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Vedas

The Vedas (/ˈvdə(z)/[4] or /ˈvdə(z)/,[5] IAST: veda, Sanskrit: वेदः, lit.'knowledge') are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.[6][7][8]

Vedas
Four Vedas
Information
ReligionHinduism
LanguageVedic Sanskrit
Periodc. 1500–1200 BCE (Rigveda),[1][note 1]
c. 1200–900 BCE (Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda)[1][2]
Verses20,379 mantras[3]
Full text
The Vedas at English Wikisource
The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the Atharvaveda.

There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda.[9][10] Each Veda has four subdivisions – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices), the Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).[9][11][12] Some scholars add a fifth category – the Upasanas (worship).[13][14] The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana-traditions.[15]

Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"),[16] distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what is remembered"). Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means "not of a man, superhuman"[17] and "impersonal, authorless,"[18][19][20] revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation.[21][22]

The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques.[23][24][25] The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer.[26] By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base."[26]

The various Indian philosophies and Hindu denominations have taken differing positions on the Vedas; schools of Indian philosophy that acknowledge the primal authority of the Vedas are classified as "orthodox" (āstika).[note 2] Other śramaṇa traditions, such as Charvaka, Ajivika, Buddhism, and Jainism, which did not regard the Vedas as authorities, are referred to as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" (nāstika) schools.[15][27]

Etymology and usage

The Sanskrit word véda "knowledge, wisdom" is derived from the root vid- "to know". This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *u̯eid-, meaning "see" or "know."[28][29]

The noun is from Proto-Indo-European *u̯eidos, cognate to Greek (ϝ)εἶδος "aspect", "form" . This is not to be confused with the homonymous 1st and 3rd person singular perfect tense véda, cognate to Greek (ϝ)οἶδα (w)oida "I know". Root cognates are Greek ἰδέα, English wit, etc., Latin videō "I see", German wissen "to know" etc.[30]

The Sanskrit term veda as a common noun means "knowledge".[28] The term in some contexts, such as hymn 10.93.11 of the Rigveda, means "obtaining or finding wealth, property",[31] while in some others it means "a bunch of grass together" as in a broom or for ritual fire.[32]

Vedas are called Maṛai or Vaymoli in parts of South India. Marai literally means "hidden, a secret, mystery". But the Tamil Naan Marai mentioned in Tholkappiam is not Sanskrit Vedas.[33][34] In some parts of South India (e.g. the Iyengar communities), the word veda is used in the Tamil writings of the Alvar saints. Such writings include the Naalayira Divya Prabandham (aka Tiruvaymoli).[35]

Vedic texts

 
Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari

Vedic Sanskrit corpus

The term "Vedic texts" is used in two distinct meanings:

  1. Texts composed in Vedic Sanskrit during the Vedic period (Iron Age India)
  2. Any text considered as "connected to the Vedas" or a "corollary of the Vedas"[36]

The corpus of Vedic Sanskrit texts includes:

  • The Samhitas (Sanskrit saṃhitā, "collection"), are collections of metric texts ("mantras"). There are four "Vedic" Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda and Atharva-Veda, most of which are available in several recensions (śākhā). In some contexts, the term Veda is used to refer only to these Samhitas, the collection of mantras. This is the oldest layer of Vedic texts, which were composed between circa 1500–1200 BCE (Rig Veda book 2–9),[note 1] and 1200–900 BCE for the other Samhitas. The Samhitas contain invocations to deities like Indra and Agni, "to secure their benediction for success in battles or for welfare of the clan."[37] The complete corpus of Vedic mantras as collected in Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance (1907) consists of some 89,000 padas (metrical feet), of which 72,000 occur in the four Samhitas.[38]
  • The Brahmanas are prose texts that comment and explain the solemn rituals as well as expound on their meaning and many connected themes. Each of the Brahmanas is associated with one of the Samhitas or its recensions.[39][40] The oldest dated to about 900 BCE, while the youngest Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana), were complete by about 700 BCE.[41][42] The Brahmanas may either form separate texts or can be partly integrated into the text of the Samhitas. They may also include the Aranyakas and Upanishads.
  • The Aranyakas, "wilderness texts" or "forest treaties", were composed by people who meditated in the woods as recluses and are the third part of the Vedas. The texts contain discussions and interpretations of ceremonies, from ritualistic to symbolic meta-ritualistic points of view.[43] It is frequently read in secondary literature.
  • Older Principal Upanishads (Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chandogya, Kaṭha, Kena, Aitareya, and others),[1][44] composed between 800 BCE and the end of the Vedic period.[45] The Upanishads are largely philosophical works, some in dialogue form. They are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions.[46][47] Of the Vedic corpus, they alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishads are still influential in Hinduism.[46][48]
  • The texts considered "Vedic" in the sense of "corollaries of the Vedas" are less clearly defined, and may include numerous post-Vedic texts such as the later Upanishads and the Sutra literature, such as Shrauta Sutras and Gryha Sutras, which are smriti texts. Together, the Vedas and these Sutras form part of the Vedic Sanskrit corpus.[1][note 3][note 4]

While production of Brahmanas and Aranyakas ceased with the end of the Vedic period, additional Upanishads were composed after the end of the Vedic period.[49] The Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads, among other things, interpret and discuss the Samhitas in philosophical and metaphorical ways to explore abstract concepts such as the Absolute (Brahman), and the soul or the self (Atman), introducing Vedanta philosophy, one of the major trends of later Hinduism. In other parts, they show evolution of ideas, such as from actual sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice, and of spirituality in the Upanishads. This has inspired later Hindu scholars such as Adi Shankara to classify each Veda into karma-kanda (कर्म खण्ड, action/sacrificial ritual-related sections, the Samhitas and Brahmanas); and jnana-kanda (ज्ञान खण्ड, knowledge/spirituality-related sections, mainly the Upanishads').[50][51][52][53][54][note 5]

Śruti and smriti

Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"),[16] distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what is remembered"). This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Müller and, while it is subject to some debate, it is still widely used. As Axel Michaels explains:

These classifications are often not tenable for linguistic and formal reasons: There is not only one collection at any one time, but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools; Upanişads [...] are sometimes not to be distinguished from Āraṇyakas [...]; Brāhmaṇas contain older strata of language attributed to the Saṃhitās; there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools. Nevertheless, it is advisable to stick to the division adopted by Max Müller because it follows the Indian tradition, conveys the historical sequence fairly accurately, and underlies the current editions, translations, and monographs on Vedic literature."[44]

Among the widely known śrutis include the Vedas and their embedded texts—the Samhitas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas. The well-known smṛtis include Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavata Purana and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, amongst others.

Authorship

Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeyā, which means "not of a man, superhuman"[17] and "impersonal, authorless."[18][19][20] The Vedas, for orthodox Indian theologians, are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation, and texts that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times.[21][22] In the Hindu Epic Mahabharata, the creation of Vedas is credited to Brahma.[55] The Vedic hymns themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot.[22][note 6]

The oldest part of the Rig Veda Samhita was orally composed in north-western India (Punjab) between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[note 1] while book 10 of the Rig Veda, and the other Samhitas were composed between 1200 and 900 BCE more eastward, between the Yamuna and the Ganges rivers, the heartland of Aryavarta and the Kuru Kingdom (c. 1200 – c. 900 BCE).[57][2][58][59][60] The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000–500 BCE.

According to tradition, Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas, who arranged the four kinds of mantras into four Samhitas (Collections).[61][62]

Chronology, transmission, and interpretation

Chronology

The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts.[63] The bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region (Punjab) of the Indian subcontinent, most likely between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[2][57][64] although a wider approximation of c. 1700–1100 BCE has also been given.[65][66][note 1] The other three Samhitas are considered to date from the time of the Kuru Kingdom, approximately c. 1200–900 BCE.[1] The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000–500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.[note 7] The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts, with the establishment of the various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise of the Mahajanapadas (archaeologically, Northern Black Polished Ware). Michael Witzel gives a time span of c. 1500 to c. 500–400 BCE. Witzel makes special reference to the Near Eastern Mitanni material of the 14th century BCE, the only epigraphic record of Indo-Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period. He gives 150 BCE (Patañjali) as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature, and 1200 BCE (the early Iron Age) as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda.[67]

Transmission

The Vedas were orally transmitted since their composition in the Vedic period for several millennia.[68][23][69] The authoritative transmission[70] of the Vedas is by an oral tradition in a sampradaya from father to son or from teacher (guru) to student (shishya),[69][71][24][72][23] believed to be initiated by the Vedic rishis who heard the primordial sounds.[73] Only this tradition, embodied by a living teacher, can teach the correct pronunciation of the sounds and explain hidden meanings, in a way the "dead and entombed manuscript" cannot do.[71][note 8] As Leela Prasad states, "According to Shankara, the "correct tradition" (sampradaya) has as much authority as the written Shastra," explaining that the tradition "bears the authority to clarify and provide direction in the application of knowledge."[74]

The emphasis in this transmission[note 9] is on the "proper articulation and pronunciation of the Vedic sounds", as prescribed in the Shiksha,[76] the Vedanga (Vedic study) of sound as uttered in a Vedic recitation,[77][78] mastering the texts "literally forward and backward in fully acoustic fashion."[70] Houben and Rath note that the Vedic textual tradition cannot simply be characterized as oral, "since it also depends significantly on a memory culture."[79] The Vedas were preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques,[23][24][25] such as memorizing the texts in eleven different modes of recitation (pathas),[70] using the alphabet as a mnemotechnical device,[80][81][note 10] "matching physical movements (such as nodding the head) with particular sounds and chanting in a group"[82] and visualizing sounds by using mudras (hand signs).[83] This provided an additional visual confirmation, and also an alternate means to check the reading integrity by the audience, in addition to the audible means.[83] Houben and Rath note that a strong "memory culture" existed in ancient India when texts were transmitted orally, before the advent of writing in the early first millennium CE.[81] According to Staal, criticising the Goody-Watt hypothesis "according to which literacy is more reliable than orality,"[84] this tradition of oral transmission "is closely related to Indian forms of science," and "by far the more remarkable" than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission.[note 11]

