Natchintanai Home | Project Charter | Pronunciation Guide | Transliteration Issues

Goals

Outside of Sri Lanka most young Sri Lankans cannot access Yogaswami's legacy. In some nations, like Mauritius, the "Tamil" children are 4 generations removed from their Tamil roots. They do not know Tamil at all. For them, as well as any non-Tamilians, Yogaswami's heritage is a "black box." They may learn to sing the songs by repetition, but they do not have any idea what is the meaning behind what they are singing. Our goal is to open this treasure to everyone and thus help the Sivathondan Society in the mission of making sure that the living tradition of singing these songs continues on into the future. And also, by helping us all to understand the meaning of the songs as we sing them, they become like sacred affirmations that re-impress our minds with the key elements of our faith and philosophy. Study of Natchintanai is a very high order of "svadhyaya" sadhana.

Scope

In 2005 when devotees requested small Natchintanai songs books for satsangs, we found that the computer files for our 1992 edition, which only contained 15 songs, were completely obsolete. In November 2005 a project to re-create and expand the songbook was undertaken. Seventy-two popular Natchintanai commonly song at satsangs and bhajans were chosen. A "cap" was set at this number. Once all goals have been achieved for these 72 songs, if there is significant demand for additions, we can add more songs as time goes on.

Note, in the project outline below, English translations are mentioned. Many of these are taken from the English translation done in Jaffna by Yogaswami's devotees, this book and its excellent introduction to Saivism is a "must have" for the library of any serious student of Natchintanai. Not all the popular songs were translated into English. Note that our English translation is an accurate reflection of the original Tamil and may vary in some cases from the original Jaffna translation, where the latter took "liberties" in rendering some obscure phrases. For example, where the original Tamil says: "yama, iyama sey" it means "practice the yamas and niyamas" which is what we have as our translation. But the Jaffna version says: "follow the eight-fold path of Yoga," which is a liberal interpretation of the original Tamil.

The goals include, for each song:

  1. Tamil script
  2. an easily "digestable" roman transliteration
  3. links to one or more MP3 audio versions of each song
  4. a literal English translation--so that we know what each Tamil word means as we sing. The literal version will also help maintain accuracy when translations or lyrical versions are created other languages.
  5. rendered prose version (using the original English version for all songs that have a translation in that book.)
  6. written svarams that document tunes from traditional ragams for congregational singing (so that we all learn the same tune) and audio recording of the same.
  7. PDF's so that these songs can be widely distributed and easily learned.
  8. Lyrical version: a poetic rendering that we can sing in English in the same tune as the original. Possibly similar version will be created in other languages: German, Spanish, etc.

Common Melody for Group Singing

Regarding Goal # 6 above: When we finally are able to produce a "svaram" version, (musical notation) this will be a standard tune that can be learned by our sishya in different countries, so that we can all sing together a common melody. An audio recording of the same will be provided for practice. Of course Hindu music is very "open" and may suggest a ragam (scale) but not necessarily a fixed melodic line for any given song. So soloists may freely improvise, which is accepted and even expected. But traditional fixed melodies have developed over time for many common bhajans such as, for example the "Arati Song" ("Jaya Jagadisha Hare.... etc.") or Skanda Shashti Kavacham. We need to have a similar common tune for each Natchintanai so that someone in Singapore can fly to Mauritius and join in singing the same song in perfect unison.

Audio Archive

In addition to the 73 selected songs we hope to have, eventually, a large diversity of audio recordings for *all* Natchintanai. If you know of any Yogaswami devotees or singers who would like to offer their versions of the songs to be included on our web site, please send a note to studyhall@hindu.org Digital audio files are preferred, .aif, .mp3, .wma are all acceptable. If you record with a tape casette recorder, please use a microphone if you can so as to avoid machine noise, and make sure your input volume is good (otherwise the audio is too low volume). Songs sent on cassettes may appear not here for some time as it takes time digitize and break out individual songs.

Terms Used In This Project

PDF formats, Feedback, Upgrades

This is a work in progress. We provide a small song book of just 13 songs of the favorites songs in a single PDF that can be printed and saddled stitched and 73 PDF at 8.25 inches wide and 11 inches high which can be photo copied on A4 or US letter. If you want a different format for printing in your country, send a specification and request to Studyhall@hindu.org.

Source data is maintained in a database from which we can easily export different configurations: Tamil plus Roman; Roman plus Literal; Tamil plus Translation etc. Different contexts have different requirements. For congregational singing in temple in North American where most of the youth cannot read Tamil, only the Roman and literal are needed. But a version with Tamil, roman, literal and translation for each line is helpful for personal study or as a handout for teaching a single song in class, but much too long for a song book." For example, Engal Gurunathan with all 4 versions for each line is a 10-page document. It is not practical to put this into a song book. But a teacher or individual may download and print out a full version of one or more individual songs for indepth study and memorization.

