During October 2010, I wrote this post which kindles my inner interest and becomes the starting point of my practical research. As I was fed up with merely sharing the notes taken from the books I read, I planned to start the practical work in this regard. Definitely this post is not an idea of boosting me out. It is just an outcome of my curious research work.
From the older posts, we learned that, paashaanam is of two types and are highly poisonous forms. Interested readers can refresh the concepts in the concerned older posts.
Siththar’s removed the poisonous property of paashaanam and used the purified form for their medicinal preparations. Even the scientific technology also uses the poisonal foms in day today medicine. Thus, purifying the different type of paashaanam and the process of combining these poison free forms is called paashaanak kattu. The so formed, ‘paashaana kattu’ is full of ample medicinal properties.
As we all know, the principal statue of “Lord Dhandaayuthapaani” in Palani is made up of combined bundle of nine forms of Paashaanam. The abisheka* water of that statue possesses plenteous medicinal values. However, no abisheka is performed for that statue, since most of the backside of the statue is scratched out for its medicinal value.
Due to my curiosity on practical realization of paashaana kattu, I asked permission from my guru first on October 2010, which I got approved on end of May 2011 (this post was originally written on July 2011). In between these deeds, my exams got over and the next crisis started. It was really a big challenge to get permission from my beloved mother. Of course! She has reasons to stop me from handling these poisonous materials. As my mother happened to see the paashaana pudam perfomed by my beloved grandfather and also aware of the poisonous gas emitted during the paashaana pudam which make the performer unconscious. Hence she precluding me from this practice.
As I have to convince my mother to proceed further, I showed and described her, the structure and performance of Face gas mask, which I happened to use during my practical sessions in my medicine classes. As I somehow convinced my lovable mother, I started to gather concerned information. As we already discussed that, paashaanam is of two types; piravi baashaanam, which occurs naturally and Vaippu paashaanm, which occurs artificially and also has practical difficulty in obtaining this artificial one. I have chosen to use natural one rather than artificial. However, confusions continue here too! As there are 32 naturally available paashaanam, among which I have to choose the best for my research.
For this, the information arrived on-hand from book named “Uromarishi Maruthuva Vaakadam”. There, best five paashaanam for statue making is quoted through which I came to conclusion of using 5 paashaanam in my work.
The five paashaanam I have used are;
Apirakap paashaanam
Kar paashaanam
Soodha paashanam
Thuththap paashanam
Seelaip paashaanam
Among these, I easily got soodha paashaanam and thuththap paashaanam from my college lab with supervisor’s cordial permission. However, collecting the rest of the three is really a tedious job and got frozen. With guru’s blessings I got kar paashaanam from my friend in mattakalappai.
I got apirakap paashaanam and seelai paashaanm from store where, apirakap paashaanam costs around Rs. 60/g and seelaip paashaanam costs Rs. 54/g. As I need 100 grams in each one of the above and this costs around Rs. 11,400. Ofcourse! This is because I froze.
Cheers! Finally, I collected all the five natural piravip paashaanam. Now, each one of these should be purified so as to remove the poisonous property. Then, kuzhambu* must be gathered from each of the above separately and the equivalent amounts of the above five are mixed together. This mixture is then allowed to set on the desired mold to prepare the paashaana kattu.
I have told the procedure very easily. Let us see the practical realization in the next post.
Stay tuned!
*Abisheka – bathing of an idol with water, oil, milk, etc,.
*Kuzhambu – the liquid of thick consistency (such as sandal paste)
Original – www.siththarkal.com
Translated by Lalithambika Rajasekaran
