Learning to chant with Vaamshii
Vaamshii (Sudarshan Ravi, 2024) is an aid to accurate pronunciation of the Bhagavad Gītā. Every shloka is split — deliberately "unnaturally" — into groups optimized for reading aloud, with all sandhis carried out and the chandas identified. Master these 700 and you can chant any anuṣṭubh-metered grantha.
How to read the splits
- Each verse appears as a quartet of pāda lines (the author's maṇisraj style) — recite each line independently, then join them into a congruent whole.
- A hyphen joins pādas that must be recited together, either to protect the chandas or because they form one compound word (samasta-pada).
- # marks the upadhmānīya — a visarga before p/ph, pronounced like "f".
- % marks the jihvāmūlīya — a visarga before k/kh, pronounced "hkh" (like the guttural in Persian or Arabic).
- ऽ marks the avagraha — a placeholder for an elided "a". (The printed book renders it as $ or s owing to font constraints; the website uses the proper Devanagari sign.)
- (!!) marks a place where the original text itself breaks a rule of prosody or Paninian grammar — these are not Vaamshii errors.
Chandas
About 650 of the 700 shlokas are in anuṣṭubh chandas and can all be sung to one tune. The remaining ~50 are triṣṭubh-family meters — Indravajrā (I), Upendravajrā (u), Upajāti, Śālinī (s) — noted per pāda on each verse page.
Video tutorials
The Samskrta Nandini playlists walk through the method adhyāya by adhyāya:
- ▶ Vaamshii tutorial playlist 1
- ▶ Vaamshii tutorial playlist 2
- ▶ Vaamshii tutorial playlist 3
- ▶ Discussions on the Bhagavad Gītā — beyond pronunciation, into the meaning
Browse the special-chandas filter — every non-anuṣṭubh verse, filterable by meter.
🔇 Synced audio recitation on each verse page is planned for phase two.