A PRECIOUS
TRADITION
UNESCO has
recently proclaimed cultural expressions from 28 countries, from Vanuatu to
Brazil, one from each, as masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of
humanity.
They include
India’s tradition of Vedic chanting.
The UNESCO
statement says:The Vedas comprise a vast body of sanskrit poetry,
philosophical dialogue and thought, myth and ritual incantations brought to
India by the Aryans over 3500 years ago.
Regarded by the Hindus as the ultimate source of knowledge and the
sacred foundation of their religion and
culture, the Vedas embody one of the world’s oldest surviving cultural
traditions.
“Expressed in
elegant Vedic language, the ancestor of classical Sanskrit, the verses of the
Veda were traditionally chanted during sacred rituals and ceremonies and
recited daily in the Vedic communities.
Although the Vedic texts were recorded in writing some 15 centuries ago
for reference purposes, their principal means of transmission remain oral to
the present day.
“The
outstanding value of the Vedic tradition lies not only in the rich content of
its oral literature but also in the unique and ingenious techniques employed by
the Brahmin priests in preserving the texts over three and half millennia. The
complex recitation technique, requiring rigorous training from childhood, is
based on a specific pronunciation of each letter, tonal accents and specific
speech combinations to ensure that the sound in each word remains unchanged.”
We do not
subscribe to the Aryan invasion theory reflected in the UNESCO statement that
the Vedas were brought to India by immigrant Aryans from outside nor we need
accept the age of the Vedas to be 3500 years, but we do appreciate the UNESCO’s
recognition of the value of the Vedic lore as a significant living heritage
that deserves preservation.
UNESCO refers
to the complex recitation technique of the Vedic lore. What is it?
The
memorizing of the Vedas is being done in India not in a haphazard way. In fact a very special system of memorizing
and singing the hymns has been evolved, measuring every syllable and fixing its
place. There are still about two
thousand chanters who can recite the Vedas exactly as it was done five thousand
years ago. The number of singers is
particularly large in Andhra Pradesh, and there are seven different methods of
singing, and all the seven coincide ensuring freedom from error.
To illustrate
the intricacy and rigour of the process we can see what the last method called ganapatha
means. There the singer first
pronounces the first syllable, then the second syllable, then he goes back to
the first syllable and the second, and then pronounces the third, then he goes
back to the second, and then the first, and then pronounces the second, third
and fourth, and goes back to the third, and second and first, and so on until
he comes to the end of a verse. Thus
each mantra/verse takes a lot of time to recite. A simple verse like agnim ile purohitam yagnasya devamritvijam
hotaram ratnadhatamam takes atleast fifteen minutes, and it is not a prose
recitation, but a chanting, a beautiful, musical chanting.
The UNESCO proclamations
entail the commitment of states to implement plans to promote and safeguard the
inscribed masterpieces. It will be a
great service of the Indian State to the country if it joins whole heartedly in
the implementation of the plans for the preservation and continuance of the
chanting of the hymns of the Vedic Rishis who, in the words of Sri Aurobindo,
“may not have yoked the lightning to their chariots, nor weighed sun and star,
nor materialised all the destructive forces in Nature to aid them in massacre
and domination, but…had measured and fathomed all the heavens and earths within
us; … had cast their plummet into the inconscient and the subconscient and the
superconscient; … had read the riddle of death and found the secret of
immortality…”
Courtesy, ‘Sri Aurobindo’s Action’
from the Editor’s Desk.