Trailanga Swami
Encyclopedia
Telang Swami (Telugu
: త్రిలింగ స్వామి) (reportedly c. 1529 or 1607-1887) was a Hindu
yogi
famed for his spiritual powers who lived in Varanasi
, India
. He is regarded as a legendary figure in Bengal, with many stories told about his yogic powers, longevity. According to some accounts, Telang Swami lived to be around 300 years old, residing at Varanasi between 1737-1887. He is regarded as an incarnation of god Shiva
, and Ramakrishna
, a contemporary Bengali
saint referred to him as the "The walking Shiva of Varanasi".
in Andhra Pradesh
and belonged to the Dashanami sect. He became known as Trailanga Swami during his settlement in Varanasi. His biographers and his disciples differ on his birth date and the period of his longevity. According to one disciple biographer, he was born in 1529, while according to another biographer it was 1607. His pre-monastic name was Shivarama and was born in Holia
at Vizianagaram
in Andhra Pradesh. His parents were Narashingha Rao and Vidyavati Devi, who were devotees of god Shiva
. After the death of his parents, at the age of forty, Shivaram renounced the world and lived the life of a recluse in a cottage near a cremation ground. After practicing sadhana
(spiritual practice) for twenty years, he met his preceptor Bhagirathananda Saraswati in 1679 from Punjab
. Bhagirathananda initiated Shivaram into sannyasa
(monastic vows) and named him Ganapati Saraswati in 1685. Ganapati reportedly led a life of severe austerities and went on a pilgrimage, reaching Prayag in 1733, and finally settling in Varanasi in 1737.
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In Varanasi, till his death in 1887, he lived at different places including Asi Ghat, the Vedavyas Asharama at Hanuman Ghat, Dashashwamedh Ghat
. The Swami was often found roaming the streets or the ghats, naked and "carefree as a child". He was reportedly seen swimming or floating on Ganges for hours. The Swami talked very little and at times not at all. A large number of people became attracted to him upon hearing of his yogic powers to ameliorate their sufferings. During his stay in Varanasi, several prominent contemporary Bengali saints met and described him, including Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda
, Mahendranath Gupta
, Lahiri Mahasaya
, and Swami Abhedananda
., Swami Bhaskarananda
, Swami Vishuddhananda Saraswati, and Mahatma Vijaykrishna Goswami. After seeing Telang Swami, Ramakrishna said, "I saw that the universal Lord Himself was using his body as a vehicle for manifestation. He was in an exalted state of knowledge. There was no body-consciousness in him. Sand there became so hot in the sun that no one could set foot on it. But he lay comfortably on it." Ramakrishna also stated that Trailanga Swami was a real paramahansa (lit:"Supreme swan", used as a honorific for a spiritual teacher) and that "all Benares was illuminated by his stay there."
The Swami had taken the vow of ayachaka ( non seeking)—remaining satisfied with whatever he received. In the later stage of his life, as his fame spread, pilgrims visited him in multitudes. During his last days, he took up ajagaravritti (living like a python) in which he sat still without any movement, and devotees poured water (abhisheka
) on him from early morning till noon, looking upon him as a living incarnation of Shiva. He died on Monday evening, December 26, 1887. His body was given salilasamadhi in the Ganges river, according to the funeral customs of the monks of the Dashanami sect, in the presence of a multitude of mourning devotees standing on the ghats.
On many occasions, he was seen to drink deadly poisons with no ill effect. In one instance, a skeptic wanted to expose him as a fraud. The monk was accustomed to breaking his long fasts with buckets of clabbered milk
, so the skeptic brought him a bucket of calcium-lime mixture used for whitewashing walls instead. The monk drank the entire bucket with no ill effect—instead, the skeptic fell to the ground writhing. The monk broke his usual silence to explain the law of karma
, or cause and effect.
