Welcome to the wonder that is Veda! For many thousands of years many unknown civilizations had painstakingly maintained these voluminous and apparently indecipherable texts called Vedas. Most of the materials were maintained by ancient civilizations in India (called Vedas) and in ancient Iran (these are called Avesta). More materials were found in Lithuania where a language close to Sanskrit is spoken even now. Some RgVedic stories were also reported from Japan and other places.
Many things have been said about these texts. The devout followers believe that Vedas contain everything. They believe Veda is not a religion, but a mother of religions. Entire societies were built on Vedic tenets. From time to time reformers and leaders of society adopted what they considered is the best of Veda for the benefit of society.
Vedas, like any other literature, survived through difficult times. Somehow over the ages the essential knowledge of Vedas was lost among its practitioners. Fortunately Vedic seers recognized such a possibility and organized Vedic knowledge as a complicated ritual. Practicing the ritual even without the underlying knowledge has surely helped in the survival of Vedas, but it has weakened their impact on society.
Some critics believe that Vedas are mere stories of fights between gods and demons, and are worthless except for the grammar and linguistics. Many others believed that Vedas were invented by priesthood to continue their own prosperity and dominance.
Even some of the common mis-beliefs of the post Vedic period had also contributed to the neglect of Vedas and Sanskrit language. Just to quote a few: The criticism that only upaniSaDs and bhagavat gIta teach the highest reality and that Vedas entice people toward worldly or heavenly desires is one such. How can that be? As this site will establish, upaniSads are merely a portion of Vedas in their more compassionate mood when they get down to give us their teachings of the highest reality (Advaita or neuro-fuzzy rule sets or whatever is your favorite!) in more simpler words than rest of the texts.
Another is a badly mis-interpreted remark attributed to Adi Sankara himself: "nahi nahi rakSati dukRNkaraNe". The interpretation "When the end comes, grammar rules do not protect you" is outright illogical. It also goes against the spirit of taittirIya upaniSad which proves that one can achieve the highest reality just by grammar rules alone! Well, Adi guru can not go wrong. What he meant was: "Forgetting the praise of govindA (a form of viSNu), and vainly arguing grammar rules does not protect".
In the recent past, modern scholarship belonging to various countries worked to rediscover Vedas. Progress is slow to achieve because of the undoing of the Vedas themselves! The seers who saw the Vedas found that the only language to express their knowledge satisfactorily is the highly codified Vedic Ritual; and we lost the key to understand the ritual sometime through the ages. That key, in my opinion, was forgotten even by the time of bhagvAn buddhA to whom the Vedic scholars could not give a satisfactory reply as to why they practice the rituals.
It is the social responsibility of any society to maintain its wealth and heritage whether that heritage is of immediate utility or not. Vedas are the heritage of modern society. It is senseless and irresponsible to neglect them and cause their extinction. It is even more senseless to race for the original authorship without even a courtesy of thanks to the civilizations that underwent the struggles to bring them over to us. I do thank Carnot for his thermodynamics every time I drive my car.
A majority of the Vedic and other books were lost due to foreign invasions and sheer neglect. Many books are still on palm leafs. Traditional Vedic education system that maintained Vedas over ages is under constant threat of extinction from various economic and social factors.
Inspite of all these odds Vedas survived, if only a few of the versions, due to incessant practice of traditional Vedic schools. Many kind publishers brought out a few books but they are now out of print due to lack of commercial interest. Some publishers still refuse to publish anything that is not Vedic despite minimal sales. Some big businesses and temples are organizing Vedic rituals on large scale occasionally. All this shows that Dharma (the fourfold hierarchy of responsibilities) is alive however feebly.
It is time to rethink about Vedas. It is time to turn our attention towards them and rekindle public interest in Vedas. It is time to bring Vedas back to public life with a proper perspective. It is time to make it "profitable" for people to work for Vedas.
There has always been a complaint that Vedic knowledge did not flow to all sections of the society. Despite some unfortunate incidents recorded in mythology, the fact of real history is, no one was ever denied any Vedic knowledge on the basis of one's category in the society! Those who were accused of not revealing Vedic knowledge, in all probability, did not have it in the first place! When something is not known it becomes a top secret!
One may ask: how about those explicit rules that prevent others from accessing Vedas? Let us understand that there was no publishing technology in those days, not even cd-ROMs, let alone internet web sites (sentence style borrowed from management guru Peter F Drucker). Vedas were too voluminous to be distributed to everyone without a loss of quality of maintenance. Only a small portion of the people in the society who had money and education, who can also pass on that knowledge along family lines and closed circles were allowed to study Vedas in order to preserve the quality of the texts.
Through the ages all sections of the society had toiled to bring Vedas to the present, at times even bearing the brunt of unequal personal laws. This knowledge belongs to every one, and it is time to distribute the Vedic knowledge to all sections of the society irrespective of category, again, without compromising on quality.
Let us thank all those devoted people who brought us the Vedas in the face of constant ridicule. Let us thank all others who supported Vedas and let us pay apologies to those who suffered in any way supporting Vedas.
Let us consider every work done for Vedas as valuable and sacred whatever be the competence, effectiveness, accuracy and quality of the work. If something is wrong we could always improve it. Let us not deny any view point outright if the viewpoint is made in good faith.
Let us thank all those who worked for Vedas, whatever be their stated or unstated intentions. Never mind if somebody wanted to prove Vedas to be otherwise than they are, if they really went through the subject carefully, and made the observations intelligently.
Let us respect every version of Vedic work, or Veda related works. Let us accept every method of interpretation such as advaita, bouddha etc as useful, even though some of us may be more comfortable with one of those methods. Let us try to find answers to every question that arises on our way in trying to understand Vedas. At no stage shall we reach a point of saturation or get into endless discussions on logic. (Not to repeat that mistake again, let us expressly state that it is possible to indicate the highest reality through logic alone!).
Let us respect and support every other work done by those who discovered the Vedas, or by those who brought us Vedas over the ages, or by those who were influenced by Vedas. This spans a wide varieties of works in various fields in various languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Lithuanian, Parsi etc. All these languages and the cultures of people who use them carry the influence of Vedas. We call these "local customs".
Let us support any activity that promotes Vedas and Veda related materials. Let us support publishers who publish Vedic books. It is up to you whether or not you expect a profit from this support. Just state your intent.
Let us give credit to opinions of others, always, whether we quote them in our works or not. Let us respect all copyrights. If you can not pay the price for any work, ask its author for a free copy, you might even get it!
This site is for people who practice and teach Veda and Veda related subjects. It is for those who want to build other people as experts in Veda. Let us be committed to svAdhyAya pravachanecha (practicing and teaching).