When I posted an article on the information that Sri.Bandibatla Viswanatham Sastry, Rajamundry, Andhra Pradesh went to Germany and helped the germans to develop V-Rockest, which was used effectively by Hitler in World War II, thought there were positive comments, there was also derision that I was quoting from hearsay and legends which do not have authenticity.
I proceed in my quest to seek the Truth about Santana Dharma, despite some , from our soil, asking me to desist from pursuing the antiquity of Sanatna Dharma.
Aitreya Palm Leaf manuscript in Germany. in Tamil.
I followed up the notion that the Vedic Texts were smuggled to Germany.
For this, I took my grandfather Professor. Geometry Narayana Iyer’s words, for if a grandson does not belive a grandfather, who else would?
I think my grandfather would be happy, wherever he is now.
The Aitreya Shiksha is in Germany and to the surprise of many it is in ancient Tamil !
This also proves my Theory that Sanatana Dharma was in place in the South, probably even before the Sarasvati Valley!
The irony is that the Link was found, of all places in Pakistan defence Forum!
http://defence.pk/threads/help-recover-the-rare-text-on-vedic-phonology-from-germany.236826/
Here is the story.
Here is the long-awaited Ātreya Śikṣā. There are two versions, one is text only, the other is the critical edition with 141 footnotes.
http://is1.mum.edu/vedicreserve/shiksha/atreya_shiksha.pdf
Critical Edition: http://www.peterffreund.com/shiksha/atreya1_shiksha.pdf
We were originally attracted to Ātreya Śikṣā because it was chosen by Dr. Tony Nader, author of the landmark work, Human Physiology: Expression of Veda and Vedic Literature, who correlated the structure and function of the main texts of Shiksha with the 36 pairs of autonomic ganglia on each side of the spine. The Ātreya Śikṣā was specifically correlated with the Mesentericum inferius, one of the autonomic ganglia not located along the spine, but found in the gut, located at the origin of the inferior mesenteric artery where it branches off from the aorta. This ganglion contains the sympathetic neurons innervating the descending and sigmoid colon. (See attached picture at the bottom of this email!) But this correlation of Ātreya Śikṣā with a small bundle of nerve fibers in the abdominal cavity, did not prepare us for the grand synthesis of the knowledge of Sanskrit phonetics which Ātreya presents in this work. Starting with the alphabet which the beginning student learns, he lays out a course of Vedic study, leading to complete mastery of the science of pronunciation. Pronunciation is for the sake of perfect recitation of the Veda. Vedic recitation is a means of gaining perfection, Pāṭha mātreṇa siddhyati, “Through mere recitation, one gains perfection.” Letter-perfect recitation of the Veda–because the Veda is the blueprint of Natural Law at the basis of the whole creation, the Constitution of the Universe–leads to the complete awakening of intelligence in the individual, awareness rising to command the total potential of Natural Law, in the highest state of consciousness, Unity Consciousness, which Ātreya calls Para Brahman. The knowledge of phonetics is placed in the broader context of culturing enlightenment in the individual, unfolding the hidden latent potential within the individual. Towards this end, Ātreya incorporates all the main themes and threads of Sanskrit phonetics, to create a comprehensive vision that unites the science of phonetics with the age-old tradition of Vedic recitation, and the experience of higher states of consciousness in the individual.
Picture of the aorta and (2/3 of the way down) the place where the Inferior mesenteric artery branches off from the aorta. The nerve ganglion around that branching point, the inferior mesenteric ganglion, is correlated with this Atreya Shiksha.
The course of Vedic study begins with memorization of the Saṁhitā, and here the Taittirīya recension of Kṛiṣhṇa Yajur Veda is promoted as the first Veda to be learned by the student. After learning the Saṁhitā by heart through constant repetition, repeating it over and over with the teacher, like a gramophone record, the student begins a long and somewhat arduous journey of investigation into the detailed fabrics of the Saṁhitā text. The student starts this journey by learning the word by word recitation of the Vedic text. Whereas the words are put together in the Saṁhitā text, and there is mixing of sounds at the boundaries of words, called Sandhi, the Sandhi is resolved and the words are pulled apart in the Pada Pāṭha, or word by word recitation. Letters that are dropped or changed in Sandhi have to be restored in the Pada Pāṭha recitation, and there are many ambiguities which cannot be decided by inspection: Is the final n after long ā really a final n, or is it actually a final t which has been changed to n by Sandhi? If a long ā is followed by a voiced consonant at the start of the next word, was there originally a visarga (ḥ) which has been dropped by Sandhi, or was there just long ā? There is an entire class of texts, in Sanskrit phonetics, dealing with these issues, and serving as aids in the memorization of the Pada Pāṭha recitation. This group of texts includes the Ingya Ratnam which we have already visited, and they include also a group of texts called Sapta Lakṣaṇam. We will examine Sapta Lakṣaṇam and some of the other texts in this category in a future Ātreya Śikṣā mailing. Ātreya devotes one section to explaining the intricacies of the word by word recitation, particularly as regards the treatment of compound words.
