Sukadeva Gosvami - The Personalised Bhagavat

☺ In his previous life Sukadeva Goswami was a parrot. But he was not any ordinary parrot. He was the personal parrot of Srimati Radharani. He used to take messages from Her to Krishna.

☺ When Srimati Radharani was about to leave this world back to the spiritual world, She told her parrot, called Suka, to stay here. But the parrot did not want to stay here without Her. Then Srimati Radharani assured her wherever the transcendental pastimes of the Supreme Lord are being narrated, you will not feel separation from Me



☺ Thus the parrot Suka started looking out for a place where Hari Katha was going on. He finally reached Kailash, the place where Lord Shiva and Parvati live. Lord Shiva was reciting Srimad Bhagavatam to Parvati. The Parrot Suka hide himself in the green leaves of the tree under which Lord Shiva was sitting and started hearing the nectarean pastimes of his beloved lord.

http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/features/09-13/features2944.htm

Shuka means tropical bird, particularly, parrot.This bird has the special privilege of resting on the right shoulder of Goddess Meenakshi, who is none other than Goddess Raja Matangi also known as Raja Shyamala.This Goddess is the upasana murthi for fine arts,especially music and dance.Meenakshi is identified with Raja Mathangi or manthiri,the minister of Sri Lalitha Tripura Sundari.The parrot resting on Her shoulder is certainly not a decorative bird,but the celestial partner of the Goddess,imparting knowledge of all the 64 arts to Devi. The saint composer,Sri Syama Sastri

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in many of his compositions on Goddess Meenakshi has mentioned Shuka Shyamala(Meenakshi with the parrot).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meenakshi_Amman_Temple
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☺ Lord Shiva was completely absorbed in reciting Srimad Bhagavatam. Every few minutes Parvati would make some sounds like, Hmmmm… so that Lord Shiva would know that she was still listening. However after sometime she went to sleep and stopped making any sound. Then Suka, who was hiding behind the leaves, started making sound in the same way as Parvati.

☺ When the Srimad Bhagavatam was about to end Parvati woke up. Lord Shiva wanted to know how she liked the narration. Parvati begged forgiveness from the Lord and admitted that she had gone off to sleep.

☺ Lord Shiva was amazed and asked her who was making that sound. When she said that she did not know, Lord Shiva started looking all around to see if someone was hiding and hearing these pastimes. He finally spotted the parrot hiding in the tree.

☺ Lord Shiva started thinking that the parrot was not qualified to hear Srimad Bhagavatam. If an unqualified person hears these transcendental narrations there will be lots of disturbances therefore he wanted to kill the parrot immediately


☺ Lord Shiva took his trident and ran towards the parrot. Seeing Lord Shiva, Suka started flying away, Lord Shiva followed him. Finally the parrot reached the hermitage of Srila Vyasadev. Srila Vyasadev was narrating Srimad Bhagavatam to his wife, Bitika. While hearing his wife yawned. At that point the parrot entered into her open mouth. Lord Shiva also reached the hermitage. He inquired from Vyasadev if he had seen the parrot.

☺ Then Lord Shiva narrated him the whole incident. Lord Shiva told Srila Vyasadev that anyone who hears Srimad Bhagavatam gets free from the cycle of birth and death and becomes eternal. Srila Vyasadev commented that since the parrot had become eternal by hearing Srimad Bhagavatam, he could not be killed. So Lord Shiva went away.

☺ The Parrot, Suka, inside the body of Bitika took the form of a baby within her womb. However He did not come out of the womb at the usual time. Instead of nine month he stayed in the womb for 16 years Till Krishna appeared and assured that his maya will not influence him



World Emperor Pariksit accepts Sukadeva Gosvami as his spiritual master

Sukadeva Goswami instructs Maharaja Pariksit Srimad Bhagavatham

Mystery of talking ability solved

A long lasting mystery - how can parrots 'talk' like humans - seems to be heading to a solution at last. An international team of scientists led by Duke University researchers has found that parrot brains are different. This may explain the birds' unparalleled ability to imitate sounds and human speech. 

"This finding opens up a huge avenue of research in parrots, in trying to understand how parrots are processing the information necessary to copy novel sounds and what are the mechanisms that underlie imitation of human speech sounds," said Mukta Chakraborty, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Erich Jarvis, an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. 

What is surprising is that the newly found parrot brain structures had been known for 34 years but their link to speech was not made by scientists. The results also may lend insight into the neural mechanisms of human speech. The new interpretation was reported in the journal PLOS ONE on 24 June. 

By examining gene expression patterns, the new study found that parrot brains are structured differently than the brains of songbirds and hummingbirds, which also exhibit vocal learning. In addition to having defined centers in the brain that control vocal learning called 'cores,' parrots have what the scientists call 'shells,' or outer rings, which are also involved in vocal learning. The shells are relatively bigger in species of parrots that are well known for their ability to imitate human speech, the group found. 

This team included researchers from Denmark and the Netherlands who donated precious brain tissue for the study. They characterized the brains of eight parrot species besides the budgerigar, including conures, cockatiels, lovebirds, two species of Amazon parrots, a blue and gold macaw, a kea and an African Grey parrot. 

Even the most ancient of the parrot species they studied, the Kea of New Zealand, has a shell structure—albeit rudimentary. This suggests that the populations of neurons in the shells probably arose at least 29 million years ago. 

Before now, some scientists had assumed that the regions surrounding the cores had nothing to do with vocal learning. 

"The first thing that surprised me when Mukta and I were looking at the new results is, 'Wow, how did I miss this all these years? How did everybody else miss this all these years?" said Jarvis, who is also member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. "The surprise to me was more about human psychology and what we look for and how biased we are in what we look for. Once you see it, it's obvious. I have these brain sections from 15 years ago, and now I can see it." 

Most of the bird's vocal learning brain regions are tucked into areas that also control movement. These areas in parrots also show some special patterns of gene expression, which the scientists speculate might explain why some parrots are also able to learn to dance to music. This finding is a part of a much larger international effort to sequence the complete genomes of all 10,000 species of birds in the next five years, called the Bird 10K Project. 

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