Vedic Chants

As a Brahmin, I have always been surrounded by mantra chanting, and it's only now that I have taken the interest to understand what it means. I learnt Sanskrit in school, but now it gets really used. I belong to the Yajur Veda, and I'm learning to chant from the acharya that conducts the rituals at my home.

The word itself means the thing that protects the mind, and the measurements bear it out. Chant properly and the breath drops to about six a minute, with the heart falling into step behind it. The pandits who carry a whole Veda in their heads have more of the brain that memory runs on than the rest of us.

The Vedas have come down by ear for the better part of three thousand years, syllable for syllable and accent for accent, which is the oldest unbroken chain of its kind anyone knows of. The tradition takes the accents that seriously for a reason. There's an old story about a father who chanted for a son who would kill Indra, put the pitch on the wrong syllable, and got a son whom Indra killed instead, so a wrong svara is a wrong meaning, and a mistake is worth writing down.

What follows are my practice notes as I learn, including the mistakes and corrections.