Posted on: 04 Apr 2022
[Shri Ganesh V asked: Padanamskaram Swamiji, As far as I understand from reading Your knowledge, I have understood that the reason for the Vedas being the top most authority for spiritual knowledge is due to the fact that it was preserved through oral recitation and superimposed with a Vedic meter so as to prevent any corruption in scriptures. My misunderstanding was that the way a particular sutra is chanted in India should be the same. But I observed that there is a difference in chanting between a North Indian brahmin and a South Indian brahmin for the Purusha Suktam. How did this difference arise? If there is a difference in the style in which the Vedas are recited, does it give room for corruption? At Your divine feet, Ganesh V]
Swami Replied:- The style of utterance of a word is not at all important. The most important point in preserving the Veda by recitation is that insertions and deletions are avoided so that we have the pure unpolluted version of the Veda as told by God through the holy sages. Such protection of the Veda from the corruption has nothing to do with the accents and style of pronunciation. You must give importance to important things, but, if you start giving importance even to negligible things, it is not as serious as a crime, but it is certainly blind foolishness. The most important point that stands in climax regarding the Vedas is that the Veda means knowledge, which is to be grasped by the mind by studying the Veda.
Leaving the one merit of preserving the Veda through oral recitation in the times of lack of printing technology, this oral recitation is also foolish and is a wastage of time. Without studying the meaning, if you simply recite the Veda, it is utter foolishness because you have not cared for the actual meaning of the word the ‘Veda’ itself! You must know the knowledge preached by the Veda and practice it to achieve the divine fruit. By mere recitation, no divine fruit comes except the pain of the throat! If this point is understood, people can easily understand why the Veda is prohibited for all women and the fourth caste, who are always involved in continuous work of house and of agriculture respectively.
By prohibiting the recitation of the Vedas to women and the fourth caste, not even an iota of harm happened to the women and the fourth caste. The reason is that the knowledge of the Veda is important and not mere recitation of words. The women and the fourth caste were prohibited from the blind recitation of the Veda since the efforts for such blind recitation of the Veda disturb the routine work of women and the fourth caste. There is no use in blind recitation and in addition, there is harm that their work is disturbed. The knowledge of the Vedas is revealed in the secondary scriptures by reading which the entire knowledge of the Vedas can be attained by the women and the fourth caste. As far as the main point of attaining the Vedic knowledge is concerned, the priests are exactly on par with the women and the fourth caste without disturbing the work of women and the fourth caste. Since the priests are sitting without any work, this blind recitation of the Veda to protect it from corruption is assigned to the priests.
Prohibition from recitation of the Veda means warning them not to spoil their work unnecessarily for the unnecessary work. Understanding this background truth, women and other castes shall not hate the present priests because this arrangement was done by the priests of ancient generation, who do not exist now. You should not punish a person blaming that his grandfather harmed you! Even priests reciting blindly the Veda through different modes are also useless because the only use of the Veda is to get excellent knowledge required for pravrutti and nivrutti. Understanding all these points, the present priests shall not be hated by others. In this same way, even the prohibition of women and the fourth caste from Gayatri and Upanayanam must be understood because Gayatri means singing songs in praise of God in any convenient language of any religion and Upanayanam means coming close to God through such sweet songs. Every soul is singing divine songs and is getting the grace of God and hence, by such prohibition, others are not affected at all in any way.
Some foolish priests in the ancient generation stamped a specific hymn written in the Gayatri meter as Gayatri forgetting the real concept of singing sweet songs on God. By such stamping, the priests lost the real Gayatri and were harmed by the false Gayatri. Others did not lose anything and attained the full benefit of Gayatri. Understanding all these background points will not generate the hatred on such foolish few egoistic priests of the ancient generation. If any priest in the present generation is supporting the past foolish priests, the reason must be lack of the knowledge of the background. Based on such few ignorant priests, an entire community shall not be hated by others. This will split Hinduism and make it weak.