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Concept
Hamsa-Sandesha
Summary
The Hamsa Sandesha (Sanskrit: हंससन्देश; IAST: ) or "The message of the Swan" is a Sanskrit love poem written by Vedanta Desika in the 13th century CE. A short lyric poem of 110 verses, it describes how Rama, hero of the Ramayana epic, sends a message via a swan to his beloved wife, Sita, who has been abducted by the demon king Ravana. The poem belongs to the "messenger poem" genre and is very closely modeled upon the Meghadūta of Kālidāsa. It has particular significance for Sri Vaishnavas, whose god, Vishnu, it celebrates.
The Hamsa-Sandesha owes a great deal to its two poetic predecessors, Kālidāsa's Meghadūta and Valmīki's Ramāyana. Vedanta Desika's use of the Meghaduta is extensive and transparently deliberate;
his poem is a response to one of India's most famous poems by its most celebrated poet. Vedanta Desika's debt to Valmīki is perhaps more pervasive but less obvious, and possibly less deliberate too. Where the poet consciously plays with Kalidasa's verse, he treats the Ramayana more as a much-cherished story. Nevertheless, he is clearly as familiar with the details of Valmiki's poem as with Kalidasa's, and he echoes very specific images and details from the epic.
Vedanta Desika (IAST:) is best known as an important acharya in the Srivaishnavite tradition of South India which promulgated the philosophical theory of . He was a prolific writer in both Tamil and Sanskrit, composing over 100 philosophical, devotional and literary works; the Alagiya-Sandesha is his only work of this kind.
Vedanta Desika was born in 1269 CE. One popular story about his birth and childhood runs as follows: His devout parents were childless. One day they were visited in two separate but simultaneous dreams in which they were instructed to go to Tirupati, an important pilgrimage spot in south India, where they would be given a son. Once there, his mother had another dream in which she gave birth to Venkatesha's (the god of Tirupati) (bell). The next day the temple bell was missing and the chief priest, who had also had a visitation, celebrated the imminent birth of a child sent by the lord.
Official source
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