[Advaita-l] Gayatri Mantra and Sandhyavandana

[Ramesh]

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.

On 17 May 2010 08:06, ravi chandrasekhara <vadhula at yahoo.com> wrote:

<< 3.Albiet not an excuse, is there a shortened version of
sandhya-vandana for those who are dharmically weak or times of
exigency (aapatkaal).>>