A story for the significance of the holy Tamil month Purattasi
Posted on: 17/Sep/2018 5:27:11 PM
The temple of Lord Srinivasa at Tirupathi is considered to be the most important among the temples of Lord Vishnu. A man named ‘Bheeman’, a potter by profession, used to live here. He was an ardent devotee of the Lord Srinivasa. He had taken the penance to observe fasting on all Saturdays for life.
However, as he was rather poor, he would be indulged in his duties most of the times. So, he may not find time to visit the temple on Saturdays. Even if he had time to visit, he was not aware of the procedure to perform Pooja and prayer. He would simply the phrase,’God! You are anything and everything!’
Once he had a thought. However, he could not have the time to visit the temple to have the Darshan of the Lord. He thought about bringing the Lord to his location!
He made a statue out of clay. He did not have money to buy flowers. However, after completing his day’s work, he would make small flowers out of the remaining sand. He would make a garland out of these and adorn the statue made by him.
The king of his place, Thondaiman, was also an ardent devotee of the Lord Srinivasa. He used to adorn the deity with gold chains on the Saturdays. He did it for one week and returned for the next week. However, to his amazement, he only saw the garland made out of sand flowers! He got suspicious whether the Archakas or Bhttars of the temple indulged in crimes. However, he had a dream – the Lord appeared and told him about the old man.
The king immediately visited the old potter’s house. The king helped old potter with sufficient financial assistance and materials. However, the potter was not impressed or attached to the material and money but remained focused on his services to His Lord!
As per the Lord Srinivasa’s order, in honour of the devoted old potter, the offering for the Lord – Naivedhyam – is done on a clay plate and vessel!
As the lore has it that the Lord Srinivasa revealed Himself on the day of the star of Thiruvonam in the holy month of Purattasi, he provided special significance to the Saturdays in the Tamil calendar month of Purattasi.
As per the above, it has developed into a tradition for generations to pray Lord Vishnu in the form of Lord Srinivasa, at Tirupathi and pray in order to reduce the extent of evils done by Lord Sani. Only due to this reason, the ardent devotees observe the penance of fasting on the Saturdays of the Tamil calendar month of Purattasi.
