General

[Guest guest]

Dear Members of the Prapatti Group:

 

Salutations to all of you. I have been busy, the past month, purchasing a

house. Through Lord's grace, we plan to move there during the first week of

July. It is a bigger accommodation and we would be happy to host any of you,

if you happen to come this side. Please give us an opportunity to have your

sat-sangh.

 

I have been reading the recent postings with great interest. My son greatly

enjoys reading Dileepan's postings from Shriman Gopala Desikan's book. I think

it is a great service to the youth of our community. I am also happy to see my

understanding of our Sampradaya-Vishayam gradually improving through the net.

 

I haven't received the entire text of Sri Sadagopan's posting on Mantras,

Tantras and Agamas. I just wanted to add an interpretation of Shri Navalpakkam

Swami on the meaning of Mantras. The word "tram" means instrument. An

instrument to control your mind ('man') is mantram. An instrument to purify is

"Pavithram". However, the question for which we don't get a single answer is:

What should you meditate on when chanting the mantras. Some say concentrate on

the sound. Some say elongate the pause (or the silence) while repeating the

mantras. In "silence" lies the supreme reality!. Some say meditate on the

form of the Devata. For example: I choose to meditate on the beautiful form of

Sriman Narayana (Dhyeyas sada savithru mandala......) with shanku and chakra

for the Gayatri Mantra, Vaikunta Nathan for the Ashtakshara, Ksheerabdhi

Sayanan for the Dvayam and Parthasarathy for the Charama slokam.

 

Vijayaraghavan Srinivasan

 

I didn't receive the entire text of

[Guest guest]

Dear BhagawathA-s,

 

Sri N. krishnamachari wrote:-

>Thus, we write the word as Brahma (with m coming after h) , bur peonounce it

>as Bramha (with the h after the m). Unfortunately, he has not given the

>reason for why it is done this way. The fact that he has explicitly referred

to this

>word and indicated that this is an esception at least answers the issue of how

>to pronounce the word. I have not yet understood why this word is pronounced

>the way it is, and so there is still something more to learn on this issue.

 

In earlier times, the Sanskrit /h/ was voiced (prouncounced with a vibration

of the vocal cords caused by air forced from the lungs; eg., sounds like

b, g, d and all vowels) unlike the visarga which was voiceless (ie., not

voiced). Such a /h/ is usually called a "breathy voice", since it involves a

full emission of breath and also vibration of vocal cords. Any voiced sound

like /b, g, d, m/ etc can be pronounced with a breathy voice, to result in

sounds like /bh, gh, dh, mh/, etc.

 

It appears that in words like {brahma} and {jAhnavi}, as the orthography

indicates, the breathy sound came before the sonorant (/m/, or indeed /l/,

/n/), but over time the it became simultaneous with the sonorant, leading to

sounds like /mh/ which are anlogous to /bh/, /gh/ etc., except that there

was no seperate orthographic provision for them. Maybe that's the reason

why the old spelling was retained. Apparently, sounds like /nh/, /mh/ and

/lh/ abound in Prakrit, the form of Sanskrit spoken by common people in

those times.

 

A somewhat similar situation arises when the word {ask} gets to pronounced

/aks/ by some (this transposition in pronunciation is referred to as

metathesis in linguistic parlance)!! However, i suspect that the transposition

of the /m/ and /h/ in pronunciation happens in not all spoken forms of

Sanskrit.

 

Hari Om,

srikanth