While according to Mookerji understanding the meaning (vedarthajnana[87] or artha-bodha[88][note 12]) of the words of the Vedas was part of the Vedic learning,[88] Holdrege and other Indologists[89] have noted that in the transmission of the Samhitas the emphasis is on the phonology of the sounds (śabda) and not on the meaning (artha) of the mantras.[89][90][71] Already at the end of the Vedic period their original meaning had become obscure for "ordinary people,"[90][note 13] and niruktas, etymological compendia, were developed to preserve and clarify the original meaning of many Sanskrit words.[90][92] According to Staal, as referenced by Holdrege, though the mantras may have a discursive meaning, when the mantras are recited in the Vedic rituals "they are disengaged from their original context and are employed in ways that have little or nothing to do with their meaning."[89][note 14] The words of the mantras are "themselves sacred,"[93] and "do not constitute linguistic utterances."[26] Instead, as Klostermaier notes, in their application in Vedic rituals they become magical sounds, "means to an end."[note 15] Holdrege notes that there are scarce commentaries on the meaning of the mantras, in contrast to the number of commentaries on the Brahmanas and Upanishads, but states that the lack of emphasis on the "discursive meaning does not necessarily imply that they are meaningless."[94] In the Brahmanical perspective, the sounds have their own meaning, mantras are considered as "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer.[26] By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base. As long as the purity of the sounds is preserved, the recitation of the mantras will be efficacious, irrespective of whether their discursive meaning is understood by human beings."[26][note 16] Frazier further notes that "later Vedic texts sought deeper understanding of the reasons the rituals worked," which indicates that the Brahmin communities considered study to be a "process of understanding."[95]

A literary tradition is traceable in post-Vedic times, after the rise of Buddhism in the Maurya period,[note 17] perhaps earliest in the Kanva recension of the Yajurveda about the 1st century BCE; however oral tradition of transmission remained active.[68] Jack Goody has argued for an earlier literary tradition, concluding that the Vedas bear hallmarks of a literate culture along with oral transmission,[97][98] but Goody's views have been strongly criticised by Falk, Lopez Jr,. and Staal, though they have also found some support.[99][100]

The Vedas were written down only after 500 BCE,[101][68][23] but only the orally transmitted texts are regarded as authoritative, given the emphasis on the exact pronunciation of the sounds.[70] Witzel suggests that attempts to write down the Vedic texts towards the end of 1st millennium BCE were unsuccessful, resulting in smriti rules explicitly forbidding the writing down of the Vedas.[68] Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material (birch bark or palm leaves), surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years.[102] The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century;[103] however, there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards.[104]

Vedic learning

The Vedas, Vedic rituals and its ancillary sciences called the Vedangas, were part of the curriculum at ancient universities such as at Taxila, Nalanda and Vikramashila.[105][106][107][108] According to Deshpande, "the tradition of the Sanskrit grammarians also contributed significantly to the preservation and interpretation of Vedic texts."[109] Yāska (4th c. BCE[110]) wrote the Nirukta, which reflects the concerns about the loss of meaning of the mantras,[note 13] while Pāṇinis (4th c. BCE) Aṣṭādhyāyī is the most important surviving text of the Vyākaraṇa traditions. Mimamsa scholar Sayanas (14th c. CE) major Vedartha Prakasha[note 18] is a rare[111] commentary on the Vedas, which is also referred to by contemporary scholars.[112]

Yaska and Sayana, reflecting an ancient understanding, state that the Veda can be interpreted in three ways, giving "the truth about gods, dharma and parabrahman."[113][114][note 19] The pūrva-kāņda (or karma-kanda), the part of the Veda dealing with ritual, gives knowledge of dharma, "which brings us satisfaction." The uttara-kanda (or jnana-kanda),[note 20] the part of the Veda dealing with the knowledge of the absolute, gives knowledge of Parabrahma, "which fulfills all of our desires."[115] According to Holdrege, for the exponents of karma-kandha the Veda is to be "inscribed in the minds and hearts of men" by memorization and recitation, while for the exponents of the jnana-kanda and meditation the Vedas express a transcendental reality which can be approached with mystical means.[116]

Holdrege notes that in Vedic learning "priority has been given to recitation over interpretation" of the Samhitas.[111] Galewicz states that Sayana, a Mimamsa scholar,[117][118][119] "thinks of the Veda as something to be trained and mastered to be put into practical ritual use," noticing that "it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential [...] but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form."[120] According to Galewicz, Sayana saw the purpose (artha) of the Veda as the "artha of carrying out sacrifice," giving precedence to the Yajurveda.[117] For Sayana, whether the mantras had meaning depended on the context of their practical usage.[120] This conception of the Veda, as a repertoire to be mastered and performed, takes precedence over the internal meaning or "autonomous message of the hymns."[121] Most Śrauta rituals are not performed in the modern era, and those that are, are rare.[122]

Mukherjee notes that the Rigveda, and Sayana's commentary, contain passages criticizing as fruitless mere recitation of the Ŗik (words) without understanding their inner meaning or essence, the knowledge of dharma and Parabrahman.[123] Mukherjee concludes that in the Rigvedic education of the mantras "the contemplation and comprehension of their meaning was considered as more important and vital to education than their mere mechanical repetition and correct pronunciation."[124] Mookei refers to Sayana as stating that "the mastery of texts, akshara-praptī, is followed by artha-bodha, perception of their meaning."[88][note 12] Mukherjee explains that the Vedic knowledge was first perceived by the rishis and munis. Only the perfect language of the Vedas, as in contrast to ordinary speech, can reveal these truths, which were preserved by committing them to memory.[126] According to Mukherjee, while these truths are imparted to the student by the memorized texts,[127] "the realization of Truth" and the knowledge of paramatman as revealed to the rishis is the real aim of Vedic learning, and not the mere recitation of texts.[128] The supreme knowledge of the Absolute, para Brahman-jnana, the knowledge of rta and satya, can be obtained by taking vows of silence and obedience[129] sense-restraint, dhyana, the practice of tapas (austerities),[114] and discussing the Vedanta.[129][note 21]

Vedic schools or recensions

The four Vedas were transmitted in various śākhās (branches, schools).[131][132] Each school likely represented an ancient community of a particular area, or kingdom.[132] Each school followed its own canon. Multiple recensions are known for each of the Vedas.[131] Thus, states Witzel as well as Renou, in the 2nd millennium BCE, there was likely no canon of one broadly accepted Vedic texts, no Vedic “Scripture”, but only a canon of various texts accepted by each school. Some of these texts have survived, most lost or yet to be found. Rigveda that survives in modern times, for example, is in only one extremely well preserved school of Śåkalya, from a region called Videha, in modern north Bihar, south of Nepal.[133] The Vedic canon in its entirety consists of texts from all the various Vedic schools taken together.[132]

Each of the four Vedas were shared by the numerous schools, but revised, interpolated and adapted locally, in and after the Vedic period, giving rise to various recensions of the text. Some texts were revised into the modern era, raising significant debate on parts of the text which are believed to have been corrupted at a later date.[134][135] The Vedas each have an Index or Anukramani, the principal work of this kind being the general Index or Sarvānukramaṇī.[136][137]

Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity.[138] For example, memorization of the sacred Vedas included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the jaṭā-pāṭha (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated in the original order.[139] That these methods have been effective, is attested to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Rigveda, as redacted into a single text during the Brahmana period, without any variant readings within that school.[139]

The Vedas were orally transmitted by memorization, and were written down only after 500 BCE,[101]</ref>[68][23] All printed editions of the Vedas that survive in the modern times are likely the version existing in about the 16th century CE.[140]

Four Vedas

The canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold (turīya) viz.,[141]

  1. Rigveda (RV)
  2. Yajurveda (YV, with the main division TS vs. VS)
  3. Samaveda (SV)
  4. Atharvaveda (AV)

Of these, the first three were the principal original division, also called "trayī vidyā"; that is, "the triple science" of reciting hymns (Rigveda), performing sacrifices (Yajurveda), and chanting songs (Samaveda).[142][143] The Rig Veda most likely was composed between c. 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE.[note 1] Witzel notes that it is the Vedic period itself, where incipient lists divide the Vedic texts into three (trayī) or four branches: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva.[132]

Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies such as newborn baby's rites of passage, coming of age, marriages, retirement and cremation, sacrifices and symbolic sacrifices), the Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (text discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).[9][11][12] The Upasanas (short ritual worship-related sections) are considered by some scholars[13][14] as the fifth part. Witzel notes that the rituals, rites and ceremonies described in these ancient texts reconstruct to a large degree the Indo-European marriage rituals observed in a region spanning the Indian subcontinent, Persia and the European area, and some greater details are found in the Vedic era texts such as the Grhya Sūtras.[144]

Only one version of the Rigveda is known to have survived into the modern era.[133] Several different versions of the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda are known, and many different versions of the Yajur Veda have been found in different parts of South Asia.[145]

The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana-traditions.[15]

Rigveda

Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of non-Eternity):

Who really knows?
Who can here proclaim it?
Whence, whence this creation sprang?
Gods came later, after the creation of this universe.

Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute;
Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows,
He only knows, or perhaps He does not know.

