Vishnu.Sahasranama.with.the.Bhasya.of.Sankaracharya_text

their side, which is afterwards distributed among the
village people. Sometimes some wealthy householder, in
celebrating the thread or initiation ceremony of his son,
feeds one thousand virtuous Brahmins repeating each
nama before a Brahmin. According to Nllakantha, the
author of the glossary, if one wants to perform Puras-
charana in order to attain perfection, one should repeat it
a lakh of times within a fixed period during his lifetime
and perform Homa in fire with ghee or paynsa (milk-rice).
PranayAma
The utility and importance of this fundamental Yoga
practice have not been fully realised by us. Vyasa says in
a hymn '
' The Lord Vishnu himself is Yoga and the leader
of all the Yogins (S'lo. 16), the Yogi and the Lord of the
Yogins (S'lo. 104) ". The ancients have perfected it to a
science, but it is lost to us to a considerable extent through
our own folly. It is the sacred duty of every true Aryan
to revive it. The desire for material advancement has
supplanted the yearning for spiritual progress. At present,
the yearning for Swaraj has well nigh become universal ; but
the people have not yet realised that unless and until they
are healthy—physically, mentally and morally— they can
never hope to become a Nation and attain Swaraj. In
ancient times the Aryans were a very strong and powerful
race, imbued with the highest of virtues, so that the word
Arya came to connote strength, and Anarya, weakness.
{Vide Bhagavad-Gita, II, 2.) The Aryans attained and
retained unto death their bodily and mental perfection by
the simple but effective method of Pranayama. To them
death had no horrors. Just as one throws off one's worn out
garments, even so they cast off their body by their own free
will by the power of Yoga. I have written about the