Aum Sri Sairam
Loving Pranams at the Lotus Feet of Our Most Beloved Bhagawan!
With Bhagawan’s Divine Grace and Blessings a State-level Virtual Workshop for Vedam Chanters and Teachers was conducted on Sunday, 29th August 2021. The main objective of this workshop was to highlight the importance of correct pronunciation of the Sanskrit words.
The session would be continued further in the coming months by sharing a standardised content for each mantram (that is part of the identified basic syllabus of mantrams that are to be learnt by all Vedam chanters in the organisation) and highlighting the Tamilnadu region-specific common mistakes. Although this series of workshops would be covering Vedam content in the following set of sessions, many bhajan singers were also registered as part of the workshop so that the pronunciation aspects in bhajans and other common prayers also can be improved.
The programme started with the invocation of Medha Suktam, dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi’s aspect that rules the intelligence, understanding, consciousness and memory by Smt. Vasanta Lakshmi Rajaram, State Vedam Coordinator (Ladies), Tamilnadu & Chennai Metro Region. This was followed by welcome address by Sri. Vijayakrishnan, State Spiritual Coordinator (Gents), Tamilnadu & Chennai Metro Region, who welcomed all the participants for the session, highlighted how Veda Poshana was an important aspect of Bhagawan’s Avatarhood, emphasised on the need of the Bharateeyas to safeguard the knowledge of the Vedas and propagate them, and called upon all of them to attend the rest of the sessions of the workshop as well, without missing any of the sessions to improve the quality of chanting across the state.
This was followed by keynote address by Sri. Subramanyam Gorti, National Vedam Coordinator who highlighted the importance of Vedam in the current modern context and how the quality aspect of chanting with respect to Akshara, Maatraa and Swara Shuddhis is important in Vedam chanting. He also highlighted how the flagship programme of the Vedam activities in our organisation, Sri Sathya Sai Samyukta Sruti Sreni is attempting to achieve it. He also observed that the diversity of our country is marvellous. However, at the same time it poses challenges with respect to Vedam chanting, as the local dialects influence the pronunciation of Sanskrit words.
The next speaker, Sri. Srinivasan gave examples from Indian culture which emphasise the importance of correctness in the pronunciation and intonation in Vedam chanting. He also mentioned how even a simple change in the pronunciation of a syllable would alter the meaning of the sentence entirely. He also called upon all the participants to stay focussed throughout the sessions and derive the benefit of attending the session completely.
The rest of the session was conducted by Sri. Shyam Kumar, State Vedam Coordinator (Gents), Tamilnadu and Chennai Metro region and Smt. Vasanta Lakshmi Rajaram, State Vedam Coordinator (Ladies), Tamilnadu and Chennai Metro region. They explained how the Sanskrit aksharas (letters) are scientifically categorised, based on multiple factors such as the organ from where the sound emanates, the modulation of the flow of breath, length of the sound etc. They included examples from Vedam, bhajans and Sri Sathya Sai Suprabhatam and also some commonly used words from Tamil language, covering all the letters.
The workshop’s proceedings came to a close with the concluding remarks from Smt. Kavitha Murali, State Spiritual Coordinator (Ladies), Tamilnadu and Mahamangala Haarati. She re-emphasised the importance of this workshop and how it benefits both Vedam Chanting and Bhajan Singing and that, similar separate sessions would be planned for Sri Sathya Sai Ashtothara Sata Namavali, Sri Sathya Sai Suprabhatam and other common prayers as well.
More than 550 chanters from Samithis across the State participated in this workshop that was held online. The audience were very enthusiastic throughout the presentation, which was evident by their participation in discussions by means of suggestions, questions and clarifications raised on the chat window and their follow up over email. The follow up sessions would be planned and communicated to all the registered participants. The follow up sessions would be for about 45 minutes to an hour once in a month or two.
We are grateful to Our Dearest Bhagawan for giving us this opportunity to be part of the Veda Poshana, an objective of His Avataric mission.
|| Jai Sai Ram ||