Rig Veda 10.129.6–7[146]

The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text.[147] It is a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten books (Sanskrit: mandalas).[148] The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities.[149]

The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a period of several centuries between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[note 1] (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the northwest Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, the initial codification of the Rigveda took place at the end of the Rigvedic period at c. 1200 BCE, in the early Kuru kingdom.[150]

The Rigveda is structured based on clear principles. The Veda begins with a small book addressed to Agni, Indra, Soma and other gods, all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection; for each deity series, the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones, but the number of hymns per book increases. Finally, the meter too is systematically arranged from jagati and tristubh to anustubh and gayatri as the text progresses.[132]

The rituals became increasingly complex over time, and the king's association with them strengthened both the position of the Brahmans and the kings.[151] The Rajasuya rituals, performed with the coronation of a king, "set in motion [...] cyclical regenerations of the universe."[152] In terms of substance, the nature of hymns shift from praise of deities in early books to Nasadiya Sukta with questions such as, "what is the origin of the universe?, do even gods know the answer?",[146] the virtue of Dāna (charity) in society,[153] and other metaphysical issues in its hymns.[note 22]

There are similarities between the mythology, rituals and linguistics in Rigveda and those found in ancient central Asia, Iranian and Hindukush (Afghanistan) regions.[154]

Samaveda

The Samaveda Samhita[155] consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost entirely (except for 75 mantras) from the Rigveda.[44][156] While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, between c. 1200 and 1000 BCE or "slightly later," roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda.[156]

The Samaveda samhita has two major parts. The first part includes four melody collections (gāna, गान) and the second part three verse “books” (ārcika, आर्चिक).[156] A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the arcika books. Just as in the Rigveda, the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with hymns to Agni and Indra but shift to the abstract. Their meters shift also in a descending order. The songs in the later sections of the Samaveda have the least deviation from the hymns derived from the Rigveda.[156]

In the Samaveda, some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated.[157] Including repetitions, there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith.[158] Two major recensions have survived, the Kauthuma/Ranayaniya and the Jaiminiya. Its purpose was liturgical, and they were the repertoire of the udgātṛ or "singer" priests.[159]

Yajurveda

The Yajurveda Samhita consists of prose mantras.[160] It is a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire.[160] The core text of the Yajurveda falls within the classical Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE – younger than the Rigveda, and roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda, the Rigvedic Khilani, and the Sāmaveda.[161] Witzel dates the Yajurveda hymns to the early Indian Iron Age, after c. 1200 and before 800 BCE.[162] corresponding to the early Kuru Kingdom.[163]

 
A page from the Taittiriya Samhita, a layer of text within the Yajurveda

The earliest and most ancient layer of Yajurveda samhita includes about 1,875 verses, that are distinct yet borrow and build upon the foundation of verses in Rigveda.[164] Unlike the Samaveda which is almost entirely based on Rigveda mantras and structured as songs, the Yajurveda samhitas are in prose, and they are different from earlier Vedic texts linguistically.[165] The Yajur Veda has been the primary source of information about sacrifices during Vedic times and associated rituals.[166]

There are two major groups of texts in this Veda: the "Black" (Krishna) and the "White" (Shukla). The term "black" implies "the un-arranged, motley collection" of verses in Yajurveda, in contrast to the "white" (well arranged) Yajurveda.[167] The White Yajurveda separates the Samhita from its Brahmana (the Shatapatha Brahmana), the Black Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary. Of the Black Yajurveda, texts from four major schools have survived (Maitrayani, Katha, Kapisthala-Katha, Taittiriya), while of the White Yajurveda, two (Kanva and Madhyandina).[168][169] The youngest layer of Yajurveda text is not related to rituals nor sacrifice, it includes the largest collection of primary Upanishads, influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy.[170][171]

Atharvaveda

The Artharvaveda Samhita is the text 'belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets. It has about 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in common with the Rigveda.[172] Most of the verses are metrical, but some sections are in prose.[172] Two different versions of the text – the Paippalāda and the Śaunakīya – have survived into the modern times.[172][173] The Atharvaveda was not considered as a Veda in the Vedic era, and was accepted as a Veda in late 1st millennium BCE.[174][175] It was compiled last,[176] probably around 900 BCE, although some of its material may go back to the time of the Rigveda,[2] or earlier.[172]

The Atharvaveda is sometimes called the "Veda of magical formulas",[177] an epithet declared to be incorrect by other scholars.[178] The Samhita layer of the text likely represents a developing 2nd millennium BCE tradition of magico-religious rites to address superstitious anxiety, spells to remove maladies believed to be caused by demons, and herbs- and nature-derived potions as medicine.[179][180] The text, states Kenneth Zysk, is one of oldest surviving record of the evolutionary practices in religious medicine and reveals the "earliest forms of folk healing of Indo-European antiquity".[181] Many books of the Atharvaveda Samhita are dedicated to rituals without magic, such as to philosophical speculations and to theosophy.[178]

The Atharva veda has been a primary source for information about Vedic culture, the customs and beliefs, the aspirations and frustrations of everyday Vedic life, as well as those associated with kings and governance. The text also includes hymns dealing with the two major rituals of passage – marriage and cremation. The Atharva Veda also dedicates significant portion of the text asking the meaning of a ritual.[182]

Embedded Vedic texts

 
 
Manuscripts of the Vedas are in the Sanskrit language, but in many regional scripts in addition to the Devanagari. Top: Grantha script (Tamil Nadu), Below: Malayalam script (Kerala).

Brahmanas

The Brahmanas are commentaries, explanation of proper methods and meaning of Vedic Samhita rituals in the four Vedas.[39] They also incorporate myths, legends and in some cases philosophy.[39][40] Each regional Vedic shakha (school) has its own operating manual-like Brahmana text, most of which have been lost.[183] A total of 19 Brahmana texts have survived into modern times: two associated with the Rigveda, six with the Yajurveda, ten with the Samaveda and one with the Atharvaveda. The oldest dated to about 900 BCE, while the youngest Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana), were complete by about 700 BCE.[41][42] According to Jan Gonda, the final codification of the Brahmanas took place in pre-Buddhist times (ca. 600 BCE).[184]

The substance of the Brahmana text varies with each Veda. For example, the first chapter of the Chandogya Brahmana, one of the oldest Brahmanas, includes eight ritual suktas (hymns) for the ceremony of marriage and rituals at the birth of a child.[185][186] The first hymn is a recitation that accompanies offering a Yajna oblation to Agni (fire) on the occasion of a marriage, and the hymn prays for prosperity of the couple getting married.[185][187] The second hymn wishes for their long life, kind relatives, and a numerous progeny.[185] The third hymn is a mutual marriage pledge, between the bride and groom, by which the two bind themselves to each other. The sixth through last hymns of the first chapter in Chandogya Brahmana are ritual celebrations on the birth of a child and wishes for health, wealth, and prosperity with a profusion of cows and artha.[185] However, these verses are incomplete expositions, and their complete context emerges only with the Samhita layer of text.[188]

Aranyakas and Upanishads

The Aranyakas layer of the Vedas include rituals, discussion of symbolic meta-rituals, as well as philosophical speculations.[14][43]

Aranyakas, however, neither are homogeneous in content nor in structure.[43] They are a medley of instructions and ideas, and some include chapters of Upanishads within them. Two theories have been proposed on the origin of the word Aranyakas. One theory holds that these texts were meant to be studied in a forest, while the other holds that the name came from these being the manuals of allegorical interpretation of sacrifices, for those in Vanaprastha (retired, forest-dwelling) stage of their life, according to the historic age-based Ashrama system of human life.[189]

The Upanishads reflect the last composed layer of texts in the Vedas. They are commonly referred to as Vedānta, variously interpreted to mean either the "last chapters, parts of the Vedas" or "the object, the highest purpose of the Veda".[190] The central concern of the Upanishads are the connections "between parts of the human organism and cosmic realities."[191] The Upanishads intend to create a hierarchy of connected and dependent realities, evoking a sense of unity of "the separate elements of the world and of human experience [compressing] them into a single form."[192] The concepts of Brahman, the Ultimate Reality from which everything arises, and Ātman, the essence of the individual, are central ideas in the Upanishads,[193][194] and knowing the correspondence between Ātman and Brahman as "the fundamental principle which shapes the world" permits the creation of an integrative vision of the whole.[192][194] The Upanishads are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions,[46][195] and of the Vedic corpus, they alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishads have influenced the diverse traditions of Hinduism.[46][196]

Aranyakas are sometimes identified as karma-kanda (ritualistic section), while the Upanishads are identified as jnana-kanda (spirituality section).[51][52][53][note 5] In an alternate classification, the early part of Vedas are called Samhitas and the commentary are called the Brahmanas which together are identified as the ceremonial karma-kanda, while Aranyakas and Upanishads are referred to as the jnana-kanda.[54]

Post-Vedic literature

Vedanga

The Vedangas developed towards the end of the vedic period, around or after the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. These auxiliary fields of Vedic studies emerged because the language of the Vedas,[197] composed centuries earlier, became too archaic to the people of that time.[198] The Vedangas were sciences that focused on helping understand and interpret the Vedas that had been composed many centuries earlier.[198]

The six subjects of Vedanga are phonetics (Śikṣā), poetic meter (Chandas), grammar (Vyākaraṇa), etymology and linguistics (Nirukta), rituals and rites of passage (Kalpa), time keeping and astronomy (Jyotiṣa).[199][200][201]

Vedangas developed as ancillary studies for the Vedas, but its insights into meters, structure of sound and language, grammar, linguistic analysis and other subjects influenced post-Vedic studies, arts, culture and various schools of Hindu philosophy.[202][203][204] The Kalpa Vedanga studies, for example, gave rise to the Dharma-sutras, which later expanded into Dharma-shastras.[198][205]

Parisista

Pariśiṣṭa "supplement, appendix" is the term applied to various ancillary works of Vedic literature, dealing mainly with details of ritual and elaborations of the texts logically and chronologically prior to them: the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Sutras. Naturally classified with the Veda to which each pertains, Parisista works exist for each of the four Vedas. However, only the literature associated with the Atharvaveda is extensive.

