Different chhandas to chant mantras

[skdas3739@yahoo.co.in]

Respected All,

 

Namaskar

 

Can anyone guide me and teach me the different chhandas (like gayatri, tristup etc. etc. ) to chant vedic mantrs. I will remain ever grateful.

 

S.K.Das

[shailendra_mishra]

Vedic chants are dependent on swaras than chandas. The sthula definition of chanda is that they tell you the no. of syllables in a pada. Also, not all vedic anuvakas are set to a chanda, it depends on the shakha (Shakalya shakha of Rigveda - all verses are set to some or other chanda). However for Taittiriya shakha in samhita only mantras are set to chanda, the Brahmana portions are chanda free. Like I wrote earlier this is very sthula or gross definition of Chanda. They have very deeper meaning and in yajurveda there are verses describing the nature of chandas and there releation to God and/or the yaga. Hope this helps.

 

 

Respected All,

 

Namaskar

 

Can anyone guide me and teach me the different chhandas (like gayatri, tristup etc. etc. ) to chant vedic mantrs. I will remain ever grateful.

 

S.K.Das

[riih.qarojamahoamaan]

There is too much to write here on metres, but there are good post on this subject here. If you know nothing about metres, you can still chant a mantra correctly if you pronounce correctly the long and short syllables. Especially be careful not to drop the short a as is done in Hindi. In general, chant in Sanskrit, not in Hindi or in a modern language. Be inspired by my signature!

[kshama]

What is cchhands and swaras? Thank you.

[riih.qarojamahoamaan]

swara usually means a vowel. In sanskrt a vowel is short or long. By certain patterns of long (called guru =heavy) and short (called laghu= light) syllables, metres (=chandas) are created.

In this forum there are good posts about chandas. See the threads appearing below.