Please send feed back on your needs, testimonials on what is working well for you, and suggestions for teaching tools to Study Hall. Please share your context: number of children or youth you are working with, venue, age group, challenges you face and your insights on what more we might do to achieve the goal of transmitting Natchintanai to the next generation.

Our Pronunciation/Transliteration scheme

Our system is is meant for easy reading by the untutored. Go to the following pages for more information on pronunciation and transliteration.

If you would like to get a better "grip" on Tamil and English is your first language, we highly recommend the series by Mrs. Vasantha Navaratnam in Toronto "Learning Tamil Through English."

Notes on Translation

Literal Translation

The literal translation is designed as an aid to visualization and also to assist in learning the Tamil for those who are interested. But a challenge is faced because Tamil syntax order is different than English. In Tamil the object of the verb may begin a sentence, and the subject follows and the sentence ends with a the verb.

For example, we could have a line of Tamil script with an English translation underneath, like this:

Tamil Script: "Hat red to me Yogaswami gave."
Translation: "Yogaswami gave me a red hat."

The problem with this is that the singer who does not know Tamil will be singing "Hat red: (in Tamil) but he will be visualizing "Yogaswami."

To address this issue our literal translation maintains a one-to-one correspondence with Tamil sentence structure.

On the other hand, where Tamil words use suffixes to indicate both case and associated subjective-pronouns (the doer of any action), for single words, the equivalant English requires a short phrase, but only makes sense in the natural English order: For example:

Accusative case: "ennukku" is translated "to me"
-- where the suffix "-ku" indicates "to" . If we put "me -to" it will not make sense at all

Subjective Pronoun: "arivitthaan" is translated "he introduced"
where the suffix "-aan" indicates masculine "he". Similarly, "introduced-he" will not make any sense.

No attempt has been made to elaborate metaphorical or allegorical phrases and we did not want to "corrupt" Yogaswami's original diction. These need to be studied out. Two examples would be "within the house no builder built" means the body. and "vasiyogham" -- "horse yoga" -- meaning diaphragmatic breathing. Check the footnotes in the song books and the full prose translation.

Roadmap and Status Overview

Task Date Status
Tamil Data Entry January 2005 complete
Proof Tamil-Enter corrections March 2006 Complete
First Draft Transliterations January 2005 Complete
Proof and Correct Transliterations January 2007 Complete
OCR -- Enter Original English Translations February 2005 Complete
Milestone: Create first Songbook April 2007 Complete
Literal Translations March 2007 Complete
Remaining English Translations,
(for those not originally translated)		 Pending
Web-Site: PDF's Uploaded May 2007 In Progress
Music Side: (runs concurrently) --
Web-Site: MP3's Uploaded May 2007 In Progress
Recordings-Traditional Ragam Set Pending
Chose tune and set swarams Pending
Expand to all 360 Natchintanai ?! Futuristic

Organizational Scheme

Songs have been entered, process and maintained in a small data base at Kauai Aadheenam. The key ID is the original page number in the "Red Tamil Edition" published in 1997. In a few case, there are two songs on the same page. The order of songs follows their natural order in the book. This makes for easy referencing to the original Tamil. Note that some minors errors were found in the typesetting of the original Tamil which have been corrected in our versions.

PDF's are set to an A4 page size with a large bottom margin that will allow for copying also on US letter size paper. Initially songs will be simply posted to the internet as individual PDF's. Overtime we will determine the best format through actual usage, we will finalize a format for a song book that we can print as a whole. Until then everyone will need to print out and distribute the PDF's as individual songs. Intially PDF's will contain just Tamil and transliterations. As we add the other increments (literal, translation, svarams) we will update the PDF's. Since all increments would mean printing 5 lines for each line, we will eventually break create two PDF's for each song: one for satsang use and one for personal study and practice.

Get the Original Books!

Everyone is encouraged to get the complete Tamil and English translation editions published by the Sivathondan Society, available at our web store. It will be a boon to your spiritual life and support the society's publishing efforts. Gurudeva used to say that there is no point singing songs "like parrots." We should know the meaning of what we are singing to give the fullest expression of devotion. Then singing because a true sadhana, "svadhyaya," as well as meaningful worship.

Appreciations and Credits

We want to first offer our deep appreciation to the Sivathondan Society of Sri Lanka which has continued to fulfill its sacred duty in preserving the sacred treasure of Satguru Siva Yogaswami. Their books are the source texts for this project. We also want to thank the dedicated Sivathondars working on this project: Prof. A Manickavel, Chidambaram, India; Sheela Venkatakrishnan, Chennai, Jayalakshmi Gopalakrishnan, Mumbai, India; Anil Bardwaj, Norway; Rishi Thondunatha, Florida; our consultants for IT issues relating to Tamil fonts: Prof. Kalyansundaram, Switzerland and Muthu Neduraman, Malaysia; Thiru Satkunendran of Toronto for support, as well as all the ladies and others of the Sri Lankan community in Toronto, Canada, who are contributing their feedback and insights.

Top