  • The Āśvalāyana Gṛhya Pariśiṣṭa is a very late text associated with the Rigveda canon.
  • The Gobhila Gṛhya Pariśiṣṭa is a short metrical text of two chapters, with 113 and 95 verses respectively.
  • The Kātiya Pariśiṣṭas, ascribed to Kātyāyana, consist of 18 works enumerated self-referentially in the fifth of the series (the Caraṇavyūha) and the Kātyāyana Śrauta Sūtra Pariśiṣṭa.
  • The Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda has 3 parisistas The Āpastamba Hautra Pariśiṣṭa, which is also found as the second praśna of the Satyasāḍha Śrauta Sūtra', the Vārāha Śrauta Sūtra Pariśiṣṭa
  • For the Atharvaveda, there are 79 works, collected as 72 distinctly named parisistas.[206]

Upaveda

The term upaveda ("applied knowledge") is used in traditional literature to designate the subjects of certain technical works.[207][208] Lists of what subjects are included in this class differ among sources. The Charanavyuha mentions four Upavedas:[209]

"Fifth" and other Vedas

Some post-Vedic texts, including the Mahabharata, the Natyasastra[212] and certain Puranas, refer to themselves as the "fifth Veda".[213] The earliest reference to such a "fifth Veda" is found in the Chandogya Upanishad in hymn 7.1.2.[214]

Let drama and dance (Nātya, नाट्य) be the fifth vedic scripture. Combined with an epic story, tending to virtue, wealth, joy and spiritual freedom, it must contain the significance of every scripture, and forward every art. Thus, from all the Vedas, Brahma framed the Nātya Veda. From the Rig Veda he drew forth the words, from the Sama Veda the melody, from the Yajur Veda gesture, and from the Atharva Veda the sentiment.

— First chapter of Nātyaśāstra, Abhinaya Darpana [215][216]

"Divya Prabandha", for example Tiruvaymoli, is a term for canonical Tamil texts considered as Vernacular Veda by some South Indian Hindus.[34][35]

Other texts such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedanta Sutras are considered shruti or "Vedic" by some Hindu denominations but not universally within Hinduism. The Bhakti movement, and Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular extended the term veda to include the Sanskrit Epics and Vaishnavite devotional texts such as the Pancharatra.[217]

Puranas

The Puranas is a vast genre of encyclopedic Indian literature about a wide range of topics particularly myths, legends and other traditional lore.[218] Several of these texts are named after major Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi.[219][220] There are 18 Maha Puranas (Great Puranas) and 18 Upa Puranas (Minor Puranas), with over 400,000 verses.[218]

The Puranas have been influential in the Hindu culture.[221][222] They are considered Vaidika (congruent with Vedic literature).[223] The Bhagavata Purana has been among the most celebrated and popular text in the Puranic genre, and is of non-dualistic tenor.[224][225] The Puranic literature wove with the Bhakti movement in India, and both Dvaita and Advaita scholars have commented on the underlying Vedanta themes in the Maha Puranas.[226]

Authority of the Vedas

The various Hindu denominations and Indian philosophies have taken differing positions on the authority of the Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy which acknowledge the authority of the Vedas are classified as "orthodox" (āstika).[note 23] Other śramaṇa traditions, such as Charvaka, Ajivika, Buddhism and Jainism, which did not regard the Vedas as authorities, are referred to as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" (nāstika) schools.[15][27]

Certain traditions which are often seen as being part of Hinduism also rejected the Vedas. For example, authors of the tantric Vaishnava Sahajiya tradition, like Siddha Mukundadeva, rejected the Vedas' authority.[228] Likewise, some tantric Shaiva Agamas reject the Vedas. The Anandabhairava-tantra for example, states that "the wise man should not elect as his authority the word of the Vedas, which is full of impurity, produces but scanty and transitory fruits and is limited."[229]

Though many religious Hindus implicitly acknowledge the authority of the Vedas, this acknowledgment is often "no more than a declaration that someone considers himself [or herself] a Hindu,"[230][note 24] and "most Indians today pay lip service to the Veda and have no regard for the contents of the text."[231] Some Hindus challenge the authority of the Vedas, thereby implicitly acknowledging its importance to the history of Hinduism, states Lipner.[232]

Hindu reform movement such as Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj accepted the authority of Vedas,[233] while the authority of the Vedas has been rejected by Hindu modernists like Debendranath Tagore and Keshub Chandra Sen;[234] and also by social reformers like B. R. Ambedkar.[235]

Western Indology

The study of Sanskrit in the West began in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to Vedic texts, specifically the Upanishads. The importance of Vedic Sanskrit for Indo-European studies was also recognized in the early 19th century. English translations of the Samhitas were published in the later 19th century, in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Müller between 1879 and 1910.[236] Ralph T. H. Griffith also presented English translations of the four Samhitas, published 1889 to 1899.

Rigveda manuscripts were selected for inscription in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2007.[237]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f It is certain that the hymns of the Rig Veda post-date Indo-Iranian separation of ca. 2000 BCE and probably that of the relevant Mitanni documents of c. 1400 BCE. The oldest available text is estimated to be from 1200 BCE. Philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to the second half of the second millennium:
    • Max Müller: "the hymns of the Rig-Veda are said to date from 1500 B.C."[238]
    • The EIEC (s.v. Indo-Iranian languages, p. 306) gives 1500–1000 BCE.
    • Flood and Witzel both mention c. 1500–1200 BCE.[2][57]
    • Anthony mentions c. 1500–1300 BCE.[64]
    • Thomas Oberlies (Die Religion des Rgveda, 1998, p. 158) based on 'cumulative evidence' sets a wide range of 1700–1100 BCE.[65] Oberlies 1998, p. 155 gives an estimate of 1100 BCE for the youngest hymns in book 10.[239]
    • Witzel 1995, p. 4 mentions c. 1500–1200 BCE. According to Witzel 1997, p. 263, the whole Rig Vedic period may have lasted from c. 1900 BCE to c. 1200 BCE: "the bulk of the RV represents only 5 or 6 generations of kings (and of the contemporary poets)24 of the Pūru and Bharata tribes. It contains little else before and after this “snapshot” view of contemporary Rgvedic history, as reported by these contemporary “tape recordings.” On the other hand, the whole Rgvedic period may have lasted even up to 700 years, from the infiltration of the Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent, c. 1900 B.C. (at the utmost, the time of collapse of the Indus civilization), up to c. 1200 B.C., the time of the introduction of iron which is first mentioned in the clearly post-vedic hymns of the Atharvaveda."
  2. ^ Elisa Freschi (2012): "The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed, but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school."Freschi 2012, p. 62 This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions.
  3. ^ For a table of all Vedic texts see Witzel 2003, pp. 100–101.
  4. ^ The Vedic Sanskrit corpus is incorporated in A Vedic Word Concordance (Vaidika-Padānukrama-Koṣa) prepared from 1930 under Vishva Bandhu, and published in five volumes in 1935–1965. Its scope extends to about 400 texts, including the entire Vedic Sanskrit corpus besides some "sub-Vedic" texts. Volume I: Samhitas, Volume II: Brahmanas and Aranyakas, Volume III: Upanishads, Volume IV: Vedangas; A revised edition, extending to about 1800 pages, was published in 1973–1976.
  5. ^ a b Edward Roer (Translator), Shankara's Introduction at Google Books to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad at pp. 1–5: "The Vedas are divided in two parts, the first is the karma-kanda, the ceremonial part, also (called) purva-kanda, and treats on ceremonies; the second part is the jnana kanda, the part which contains knowledge, also named uttara-kanda or posterior part, and unfolds the knowledge of Brahma or the universal soul."
  6. ^ "As a skilled craftsman makes a car, a singer I, Mighty One! this hymn for thee have fashioned. If thou, O Agni, God, accept it gladly, may we obtain thereby the heavenly Waters". – Rigveda 5.2.11, Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith[56]
  7. ^ Gavin Flood sums up mainstream estimates, according to which the Rigveda was compiled from as early as 1500 BCE over a period of several centuries.[2]
  8. ^ Broo 2016, p. 92 quotes Harold G. Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja.
  9. ^ Of the complete Veda, by pāțha-śālā (priestly schools), as distinguished from the transmission in the pūjā, the daily services.[75]
  10. ^ Several authors refer to the Chinese Buddhist Monk I-Tsing, who visited India in the 7th century to retrieve Buddhist texts and gave examples of mnemonic techniques used in India:[80] "In India there are two traditional ways in which one can attain great intellectual power. Firstly by repeatedly committing to memory the intellect is developed; secondly the alphabet fixes (to) one's ideas. By this way, after a practice of ten days or a month, a student feels his thoughts rise like a fountain, and can commit to memory whatever he has heard once."[81][80]
  11. ^ Staal: [this tradition of oral transmission is] "by far the more remarkable [than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission], not merely because it is characteristically Indian and unlike anything we find elsewhere, but also because it has led to scientific discoveries that are of enduring interest and from which the contemporary West still has much to learn." Schiffman (2012, p. 171), quoting Staal (1986, p. 27)
    Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially Pāṇini, had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by Noam Chomsky. (Chomsky himself has said that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar).[85] These early Indian methods allowed the construction of discrete, potentially infinite generative systems. Remarkably, these early linguistic systems were codified orally, though writing was then used to develop them in some way. The formal basis for Panini's methods involved the use of "auxiliary" markers, rediscovered in the 1930s by the logician Emil Post.[86]
  12. ^ a b Artha may also mean "goal, purpose or essence," depending on the context.[125]
  13. ^ a b Klostermaier 2007, p. 55: "Kautas, a teacher mentioned in the Nirukta by Yāska (ca. 500 BCE), a work devoted to an etymology of Vedic words that were no longer understood by ordinary people, held that the word of the Veda was no longer perceived as meaningful "normal" speech but as a fixed sequence of sounds, whose meaning was obscure beyond recovery."

