(This is a guest post by reader Ranjith P, after he saw a RigVeda chanting exercise in a temple near his home)

As you might know it is a puzzle that how is RigVeda, a ~4000 year old text is still memorized and chanted without making any mistake. It turns out that people have made many special exercises to make sure that each person understands each word in detail, and can chant it in any order. Once such exercise is called vaaram which helps people learn RigVeda word by word by reciting it in a complex ordered way.

For example, these are the verses from Book 1, Hymn 23

Now watch these being recited

The two persons chanting are Dr. Mannoor Jathavedan Namboodiri (first person) and Mr. Naarayanamangalam Visakh. The second part (second person) is from Rig Veda Book 8 Hymn 11

When you see the video, you will note a few things

In the first few minutes you can clearly see some stones near the person. They use some stones and somehow generate a random number. And using this, they choose a random hymn in RigVeda and start from there. They don’t pre-plan where to start. That means, they have to know the whole of Veda by heart They repeat words like: alpha beta, beta gamma, gamma, delta etc (first word, second word, second word, third word, third word fourth word etc). At the end of each sentence (and randomly) they have to split words (spitting sanskrit words is tough) . If you imagine transmitting some information orally, after some generations, very likely that one will goof up long and short vowels. For example, words like “devaa” could be mistaken for “deva” and “vayoo” for “vayu“. To avoid it, they have developed a way of chanting where they stress the long vowels very clearly by extending it a bit too long so that the “deergham” is very clearly conveyed orally

When the second person chants you can see the first person, using his fingers, at random locations, ask the second person to split words (to test whether he knows)

This vaaram is like a minor day-to-day version of the famous Kadvalloor Anyonyam. vaaram is only one of the exercises and there are many others as well.

PS: This event happened at the Edakkuda temple, Malappuram district, Kerala

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