Gautami Shiksha teaches all about the anchor points in the flow of music in the many thousands of songs in Sama Veda, these anchor points are the consonants of the Vedic language, known individually in words, and also in clusters called conjunct consonants. Called Nibandhanas, these anchor points also expand, just as life expands from point to infinity: Clusters of conjunct consonants expand from 2 to 3 to 4, even to 7 individual consonants bound together in one conjuna cluster. Gautami Shiksha is the only Shiksha entirely focused consonants and their combinations in conjung on consonants.
Dr. Peter F. Freund is a scholar, translator, and author of books on Shiksha and Upapurana. He has a PhD in Maharish Vedic Science from Maharishi International University, U.S.A. (2006) where he also taught courses on Vedic literature and consciousness. Dr. Freund has published several books on various aspects of Vedic science, such as Varna Shiksha Varuna Purana, Paniniya Shiksha, Vasishtha Shiksha, as well as Yogic Flying According to Yoga Vasishtha.
There are eight stages of dynamism collapsing to silence, eight somersaults of the contracting reverberation of "A" as "A" becomes "I" then "U and "R" and "Lr" and "E" and "O" and lastly the nasal vowel "Arm" as the fully open "A" becomes fully closed "Ka." These eight somersaults of "A" trace out the path of expression from unmanifest abstract potentiality of all possibilities to the complete inertia of the fully articulated manifest point value of silence in "Ka." The somersaults flow sequentially through all the eight elements of Nature, called Prakrtis: Earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and ego. These eight Prakrtis encompass the whole range of Natural Law. Infinite unbounded pure abstract Natural Law creates manifest creation through these eight somersaults contained in the simple flow of speech from "A" to "Ka."
This is the field of Shiksha, the Vedic science of phonology, the science of speech. In the range between the dynamism of "A" and the silence of "Ka," the Total Knowledge and organizing power of Natural Law on every level of creation all the Reas of the Veda-is contained. Everything that there is to experience in all the possible worlds of experience, and everything there is to know in all the worlds of the manifest and the unmanifest, and all the potential for action, for organizing power, everything is contained there in the collapse of "A" to "Ka"-it is the fundamental unit of speech, and the ultimate paradigm of Total Natural Law. The Vedic science of speech contains everything that one needs for complete illumination of the reality of life, and total unfoldment of the latent infinite potential of every human being. Shiksha has everything that one needs for complete enlightenment, for raising individual awareness to the highest state of consciousness, the level of unbounded comprehension of the total field of Natural Law in Brahman Consciousness.
The unfoldment of knowledge in Gautami siksa follows a simple, clear and logical progression. In the first section, Gautama classifies and identifies all the different consonants that can participate in conjuncts and discusses the different strengths of bonds between letters.
In the second section, the formation of Yamas is described. Yamas are voiced nasal sounds formed in the throat to create a bridge between a prior stop consonant and following nasal. Yamas are not written in Sanskrit, but they are always pronounced. They are counted as letters in their own right, when the different members of conjunct clusters are counted. In the third section, the rules of consonantal doubling are presented. In modern times, consonantal doubling is not written, but many older texts do show the consonantal doubling.
The principal rule of consonantal doubling states that when a consonant after a vowel is followed by another consonant, without an intervening vowel, then that first consonant is doubled. This rule, if followed universally, mandates that there can never be a conjunct cluster with only two members. However, there are many exceptions to this rule, so that there are several situations in which conjunct clusters with only two members are found.
The first and perhaps most obvious and important exception to the rule of consonantal doubling is the case of duplicated consonants, such as tt, or dd. Double consonants as an exception to the rule of consonantal doubling are recounted in the fourth section.
In the fifth section, three more exceptions make possible the formation of conjunct clusters with only two consonants, The first is the combination of an unaspirated consonant with its corresponding aspirated consonant, such as ta and tha. In these cases, there is no consonantal doubling. The second group of exceptions detailed in the fifth section are the combinations of the letter 'r' with the Usman consonants, which are sa, sa, sa, and ha. In these cases, there is no consonantal doubling. And finally, the third exception mentioned in this fifth section is the case of two consonants not preceded by a vowel, as in the beginning of a word or beginning of a sentence. There also the initial letter of the conjunct is not doubled.
Section six completes the survey of exceptions to the rule of consonantal doubling by explaining that the nasalized y, nasalized I, and nasalized v are not to be doubled when they are followed by their corresponding non-nasalized y, 1, or v.
Sections 7, 8 and 9 of the first Prapathaka present copious examples of conjunct clusters having three consonants.
The first, second and third sections of the second Prapathaka present examples of consonant conjunct clusters having four members: Section one is focusing on conjunct clusters of four members in which one of the four is a Yama; sections two and three present clusters of four members in which none of the four is a Yama.
Conjunct clusters having five consonants are presented similarly in sections four and five: Clusters of five consonants that do not include a Yama are presented first, in section 4; clusters of five consonants in which one of the consonants is a Yama are presented in section 5.
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