    The tenth through twelfth volumes of the first Prapathaka of the Chandogya Upanishad (800-600 BCE) describe a legend about priests and it criticizes how they go about reciting verses and singing hymns without any idea what they mean or the divine principle they signify.[91]
  14. ^ According to Holdrege, srotriyas (a group of male Brahmin reciters who are masters of sruti[70]) "frequently do not understand what they recite" when reciting the Samhitas, merely preserving the sound of the text.[89]
  15. ^ Klostermaier: "Brahman, derived from the root bŗh = to grow, to become great, was originally identical with the Vedic word, that makes people prosper: words were the pricipan means to approach the gods who dwelled in a different sphere. It was not a big step from this notion of "reified speech-act" to that "of the speech-act being looked at implicitly and explicitly as a means to an end." Klostermaier 2007, p. 55 quotes Deshpande 1990, p. 4.
  16. ^ Coward 2008, p. 114: "For the Mimamsa the ultimate reality is nothing other than the eternal words of the Vedas. They did not accept the existence of a single supreme creator god, who might have composed the Veda. According to the Mimamsa, gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names. The power of the gods, then, is nothing other than the power of the mantras that name them."
  17. ^ The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first Pali Canon written many centuries after the death of the Buddha.[96]
  18. ^ Literally, "the meaning of the Vedas made manifest."
  19. ^ Sayana repeats Yaska; see interpretation of the Vedas.
  20. ^ The Upanishads.[52]
  21. ^ Mookerji also refers to the Uśanā smriti (81-2), which "states that mastery of mere text of Veda is to be followed up by its meaning" by discussing the Vedanta.[129] where-after they were able to engage in doscourses on the Vedas.[130][95]
  22. ^ For example,
    Hymn 1.164.34, "What is the ultimate limit of the earth?", "What is the center of the universe?", "What is the semen of the cosmic horse?", "What is the ultimate source of human speech?"
    Hymn 1.164.34, "Who gave blood, soul, spirit to the earth?", "How could the unstructured universe give origin to this structured world?"
    Hymn 1.164.5, "Where does the sun hide in the night?", "Where do gods live?"
    Hymn 1.164.6, "What, where is the unborn support for the born universe?";
    Hymn 1.164.20 (a hymn that is widely cited in the Upanishads as the parable of the Body and the Soul): "Two birds with fair wings, inseparable companions; Have found refuge in the same sheltering tree. One incessantly eats from the fig tree; the other, not eating, just looks on.";
    Sources: (a) Antonio de Nicholas (2003), Meditations Through the Rig Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, ISBN 978-0-595-26925-9, pp. 64–69;
    Jan Gonda, A History of Indian Literature: Veda and Upanishads, Volume 1, Part 1, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2, pp. 134–135;
    Rigveda Book 1, Hymn 164 Wikisource
  23. ^ Elisa Freschi (2012): "The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed, but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school."[227] This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions.
  24. ^ Lipner quotes Brockington (1981), The sacred tread, p.5.

References

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  2. ^ a b c d e f Flood 1996, p. 37.
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  4. ^ "Veda". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  5. ^ Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed 8 April 2023)
  6. ^ see e.g. Radhakrishnan & Moore 1957, p. 3; Witzel 2003, p. 68; MacDonell 2004, pp. 29–39.
  7. ^ Sanskrit literature (2003) in Philip's Encyclopedia. Accessed 2007-08-09
  8. ^ Sanujit Ghose (2011). "Religious Developments in Ancient India" in World History Encyclopedia.
  9. ^ a b c Gavin Flood (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-43878-0, pp. 35–39
  10. ^ Bloomfield, M. The Atharvaveda and the Gopatha-Brahmana, (Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde II.1.b.) Strassburg 1899; Gonda, J. A history of Indian literature: I.1 Vedic literature (Samhitas and Brahmanas); I.2 The Ritual Sutras. Wiesbaden 1975, 1977
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  14. ^ a b c Holdrege 1995, pp. 351–357.
  15. ^ a b c d Flood 1996, p. 82.
  16. ^ a b Apte 1965, p. 887.
  17. ^ a b Apte 1965, "apauruSeya".
  18. ^ a b Sharma 2011, pp. 196–197.
  19. ^ a b Westerhoff 2009, p. 290.
  20. ^ a b Todd 2013, p. 128.
  21. ^ a b Pollock 2011, pp. 41–58.
  22. ^ a b c Scharfe 2002, pp. 13–14.
  23. ^ a b c d e f Wood 2007.
  24. ^ a b c Hexam 2011, p. chapter 8.
  25. ^ a b Dwyer 2013.
  26. ^ a b c d e Holdrege 1996, p. 347.
  27. ^ a b "astika" and "nastika". Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 20 April 2016.
  28. ^ a b Monier-Williams 1899, p. 1015.
  29. ^ Apte 1965, p. 856.
  30. ^ see e.g. Pokorny's 1959 Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch s.v. u̯(e)id-²; Rix' Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben, u̯ei̯d-.
  31. ^ Monier-Williams 1899, p. 1017 (2nd Column).
  32. ^ Monier-Williams 1899, p. 1017 (3rd Column).
  33. ^ Vasudha Narayanan (1994), The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-0-87249-965-2, p. 194
  34. ^ a b John Carman (1989), The Tamil Veda: Pillan's Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-09305-5, pp. 259–261
  35. ^ a b Vasudha Narayanan (1994), The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-0-87249-965-2, pp. 43, 117–119
  36. ^ according to ISKCON, Hindu Sacred Texts, "Hindus themselves often use the term to describe anything connected to the Vedas and their corollaries (e.g. Vedic culture)."
  37. ^ Prasad 2020, p. 150.
  38. ^ 37,575 are Rigvedic. Of the remaining, 34,857 appear in the other three Samhitas, and 16,405 are known only from Brahmanas, Upanishads or Sutras
  39. ^ a b c Klostermaier 1994, pp. 67–69.
  40. ^ a b Brahmana Encyclopædia Britannica (2013)
  41. ^ a b Michael Witzel, "Tracing the Vedic dialects" in Dialectes dans les litteratures Indo-Aryennes ed. Caillat, Paris, 1989, 97–265.
  42. ^ a b Biswas et al (1989), Cosmic Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-34354-1, pp. 42–43
  43. ^ a b c Jan Gonda (1975), Vedic Literature: (Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas), Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2, pp. 424–426
  44. ^ a b c Michaels 2004, p. 51.
  45. ^ William K. Mahony (1998). The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination. State University of New York Press. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-7914-3579-3.
  46. ^ a b c d Wendy Doniger (1990), Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism, 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-61847-0, pp. 2–3; Quote: "The Upanishads supply the basis of later Hindu philosophy; they alone of the Vedic corpus are widely known and quoted by most well-educated Hindus, and their central ideas have also become a part of the spiritual arsenal of rank-and-file Hindus."
  47. ^ Wiman Dissanayake (1993), Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Editors: Thomas P. Kasulis et al.), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-1080-6, p. 39; Quote: "The Upanishads form the foundations of Hindu philosophical thought and the central theme of the Upanishads is the identity of Atman and Brahman, or the inner self and the cosmic self.";
    Michael McDowell and Nathan Brown (2009), World Religions, Penguin, ISBN 978-1-59257-846-7, pp. 208–210
  48. ^ Patrick Olivelle (2014), The Early Upanisads, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-535242-9, p. 3; Quote: "Even though theoretically the whole of vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth [shruti], in reality it is the Upanishads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanishads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism".
  49. ^ Witzel 2003, pp. 100–101.
  50. ^ Bartley 2001, p. 490.
  51. ^ a b Holdrege 1996, p. 30.
  52. ^ a b c Nakamura 1983, p. 409.
  53. ^ a b Bhattacharya 2006, p. 9.
  54. ^ a b Knapp 2005, pp. 10–11.
  55. ^ Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata Bruce M. Sullivan, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 85–86
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Further reading

Overviews
  • Gonda, J. (1975), Vedic Literature: Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, vol. 1, Veda and Upanishads, Wiesnaden: Harrassowitz: A History of Indian literature, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2.
  • Santucci, J.A. (1976), "An Outline of Vedic Literature", Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion.
  • Shrava, S. (1977), A Comprehensive History of Vedic Literature – Brahmana and Aranyaka Works, Pranava Prakashan.
  • A Vedic Concordance, (an alphabetic index to every line, every stanza of the Vedas published before 1906), Harvard University: Maurice Bloomfield, 1906{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
  • The Vedas at sacred-texts.com, Sacred Texts.
Concordances
  • Bloomfield, M. (1907), A Vedic Concordance.
  • Bandhu, Vishva; Dev, Bhim (1963), Bhaskaran Nair, S. (ed.), Vaidika-Padānukrama-Koṣa: A Vedic Word-Concordance, Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute.
  • An Enlarged Electronic Version of Bloomfield's A Vedic Concordance, Harvard University Press.
Conference proceedings
  • Griffiths, Arlo (2004), Houben, Jan E.M. (ed.), The Vedas : texts, language & ritual: proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop, Leiden 2002, Groningen : Forsten: Groningen Oriental Studies 20, ISBN 90-6980-149-3.
  • Michael, Witzel, On the History and the Present State of Vedic Tradition in Nepal (PDF).
Journals
  • Arnold, Edward Vernon (1897), "Sketch of the Historical Grammar of the Rig and Atharva Vedas", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 18: 203–353, doi:10.2307/592303, ISSN 0003-0279, JSTOR 592303.

