Popular name

Popular name

 

Sumukach-chaikatanta kapilo gajakarnaka:

Lambodharascha vikato vignarajo vinayaka:

 

"Vinayakar" is the next name. Among the names of vigneswarar, vinayaka is a popular one. More than in northern India, in the south the name is even more popular. "pillaiyar chaturti" in colloquial form is formally referred to as "vinayaka chaturti". In the north they call it, "ganesh chaturti". In several of the names such as Siddhi vinayakar, varasiddhi vinayakar, selva vinayakar, sweta vinayakar, used in the south Indian temples, the vinayakar is appended to his name. The popular composition of auvaiyar is called "vinayakar akaval."

 

Vi-nayakar. Nayakar means head (leader). He is above several persons controlling them.

Elevating thoughts for people from all castes

 

There is a caste by the name nayakar.

 

Nowadays there is an opinion that some people are oppressed based on their caste, and the people who oppress them have also rooted themselves with this practice. Many call themselves as oppressed because of the various subsidies and privileges granted to those from oppressed castes! But it was not so in the early days. People in each caste felt that they were in a respected position in the human society, with their own merits. When we look at the name of the caste, this will be evident. One of the group of people from the fourth caste is called mudaliyar. Those who have the first place in the society are called mudaliyar. Similarly in the north we have agarwal. Agra stanam means first place. Like that the people who are the first (i.e. agra stanam) place in the society are called "agarwal". Pillai also means the person deserving respect. We call a high quality variety of coconut as "pillai coconut." If we see the vaishnavait heritage, we can notice that Brahmins also had names with pillai and mudali. In the saivait heritage also we can see: sambandar was a Vedic Brahmin, sundarar was an adi saivait, and appar was a velalar – there is a tradition to call these three persons jointly as "mudali moovar" (first trinity). The title Raja only became raya and rao. In Tamil nadu we think of madhva Brahmins when we hear the title rao. However, in Karnataka which has several madhvas, and in andra Pradesh the title rao is used by the fourth caste people. There are titles such as rai and ray in north India. We call the vaisyas as chettiar. Shresti only became chettiar. Shresti means the person who is in a high position. Shresti only became seth. In Karnataka it became shetty. Instead of comparing who is higher and lower in the caste, and having any competition or fight, whoever it is, that person carried out the traditional task (inherited in the generations of their families) making a distinct contribution to the functioning of the society. In this way, all the tasks in the society were performed by people from various castes without any feeling of competition or jealousy, and with a pride that each one belonged to a caste which was superior in its own way – these are evident from the names for the castes. We can also notice the comradeship among the various castes. We can notice that the people of one caste did not object to the names used by another caste (which implied that they were superior), and used those names to call them, accepting that each caste should keep their pride.

 

The "nayaka" word which means leader or head has been used by all the castes. It demonstrates very well the equality that prevailed in those days among people – not in the work done as argued nowadays – in their feelings. In Maharashtra we have Brahmins who have the title nayak. In the nayak dynasties that lived in tanjore and Madurai, the nayaks belonged to royal castes. The nayakkars who came from Karnataka and the naidus (the root word for this title came from the nayak) from andra belong to the fourth caste.

 

Instead of nayaka we can only say "naya". This is similar to balan called as balakan some times. Often in Sanskrit "ka" is added to several words. Nayan also means leader or head. In Kerala they call nayar. They also belong to the fourth caste. In Tamil nadu the saintly devotees are called "nayanar". One person is nayar, and many nayanars are called nayanmaar. There is no caste missing in the 63 nayanmaars! The priests in the temple in which sundra moorthy swami sang about the 63 nayanmaars are called "nayinar".