Maha Periyava and a foreign visitor

Once a foreigner interested in the philosophy of Hinduism was waiting

for darshan of Mahaperiyaval at Kanchi to clarify his doubt. Shortly,

he got his appointment and without wasting time, he put forth his

question.

“Swamiji, I understand all your concepts, value them but for one

particular faith (i.e) same soul taking various births, papa, punya

being carried forward to the next births etc…Can you please make me

comfortable on this aspect?”. Because, in all our religions, we get

the reward for what we do in this birth only. (i.e) if we are honest,

God is pleased and blesses us with benefits and we are dishonest, we

get punished by Him.

At this point, Periyaval asked him, whether he owns a car and if he

could do a favour of collecting some statistical information within

Kancheepuram using his vehicle. The guest readily agreed, at the same

time wondering why his question was not answered spontaneously.


Please, swamiji, go ahead, “What is the service you expect me to do now?”.

Periyaval said, ‘Please go around 10 maternity centres within

Kancheepuram and collect the data of children born within the last 2

days – Child’ s gender, health condition, parents name, status,

educational qualification, time of birth.

The man said “Fine, this is nothing, immediately rushed in his car

like Lord Muruga goes in Thiruvilayadal and within a day he was back

in the matam with exact statistics in front of Mahaperiyaval. He went

through the statistics, about 15 children were born in 10 hospitals, 8

female and 7 male infants, out of which 3 children had malnutrition

defects, 2 children were the first child of highly rich parents born

in luxury hospitals while 4 were children of coolie labourers who

already had few children.

Mahaperiyaval now looked at the gentleman and started asking few questions:

Do you think any of these children have been honest / dishonest within

2 days of their birth? Probably they could not even recognize their

own mother. So, they have neither earned papa or punya in this birth..

According to your concepts, all these children should be living

exactly identical to each other, but not so practically – some are

ill, some are healthy, some are born to rich parents, some are born to

poor parents –

Remember all children born in the same day, same longtitude, latitude,

you can’t blame their horoscope which is going to be almost

identical….

The gentleman was dumb folded!

It is here the concept of previous birth erupts! All these children

have taken their present birth according to their deeds(karma) and the

resultant papa, punya which they have assimilated in their previous

births.

Sanatana Dharma was smiling at the gentleman through Maha Periyaval.