Sandhya Mantras

Many of the Sandhya Vandanam Mantras directly trace their origin to the Vedas. This is not surprising if what what Dr.Kashyap told me is right. In his email, he opined that by 1000BCE, the Vedic people realised that there were not enough people to carry on the torch of knowledge present in the Veda. So they set aside some of the suktas that they thought were relevant eternally and came up with the practice of Sandhya Vandanam and prescribed it as compulsory for every brahmin.

Here are some of the mantras from Sandhya found in the Vedas and Upanishads:

1) MArjana Mantram: ApO HishTha-- Rig Veda10.9 (the first time, only the first 6 Riks are chanted. In the punar-mArjanam, all the riks in the suktam are chanted)

2) Rtam cha Satyam-- Rig Veda 10.190 (This suktam deals with Creation!)

3) AyAtu varadA dEvi -- TaittIriya Aranyaka 10.26-1

4) OjOsi sahOsi -- TaittIriya Aranyaka 10.26-1

5) gAyatrIm AvAhAyAmi-- TaittIriya Aranyaka 10.26-1

6) tatsaviturvarENyam (gayatri mantram)-- Rig Veda 3.62-10

7) Om bhUrbhuvah... (the whole gAyatri mantram)--- VajasanEyi samhita (the other name for Shukla Yajur Veda) 36.3, taittIriya samhita (the other name for Krishna Yajur Veda) 4.1.11-1

8) UttamE SikharE -- MahAnArAyanOpaniSad 36.1

9) Rtam satyam param -- MahAnArAyanOpaniSad 23.1

10) Mitrasya CharshaNi-- Rig Veda 3.59-6,7,8,9 (In most other versions, 3.58-6,1,2 are chanted instead)

11) jAtavEdase-- Rig Veda 1.99-1

12) Om bhadram nO apivAtaye manah-- Rig Veda 10.20-1

Note that only Pratah Sandhya mantras in are presented here.