[Advaita-l] Gayatri Mantra and Sandhyavandana

[Ravisankar Mayavaram]

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Ramesh <rkmurthy at gmail.com> wrote:

> This may not fully answer any of your questions but may have some
> bearing on your third question.
>
> The sandhyA varies a lot depending on region, ancestry and such
> factors, and in most cases has a lot of post-vedic accretion. For
> example, the modern yajurvedic sandhyA as practised in southern India,
> even by smArta-s, has a lot of paurANika vaiShNava elements
>
> Perhaps the "original" (or one of the earliest) forms of the
> yajurvedic sandhyA is the one prescribed by bodhAyana. It runs roughly
> as follows:
>
> 1. Achamana using prANAya svAhA...(not achyuta, ananta..)
> 2. prokShaNa using dadhikrAvNo..., ApohiShTha...,sUryashcha/agnishcha...,
> etc
> 3.  gAyatrI 1000 times (or 100 times with prANAyAma or 10 times with
> the seven vyAhR^iti-s prefixed)
> 4. mitrasya...in the morning / imam me varuNa...in the evening.
>
> It is clearly much shorter than the current version and contains
> almost no vaiShNava references.
>
> On a different note, I don't think a sandhyA without the gAyatrI would
> be acceptable to a smArta.
>
>
I think you are covering arghya pradaana under #2, that  is the main goal of
sandhya vandana. This has the basis in shruti . Rest of the items in #1 and
#2 are preparatory steps for this.

Please see http://www.sanskritweb.net/yajurveda/ta-02.pdf -  at the very
beginning starting with saha vai devaanam and ending in asavaadiyo brahmeti
brahmaiva san brahmaapyeti y evam veda.

Ravi