According to another story, he often walked around without any clothes, much like the naga (or "sky-clad") sadhus. The Varanasi police were scandalized by his behaviour, and had him locked in a jail cell. He was soon seen on the prison roof, in all his 'sky-clad' glory. The police put him back into his locked cell, only to see him appear again on the jail roof. They soon gave up, and let him again walk the streets of Varanasi.
Thousands of people reportedly saw him levitating in a sitting position on the surface of the river Ganges for days at a time. He would also apparently disappear under the waves for long periods, and reappear unharmed. Swami Sivananda
attributed some of his miracles to the siddhi
or yogic power Bhutajaya— or conquest over the five elements, "Fire will not burn such a Yogi. Water will not drown him."
With respect to his reportedly yogic powers, miracles abundant in his biographies and exceptionally long life, Swami Medhasananda writes that according to the "science of yoga", attainment of these is not "impossible".
(the Hindu belief that life is a cycle of birth and death) through "spiritual knowledge". He remarks that attachment to the "evanescent" world is "our chronic disease" and the medicine is "detachment".
The Swami describes man's senses as his enemy and his controlled senses as his friend. His description of a poor person is one who is "very greedy" and regards one who always remains content as rich. The Swami says that the greatest place of pilgrimage is "Our own pure mind" and instructs to follow the "Vedantic
truth from the Guru." He describes a Sadhu
as the one who is free from attachment and delusion.
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
: త్రిలింగ స్వామి) (reportedly c. 1529 or 1607-1887) was a Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
yogi
Yogi
A Yogi is a practitioner of Yoga. The word is also used to refer to ascetic practitioners of meditation in a number of South Asian Religions including Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.-Etymology:...
famed for his spiritual powers who lived in Varanasi
Varanasi
-Etymology:The name Varanasi has its origin possibly from the names of the two rivers Varuna and Assi, for the old city lies in the north shores of the Ganga bounded by its two tributaries, the Varuna and the Asi, with the Ganges being to its south...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. He is regarded as a legendary figure in Bengal, with many stories told about his yogic powers, longevity. According to some accounts, Telang Swami lived to be around 300 years old, residing at Varanasi between 1737-1887. He is regarded as an incarnation of god Shiva
Shiva
Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
, and Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
, a contemporary Bengali
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
saint referred to him as the "The walking Shiva of Varanasi".
Life
Trailanga Swami was from VizianagaramVizianagaram
Vizianagaram is the main city of the Vizianagaram District of north-eastern Andhra Pradesh in southern India. Vizianagaram district was formed on 1 June 1979, with some parts carved from the neighbouring districts of Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam. It is, at present, the largest municipality of...
in Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...
and belonged to the Dashanami sect. He became known as Trailanga Swami during his settlement in Varanasi. His biographers and his disciples differ on his birth date and the period of his longevity. According to one disciple biographer, he was born in 1529, while according to another biographer it was 1607. His pre-monastic name was Shivarama and was born in Holia
Holia
Holia is an extinct genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida. It contains four species, H. cimelia, H. glabra, H. secristi, and H. anacantha.-External links:* at the Paleobiology Database...
at Vizianagaram
Vizianagaram
Vizianagaram is the main city of the Vizianagaram District of north-eastern Andhra Pradesh in southern India. Vizianagaram district was formed on 1 June 1979, with some parts carved from the neighbouring districts of Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam. It is, at present, the largest municipality of...
in Andhra Pradesh. His parents were Narashingha Rao and Vidyavati Devi, who were devotees of god Shiva
Shiva
Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
. After the death of his parents, at the age of forty, Shivaram renounced the world and lived the life of a recluse in a cottage near a cremation ground. After practicing sadhana
Sadhana
Sādhanā literally "a means of accomplishing something" is ego-transcending spiritual practice. It includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Sikh , Buddhist and Muslim traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives.The historian N...
(spiritual practice) for twenty years, he met his preceptor Bhagirathananda Saraswati in 1679 from Punjab
Punjab region
The Punjab , also spelled Panjab |water]]s"), is a geographical region straddling the border between Pakistan and India which includes Punjab province in Pakistan and the states of the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and some northern parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi...
