsequently with the help of Viswanathan and Kapali he wrote slokas to conform exactly to the Tamil verses and sent them. The former, however, remained as it was while Nayana's was published under the title `Sad Darshanam'.
Things happen as they should. What can we do? In accordance with that Sanskrit translation, Kapali wrote his commentary in English and in Sanskrit. After that Viswanathan translated it into Tamil."

"How did the Anubandham (Supplement) happen to be
written?" I asked.
"I did not write it for any particular reason. As and when somebody wanted a verse I wrote one, and all of them were added on as a supplement. For the first publication, there were only 30 verses. Afterwards, they became 40. Even they were written only in the first instance. Subsequently I wrote them in Telugu and then in Malayalam.
Some of the slokas are from those written by great people in olden days and some by Lakshmana Sarma who followed the prose written by me," said Bhagavan."

"Some of the slokas are written by Bhagavan also?" I said.
"I must have written only two or three," said Bhagavan.
"Bhagavan must have written some of the Telugu verses also," I said.
"Yes, there must be some. If you like, look at the manuscript.
You will see the details," said Bhagavan

*************************************************
note: the version by Lakshmana Sarma was later published under the title "Revelation"