Chants, Hymns, and Songs

The recitation of sacred texts at Sri Ramanasramam goes back to the early days at Skandasramam. Bhagavan regularly initiated chanting of the Ribhu Gitai as well as other classical advaitic texts. He encouraged chanting of devotional poetry such as Thevaram of Sundarar, Appar, Jnanasambandar, and Manickavachakar, whose Tiruvachakam devotees recited throughout the night on the occasion of the Mahasamadhi of Bhagavan’s mother in May 1922.

By the late 1940s, the poetical works of Bhagavan were added to the Ashram repertoire, which included works of other saints and devotees, forming a fifteen-day cycle starting and ending with Thevaram. Recitations were compiled in a notebook and kept in the Old Hall. Those wishing to chant them would copy them out by hand and join in the group chanting in Bhagavan’s presence in the evenings at 6.45 p.m. If requested, Bhagavan would copy out the notebook himself for devotees’s use. (One such notebook has been published as ‘The Works of Bhagavan in His Own Handwriting’). Devotees like Kunjuswami, Devaraja Mudaliar, Ramaswami Pillai, Somasundaram Pillai, K.Natesan, Thoppayya Mudaliar, Rangaswami, Annamalai Swami, Vadivudayar, Sivananda Swami, T.K. Sundaresa Iyer, T.P. Ramachandra Iyer, and a few others, during their stay in the ashram, would sit in two groups and chant antiphonally, each side reciting alternately as in the regular Vedaparayana.

For a few years following Bhagavan’s Mahasamadhi, the Tamil Parayana was held twice daily in the Old Hall at 7.30 a.m. and 6.15 p.m. For the past two decades, it has been chanted as a weekly cycle (except Sundays) in Bhagavan’s Samadhi Hall each evening at 6.30 p.m. In the mid-1960s, Smt. Mangalam, Smt. Saraswati, and Sri V. Ganesan made recordings of the group recitations, which were later digitized and edited. These edited recordings are now being included in an upcoming audio release of the fifteen-day cycle of the Tamil Parayana, two thirds of which consist of recordings of Kunjuswami and the other old devotees mentioned above (six in all). The present upload is a copy of the same.