History of Vedic Interpretation

Tradition says that Vedas contain everything. Unlike many other religions whose limited literature is available in any hotel room, Vedic literature is vast, voluminous and out of reach of entire populations. Less than 0.01% of the population has ever seen a Vedic text, let alone making an attempt to interpret.

Following are the currently available approaches to interpretation of Vedas.

Mythology, Philosophy and Logic

Since ancient times Vedas were interpreted using mythological, philosophical and logical approaches.

The term 'mythology' is a loaded English word imposed on the field from outside. This term is inappropriate now, as it implies that the subject under investigation is a 'myth', unreal and ahistoric. The correct term used in tradition is 'purANa' which is a mixture of history and imagination. The purANa models are cyclical wherein history repeats at fixed intervals. The purANa approaches were meant to help common people in society to get a grasp of Vedas even without knowing the jargon, and are found to be helpful in understanding Vedas in an indirect way. They also give clues how to interpret the Vedas.

The philosophical and logical approaches that we have today have been gold standard of Scriptural interpretation for more than 3000 years. These include (but not limited to) the set of six darshanas namely advaita, dvaita, vishishtadvaita, vaiseshika, samkhya, nyaya, and others such as jaina and boudha. These approaches are developed and practiced by individual sects or schools within those sects. Many of these approaches are today politically classified as different religions such as Hindu, Buddhist and Jain, mostly for the wrong reasons. Some of these approaches such as Buddhist and Jain as well as the 'Hindu' charvakas do not accept the authority of Vedas. All these traditions can be consider as belonging to a larger umbrella of Indic traditions because they all have a long history of interaction and discourse. The six darshanas mentioned above are part of 'astika' existential traditions of Hinduism. In addition there are also non-existential traditions such as nastika, charvaka etc. The astika traditions accept authority of Vedas. Of the astika traditions, the purva meemaamsa derives its authority from the ritual portions of Veda and the uttara meemamsa and rest of the darshanas mostly derive their theories form some of the last portions of Brahmana literature namely 'Upanishats'.

The striking feature of these classical traditions whether Hindu, Budhhist or Jain is that all these approaches are self rejuvenating and new scriptures keep getting created every few centuries (Jewish culture is another parallel one can see that has similar features of rejuvenation). In other words, these traditions do not strictly consider their scriptures as written in stone. As new seers are born there would be a flood of new scriptures and new interpretations of older materials. However in Vedas themselves there have been no new major additions since 2700 years.

Another striking feature of all these traditional approaches is that they were all obsessed with discourses at the highest level of existence. This is both a positive and negative factor. It is positive in that being firmly established in the discourse at the highest level has created a following that is well established in basics and not easily distracted.

However, the major drawback of this top down approach is that there is less enthusiasm for followers of any sect to get into lower level details. This problem is very prominent in Vedic; as a result the Brahmana, sutra and other ancillary literature took a back seat compared to Upanishats and Gita which have got some extra limelight. By not venturing into the so called 'lower' literature, the traditions have become stagnant and their discourses have become monotonous. What these traditional schools did not realize is that the so called 'lower' scriptures are actually 'advanced' scriptures that contained more complex knowledge structures! This situation is akin to what a Java programmer is familiar with: The highest classes in Java are the most powerful, but they would have fewer details, fewer methods and little data. The lower classes that derive from the higher classes contain more numerous methods, they deal with a lot more data and their processing is a lot more complex and their knowledge is likewise higher. In fact many major portions of upanishats themselves contain materials called 'karma kanda' (or ritualistic materials) which are mistakenly considered 'lower'. As a result major portions of upanishats themselves as well whole volumes of Brahmana and Sutra literatures remains unexplored and waiting to be interpreted. This situation provides an opportunity for an adventurous interpreter who is willing to take the risks.

Astronomy, Geometry, Number systems, Sciences etc

Many scholars have been studying the use of subjects like mathematics and sciences in Veda. Evidence of astronomy, geometric constants like Pi or use of Pythagoras theorem etc, various mathematical techniques, the concept of zero etc were reported in the ancillary literature used in conjunction to Vedas. Efforts still continue in this direction.

Comparative Linguistics & Phonology

In 19th and 20th centuries many western scholars saved the Vedic manuscripts from extinction and published them. (Well, this seems like a great favor done, but it was never needed in the first place, had the colonialists not looted India's riches for 300 years. Vedic culture remained intact during the worst Islamic attacks, especially in the South India.) These scholars followed various approaches namely Comparative Linguistics and Philology.

