ghana-patha
घनपाठ ghana-pāṭhaThe 'dense' recitation, the most complex of the eight woven modes of Vedic chanting, in which small groups of words are braided forwards and backwards in a fixed intricate pattern. Mastering it earns the honorific Ghanapathi.
Where this term appears
- How the Vedas Were Preserved History
The Vedas were preserved not on any surface but in human memory, through an oral system of astonishing precision. Rather than write the texts down, which the…
- What are the Vedas? Scriptures
… a series of increasingly elaborate "woven" forms — the most complex, ghana-patha , braiding each run of words forwards and backwards in a fixed knot so intricate that a single wrong syllable shatters it where …
- Keeping the Sound Treatise
In the ghana-patha , the dense recitation, the pattern thickens further into a fixed scheme of forwards and backwards permutations that drills every word through its neighbours in a set order.
- The Machine Made of Memory Treatise
The woven forms: jata-patha and ghana-patha Now the system gets baroque, and the reasons are practical.