UNESCO Declares Vedic Chanting a "Heritage of Humanity"

February 28, 2004

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,-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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