Veda Paathshaala -- Vedic Schools Home Login Register Home Services Curriculum Donations Stream of Wisdom Contact Us About the Vedic Schools The Vedas are the great treasure of mankind. However, in Indias rush to modernize, the Vedas are rapidly being forgotten. Fortunately, God has sent a messenger, Saint Panduranga Malyala, to revive and preserve the Vedas. Saint Malyala currently has four schools in India where the Veda is being taught in the traditional Gurukulam style. At these Veda Pathasalas students receive free room, board and education in the Vedas. Plans for more schools are being made. Students live a very disciplined and straight forward life style. Because the schools are in rural India, isolated from the mainstream, the cost of student education is a small fraction of the cost of education in an industrialized society. All good souls and well wishers are invited to join in this noble endeavour. Below is a profile of the schools: Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh Campus. This facility was built in 2002 in a five acre mango grove in Ganganapally, a suburb of Kakinada. The campus includes a Ganesh Temple, a Saraswati shrine, a Shirdi Sai Baba shrine, a residence and learning facility, dining hall, kitchen, guest quarters, cow sala with ten cows, and eleven homa kundas (fire pits) for traditional Vedic ceremonies. It has 60 residential students, five “gurus” or teachers, and seven administrative and operating staff. Puttaparthi Andhra Pradesh Campus. This is a very beautiful campus built on two acres across from the airport in Puttaparthi (home of Sathya Sai Baba). This campus includes a residence and learning facility, eleven covered homa kundas and 12 outdoor homa kundas, a large outdoor pool with 7 covered outdoor learning circles, residential facilities for guests and staff, gardens, and a Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple. It has 25 residential students, and five administrative and operating staff. The School is capable of holding up to 200 students when funds become available to hire a recruiter. Sikkim. This is a rented facility with one guru and twenty students, along with a cook and another staff member. This facility can be expanded to fifty students when the funds are available. Katra, Jammu Kashmir. This is a rented facility with one guru and twenty students, along with a cook and another staff member. About the Founders aaThe founders of the Veda Pathasalas are Mahalakshmi and Panduranga Rao Malyala. Sri Malyala founded the first Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple in North America in 1991. (baba.org). He is an expert in the Vedic science of “yagna”, and has orchestrated large groups of pundits gathering for “world peace yagnas” in India since 1991. He started the Veda Pathasalas out of his family home in Kakinada in 1997. The official name of the Veda Pathasalas are THE MAHALAKSHMI PANDURANGA RAO INSTITUTES OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE, HIGHER LEARNING, AND VEDIC RESEARCH. In 1998, Sri Malyala accepted assistance from Craig “Sastry” Edwards and Jill “Yogini” Edwards, who provided an endowment for the Kakinada campus and provided administrative and other support. Craig Sastry and Jill Yogini incorporated the Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple of Austin (saiaustin.org) in June, 2007. A picture of the founders at the Puttaparthi campus taken in 2009 is shown above. All four founders are active in the management of the Veda Pathasalas. About the Veda The Vedas are said to be the oldest recorded knowledge of mankind. The belief is that the Vedas were not composed by men, but were cognitions of men, the ancient Rishis, about the fundamental truths of the universe. They were revealed to different Rishis, and are recorded in the four Vedas – Rig, Yajur (Krishna and Shukla), Sama, and Atharva Vedas. The Vedas are generally associated with Hinduism, but other major religions such as Sikkism, Jainism, and Buddhism all make use of them. They are thought to be beyond caste, religion, and creed. The Vedic literature is vast, and far exceeds the contents of the four and five Vedas. As an example, the Mahabharata, just one of the great epics closely associated with the Vedic literature, is nearly five times the size of Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey combined. The Upanishads are great philosophical texts studied at the Veda Pathasalas along with the Veda. It is thought that originally 108 Upanishads existed. There are many branches that spring from the root of the four major Vedas, and include dissertations on medicine, astronomy and astrology, warfare, diplomacy, and many other topics, such as physical yoga, which is so popular all over the world now. A special part of the Vedas has to do with how they are chanted. The meter – the up and down of the sound, is as important as the pronunciation. This is part of what guru and siksha – teacher and disciple – have preserved in unbroken tradition for thousands of years. The same Veda can be chanted in different meters. It can also be chanted in different order. For instance, the Rig Veda, chanted in regular method, takes perhaps 45 hours to recite. But in some “Ghana” methods, it might take 700 hours to recite! For thousands of years, it is believed the Veda was never written down, but passed down in a purely oral tradition. The devangari script of the Veda is the “language of the gods”. “Gods” means the underlying intelligence supervising the universe. When chanted correctly, this intelligence is enlivened and produces remarkable benefits. It is no secret that the Vedic knowledge is rapidly disappearing in India. Because the knowledge is so vast, it is not a simple matter preserving it. As an example, Tulsidas’ and Valmeeki’s Ramayana’s are secure. But what about the other 200 or so versions of the Ramayana in India? Every week an old pundit dies, and another chunk of knowledge dies with him. This is why we consider our mission of training students so important. Home | Services | Curriculum | Donations | Stream of Wisdom | Contact Us Copyright 2010 by Veda Paathshaala | Terms Of Use | Privacy Statement
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 05:21:51 +0000
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