Unlike The Other Religions, The Vedas are not transmitted in the written Form.
They are transmitted by Oral tradition.
Strictly speaking The Vedas are not to be learnt through the written Form but by ‘Hearing, Listening”
This process of hearing or listening is usually set as 12 years, starting from the age of 5.
The Vedas are to be intoned, not even chanted.
For, the Vedas are based , not on the words,but on the Sounds that have been grasped by the Rishis from the Akasa,Ether in a flash of intuition.
Svara, Note is very important.
Equally important is the Akshara, the syllables constituting the Swara..
The Swara and the letters are to rendered as grasped initially by the Rishis and expressed through the Vedas.
The recitation of Vedas is also conditioned by the Matras, the time taken to recite a Syllable and the pauses one makes while rendering the Vedas.
Neither the Sruthi, the syllable nor the intonation Swara should be in disharmony.
The synchronized rendering of Sruthi (Syllable) and Swara,Tone makes the rendering of the Vedas effective.
There are different ways/types of rendering the Vedas.
Rules have been set forth to combine words and syllables so that they are not altered.
According to this the words of a mantra are strung together in different patterns like “vakya”, “pada”, “karma”, “jata”, “mala”, “sikha”, “rekha”, “dhvaja”, “danda”, “ratha”, “ghana”.
Ghanapatam:
The chanting of the scripture up to the advanced stage is called “ghana”. “Pathin” means one who has learnt the “patha”.
When we listen to ghanapathins chant the ghana, we notice that he intones a few words of a mantra in different ways, back and forth.
There are other methods of chanting like karma, jata, sikha, mala.
The purpose of these methods is to ensure that even not even a syllable of a mantra is altered to the slightest extent.
The words are braided together.
”
In “vakyapatha” and “samhitapatha” the mantras are chanted in the original (natural) order, with no special pattern adopted.
In the vakyapatha some words of the mantras are joined together in what is called “sandhi“.
There is sandhi in Tamil also; but in English the words are not joined together.(Sandhi may be loosely translated as Conjunction)
You have many examples of sandhi in the Tevaram, Tiruvachakam, Tirukkural, Divyaprabandham and other Tamil works.
Because of the sandhi the individual words are less recognisable in Sanskrit than even in Tamil.
In padapatha each word in a mantra is clearly separated from the next.
It comes next to samhitapatha and after it is kramapatha. In this the first word of a mantra is joined to the second, the second to the third, the third to the fourth, and so on, until we come to the final word.
In old inscriptions in the South we find the names of some important people of the place concerned mentioned with the appellation “kramavittan” added to the names. “Kramavittan” is the Tamil form of “kramavid” in the same way as “Vedavittan” is of “Vedavid”.
In jata patha, the first word of the mantra is chanted with the second, then the order is reversed-the second is chanted with the first.
Then, again, the first word is chanted with the second, then the second with the third, and so on.
In this way the entire mantra is chanted, going back and forth. In sikhapatha the pattern consists of three words of a mantra, instead of the two of jata.
Ghanapatha is more difficult than these.
There are four types in this method. Here also the words of a mantra are chanted back and forth and there is a system of permutation and combination in the chanting.
Samhitapatha and padapatha are called “prakrtipatha” (natural way of chanting) since the words are recited only once and in their natural order.
The other methods belong to the “vikrtipatha” (artificial way of chanting) category. (In krama, though the words do not go in the strict natural order of one-two-three, there is no reversal of the words-the first after the second, the second after the third, and so on. So we cannot describe it fully as vikrtipatha).
Leaving out krama, there are eight vikrti patterns and they are recounted in verse to be easily remembered.
Jata mala sikha rekha dhvaja dando ratho ghanah
Ityastau-vikrtayah proktah kramapurva maharsibhih
All these different methods of chanting are meant to ensure the tonal and verbal purity of the Vedas for all time.
In pada the words in their natural order, in krama two words together, in jata the words going back and forth.
The words tally in all these methods of chanting and there is the assurance that the original form will not be altered.
The benefits to be derived from the different ways of chanting are given in this verse.
Samhitapathamatrena yatphalam procyate budhaih
Padu tu dvigunam vidyat krame tu ca caturgunam
Varnakrame satagunam jatayantu sahasrakam
“
The various pathas or recitation styles are designed to allow the complete and perfect memorization of the text and its pronunciation, including the Vedic pitch accent. Eleven such ways of reciting the Vedas were designed – Samhita, Pada, Krama, Jata, Maalaa, Sikha, Rekha, Dhwaja, Danda, Rathaa, Ghana, of which Ghana is usually considered the most difficult.[3]
The students are first taught to memorize the Vedas using simpler methods like continuous recitation (samhita patha), word by word reciation (pada patha) in which compounds (sandhi) are dissolved and krama patha (words are arranged in the pattern of ab bc cd…); before teaching them the eight complex recitation styles.[4]
A pathin is a scholar who has mastered the pathas. Thus, a ghanapaathin (or ghanapaati in Telugu) has learnt the chanting of the scripture up to the advanced stage of ghana. The Ghanapatha or the “Bell” mode of chanting is so called because the words are repeated back and forth in a bell shape. The sonority natural to Vedic chanting is enhanced in Ghana. In Jatapatha, the words are braided together, so to speak, and recited back and forth.[5]
The samhita, pada and krama pathas can be described as the natural recitation styles or prakrutipathas.
The remaining 8 modes of chanting are classified as complex recitation styles or Vikrutipathas as they involve reversing of the word order. The backward chanting of words does not alter the meanings in the Vedic (Sanskrit) language.
Mnemonic.
Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity.
Towards this end, eight complex forms of recitation or pathas were designed to aid memorization and verification of the sacred Vedas. The texts were subsequently “proof-read” by comparing the different recited versions.
Some of the forms of recitation are —
- The jaṭā-pāṭha (literally “mesh recitation”) in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated again in the original order.[7] The recitation thus proceeded as:
word1word2, word2word1, word1word2; word2word3, word3word2, word2word3; …
- In another form of recitation, dhvaja-pāṭha (literally “flag recitation”) a sequence of N words were recited (and memorized) by pairing the first two and last two words and then proceeding as:
word1word2, word(N-1)wordN; word2word3, word(N-3)word(N-2); …; word(N-1)wordN, word1word2;
- The most complex form of recitation, ghana-pāṭha (literally “dense recitation”), according to (Filliozat 2004, p. 139), took the form:
word1word2, word2word1, word1word2word3, word3word2word1, word1word2word3; word2word3, word3word2, word2word3word4, word4word3word2, word2word3word4; …These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed the most perfect canon not just in terms of unaltered word order but also in terms of sound.
That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Ṛgveda (ca. 1500 BCE).
Similar methods were used for memorizing mathematical texts, whose transmission remained exclusively oral until the end of the Vedic period (ca. 500 BCE).
Citation.
Culled form the Speeches of Kanchi Periyavar.
Check the following Link for more information.
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Thanks for the clear explanation
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