VEDAS

Katyayana likens speech to the supreme Brahman. He uses the Rigvedic verse – Four are its horns, three its feet, two its heads, and seven its hands, roars loudly the threefold-bound bull, the great god enters mortals (Rig-Veda, iv. 58, 3), to assert this claim. Katyayana explains that in the verse, the four horns are the four kinds of words i.e. nouns, verbs, prepositions, and particles; its three feet mean the three tenses, past, present and future; the two heads imply the eternal and temporary words, distinguished as the manifested and the manifester; its seven hands are the seven case affixes; threefold bound is enclosed in the three organs the chest, the throat, and the head; the metaphor bull (vrishabha) is used to imply that it gives fruit when used with knowledge; loudly roars signifies uttering sound, speech or language; and in the great god enters mortals entails that the great god speech, enters the mortals.[9] Thus, primal sound is often referred to as Shabda Brahman or word as The Absolute.

• MNEMONIC TECHNIQUES
  • Vedic chantings use 4 tones –
    • udātta उदात्त (middle tone),
    • anudātta अनुदात्त (lower tone),
    • svarita स्वरित (higher tone)
    • dīrgha svarita दीर्घस्वरित (high tone extended). These are usually marked with intuitive svara marks – an underline for anudātta (अ॒), a small vertical line above the letter for svarita (अ॑) and two vertical lines for dīrgha svarita (आ᳚).
  • Eleven such ways of reciting the Vedas ( pathas ) were designed –
    • Samhita, continuous recitation (samhitapatha)
    • Pada, word by word recitation (pada patha) , compounds (sandhi) are dissolved
    • Krama, krama patha (words are arranged in the pattern of ab bc cd …)
    • Jata, Jatapatha, the words are braided together, so to speak, and recited back and forth
    • Maalaa,
    • Sikha,
    • Rekha,
    • Dhwaja,
    • Danda,
    • Rathaa,
    • Ghana, of which Ghana is usually considered the most difficult.

• VEDAS
  • Nature
    • words of god
  • types
    • rigveda
    • yajurveda
    • atharvaveda
    • samaveda
  • Each veda has
    • the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions)
    • the Brahmanas (commentaries on and explanation of rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices - Yajñas)
    • the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices),
    • the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge)
    • the Upāsanās (worship)
  • vedanga
    • Shiksha (Sanskrit: शिक्षा śikṣā, instruction, teaching): phonetics, phonology, pronunciation.
      • This auxiliary discipline has focused on the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, accent, quantity, stress, melody and rules of euphonic combination of words during a Vedic recitation
    • Chandas (Sanskrit: छन्दस् chandas, metre): prosody.
      • This auxiliary discipline has focused on the poetic meters, including those based on fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse.
    • Vyakarana (Sanskrit: व्याकरण vyākaraṇa, grammar): grammar and linguistic analysis.
    • Nirukta (Sanskrit: निरुक्त nirukta, etymology): etymology, explanation of words, particularly those that are archaic and have ancient uses with unclear meaning.
    • Kalpa (Sanskrit: कल्प kalpa, proper. fit): ritual instructions
    • Jyotisha (Sanskrit: ज्योतिष jyotiṣa, astrology): Right time for rituals with the help of position of nakshatras and asterisms and astronomy.