Respected web admin,
first of all please accept my apologies for the late reply. I am at present in Guwahati and shall be returning to Shillong tomorrow. Actually, I was composing a piece on Lord Shiva by Sister Nivedita. Thought I would post that in reply to your kind post. However, our home PC has some problem with microsoft word and I was unable to do as I planned. Anyway, thank you for the kind words and the valuable excerpt. Today Sri Fhanindra called me. Recitation from the Bhagavad purana in his house. THe reciter was a good man with a beautiful voice. Really, hearing to the glory of the Lord can help cleanse one. The bhagavad he was reading from was by Sri Sri Sankardeva in Assamese. He narrated the story of the events leading to Sri Krishna's lifting the Govardhan mountain with the little finger of his left hand and humbling Indra, and also the story of Krishna's birth. At my asking, he told the story of Gajendra moksha in brief. I love that story. How Indradumnya, the king who built the now famous Jagannath temple, was cursed by Rishi Agastya to become an elephant and how in that animal incarnation, he was redeemed by Lord Vishnu. He also said that the Lord as Vishnu gives everything to his dear devotees, his rupa or form, his mace, discus, lotus and conch, and his powers. But He does not give anyone two things, viz. the kaustubha and srivatsa. Kaustubha was the gem obtained during the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons and has the brilliance of the sun, and srivatsa is where he has preserved on his chest the dust of the feet of hsi great devotee, the rishi Brighu, obtained when that sage kiched Him there. I have read in the Bhagavad Gita that the seven sages, the saptarshi, one among whom incarnated on Earth as Swami Vivekananda according to Sri Ramakrishna, are equal in power with the Lord except that they cannot create.
'dust of the feet of hsi great devotee, the rishi Brighu, obtained when that sage kiched Him there' should be read as 'dust of the feet of his great devotee, the rishi Brighu, obtained when that sage kicked Him there.'