After mastering the Pada Pāṭha, the student is now ready to begin the Krama recitation of the Veda. In the Krama recitation, two words at a time from the Pada Pāṭha are combined together with Sandhi, and recited: The first and the second, the second and the third, and then the third and the fourth, so that each word is repeated twice, once together with the previous word and once together with the following word. Some details of this recitation are explained in the section on Krama in Ātreya Śikṣā, and there are also some rare Śikṣā texts on this topic which we are trying to obtain.
The Saṁhitā and Krama recitations are called Prakṛiti recitations, because the original sequence of the Vedic text is maintained in these recitations. There are also more complex recitations of the words of the Veda, called Vikṛiti, and Ātreya devotes a section to explaining the first of these, called Jaṭā. In the Jaṭā recitation, each pair of words that are repeated in the Krama recitation, are now repeated three times, once forward in their normal sequence, then backward, in the reverse order, and then again forward in the normal sequence, ie.,1-2, 2-1, 1-2. There is a class of texts dealing with the Jaṭā recitation, and we will be visiting a half-dozen of these in a future Ātreya Śikṣā mailing. In addition to Jaṭā, there are seven other modes of Vikṛiti recitation, and these are discussed in another group of phonetic texts, one of which, Vyāla Śikṣā, we have already visited.
After the study of the Vikṛiti recitations of the Vedic text, which take many years to master, there is yet another level of recitation which explores in excruciating detail all the fine points of Vedic phonology. This is the Varṇakrama recitation. Varṇakrama means literally, letter by letter, and there are five kinds of Varṇakrama recitations, each increasingly more complex: The added complexity is not through alteration of sequence, but through giving more and more details of the phonological characteristics of each letter in sequence(1), the associated accent(2), the length (Kāla) of the sound(3), demarcation of plosives by what are called aṅgas (limbs of each vowel)(4) until in the fifth kind of Varṇakrama, called Varṇasārabhūta Varṇakrama(5), eight different parameters are described for each vowel, eight for each consonant, and ten different parameters for each Vedic accent, including the jāti (caste), and devatā of each letter. The description of the Varṇakrama recitation begins with verse 46.2 and continues through verse 281, as Detlef Eichler has so kindly pointed out. Thus the study of Varṇakrama forms the bulk of the content of Ātreya Śikṣā, There is one other well-known text which deals exclusively with Varṇakrama (although Varṇakrama itself is not well known) and that is Pāri Śikṣā. An excellent version of Pāri Śikṣā with numbered verses and clearly marked sections is included in the Hamburg palm leaves where Ātreya Śikṣā is also found, and there it is called Pañchavarṇakrama Lakṣaṇam. We will go into detail about the Varṇakrama recitation as described in Ātreya Śikṣā in the light of the description of Varṇakrama in Pāri Śikṣā in a future Ātreya Śikṣā mailing. The Varṇakrama recitation demands perfection in the letter perfect preservation and recitation of the Vedic text. Its treatment completes the unfoldment of Sanskrit phonetics in Ātreya Śikṣā.
Having completed the discussion of Varṇakrama, in the remaining verses, Ātreya describes the goal of Vedic study, the attainment of Brahman consciousness, and strongly emphasizes the importance of daily recitation of the Veda as taught by the guru.
Atreya Shiksha has 14 chapters and 64 named sections in those chapters. The verse count is said to be 294, but we seem to have 295. The verses are numbered in both manuscripts although sparsely. The Tirupati manuscript was said to be 500 to 600 years old; the Hamburg manuscript is probably 150 to 200 years old. But differences between the Hamburg and the Tirupati manuscripts are very few: these are noted with footnotes. Only rarely was the reading in the Tirupati manuscript clearer or more sound. The Hamburg manuscript has one more verse than the Tirupati manuscript, but this verse seems to belong. The Hamburg manuscript has three lines in a different position than in the Tirupati manuscript. We have settled with the position given them by the Hamburg manuscript. Further differences are more subtle. Only readings that were clearly different, and not due to poor penmanship (or insect damage) have been noted.
