Kerala chants

[Green_Manalishi]

Hi, i was watching a documentary made by the BBC called, if i'm not mistaken, "The Story of India". During the said documentary, there were this Brahmans, from the Kerala region, chanting mantras passed orally from the most ancient times. In the documentary they said that the chants where sung in an unknown language, and that the language had been a object of study (they didn't specified if by ethnologists, or linguistic experts, or whatever), and that the results of the study where that the language didn't resemble any modern spoken language, but it was rather similar to the songs of birds.
So i tried to find more info on the net, but couldn't find any. Does anyone known, or have, more information about this.

 

[Color]

Hi, i was watching a documentary made by the BBC called, if i'm not mistaken, "The Story of India". During the said documentary, there were this Brahmans, from the Kerala region, chanting mantras passed orally from the most ancient times. In the documentary they said that the chants where sung in an unknown language, and that the language had been a object of study (they didn't specified if by ethnologists, or linguistic experts, or whatever), and that the results of the study where that the language didn't resemble any modern spoken language, but it was rather similar to the songs of birds.
So i tried to find more info on the net, but couldn't find any. Does anyone known, or have, more information about this.

Can I ask why are you interested in this? Is it about the 'unknown language' or it's use for chanting mantras?
Here is some information which may interest you: http://glossary.cassiopaea.com/glossary.php?id=142&lsel=B
and this thread: http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7030

hope this helps

 

[Green_Manalishi]

My interest was more about how the said study reached the conclusion that the language resembled more a birdsong.
This is because when one reads about the "language of the birds" and then someone claims that an unknown language resembles a birdsong, my curiosity as aroused. Could be nothing, could be something.

 

[Color]

My interest was more about how the said study reached the conclusion that the language resembled more a birdsong.
This is because when one reads about the "language of the birds" and then someone claims that an unknown language resembles a birdsong, my curiosity as aroused. Could be nothing, could be something.

fwiw, I had some experiences with TM and the mantras they gave you are all meant to be sang and since they're not everyday words, it also could resemble a birdsong, in some amount... That's why I gave those links about mantras Not sure how much different those Kerala chanting mantras are, but there's a good chance it's just the same old self-calming effect.

 

[Mr. Premise]

I read somewhere that the TM mantras are not just nonsense syllables but rather are invocations to Hindu entities to enter one's psyche and possess one. I read this years ago and don't have any links. Doubtful that such invocations would have any efficacy if one doesn't know what they mean, but why repeat some nonsense phrase that a money-grubbing member of an exploitative New Age pyramid scheme gives you. Why not make up your own and keep your money?

My interest was more about how the said study reached the conclusion that the language resembled more a birdsong.
This is because when one reads about the "language of the birds" and then someone claims that an unknown language resembles a birdsong, my curiosity as aroused. Could be nothing, could be something.

fwiw, I had some experiences with TM and the mantras they gave you are all meant to be sang and since they're not everyday words, it also could resemble a birdsong, in some amount... That's why I gave those links about mantras Not sure how much different those Kerala chanting mantras are, but there's a good chance it's just the same old self-calming effect.

 

[Color]

I read somewhere that the TM mantras are not just nonsense syllables but rather are invocations to Hindu entities to enter one's psyche and possess one. I read this years ago and don't have any links. Doubtful that such invocations would have any efficacy if one doesn't know what they mean, but why repeat some nonsense phrase that a money-grubbing member of an exploitative New Age pyramid scheme gives you. Why not make up your own and keep your money?

I didn't say how I am practicing any of that stuff or tried advertising it, quite the opposite... I told about my experience to draw the line of possible similarity between those two things, as both created to keep us asleep. Which is quite obvious when you look at the links I gave at the first place I went through 5 day seminar on MT, 9 years ago, while searching for something that 'works'... And I stopped practicing it quickly cause I didn't find anything in it, except some weird experiences. There are lots of sites on the web talking about those TM mantras, here's one of them saying:

And what did Maharishi procure for? The Vedic gods. He sold us a meaningless word that was supposed to guide our minds to transcend superficial consciousness. Later we learned those meaningless words, our mantras, were names of deities. He taught us advanced techniques with the Sanskrit word “namah” at their core: “I bow down.”

Mantra meditation is a form of paying worship to those who call themselves gods. When you scrape away all the fancy and misleading explanations – like “meaningless sounds” and “impulses of creative intelligence,” what you get very simply is people with their eyes closed bowing down in their minds to an assigned Hindu deity.

Also, there were few discussions here on the forum about TM and I agree how it's a fraud which keeps us asleep. Like said in the first link :

Those whose intrinsic nature is toward Non-being, follow the path of limitation of Infinite Being by assuming that they, in their state of ignorance and subjectivity, know better than God how Creation ought to be fixed. They pray for change, they perform rituals, they chant mantras and repeat endless visualizations of "magical forms" that are supposed to "change" reality. They bomb others with "Love and Light," (their subjective version of it, of course), and they seek to fix the world "out there" by projecting their subjective view of reality onto the infinite wisdom of Creation. This "consciousness energy direction" even includes the assumption that just knowing that all division is illusion will accomplish the goal of "Ascension," and that is the most cunning lie of all.

 

[Green_Manalishi]

In the said documentary when the chants were mentioned, the host implicated that the language was different from everything else in India.
I'll just keep digging the net to see what i can find.
Thanks for the replies anyway.

 

[Amoeba]

The local language in Kerala is called "Malayalam". If they are Brahmins they could be using Sanskrit. But since you mentioned it is not any language used in India I am intrigued.

Ofcourse people could be using all kinds of languages for religious purposes.

G_M, let us see what your investigations turn up. :)