The Hindu : Efficacy of Vedic chanting

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 05, 2002

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - Religion

Efficacy of Vedic chanting

CHENNAI JULY 5. India can feel proud of one of its glorious inheritances viz. the Divine Revelations, which are God's direct utterances to enable mankind to spend their lives purposefully.

Sages of ancient days have handed over these precious and priceless treasures, called the Vedas, to others interested, transmitting them only by oral instructions to successive generations of disciples.

What is significant is that these valid statements have to be recited with extreme care without any distortion in spelling, intonation and diction, with emphasis on certain words and soft pronunciation in the case of others.

The Vedas contain "Mantras" and hence will fetch all that one desires provided they are recited according to tradition. If the desired result is not achieved, the fault lies only with the defective procedure adopted to utter them.

How sensitive and careful one should be while reciting them has been compared to the tigress that uses extraordinary vigilance with which it lifts its just-born cub in its mouth, avoiding any injury to it or dropping it.

Why ancient texts give the example of this ferocious animal is only to show that in days of yore, they moved without harming anyone, around the sages' hermitages.

The Bhagavatham illustrates the efficacy of the Vedic chanting by pointing out how a sage "created" a character to punish a powerful celestial being, who had earlier killed his son.

As the sage undertook this task out of anger, the character so born possessed demoniac features and he decided to punish the celestials, whose chief prayed to the Lord to protect all of them. At the latter's suggestion, a thunderbolt was made out of the vertebra of a sage, who did not mind sacrificing his life for the good of others.

When the demon was killed he praised Lord Narayana for His compassion to all His creations. "May my mind always dwell on Your mercy, my tongue praise Your virtue and let me take delight in remaining in the company of the pious" was his supplication to the Lord.

Why this person with such a noble attitude showed demoniac qualities was explained by Sri P.M. Vijayaraghava Sastrigal in a discourse by referring to a curse incurred when once he indulged in passing flippant remarks about Lord Siva and Goddess Parvathi while he was flying in an aerial car.

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Efficacy of Vedic chanting

dated July 5, 1952: India Govt. Policies

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