Into The Light

A couple of days back, a friend gave me a nefarious time-soaking device: Season 1 and the pilot DVDs of Battlestar Galactica. It's coming to an end right now in the US, and I have not been that fond of SF serials anyway. But when I started watching it, I just couldn't stop at one, as the potato chips ad goes!

What really gripped my attention was the title music for the pilot and the episodes. Both have operatic voices singing some strangely familiar chants. And it dawned on me that these are the same mantras that we have known for a long time.

The pilot uses the chant "Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamayaa". Having heard and read this one so many times, I was finally curious to delve deeper into the exact meaning and significance of this phrase. A little bit of research told me that this is part of a complete chant, as below:

"असतो मा सदगमय; तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय; मृत्योर मा अमृतं गमय; ॐ शांति शांति शांति"

"Asato Ma SadGamaya; Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya; Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya; Om Shanti Shanti Shanti"

Meaning:
"O Lord, Lead Us From Untruth To Truth, Lead Us From Darkness To Light, Lead Us From Death To Immortality, Om (signifying the sound of the Eternal) Let There Be Peace Peace Peace."

This chant is taken from the Third Brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.27).

The things we have to relearn from foreign shores! Even the link above is to the Max Muller translation of the Upanishad. Well, knowledge doesn't really belong to anyone, I guess!

Okay, this was just the pilot. The episodes use a different chant as their title music. More on that in a separate post.