Study of the Veda as a living tradition gives a voice
to four generations of ahitagnis in ten families:
biographies, interviews, discussions.
David M. Knipe, Vedic Voices, New York, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Vedic Voices:
intimate narratives of a living Andhra tradition.
This study explores an intriguing but almost invisible living tradition.
It demonstrates, along the way, the viability of a predominantly oral,
intellectual culture, and its adaptation, survival and continuation in modern
times.
E.g. p 250, citation from Yajulu Duvvuri, 28.3.1992:
"Reading and writing I acquired in the course of time. I never
went to school. There was no activity other than Veda."
From the preface:
A.
The four generations of ten families in this book represent a period of rapid and
far-reaching changes.
B.
This book highlights the essential features of contemporary Vedic life by
allowing ahitagnis and other Veda pandits, their wives, and their children to
narrate personal experience. This is important because their communities and
their individual narrations, all noteworthy and remarkable, are largely unknown to
mainstream India. Certainly they are far removed from Western perception.
Outside of the subcontinent the general reader of books about India rarely notices
the Vedic tradition, and normally considers it a strange and remote period that seems to have ended
thousands of years ago.
C.
An energetic three-hour discussion of Vedic texts and rituals ensued, leading off three
decades of engagement with the residents of this and nearby agraharas. When a
modest rupee honorarium was extended to the senior ahitagni Baballa, following
this initial unanticipated meeting, he declined with an elegant, unforgettable
phrase: “Your interest in Veda is our daksina (ritual payment)!"