External links

  • "GRETIL etexts", Goettingen.
  • Vedas at Curlie

vedas, veda, vedic, redirect, here, other, uses, veda, disambiguation, vedic, disambiguation, iast, veda, sanskrit, knowledge, large, body, religious, texts, originating, ancient, india, composed, vedic, sanskrit, texts, constitute, oldest, layer, sanskrit, li. Veda and Vedic redirect here For other uses see Veda disambiguation and Vedic disambiguation The Vedas ˈ v eɪ d e z 4 or ˈ v iː d e z 5 IAST veda Sanskrit व द lit knowledge are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India Composed in Vedic Sanskrit the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism 6 7 8 VedasFour VedasInformationReligionHinduismLanguageVedic SanskritPeriodc 1500 1200 BCE Rigveda 1 note 1 c 1200 900 BCE Yajurveda Samaveda Atharvaveda 1 2 Verses20 379 mantras 3 Full textThe Vedas at English WikisourceThe Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism Above A page from the Atharvaveda There are four Vedas the Rigveda the Yajurveda the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda 9 10 Each Veda has four subdivisions the Samhitas mantras and benedictions the Aranyakas text on rituals ceremonies sacrifices and symbolic sacrifices the Brahmanas commentaries on rituals ceremonies and sacrifices and the Upanishads texts discussing meditation philosophy and spiritual knowledge 9 11 12 Some scholars add a fifth category the Upasanas worship 13 14 The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana traditions 15 Vedas are sruti what is heard 16 distinguishing them from other religious texts which are called smṛti what is remembered Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya which means not of a man superhuman 17 and impersonal authorless 18 19 20 revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation 21 22 The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques 23 24 25 The mantras the oldest part of the Vedas are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics and are considered to be primordial rhythms of creation preceding the forms to which they refer 26 By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base 26 The various Indian philosophies and Hindu denominations have taken differing positions on the Vedas schools of Indian philosophy that acknowledge the primal authority of the Vedas are classified as orthodox astika note 2 Other sramaṇa traditions such as Charvaka Ajivika Buddhism and Jainism which did not regard the Vedas as authorities are referred to as heterodox or non orthodox nastika schools 15 27 Contents 1 Etymology and usage 2 Vedic texts 2 1 Vedic Sanskrit corpus 2 2 Sruti and smriti 2 3 Authorship 3 Chronology transmission and interpretation 3 1 Chronology 3 2 Transmission 3 3 Vedic learning 4 Vedic schools or recensions 5 Four Vedas 5 1 Rigveda 5 2 Samaveda 5 3 Yajurveda 5 4 Atharvaveda 5 5 Embedded Vedic texts 5 5 1 Brahmanas 5 5 2 Aranyakas and Upanishads 6 Post Vedic literature 6 1 Vedanga 6 2 Parisista 6 3 Upaveda 6 4 Fifth and other Vedas 6 5 Puranas 7 Authority of the Vedas 8 Western Indology 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 Sources 13 Further reading 14 External linksEtymology and usageThe Sanskrit word veda knowledge wisdom is derived from the root vid to know This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto Indo European root u eid meaning see or know 28 29 The noun is from Proto Indo European u eidos cognate to Greek ϝ eἶdos aspect form This is not to be confused with the homonymous 1st and 3rd person singular perfect tense veda cognate to Greek ϝ oἶda w oida I know Root cognates are Greek ἰdea English wit etc Latin videō I see German wissen to know etc 30 The Sanskrit term veda as a common noun means knowledge 28 The term in some contexts such as hymn 10 93 11 of the Rigveda means obtaining or finding wealth property 31 while in some others it means a bunch of grass together as in a broom or for ritual fire 32 Vedas are called Maṛai or Vaymoli in parts of South India Marai literally means hidden a secret mystery But the Tamil Naan Marai mentioned in Tholkappiam is not Sanskrit Vedas 33 34 In some parts of South India e g the Iyengar communities the word veda is used in the Tamil writings of the Alvar saints Such writings include the Naalayira Divya Prabandham aka Tiruvaymoli 35 Vedic texts Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari Vedic Sanskrit corpus The term Vedic texts is used in two distinct meanings Texts composed in Vedic Sanskrit during the Vedic period Iron Age India Any text considered as connected to the Vedas or a corollary of the Vedas 36 The corpus of Vedic Sanskrit texts includes The Samhitas Sanskrit saṃhita collection are collections of metric texts mantras There are four Vedic Samhitas the Rig Veda Yajur Veda Sama Veda and Atharva Veda most of which are available in several recensions sakha In some contexts the term Veda is used to refer only to these Samhitas the collection of mantras This is the oldest layer of Vedic texts which were composed between circa 1500 1200 BCE Rig Veda book 2 9 note 1 and 1200 900 BCE for the other Samhitas The Samhitas contain invocations to deities like Indra and Agni to secure their benediction for success in battles or for welfare of the clan 37 The complete corpus of Vedic mantras as collected in Bloomfield s Vedic Concordance 1907 consists of some 89 000 padas metrical feet of which 72 000 occur in the four Samhitas 38 The Brahmanas are prose texts that comment and explain the solemn rituals as well as expound on their meaning and many connected themes Each of the Brahmanas is associated with one of the Samhitas or its recensions 39 40 The oldest dated to about 900 BCE while the youngest Brahmanas such as the Shatapatha Brahmana were complete by about 700 BCE 41 42 The Brahmanas may either form separate texts or can be partly integrated into the text of the Samhitas They may also include the Aranyakas and Upanishads The Aranyakas wilderness texts or forest treaties were composed by people who meditated in the woods as recluses and are the third part of the Vedas The texts contain discussions and interpretations of ceremonies from ritualistic to symbolic meta ritualistic points of view 43 It is frequently read in secondary literature Older Principal Upanishads Bṛhadaraṇyaka Chandogya Kaṭha Kena Aitareya and others 1 44 composed between 800 BCE and the end of the Vedic period 45 The Upanishads are largely philosophical works some in dialogue form They are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions 46 47 Of the Vedic corpus they alone are widely known and the central ideas of the Upanishads are still influential in Hinduism 46 48 The texts considered Vedic in the sense of corollaries of the Vedas are less clearly defined and may include numerous post Vedic texts such as the later Upanishads and the Sutra literature such as Shrauta Sutras and Gryha Sutras which are smriti texts Together the Vedas and these Sutras form part of the Vedic Sanskrit corpus 1 note 3 note 4 While production of Brahmanas and Aranyakas ceased with the end of the Vedic period additional Upanishads were composed after the end of the Vedic period 49 The Brahmanas Aranyakas and Upanishads among other things interpret and discuss the Samhitas in philosophical and metaphorical ways to explore abstract concepts such as the Absolute Brahman and the soul or the self Atman introducing Vedanta philosophy one of the major trends of later Hinduism In other parts they show evolution of ideas such as from actual sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice and of spirituality in the Upanishads This has inspired later Hindu scholars such as Adi Shankara to classify each Veda into karma kanda कर म खण ड action sacrificial ritual related sections the Samhitas and Brahmanas and jnana kanda ज ञ न खण ड knowledge spirituality related sections mainly the Upanishads 50 51 52 53 54 note 5 Sruti and smriti Vedas are sruti what is heard 16 distinguishing them from other religious texts which are called smṛti what is remembered This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Muller and while it is subject to some debate it is still widely used As Axel Michaels explains These classifications are often not tenable for linguistic and formal reasons There is not only one collection at any one time but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools Upanisads are sometimes not to be distinguished from Araṇyakas Brahmaṇas contain older strata of language attributed to the Saṃhitas there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools Nevertheless it is advisable to stick to the division adopted by Max Muller because it follows the Indian tradition conveys the historical sequence fairly accurately and underlies the current editions translations and monographs on Vedic literature 44 Among the widely known srutis include the Vedas and their embedded texts the Samhitas the Upanishads the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas The well known smṛtis include Bhagavad Gita Bhagavata Purana and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata amongst others Authorship Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya which means not of a man superhuman 17 and impersonal authorless 18 19 20 The Vedas for orthodox Indian theologians are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation and texts that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times 21 22 In the Hindu Epic Mahabharata the creation of Vedas is credited to Brahma 55 The Vedic hymns themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis sages after inspired creativity just as a carpenter builds a chariot 22 note 6 The oldest part of the Rig Veda Samhita was orally composed in north western India Punjab between c 1500 and 1200 BCE note 1 while book 10 of the Rig Veda and the other Samhitas were composed between 1200 and 900 BCE more eastward between the Yamuna and the Ganges rivers the heartland of Aryavarta and the Kuru Kingdom c 1200 c 900 BCE 57 2 58 59 60 The circum Vedic texts as well as the redaction of the Samhitas date to c 1000 500 BCE According to tradition Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas who arranged the four kinds of mantras into four Samhitas Collections 61 62 Chronology transmission and interpretationSee also Vedic period Chronology The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts 63 The bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region Punjab of the Indian subcontinent most likely between c 1500 and 1200 BCE 2 57 64 although a wider approximation of c 1700 1100 BCE has also been given 65 66 note 1 The other three Samhitas are considered to date from the time of the Kuru Kingdom approximately c 1200 900 BCE 1 The circum Vedic texts as well as the redaction of the Samhitas date to c 1000 500 BCE resulting in a Vedic period spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age note 7 The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts with the establishment of the various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise of the Mahajanapadas archaeologically Northern Black Polished Ware Michael Witzel gives a time span of c 1500 to c 500 400 BCE Witzel makes special reference to the Near Eastern Mitanni material of the 14th century BCE the only epigraphic record of Indo Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period He gives 150 BCE Patanjali as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature and 1200 BCE the early Iron Age as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda 67 Transmission The Vedas were orally transmitted since their composition in the Vedic period for several millennia 68 23 69 The authoritative transmission 70 of the Vedas is by an oral tradition in a sampradaya from father to son or from teacher guru to student shishya 69 71 24 72 23 believed to be initiated by the Vedic rishis who heard the primordial sounds 73 Only this tradition embodied by a living teacher can teach the correct pronunciation of the sounds and explain hidden meanings in a way the dead and entombed manuscript cannot do 71 note 8 As Leela Prasad states According to Shankara the correct tradition sampradaya has as much authority as the written Shastra explaining that the tradition bears the authority to clarify and provide direction in the application of knowledge 74 The emphasis in this transmission note 9 is on the proper articulation and pronunciation of the Vedic sounds as prescribed in the Shiksha 76 the Vedanga Vedic study of sound as uttered in a Vedic recitation 77 78 mastering the texts literally forward and backward in fully acoustic fashion 70 Houben and Rath note that the Vedic textual tradition cannot simply be characterized as oral since it also depends significantly on a memory culture 79 The Vedas were preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques 23 24 25 such as memorizing the texts in eleven different modes of recitation pathas 70 using the alphabet as a mnemotechnical device 80 81 note 10 matching physical movements such as nodding the head with particular sounds and chanting in a group 82 and visualizing