. Bhagirathananda initiated Shivaram into sannyasa
Sannyasa
Sannyasa is the order of life of the renouncer within the Hindu scheme of āśramas, or life stages. It is considered the topmost and final stage of the ashram systems and is traditionally taken by men or women at or beyond the age of fifty years old or by young monks who wish to renounce worldly...
(monastic vows) and named him Ganapati Saraswati in 1685. Ganapati reportedly led a life of severe austerities and went on a pilgrimage, reaching Prayag in 1733, and finally settling in Varanasi in 1737.
Dashashwamedh Ghat
Dashashwamedh Ghat is main ghat in Varanasi on the Ganges River, it is located close to "Vishwanath Temple", and is probably the most spectacular ghat. Two Hindu mythologies are associated with it: According to one, Lord Brahma created it to welcome Lord Shiva...
. The Swami was often found roaming the streets or the ghats, naked and "carefree as a child". He was reportedly seen swimming or floating on Ganges for hours. The Swami talked very little and at times not at all. A large number of people became attracted to him upon hearing of his yogic powers to ameliorate their sufferings. During his stay in Varanasi, several prominent contemporary Bengali saints met and described him, including Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...
, Mahendranath Gupta
Mahendranath Gupta
Mahendranath Gupta , , was a disciple of Ramakrishna—a 19th century mystic and the author of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita,a Bengali classic...
, Lahiri Mahasaya
Lahiri Mahasaya
Shyama Charan Lahiri , , best known as Lahiri Mahasaya, was an Indian yogi and a disciple of Mahavatar Babaji. He was also popularly known as Yogiraj and Kashi Baba. He revived the yogic science of Kriya Yoga when he learned it from Mahavatar Babaji in 1861...
, and Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda was a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who Swami Vivekananda sent to the West to head the Vedanta Society, New York in 1897, and spread the message of Vedanta, a theme on which he authored several books through his life, and subsequently founded the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math,...
., Swami Bhaskarananda
Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati
Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati was a noted 19th century sannyasin and saint of Varanasi, India. He wandered over India for thirteen years before settling in Anandabag near the Durga Mandir, in 1868...
, Swami Vishuddhananda Saraswati, and Mahatma Vijaykrishna Goswami. After seeing Telang Swami, Ramakrishna said, "I saw that the universal Lord Himself was using his body as a vehicle for manifestation. He was in an exalted state of knowledge. There was no body-consciousness in him. Sand there became so hot in the sun that no one could set foot on it. But he lay comfortably on it." Ramakrishna also stated that Trailanga Swami was a real paramahansa (lit:"Supreme swan", used as a honorific for a spiritual teacher) and that "all Benares was illuminated by his stay there."
The Swami had taken the vow of ayachaka ( non seeking)—remaining satisfied with whatever he received. In the later stage of his life, as his fame spread, pilgrims visited him in multitudes. During his last days, he took up ajagaravritti (living like a python) in which he sat still without any movement, and devotees poured water (abhisheka
Abhisheka
Abhisheka is a Sanskrit term comparable to puja, yagya and arati that denotes: a devotional activity; an enacted prayer, rite of passage and/or religious rite or ritual...
) on him from early morning till noon, looking upon him as a living incarnation of Shiva. He died on Monday evening, December 26, 1887. His body was given salilasamadhi in the Ganges river, according to the funeral customs of the monks of the Dashanami sect, in the presence of a multitude of mourning devotees standing on the ghats.
Legends and stories
There are many stories told about Telang Swami and his spiritual powers, such that he has become a nearly mythical figure in India. Robert Arnett writes that Telang Swami's miracles are "well documented" and "he displayed miraculous powers that cannot be dismissed as myth" and there were living witnesses to his "amazing feats". He was reputed to have lived to be around 300 years, and was a larger than life figure, reportedly weighing over 300 pounds (136.1 kg), though he seldom ate. One account said that he could "read people’s minds like books."On many occasions, he was seen to drink deadly poisons with no ill effect. In one instance, a skeptic wanted to expose him as a fraud. The monk was accustomed to breaking his long fasts with buckets of clabbered milk
Buttermilk
Buttermilk refers to a number of dairy drinks. Originally, buttermilk was the liquid left behind after churning butter out of cream. It also refers to a range of fermented milk drinks, common in warm climates where unrefrigerated fresh milk otherwise sours quickly...
