Introduction to Veda and Vedic Literature

What are Vedas?

Vedas are scriptures recorded by a civilization that lived on the banks of river Sarasvati in presently north west India. The Vedic tradition lives on in India to this date, where it is still practiced by isolated groups of scholars.

It was believed that among the cycles of civilizations there once existed a Vedic civilization which spanned across the world. There is irrefutable evidence provided by linkages between Sanskrit and many other languages around the world including Europe and Central Asia and ancient Iran. Many Vedic and para-Vedic civilizations may have existed elsewhere in other parts of the world. All these cultures have become extinct except the Vedic.

As happens with any world view that has potential to dominate, there are always competing dispensations, some of whom have a vested interest in creating a mischievous propaganda about the Vedas. In addition to this, the practitioners themselves have a lot of misperceptions about the subject. Here we will attempt to discuss and root out the propaganda, as well as remove common misperceptions among the practitioners.

Ever since the 18th century colonialist Europeans discovered Sanskrit and Vedas, they made all out efforts to claim the origin of both Sanskrit and Vedas and credit them to Europe. However these efforts are slanderous, half-hearted, outright fraudulent, hypocritical and self-serving. They are slanderous because, while plundering the wealth of Sanskrit's grammar to develop their native grammars they denounced Sanskrit as a 'dead language'. They are half-hearted because they only plundered what they could understand, and discarded as worthless what they don't understand. They are fraudulent because they rely entirely on failed sciences of 19th century and reject archeology and most of the advanced sciences including artificial intelligence and genetics. They are hypocritical in that, while praising the structure of Sanskrit language as perfect within closed doors, they continue to keep their own people in ignorance by not popularizing this wealth to them. In addition, these cunning European scholars became subservient to Christianity by ignoring Europe's own glorious pre-Christian cultures that were destroyed after the advent of Christianity. They are self-serving (and not academically impartial) because they let some of the proven sciences like yoga being introduced to their populations in the west after stripping off the labels to confound the origin of these sciences. A lot of misinformation is being propagated about Vedas and Vedic cultures by the cartels of unscrupulous non-scholars who control important academic positions in various universities. The only way to dismantle this fraud is through self education and standing up against it. None of these non-scholars have been able to answer any pointed questions on any topic so far in any online forums.

It was said that Vedas are composed by Indo European nomadic tribes. But the highly complex grammar rules which went into making of the most ancient and most voluminous of the work in the world, the Rgveda, could not have been present without the surrounding paraphernalia of a vast cultural capital and ancillary literature, and without a life support from a large civilization. The Rgveda itself had more than 1000 oral recensions. Therefore the term 'nomadic' is inappropriate, whatever the claimed technicalities of the word are. The rishis don't become nomads just because they lived in the forests and were always on the move, as they were always in contact with great civilizations.

As the Vedas were never put to writing till about 2500 years ago, it was said that writing was not known to authors of the Vedas. The fact is, Sanskrit and Vedas were supported by countless civilizations whose own languages were lost in the history of mankind. The conceivers of Vedas were intelligent enough to understand that any script becomes indecipherable in only a few centuries and they knew the futility of putting the Vedas to writing which would have made their script indecipherable making the Vedas extinct within a couple of millennia. As a results, Vedas were never put to writing. They were only transmitted from person to person.

Divisions of Vedic Literature

'Veda' means 'That which can be known'. Veda was meant to be a repository of knowledge known to the Vedic civilization.

The Vedas are recorded in an ancient version of Sanskrit language as poetry and prose. An example of Vedic poetry is typically found in what is called Mantra or Samhita literature which is available in four parts namely Rgveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharva veda.

The prose of Vedic literature is typically found in what is called 'Brahmana' literature. The brahmana literature contains the rules for conducting various yajnas and utilizes the Mantra/Samhita portions of the Vedas. There are hundreds of types of yajnas described in the Veda. A yajna is an algorithmic representation of actions to be taken by the priests. Hundreds of such yajnas form a large hierarchy of inheritance, somewhat akin to object oriented modeling. An example of Vedic prose is,

A part of the Samhita literature, usually the end portions of it, are called upanishats. The upanishats contain easily understandable 'knowledge portions' (or jnAna kAnDa). Upanishats have a large following among the population due to their philosophical content. The quality of the knowledge contained in the upanishats, together with Adi Sankara'a commentary far exceeds the quality of philosophy discussed by any European logician or philosopher. It is a misfortune that upanishats have yet to attain an official recognition as a valid subject that can be taught in a university even in India where they originated.

Now, the division between ritual and upanishat portions of Veda, however well intended by tradition, is crude and highly misleading and in a way self-deprecating. The fact remains that large portions of upanishats themselves contain the so called ritualistic material which remained so far undeciphered even for the best of the intellects among upanishat commentators and followers. On the other hand, the so-called ritualistic brahmana portions contain some of the finest ever upanishat-grade material. To repeat, even a cursory inquiry would reveal that the whole division of upanishat(jnana kanda) vs karma kanda is arbitrary.

In addition to the Samhita and Brahmana literature, there is sutra literature which more or less closer to brahmana literature in their content. In addition, there are books on grammars, music, and other ancillary knowledge needed for performing the yajnas.

