Kulasekara Azhvar in one of his pasurams describes Krishna caught by Yasoda while eating butter. Krishna knew that Yasoda would punish Him. So, He thought of how He could escape punishment. He being the Paramatma forgives us our many sins if we do an anjali to Him. So He reasoned that if He did an anjali to Yasoda she would let Him go. Doing anjali to the Lord is the ideal way for us to worship Him. It is said, “anjalihi paramA mudrA kshipram deva prasadini.” That means anjali is the best, most superior mudra, elaborated M.A. Venkatakrishnan in a discourse.
The very word anjali indicates its power- “am jalayithi iti anjali.” The akshara “a” indicates Vishnu — akarArthO Vishnuh. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord Himself declares — aksharANAm akArOsmi. Krishna is affirming here that among the aksharas He is “a.” Because of the significance of anjali, Vedanta Desika wrote an entire work extolling anjali, and gave it the title — Anjali Vaibhava. While explaining another Divya Prabandha verse, Peria Vachan Pillai answers those who may doubt how a mere gesture can be so important.
Peria Vachan Pillai gives the example of a man who sees a boy at some distance from him waving his index finger at him. The old man remarks angrily that such a little boy threatens someone aged like him. A man present at the scene asks the old man how a mere shaking of a finger can be so interpreted. The old man replies that everyone knows that if the index finger is moved that way, it means an act of threatening. So we human beings have some commonly accepted ways of interpreting gestures, though there are no written rules for them. Will the Lord not know that when we do an anjali to Him we are offering humble worship at His feet and seeking His forgiveness?