Before discovery of Sanskrit, there was no grammar worth the name in European academy. After appropriating all decipherable knowledge from Sanskrit, and indexing it in their own way using their jargon, the European scholars invented a subjects called Comparative Linguists which is born of studying relationships between Sanskrit, European, central Asian and other languages of the world. Vedic grammar was compared to other grammars of the world, and it was found to be of a very advanced nature. The phonology of Vedic recitation was studied using advanced instruments and was found to be very accurately preserved in present day Vedic ritualistic practices. In spite of the intense linguistic studies, the meaning of Vedas still remained a mystery. Some modern scholars had even concluded that Vedas are a canonical theology developed by priestly cadres to further their dominance in the society, and that the Vedic verses were mere grammatical structures with no comprehensible meaning at all. The Comparative linguistics approach merely remained as a technique that may help us understand how languages change when Spanish migrate to Japan or when Koreans migrate to Northern Ireland. But this approach has no clue to study integrity of a whole language as it was originally conceived by its original speakers, nor did it have the ability to comprehend or explain what the original thinkers of Vedas had in mind when they codified the brahmana literature.

Other Recent Interpretations

In late 20th century many scholars claimed finding of 'Vedic Psychology', 'Cosmic particles' or nuclear physics in Vedas; but many of these 'findings' were found to be regular papers of respective scientific disciplines, albeit genuine, with a 'Vedic' label attached to them. Some serious scholars have taken up the philosophy of life as described in Upanishads of Vedas, and attempted to formulate a theory of evolution. Surely the inspiration for these efforts is Veda, but the approach is still science as we know it today. No direct attempt has been made to interpret Vedic symbols or rituals as such directly being related to the modern subjects.

Modern Vedic Psychophysics

The first effort towards a modern interpretation of Vedas was made by Mr. Kondamudi Hanumatchastry (address in India unknown) in 1981, when he wrote a series of articles in Andhra Prabha and discussed medical benefits of a meditation mentioned in the 'Prana Sukta' chapter of Atharva Veda. Mr. Hanumatchastry's topic is outlined at http://www.oocities.org/vaidix/qad2.htm

The efforts of Bhadraiah Mallampalli since 1974 have led to the discovery of Psychophysics in Vedas in late 1980s. Mallampalli started out with the assumption that an intelligent civilization that achieved heights of grammatical accuracy could not have possibly wasted their time deliberating meaningless relationships between un-thought of symbols. Later in 1984, Mallampalli discovered the Vedic concept of breathing in Chandogya Upanishad. Other topics such as components of knowledge, derivatives of knowledge, origins of vedic symbols etc were discovered in 1990s. All these concepts have been verified by pranaayaama and repeatable using meditations and yogas that are easy to understand and practice. This is the most promising of all approaches we have so far, in that the scope for research is unlimited, and the possibility of seeing new Vedas in some distant future is becoming a plausibility.

A note on "Hinduism:: By the way, the term Hinduism deserves a discussion. This term was first coined by British some time after 17th century to denote a set of 'religious' practices in India. However, the word "Hind" itself had come into existence in 7th century ever since the Arabic invaders came into contact with India. Using the process by which the term "Hinduism", we can speculate that the beliefs of people who settled in the continental United States can be called "Americaism", e.g., belief in Zoro, avoiding number 13, belief in Super man, UFOs and so on. In other words, Hinduism is a regional definition of a set of practices called 'religion'. Now, the term religion itself invites further discussion. The Larin word religare means to tie back and restrict, so religion means a set of practices to tie back and restrict a practitioner. It is doubtful if this word can be used to describe the so called "Hinduism" at all, ecause many paths within "Hinduism" claim to 'liberate' people instead of restraining them. In addition, the suffix "ism" is another mischevious addition, because this suffix implies a reckless application of a principle to human activity irrespective of consequences, as happens to Capitalism, Communism, etc. In Capitalism people work to acquire and amass capital at the expenese of everything; whereas Communism works in a different way. The names "Hinduism", "Buddhism", Judiasm" that have come into currency during the colonial times do not represent the true spirit of the paths, and actually misrepresent them. While two other major religions have been spared from this suffix, the followers of the paths that use the suffix have internalize the terms.