Village temple priests set to be trained in Tamil, Sanskrit

Chennai: About 100 priests of village temples across Tamil Nadu will congregate in Salem on April 6 to undergo rigorous training in both Tamil and Sanskrit to perform pujas and other daily rituals connected with the temples."The village temple priests represent various castes and are aged 16 to 55 years. They would be trained in the conduct of archanai and abishekam to the deities and other rituals connected with the temples, particularly annual festivals at the temples," says P. Vasu, Temple Priests Welfare Association (Kovil Pusarikal Nala Sangam).
Many of those who would attend the six-day training session have been performing pujas in the village temples and the present training \ refresher course would enable them to adopt a uniform system of conducting the archa-
nai and abishekam.

Though the training will be imparted in Tamil, they would be trained to conduct the archana in Sanskrit too. "These priests are not Brahmins and they would be taught to perform the rituals as prescribed in the sacred texts," he claimed.

"Due to paucity of time, we have not included yoga or Suryanamaskaram during this session. However, we have plans to include a special session on yoga, considering its importance, from next year onwards," Mr Vasu told this correspondent on Monday.

All the participants would be provided vegetarian meals, though they are all non-Brahmins.

"We have decided to impart them the skills to cater to the requirement of the devotees in their villages. Atleast two from each district would attend and all of them would be given a certificate upon completion of the course," he said.