With a view to upholding the cosmopolitan nature of the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple, the Travancore Devaswom Board has decided to play devotional songs of Lord Ayyappa in four more languages other than Malayalam and Sanskrit at the temple.
Usually the temple opens in the morning with the Sanskrit ‘Suprabhatham', ‘Vande Vigneswaram…' rendered by K.J. Yesudas and in the evening with the Malayalam song ‘Sree kovil nada thurannu…' rendered by Jayan of the Jaya-Vijayan duo. The temple closes with ‘Harivarasanam…' sung by Yesudas.
Henceforth, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi songs will be played along with the Malayalam and Sanskrit songs while opening the temple in the morning and the evening, but ‘Harivarasanam…' alone will be played at night as usual.
Two new albums consisting of devotionals sung by singers such as Seerkazhi Govindarajan, S.P. Balasubramaniam, Veeramani-Kannan, Narayana Reddy, and others have been prepared for the purpose.
The songs such as ‘Sabarimalayil thanga soorodayam…,' ‘Aadi varukirathu Ayyappanin…', ‘Chandanam manakkuthe…', ‘Bhagavan saranam Bhagavathy saranam…', ‘Giri uthungame…', ‘Thulasi mala aninju…', and ‘Udichuyarnnu mamala mele…' have been included in the new albums.
The album to be played in the morning has been named as ‘Manikanta Suprabhatham' and the one to be played in the evening, ‘Sandhya Deepam.'
The idea of playing songs in different languages at the hill temple was mooted by Sabarimala Special Commissioner S.H. Panchapakesan and it was approved by the board. The decision was made considering the heavy flow of pilgrims from different parts of the country.
The new CD will be released by Devaswom Minister V.S. Sivakumar at a function at the Dharmasastha Auditorium at Sabarimala on June 15, when the temple opens for the monthly pujas. Board president M.Rajagopalan Nair will preside. Additional Chief Secretary K.Jayakumar will deliver the keynote address.
