Upanishads Part I · 36 of 237

Second Prapāthaka: KHÂNDOGYA-UPANISHAD: EIGHTH KHANDA.

EIGHTH KHANDA. 1. Next for the sevenfold Sâman. Let a man meditate on the sevenfold Sâman in speech. Whenever there is in speech the syllable huṅ 1, that is hiṅkâra, pra is the prastâva, â is the âdi, the first, i.e. Om,

2. Ud is the udgîtha, pra the pratihâra, upa the upadrava, ni the nidhana.

Insight

The sevenfold mapping of the sun's day runs through all of life: animals making their pre-dawn sound at the hinkara, men loving praise as the prastava, birds flying in mid-morning at the adi (the Om itself), the gods themselves at noon, embryos in early afternoon resting safe because that hour is the pratihara, forest animals fleeing in late afternoon at the upadrava, the fathers laid down at sunset for the nidhana. Every hour of the day is the proper time for some class of being, and the human being meditating on the sevenfold Saman is being asked to perceive each of them in turn. The day becomes a moving liturgy. Cassian's seven monastic hours, the Islamic five daily prayers, the Hebrew evening-and-morning structure of Genesis 1 all do something similar: they impose a contemplative shape on the rotation of the sky. The Khandogya gets there by reading the rotation itself as already a chant.Khandogya 2.9.2-8; cf. Cassian, Institutes III on the canonical hours

3. Speech yields the milk, which is the milk of speech itself, to him who knowing this meditates on the sevenfold Sâman in speech. He becomes rich in food, and able to eat food.

Footnotes 26:1 These are again the stobhâksharas, or musical syllables used in the performance of the Sâman hymns; see p. 22.