VEDIC CHANTING DECLARED INTANGIBLE
HERITAGE OF HUMANITY BY UNESCO
The oral tradition
of vedic chanting has been declared intangible heritage of humanity
by UNESCO. In a meeting of jury members on 7th November,
2003 at Paris, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO,
declared the chanting of vedas in India outstanding example of
heritage and the form of cultural expressions. The proclamation
says in the age of globalisation and modernisation when the cultural
diversity is under pressure, the preservation of oral tradition
of vedic chanting, a unique cultural heritage has great significance.
Total 80 entries were received for this purpose from all over
the world and 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 have survived for centuries
encoding the wisdom contained in the Vedas through an extraordinary
effort of memorisation and through an 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.
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 five year action plan to safeguard, protect,
promote and disseminate oral tradition of vedic tradition in terms
of their uniqueness and distinctiveness, encourage scholars and
practitioners to preserve, revitalise 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.