Authority on Shakti worship

Bhaskara_Raya (1690-1785) is the unquestioned authority for all questions pertaining to the worship of Mother Goddess in Hinduism .The worship of Shakti involves many hidden meanings of mantras and coded passages. The Hindu religious world owes a lot to Bhaskara Raya for his writings on these meanings, revealed to him by the Goddess Herself. His works number more than 40 and range from Vedanta to poems of devotion. from Logic and Grammar to the labyrinths and nuances of the Science of Tantra and from commentaries on rare works to original compositions on rare subjects.

Three Masterpieces

Particularly his three books Varivasya Rahasyam, Sowbhagya Bhaskaram and Sethu Bandham are considered to be the holy triad on the worship of Mother Goddess through her most secret mantras. The first is a scientific commentary on Sri Vidya mantra and worship. The second is a commentary on Lalita sahasranama. The third is a deeper

Life in brief

Bhaskara Raya was born in Bhaga in Maharashtra, India. His father was a great scholar who initiated the son in scholarly traditions even at an early age. He was taken to Kashi (Benares) and put under the tutelege of a renowned Pundit there. He was initiated into the Sri Vidya Mantra and Upasana (Worship) by Guru Shiva Dutta Shukla of Surat. Later he toured the Gujarat region and won in debate several scholars of the Madhva tradition.

A disciple king of his invited him to the South and gifted him a whole village on the banks of the Cauvery river. Bhaskara Raya made that village his headquarters for the rest of his life. It later came to be known as Bhaskara-raja-puram. During his stay there and the nearby town of Madhyarjunam his spiritual and psychic greatness got revealed through scores of miracles. Two of them may be cited here.

Spiritual Fire!

Once an ochre-robed sannyasi (renunciate) was passing his house while he was sitting in the portico. The sannyasi felt hurt that the householder Bhaskara Raya did not rise and make a prostration to him as every householder was obliged to do so on seeing a sannyasi. Later on

It is rather difficult for us to believe this and acquiesce in this logic but the spiritual fire latent in Bhaskara Raya was known by his contemporaries to have been that powerful.

Goddess standing on his shoulders!

Several pundits were unhappy with his tantric leanings. They wanted to convert him by their scholarly argument and disputation.

Once Bhaskara Raya invited many of them to his house for a participation in a yajna. There they opened a debate with him and asked him intricate questions about mantra and tantra. Being an adept in these he shot back all the answers without the least hesitation.One witness to this drama, a sannyasi (renuciate), Kumkum-ananda-swami by name, cautioned the challengers and declared: Bhaskara Raya cannot be defeated in debate or by qustions. It is the goddess Herself standing on his shouldes who is answering all your questions. I am able to see her standing on his shoulders!This Kumkum-ananda-swami himself was a great devotee mystic and ritual worshipper of the Goddess. He was so much full of Devi-consciousness that even sacred ash thrown on his body immediately transformed into saffron (kumkumam) and hence his name.

The pundits wanted to put to test even this declaration of the Swami. They asked Bhaskara-Raya what looked like an impossible question. The Lalitha-sahasranama mentions the Goddess as being served by sixty-four crores( crore = ten million) of angels called yoginis. Bhaskara Raya was asked: Can you name each one of them, their origin and their qualities?

Bhaskara Raya immediately replied: Take down. Here are their names and other information for you!. So saying he reeled off one by one the names of the yoginis, the attributes which define them and other specifications. He was shooting off in a non-stop fashion, as if he was possessed. Hours passed, only the Pundits got exhausted in following him, but not Bhaskara Raya. Naturally the debate was called off!