, so the skeptic brought him a bucket of calcium-lime mixture used for whitewashing walls instead. The monk drank the entire bucket with no ill effect—instead, the skeptic fell to the ground writhing. The monk broke his usual silence to explain the law of karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
, or cause and effect.
According to another story, he often walked around without any clothes, much like the naga (or "sky-clad") sadhus. The Varanasi police were scandalized by his behaviour, and had him locked in a jail cell. He was soon seen on the prison roof, in all his 'sky-clad' glory. The police put him back into his locked cell, only to see him appear again on the jail roof. They soon gave up, and let him again walk the streets of Varanasi.
Thousands of people reportedly saw him levitating in a sitting position on the surface of the river Ganges for days at a time. He would also apparently disappear under the waves for long periods, and reappear unharmed. Swami Sivananda
Swami Sivananda
Swami Sivananda Saraswati was a Hindu spiritual teacher and a proponent of Yoga and Vedanta. Sivananda was born Kuppuswami in Pattamadai, in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He studied medicine and served in Malaya as a physician for several years before taking up monasticism...
attributed some of his miracles to the siddhi
Siddhi
is a Sanskrit noun that can be translated as "perfection", "accomplishment", "attainment", or "success". The term is first attested in the Mahabharata. In the Pancatantra, a siddhi may be any unusual skill or faculty or capability...
or yogic power Bhutajaya— or conquest over the five elements, "Fire will not burn such a Yogi. Water will not drown him."
With respect to his reportedly yogic powers, miracles abundant in his biographies and exceptionally long life, Swami Medhasananda writes that according to the "science of yoga", attainment of these is not "impossible".
Teachings
The teachings of Telang Swami are extant and are available in the biography of the Swami by Umacharan Mukhopadhyay, one of his disciples. Telang Swami describes bondage as "attachment to the world" and liberation as "renunciation of the world and absorption in God." He further says that after attaining the state of desirelessness, "this world is transformed into heaven" and one can be liberated from samsaraSamsara
thumb|right|200px|Traditional Tibetan painting or [[Thanka]] showing the [[wheel of life]] and realms of saṃsāraSaṅsāra or Saṃsāra , , literally meaning "continuous flow", is the cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth or reincarnation within Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, Sikhism, and other...
(the Hindu belief that life is a cycle of birth and death) through "spiritual knowledge". He remarks that attachment to the "evanescent" world is "our chronic disease" and the medicine is "detachment".
The Swami describes man's senses as his enemy and his controlled senses as his friend. His description of a poor person is one who is "very greedy" and regards one who always remains content as rich. The Swami says that the greatest place of pilgrimage is "Our own pure mind" and instructs to follow the "Vedantic
Vedanta
Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
truth from the Guru." He describes a Sadhu
Sadhu
In Hinduism, sādhu denotes an ascetic, wandering monk. Although the vast majority of sādhus are yogīs, not all yogīs are sādhus. The sādhu is solely dedicated to achieving mokṣa , the fourth and final aśrama , through meditation and contemplation of brahman...
as the one who is free from attachment and delusion.
Further reading
- The Saints of India By Tattwananda
- The Walking Shiva of Varanasi by Dr. V.V.B. Rama Rao
External links
- "Jogananda Jogashrama -- An asrama by Shiramt Swami Jogananda Saraswati (Ancestor of Shrimat Telang Swami)".
- "A Boatman's story" in Yoga JournalYoga JournalYoga Journal is an American based media company that publishes a magazine, a website, DVDs, and puts on conferences all devoted to yoga, food and nutrition, fitness, wellness, and fashion and beauty.-Beginnings and Growth:...
.