sounds by using mudras hand signs 83 This provided an additional visual confirmation and also an alternate means to check the reading integrity by the audience in addition to the audible means 83 Houben and Rath note that a strong memory culture existed in ancient India when texts were transmitted orally before the advent of writing in the early first millennium CE 81 According to Staal criticising the Goody Watt hypothesis according to which literacy is more reliable than orality 84 this tradition of oral transmission is closely related to Indian forms of science and by far the more remarkable than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission note 11 While according to Mookerji understanding the meaning vedarthajnana 87 or artha bodha 88 note 12 of the words of the Vedas was part of the Vedic learning 88 Holdrege and other Indologists 89 have noted that in the transmission of the Samhitas the emphasis is on the phonology of the sounds sabda and not on the meaning artha of the mantras 89 90 71 Already at the end of the Vedic period their original meaning had become obscure for ordinary people 90 note 13 and niruktas etymological compendia were developed to preserve and clarify the original meaning of many Sanskrit words 90 92 According to Staal as referenced by Holdrege though the mantras may have a discursive meaning when the mantras are recited in the Vedic rituals they are disengaged from their original context and are employed in ways that have little or nothing to do with their meaning 89 note 14 The words of the mantras are themselves sacred 93 and do not constitute linguistic utterances 26 Instead as Klostermaier notes in their application in Vedic rituals they become magical sounds means to an end note 15 Holdrege notes that there are scarce commentaries on the meaning of the mantras in contrast to the number of commentaries on the Brahmanas and Upanishads but states that the lack of emphasis on the discursive meaning does not necessarily imply that they are meaningless 94 In the Brahmanical perspective the sounds have their own meaning mantras are considered as primordial rhythms of creation preceding the forms to which they refer 26 By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base As long as the purity of the sounds is preserved the recitation of the mantras will be efficacious irrespective of whether their discursive meaning is understood by human beings 26 note 16 Frazier further notes that later Vedic texts sought deeper understanding of the reasons the rituals worked which indicates that the Brahmin communities considered study to be a process of understanding 95 A literary tradition is traceable in post Vedic times after the rise of Buddhism in the Maurya period note 17 perhaps earliest in the Kanva recension of the Yajurveda about the 1st century BCE however oral tradition of transmission remained active 68 Jack Goody has argued for an earlier literary tradition concluding that the Vedas bear hallmarks of a literate culture along with oral transmission 97 98 but Goody s views have been strongly criticised by Falk Lopez Jr and Staal though they have also found some support 99 100 The Vedas were written down only after 500 BCE 101 68 23 but only the orally transmitted texts are regarded as authoritative given the emphasis on the exact pronunciation of the sounds 70 Witzel suggests that attempts to write down the Vedic texts towards the end of 1st millennium BCE were unsuccessful resulting in smriti rules explicitly forbidding the writing down of the Vedas 68 Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material birch bark or palm leaves surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years 102 The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century 103 however there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards 104 Vedic learning Main article Svadhyaya The Vedas Vedic rituals and its ancillary sciences called the Vedangas were part of the curriculum at ancient universities such as at Taxila Nalanda and Vikramashila 105 106 107 108 According to Deshpande the tradition of the Sanskrit grammarians also contributed significantly to the preservation and interpretation of Vedic texts 109 Yaska 4th c BCE 110 wrote the Nirukta which reflects the concerns about the loss of meaning of the mantras note 13 while Paṇinis 4th c BCE Aṣṭadhyayi is the most important surviving text of the Vyakaraṇa traditions Mimamsa scholar Sayanas 14th c CE major Vedartha Prakasha note 18 is a rare 111 commentary on the Vedas which is also referred to by contemporary scholars 112 Yaska and Sayana reflecting an ancient understanding state that the Veda can be interpreted in three ways giving the truth about gods dharma and parabrahman 113 114 note 19 The purva kanda or karma kanda the part of the Veda dealing with ritual gives knowledge of dharma which brings us satisfaction The uttara kanda or jnana kanda note 20 the part of the Veda dealing with the knowledge of the absolute gives knowledge of Parabrahma which fulfills all of our desires 115 According to Holdrege for the exponents of karma kandha the Veda is to be inscribed in the minds and hearts of men by memorization and recitation while for the exponents of the jnana kanda and meditation the Vedas express a transcendental reality which can be approached with mystical means 116 Holdrege notes that in Vedic learning priority has been given to recitation over interpretation of the Samhitas 111 Galewicz states that Sayana a Mimamsa scholar 117 118 119 thinks of the Veda as something to be trained and mastered to be put into practical ritual use noticing that it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form 120 According to Galewicz Sayana saw the purpose artha of the Veda as the artha of carrying out sacrifice giving precedence to the Yajurveda 117 For Sayana whether the mantras had meaning depended on the context of their practical usage 120 This conception of the Veda as a repertoire to be mastered and performed takes precedence over the internal meaning or autonomous message of the hymns 121 Most Srauta rituals are not performed in the modern era and those that are are rare 122 Mukherjee notes that the Rigveda and Sayana s commentary contain passages criticizing as fruitless mere recitation of the Ŗik words without understanding their inner meaning or essence the knowledge of dharma and Parabrahman 123 Mukherjee concludes that in the Rigvedic education of the mantras the contemplation and comprehension of their meaning was considered as more important and vital to education than their mere mechanical repetition and correct pronunciation 124 Mookei refers to Sayana as stating that the mastery of texts akshara prapti is followed by artha bodha perception of their meaning 88 note 12 Mukherjee explains that the Vedic knowledge was first perceived by the rishis and munis Only the perfect language of the Vedas as in contrast to ordinary speech can reveal these truths which were preserved by committing them to memory 126 According to Mukherjee while these truths are imparted to the student by the memorized texts 127 the realization of Truth and the knowledge of paramatman as revealed to the rishis is the real aim of Vedic learning and not the mere recitation of texts 128 The supreme knowledge of the Absolute para Brahman jnana the knowledge of rta and satya can be obtained by taking vows of silence and obedience 129 sense restraint dhyana the practice of tapas austerities 114 and discussing the Vedanta 129 note 21 Vedic schools or recensionsMain article Shakha The four Vedas were transmitted in various sakha s branches schools 131 132 Each school likely represented an ancient community of a particular area or kingdom 132 Each school followed its own canon Multiple recensions are known for each of the Vedas 131 Thus states Witzel as well as Renou in the 2nd millennium BCE there was likely no canon of one broadly accepted Vedic texts no Vedic Scripture but only a canon of various texts accepted by each school Some of these texts have survived most lost or yet to be found Rigveda that survives in modern times for example is in only one extremely well preserved school of Sakalya from a region called Videha in modern north Bihar south of Nepal 133 The Vedic canon in its entirety consists of texts from all the various Vedic schools taken together 132 Each of the four Vedas were shared by the numerous schools but revised interpolated and adapted locally in and after the Vedic period giving rise to various recensions of the text Some texts were revised into the modern era raising significant debate on parts of the text which are believed to have been corrupted at a later date 134 135 The Vedas each have an Index or Anukramani the principal work of this kind being the general Index or Sarvanukramaṇi 136 137 Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity 138 For example memorization of the sacred Vedas included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text The texts were subsequently proof read by comparing the different recited versions Forms of recitation included the jaṭa paṭha literally mesh recitation in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order then repeated in the reverse order and finally repeated in the original order 139 That these methods have been effective is attested to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text the Rigveda as redacted into a single text during the Brahmana period without any variant readings within that school 139 The Vedas were orally transmitted by memorization and were written down only after 500 BCE 101 lt ref gt 68 23 All printed editions of the Vedas that survive in the modern times are likely the version existing in about the 16th century CE 140 Four VedasThe canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold turiya viz 141 Rigveda RV Yajurveda YV with the main division TS vs VS Samaveda SV Atharvaveda AV Of these the first three were the principal original division also called trayi vidya that is the triple science of reciting hymns Rigveda performing sacrifices Yajurveda and chanting songs Samaveda 142 143 The Rig Veda most likely was composed between c 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE note 1 Witzel notes that it is the Vedic period itself where incipient lists divide the Vedic texts into three trayi or four branches Rig Yajur Sama and Atharva 132 Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types the Samhitas mantras and benedictions the Aranyakas text on rituals ceremonies such as newborn baby s rites of passage coming of age marriages retirement and cremation sacrifices and symbolic sacrifices the Brahmanas commentaries on rituals ceremonies and sacrifices and the Upanishads text discussing meditation philosophy and spiritual knowledge 9 11 12 The Upasanas short ritual worship related sections are considered by some scholars 13 14 as the fifth part Witzel notes that the rituals rites and ceremonies described in these ancient texts reconstruct to a large degree the Indo European marriage rituals observed in a region spanning the Indian subcontinent Persia and the European area and some greater details are found in the Vedic era texts such as the Grhya Sutras 144 Only one version of the Rigveda is known to have survived into the modern era 133 Several different versions of the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda are known and many different versions of the Yajur Veda have been found in different parts of South Asia 145 The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana traditions 15 Rigveda Main article Rigveda Nasadiya Sukta Hymn of non Eternity Who really knows Who can here proclaim it Whence whence this creation sprang Gods came later after the creation of this universe Who then knows whence it has arisen Whether God s will created it or whether He was mute Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows He only knows or perhaps He does not know Rig Veda 10 129 6 7 146 The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text 147 It is a collection of 1 028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10 600 verses in all organized into ten books Sanskrit mandalas 148 The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities 149 The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a period of several centuries between c 1500 and 1200 BCE note 1 the early Vedic period in the Punjab Sapta Sindhu region of the northwest Indian subcontinent According to Michael Witzel the initial codification of the Rigveda took place at the end of the Rigvedic period at c 1200 BCE in the early Kuru kingdom 150 The Rigveda is structured based on clear principles The Veda begins with a small book addressed to Agni Indra Soma and other gods all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection for each deity series the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones but the number of hymns per book increases Finally the meter too is systematically arranged from jagati and tristubh to anustubh and gayatri as the text progresses 132 The rituals became increasingly complex over time and