On many an occasion, like other Americans of Indic origin I found
myself in search of a text on the subject of Hindu weddings, which
not only explained the various steps in the ceremony but gave the
rationale in a clearly intelligible manner, for these steps in the
marriage. I found the pickings slim especially when I was looking for a
text which was tuned towards audiences in North America. But I am
not the one to give up easily, I mentioned the fact that I was looking
for such a text to Dr. A V Srinivasan who also happened to be the
manager I reported to several years ago when I was working for Pratt
and Whitney. It turned out that he had just completed the manuscript
for a book on the topic and to cut a long story short I offered to review
it in my website.
Needless to say, the effort has proved to be a delight. . It is quite
obvious that the book is a labor of love, all the more so since the
author has performed numerous Hindu weddings all across the
United States.
The book is 227 pages long , and consists of 5 chapters, 6 appendices
, a bibliography, a glossary of commonly used Sanskrit terms and a
page describing the Devanagari alphabet with the associated
transliteration scheme that is used in the book. The font size is easy
on the eyes and the book is profusely illustrated both with
photographs and artistically rendered illustrations on almost every
page. The reference value of the book is immensely enhanced by
including all the mantras used in a typical wedding, both in
Devanagari (the customary script for the Sanskrit language , the
language in which the mantras are chanted) . Of course the real value
of the book lies in its semantic and literary content, and we therefore
give a synopsis of these contents.