The chapters are noted with numbers in the Hamburg manuscript: The numbers are written on the left margin of the palm leaf, associated with the section title of the last section of the chapter. In the Tirupati manuscript, the end of the second chapter is marked with the word “dvaya.” This gives a hint that the chapter divisions are indeed authentic, and perhaps even original. But there is some lack of clarity as to where actually the chapter boundaries fall, since only sections are marked in the text, and only these little clues of numbers written after specific sections give indication of where the chapters start and end. The sections are occasionally noted with colophons; more frequently they are noted with a long horizontal line with a wave at the end, appearing at the end of a verse. Sometimes the section title will include the word “ādi” indicating that the section starts with the verse that begins with those words and that will establish the starting point of the section. Some sections are quite clear from their subject matter; while others are gauged more crudely by the position of the title notation in the margin. Since each line has about one and a quarter anustubh verses, there is some ambiguity for the starting point of some sections.
There are surprisingly few shared verses in Ātreya Śikṣā. Shared verses have been a hallmark of authenticity in Śikṣā texts, and there are just enough to convince us that we have an authentic, original text. There are 32 shared lines in Ātreya Śikṣā, which is about 5% of the whole. There are 18 different Śikṣā texts which have at least one shared line with Ātreya Śikṣā. Top of the list is Pāri Śikṣā with 17 shared lines, then Āpiśali with 7, Śambhu with 5, Kauṇḍinya (Mysore) with 3, Veda Śikṣā, Yajñavalkya, Varṇaratnapradīpikā, Kālanirṇaya, Pāṇini, Śaunaka, Śaiśirīya Śikṣā and Svarāṣṭaka with 2 lines each, and Lomaśi, Sarvasaṁmata, KauhalIya, Cārāyaṇīya, Svara Śikṣā, and Vyāsa Śikṣā each with one shared line. Quite surprisingly, Ātreya Śikṣā is the first text that we have come across which has shared lines with Vyāsa Śikṣa. Although there is a paucity of shared verses, and many verses with the same content and vocabulary have been apparently purposely reworked by one or the other author so that they do not match, like a school-boy being careful to avoid plagiarism, still there are enough shared verses to give the sense of Ātreya belonging to the community of Śikṣākāra’s, the ancient writers of phonetic treatises. As discussed before, Pāri Śikṣā is especially close in content to the Ātreya Śikṣā, and the number of shared verses does not reveal the intimate connection between the two texts: There are many more verses, many of them cited in the footnotes, which exhibit great similarity between Ātreya and Pāri Śikṣā, and many of the chapter titles of the two works are the same. Most of Pāri Śikṣā is in Triṣṭubh meter, with 22 syllables per line, while most of Ātreya Śikṣā is in the more common Anuṣṭubh meter, with only 16 syllables per line. This of course makes it more difficult for one to borrow from the other, but in verse 106, Ātreya does just that, using one and a quarter lines to quote a Triṣṭubh line, apparently from Pāri Śikṣā, concluding with iti proktās te, “Thus they said in ancient times.” This is a hint which gives some measure of validation to the proposal of Detlef Eichler, that Ātreya has simply reworked the material of the earlier Pāri Śikṣā, adding only a few additional sections at the beginning and the end. But regardless of the antecedents, and there are such connections precisely because he does stand within the tradition of Vedic Science, nevertheless, Ātreya’s borrowing does not detract from his accomplishment: Ātreya achieves what no other Śikṣā writer has attempted, namely, he presents to the world a textbook of enlightenment through Vedic recitation.
We are grateful to the Hamburg Staats-Universitaets Bibliothek (Library) for the preservation of this manuscript bundle and the extraordinarily clear photographs of the palm leafs. We would also like to thank Detlef Eichler for his many excellent suggestions and recommended changes of the typescript. And thanks again to all the Kickstarter Project supporters for your support and your patience. We now have the content needed to move ahead with the rewards promised as part of the Atreya Shiksha Project fundraising. And of course, the monthly updates will continue as we progress with the transcription of the 40 other texts in this manuscript bundle.
Gratefully yours,
Peter Freund and Vivek Vaidyanathan
Citations with eternal gratitude to.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1871038000/atreya-shiksha/posts/736483
- It may be noticed that the script in the Image is in Tamil (ancient)
- Dr.Chandrasekhar had pointed it out rightly.
I have written to Professor Peter Freund.
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