UNESCO Declares Vedic Chanting a "Heritage of Humanity"

[Guest guest]

PARIS, FRANCE, November 12, 2003: The oral tradition of Vedic

chanting

has been declared an intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO. In

a

meeting of jury members on November 7, 2003, at Paris, Mr. Koichiro

Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, declared the chanting of Vedas

in

India an outstanding example of heritage and form of cultural

expressions. The proclamation says that in the age of globalization

and

modernization when cultural diversity is under pressure, the

preservation of oral tradition of Vedic chanting, a unique cultural

heritage, has great significance. The jury members included Dr.

Richard

Kurin, Director of the Center for Folklore and Cultural Heritage of

the

Smithsonian Institution (United Nations), Mr. Juan Goytisolo,

Writer

(Spain), Mr. Yoshikazu Hasegawa (Japan), Ms. Olive W.M. Lewin.

Pianist,

ethnomusicologist, Director of the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth

(Jamaica). The UNESCO declaration will bring international

recognition

to the excellence of the Vedic chanting tradition of India, which

has

survived for centuries encoding the wisdom contained in the Vedas

through an extraordinary effort of memorization and through

elaborately

worked out mnemonic methods. The purity and fail-safe technique

devised

for Vedic chanting in the olden days led to access to one of the

ancient literatures of humanity in its entirety today. The

Department

of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, took the initiative to

put

up the candidature of the Vedic chanting to UNESCO. A presentation

was

prepared by Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts. The Department

has

also prepared a five-year action plan to safeguard, protect,

promote

and disseminate the oral tradition of Vedas in terms of their

uniqueness and distinctiveness, encourage scholars and practitioners

to

preserve, revitalize and promote their own branch of Vedic

recitation

as the custodians of their own traditions and direct the efforts

primarily to making the tradition survive in its own context.

 

 

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