People are blindly continuing process of recitation

[dattaswami]

People are blindly continuing process of recitation

 

The priest learns the hymns through recitation without knowing the meanings. He spends few years in learning this mechanical recitation of scripture and straightly enters the field of earning his livelihood. There is no need of mechanical recitation of the scripture, when the scripture is already printed. In those days, when the printing was not developed, there was no other way to preserve the scripture than through the mechanical recitation. Therefore, the process of mechanical recitation existed and hence the mechanical recitation was justified. People are blindly continuing that process of recitation even today when the actual need for such recitation ended. This is called as blind tradition in which you follow something blindly from the past without analyzing it. It is said that all old is not gold and all modern need not be correct.

 

You have to decide the correctness based on sharp analysis of everything i.e., old or modern (Puraanamityeva…..). The priest should learn the meaning of the scripture without wasting his time on blind recitation of the printed book. The priest can recite the scripture by reading the book in ritual and explain the meaning of hymns to create interest in the audience. The priests of the other religion like Christianity, Islam etc., are reading the books of scripture in the rituals. You may say that one should only recite and not read the book as per the authority of the scripture (Tathaa likhitapathakah). This authority is not valid since it is only Smruti, that is created by the human beings, and not Shuruti, that is created by God. The same Smruti also says that you should know the meaning (Anarthajno…). The priest himself generated the authority because he found the mechanical recitation easier than learning its meaning. The priest has also created a false propagation that the sound of the scripture itself generates good even without knowing its meaning. This is again worst interpretation because the basic purpose of communication through language is murdered and hence the logic (Yukti) opposes such false concept.

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