At this site, by Veda or Vedic literature we also include tantra (lit., 'technique') and many other local traditions. The word tantra invokes horror and disgust, but this is mostly born out of misunderstanding. Tantra is the traditional name given for the process of innovative research into Vedas. Research by any name is reserved for only top notch scientists in any field; and many times research brings up moral and ethical questions, as happens in various fields like medical, embryonic and nuclear research. Tantra is no different in presenting its own conflicts. Ultimately the knowledge acquired from tantra is to be consolidated as Veda which is the knowledge base.

Local traditions are the native Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) and practices of various tribes and civilizations big and small, present and ancient. Till the third quarter of 20th century there had been a general disdain for native knowledge systems and contempt for their practices. Native beliefs are trashed as superstitions and their practices are derided as empty rituals. At the same time organized gangs of unscrupulous scholars have been preying on TKS with a view to plunder their knowledge content and siphon off to modern sciences while at the same time trashing the traditional followers. This is a double edged strategy to evade payment of royalties that would otherwise accrue to the natives and at the same time charge them for the modern systems built on the ruins of TKS. This is the modern knowledge equivalent of how colonial Britishers imported cotton from their colonies and sold finished products to the colonies all the while using the transportation systems such as roads and railways built using bricks excavated from ancient historic sites such as Harappa and Mohenjodaro which to this date remain the yet undeciphered archeological wonders.

Efforts have also made over the last two centuries to create rifts between local traditions and Vedic traditions to present a false world view as if the two opposed each other. But there was never any such conflict. The process through which Vedas developed was no different from how sciences developed. Whenever a local tradition develops to meet the highest standard it claims its entry into Veda.

What do Vedas contain?

Tradition says that Vedas are a condensed form of knowledge consisting of innumerable subjects ranging from grammar, etymology, philosophy, logic, psychology, psycho-somatic relationships, yoga, astronomy, and so on. Most portions of Vedas are incomprehensible to the uninitiated and continually pose a challenge to generations of scholars; the reason being that the knowledge contained in them is in a highly codified form, and the key to this codification is lost over the ages. However there is hope: as the subjects that made up the Vedas are all inter linked, mastering any one subject such as yoga gives enough clues to make connections and understand the other subjects contained in the Vedas.

Then again there are accusations that Vedas contain meaningless rituals, that Vedic poetry is a mechanical poetry and so on. Many European non-scholars who made claims on Rgveda wondered how could such a grandiose literature be "misused" for ritual purpose by "later day" Brahmana literature.

To unearth the correct answer for these questions and to dismantle such propaganda we need to explore the Vedic mind.

The authors of Vedas guessed quite correctly that the knowledge inherent in the Vedas might one day be lost over long periods of time. Seeing this threat, they organized Vedic knowledge as a complicated ritual that can be practiced by a group of highly specialized priests. Imagine a highly unlikely example: for instance, a company such as Microsoft, fearing that one day people may forget how to write an operating system, decides to create a live drama in which various players representing the software components of the operating system interact with each other on stage to represent the knowledge contained in the OS, and each of the actors memorizes and chants the software code that makes up the OS. Practicing such a ritual even without being aware of the underlying knowledge has surely helped in the survival of Vedas textually.

Many scholars made an arbitrary determination that some parts of Vedic literature are 'later' than the 'oldest' Rgveda based on the fact that the grammar of Rgveda appeared more archaic than rest of the literature. Here is the answer: Rgveda is the oldest because it forms the most basic material that forms part of any yajna and this material had crystalized several millennia ago. There are hundreds of yajnas and the literature that describes these yajnas is more voluminous than the mantras because the yajnas are invoked recursively from one another, just as computer programs are called from another; therefore the combinations of such invocations are infinite. This knowledge of yajnas was recorded much later using a later grammar of the day, when performance of yajnas was going into disuse. The knowledge of yajnas did exist in Rgveda, as evidenced by the names of the classes of priests such as Hotr, adhvaryu, Potr etc. The upanishat literature has a more modern grammar because the upanishats contain the most commonly known philosophical knowledge which was not so easy to forget, and therefore it was formally documented much later.

To understand the true import of Vedas there is need for unquenchable dedication and determination for inquiry into the truth and a constant practice of yoga. The last item, yoga, is the most important component of Vedic analysis because the entire Vedic corpus of literature is only a reflection of what goes on in one's own body-mind complex. The mantras of Rgveda are already ringing in the mind, of why only humans, even of animals and insects down to viruses.

What is in practice today?

There are a few traditional Vedic schools in India where Veda is taught. Veda as a ritual is still being practiced by a few isolated groups of scholars in India. The practice is dwindling due to lack of support for this art.

A number of academic institutions and universities around the world study Sanskrit language and other aspects of Vedas as part of the subject labeled as "Indology"; however the purpose of such study is not to investigate the true import of the Vedic literature, but only to promote certain pre-conceived Euro-centric theories and collect necessary data from the vast Vedic corpus that matches their theories. A true scientific inquiry should proceed the other way round, namely modify one's theory to suit the data. Most all of these schools do a lip service rather than a serious study of Veda. Worse, many of them try to cash out in their name. One self-serving entrepreneur even recorded Vedic chanting on CDs and started selling via internet without considering a royalty to the original chanter.

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