User:Universal Life/Prabhata Samgiita

Prabháta Saḿgiita or Prabhát Saḿgiit (Bengali: প্রভাত সঙ্গীত Probhat Shongit, ), also known as Songs of a New Dawn or Prabhat's Songs, are the collection of songs composed by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. Sarkar composed a total of 5,018 songs, including the lyrics and the melody, over a period of eight years from 1982 until his death in 1990. While most songs are in the Bengali language, some are in Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Urdu, Magahi, Maithili and Angika. Prabhát Saḿgiit is also sometimes considered to be a post-Tagore gharana (school of music). The poetry of lyrics expresses elements of love, mysticism, devotion, neohumanism and revolution and the songs present a wide spectrum of both Eastern and Western melodic styles.

Etymology, Name and Variants
As Prabhát(a) is the name of the composer, Prabháta Saḿgiita literally means "songs of Prabhat". In Bengali, the word prabhát(a) (প্রভাত - ) means dawn, morning or daybreak. The word sauṋgiit(a) (সঙ্গীত - ) also spelled saḿgiit(a) (সংগীত - ) means song and music. Thus, prabhát(a) sauṋgiit(a) or prabhát(a) saḿgiit(a) etymologically means "morning song" or "songs of dawn". It has also been interpreted as "songs of a new dawn".

It has many spelling variants, with the following reasons: the word saḿgiit has two different spellings in Bengali, there is no fix transliteration rule for most Indian languages, there are also different transcription conventions used in English for Indian languages, the Sanskrit pronunciation has an "a" at the end of both words, which is normally silent in Bengali and Hindi.

Thus we have the word prabhat that can be spelled as:
 * Prabhat, Prabhát, Prabhāt, Prabhata, Prabháta, Prabhāta

And we have the word samgiit that can be spelled as:


 * Sangit, Sangeet, Sangiit, Samgiit, Saḿgiit, Saṃgīt, Sauṋgiit, Saŋgīt and all of these with "a" at the end:


 * Sangita, Sangeeta, Sangiita, Samgiita, Saḿgiita, Saṃgīta, Sauṋgiita and Saŋgīta

If combined, all these variations could create a huge number of spelling variants for Prabhat Samgiit, however not all combinations are used. Subhas Sarkar mainly prefers the variant Prabháta Saḿgiita and sometimes uses Prabhāta saṃgīta. There is no consistency of spelling, even within the same newspapers. The Hindu often spells Prabhat Samgiita however also spells Prabhat Sangit and also Prabhat Sangeet. The Times of India uses both Prabhat Samgiita and Prabhat Sangeet. Most other newspapers spell Prabhat Sangeet, though some articles prefer Prabhat Sangit and Prabhata Samgiita. Publications of Ananda Marga usually goes by the spelling Prabháta Saḿgiita and also often by Prabhát Saḿgiita and Prabhát Saḿgiit. Older publications, however, tend to use the variant Prabhát Sauṋgiit or Prabháta Sauṋgiita. Finally there are instances of unusual spellings as well, such as Prabhat Sangeeth and Prabhat Samhitta.