Deshpande

The Vision and the Boon Deshpande

"A hundred dhoti-clad young men sat cross-legged on the floor in facing rows, chatting amongst themselves. At a sign from their teacher the hall went quiet. Then they began the recitation. Without pause or error, entirely from memory, one side of the room intoned one line of the text, then the other side of the room answered with the next line. Bass and baritone voices filled the hall with sonorous prosody, every word distinctly heard, their right arms moving together to mark pitch and accent. The effect was hypnotic, ancient sound reverberating through the room, saturating brain and body. After 20 minutes they halted, in unison..."This is how the traditional Vedic chanting appeals to an academic. But it is a typical western fascination for what is called the Sanskrit Effect; it is to see as how intense verbal memory training involved in such chanting and memorisation affects physical structure of the brains of the chanters.