the king s association with them strengthened both the position of the Brahmans and the kings 151 The Rajasuya rituals performed with the coronation of a king set in motion cyclical regenerations of the universe 152 In terms of substance the nature of hymns shift from praise of deities in early books to Nasadiya Sukta with questions such as what is the origin of the universe do even gods know the answer 146 the virtue of Dana charity in society 153 and other metaphysical issues in its hymns note 22 There are similarities between the mythology rituals and linguistics in Rigveda and those found in ancient central Asia Iranian and Hindukush Afghanistan regions 154 Samaveda Main article Samaveda The Samaveda Samhita 155 consists of 1549 stanzas taken almost entirely except for 75 mantras from the Rigveda 44 156 While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period the existing compilation dates from the post Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit between c 1200 and 1000 BCE or slightly later roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda 156 The Samaveda samhita has two major parts The first part includes four melody collections gana ग न and the second part three verse books arcika आर च क 156 A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the arcika books Just as in the Rigveda the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with hymns to Agni and Indra but shift to the abstract Their meters shift also in a descending order The songs in the later sections of the Samaveda have the least deviation from the hymns derived from the Rigveda 156 In the Samaveda some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated 157 Including repetitions there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith 158 Two major recensions have survived the Kauthuma Ranayaniya and the Jaiminiya Its purpose was liturgical and they were the repertoire of the udgatṛ or singer priests 159 Yajurveda Main article Yajurveda The Yajurveda Samhita consists of prose mantras 160 It is a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire 160 The core text of the Yajurveda falls within the classical Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE younger than the Rigveda and roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda the Rigvedic Khilani and the Samaveda 161 Witzel dates the Yajurveda hymns to the early Indian Iron Age after c 1200 and before 800 BCE 162 corresponding to the early Kuru Kingdom 163 A page from the Taittiriya Samhita a layer of text within the Yajurveda The earliest and most ancient layer of Yajurveda samhita includes about 1 875 verses that are distinct yet borrow and build upon the foundation of verses in Rigveda 164 Unlike the Samaveda which is almost entirely based on Rigveda mantras and structured as songs the Yajurveda samhitas are in prose and they are different from earlier Vedic texts linguistically 165 The Yajur Veda has been the primary source of information about sacrifices during Vedic times and associated rituals 166 There are two major groups of texts in this Veda the Black Krishna and the White Shukla The term black implies the un arranged motley collection of verses in Yajurveda in contrast to the white well arranged Yajurveda 167 The White Yajurveda separates the Samhita from its Brahmana the Shatapatha Brahmana the Black Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary Of the Black Yajurveda texts from four major schools have survived Maitrayani Katha Kapisthala Katha Taittiriya while of the White Yajurveda two Kanva and Madhyandina 168 169 The youngest layer of Yajurveda text is not related to rituals nor sacrifice it includes the largest collection of primary Upanishads influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy 170 171 Atharvaveda Main article Atharvaveda The Artharvaveda Samhita is the text belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets It has about 760 hymns and about 160 of the hymns are in common with the Rigveda 172 Most of the verses are metrical but some sections are in prose 172 Two different versions of the text the Paippalada and the Saunakiya have survived into the modern times 172 173 The Atharvaveda was not considered as a Veda in the Vedic era and was accepted as a Veda in late 1st millennium BCE 174 175 It was compiled last 176 probably around 900 BCE although some of its material may go back to the time of the Rigveda 2 or earlier 172 The Atharvaveda is sometimes called the Veda of magical formulas 177 an epithet declared to be incorrect by other scholars 178 The Samhita layer of the text likely represents a developing 2nd millennium BCE tradition of magico religious rites to address superstitious anxiety spells to remove maladies believed to be caused by demons and herbs and nature derived potions as medicine 179 180 The text states Kenneth Zysk is one of oldest surviving record of the evolutionary practices in religious medicine and reveals the earliest forms of folk healing of Indo European antiquity 181 Many books of the Atharvaveda Samhita are dedicated to rituals without magic such as to philosophical speculations and to theosophy 178 The Atharva veda has been a primary source for information about Vedic culture the customs and beliefs the aspirations and frustrations of everyday Vedic life as well as those associated with kings and governance The text also includes hymns dealing with the two major rituals of passage marriage and cremation The Atharva Veda also dedicates significant portion of the text asking the meaning of a ritual 182 Embedded Vedic texts Manuscripts of the Vedas are in the Sanskrit language but in many regional scripts in addition to the Devanagari Top Grantha script Tamil Nadu Below Malayalam script Kerala Brahmanas Further information Brahmana The Brahmanas are commentaries explanation of proper methods and meaning of Vedic Samhita rituals in the four Vedas 39 They also incorporate myths legends and in some cases philosophy 39 40 Each regional Vedic shakha school has its own operating manual like Brahmana text most of which have been lost 183 A total of 19 Brahmana texts have survived into modern times two associated with the Rigveda six with the Yajurveda ten with the Samaveda and one with the Atharvaveda The oldest dated to about 900 BCE while the youngest Brahmanas such as the Shatapatha Brahmana were complete by about 700 BCE 41 42 According to Jan Gonda the final codification of the Brahmanas took place in pre Buddhist times ca 600 BCE 184 The substance of the Brahmana text varies with each Veda For example the first chapter of the Chandogya Brahmana one of the oldest Brahmanas includes eight ritual suktas hymns for the ceremony of marriage and rituals at the birth of a child 185 186 The first hymn is a recitation that accompanies offering a Yajna oblation to Agni fire on the occasion of a marriage and the hymn prays for prosperity of the couple getting married 185 187 The second hymn wishes for their long life kind relatives and a numerous progeny 185 The third hymn is a mutual marriage pledge between the bride and groom by which the two bind themselves to each other The sixth through last hymns of the first chapter in Chandogya Brahmana are ritual celebrations on the birth of a child and wishes for health wealth and prosperity with a profusion of cows and artha 185 However these verses are incomplete expositions and their complete context emerges only with the Samhita layer of text 188 Aranyakas and Upanishads Further information Vedanta Upanishads and Aranyaka The Aranyakas layer of the Vedas include rituals discussion of symbolic meta rituals as well as philosophical speculations 14 43 Aranyakas however neither are homogeneous in content nor in structure 43 They are a medley of instructions and ideas and some include chapters of Upanishads within them Two theories have been proposed on the origin of the word Aranyakas One theory holds that these texts were meant to be studied in a forest while the other holds that the name came from these being the manuals of allegorical interpretation of sacrifices for those in Vanaprastha retired forest dwelling stage of their life according to the historic age based Ashrama system of human life 189 The Upanishads reflect the last composed layer of texts in the Vedas They are commonly referred to as Vedanta variously interpreted to mean either the last chapters parts of the Vedas or the object the highest purpose of the Veda 190 The central concern of the Upanishads are the connections between parts of the human organism and cosmic realities 191 The Upanishads intend to create a hierarchy of connected and dependent realities evoking a sense of unity of the separate elements of the world and of human experience compressing them into a single form 192 The concepts of Brahman the Ultimate Reality from which everything arises and Atman the essence of the individual are central ideas in the Upanishads 193 194 and knowing the correspondence between Atman and Brahman as the fundamental principle which shapes the world permits the creation of an integrative vision of the whole 192 194 The Upanishads are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions 46 195 and of the Vedic corpus they alone are widely known and the central ideas of the Upanishads have influenced the diverse traditions of Hinduism 46 196 Aranyakas are sometimes identified as karma kanda ritualistic section while the Upanishads are identified as jnana kanda spirituality section 51 52 53 note 5 In an alternate classification the early part of Vedas are called Samhitas and the commentary are called the Brahmanas which together are identified as the ceremonial karma kanda while Aranyakas and Upanishads are referred to as the jnana kanda 54 Post Vedic literatureVedanga Main article Vedanga The Vedangas developed towards the end of the vedic period around or after the middle of the 1st millennium BCE These auxiliary fields of Vedic studies emerged because the language of the Vedas 197 composed centuries earlier became too archaic to the people of that time 198 The Vedangas were sciences that focused on helping understand and interpret the Vedas that had been composed many centuries earlier 198 The six subjects of Vedanga are phonetics Sikṣa poetic meter Chandas grammar Vyakaraṇa etymology and linguistics Nirukta rituals and rites of passage Kalpa time keeping and astronomy Jyotiṣa 199 200 201 Vedangas developed as ancillary studies for the Vedas but its insights into meters structure of sound and language grammar linguistic analysis and other subjects influenced post Vedic studies arts culture and various schools of Hindu philosophy 202 203 204 The Kalpa Vedanga studies for example gave rise to the Dharma sutras which later expanded into Dharma shastras 198 205 Parisista Main article Parisiṣṭa Parisiṣṭa supplement appendix is the term applied to various ancillary works of Vedic literature dealing mainly with details of ritual and elaborations of the texts logically and chronologically prior to them the Samhitas Brahmanas Aranyakas and Sutras Naturally classified with the Veda to which each pertains Parisista works exist for each of the four Vedas However only the literature associated with the Atharvaveda is extensive The Asvalayana Gṛhya Parisiṣṭa is a very late text associated with the Rigveda canon The Gobhila Gṛhya Parisiṣṭa is a short metrical text of two chapters with 113 and 95 verses respectively The Katiya Parisiṣṭas ascribed to Katyayana consist of 18 works enumerated self referentially in the fifth of the series the Caraṇavyuha and the Katyayana Srauta Sutra Parisiṣṭa The Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda has 3 parisistas TheApastamba Hautra Parisiṣṭa which is also found as the secondprasnaof theSatyasaḍha Srauta Sutra the Varaha Srauta Sutra Parisiṣṭa For the Atharvaveda there are 79 works collected as 72 distinctly named parisistas 206 Upaveda The term upaveda applied knowledge is used in traditional literature to designate the subjects of certain technical works 207 208 Lists of what subjects are included in this class differ among sources The Charanavyuha mentions four Upavedas 209 Archery Dhanurveda associated with the Yajurveda Architecture Sthapatyaveda associated with the Rigveda Music and sacred dance Gandharvaveda associated with the Samaveda Medicine Ayurveda associated with the Atharvaveda 210 211 Fifth and other Vedas Some post Vedic texts including the Mahabharata the Natyasastra 212 and certain Puranas refer to themselves as the fifth Veda 213 The earliest reference to such a fifth Veda is found in the Chandogya Upanishad in hymn 7 1 2 214 Let drama and dance Natya न ट य be the fifth vedic scripture Combined with an epic story tending to virtue wealth joy and spiritual freedom it must contain the significance of every scripture and forward every art Thus from all the Vedas Brahma framed the Natya Veda From the Rig Veda he drew forth the words from the Sama Veda the melody from the Yajur Veda gesture and from the Atharva Veda the sentiment First chapter of Natyasastra Abhinaya Darpana 215 216 Divya Prabandha for example Tiruvaymoli is a term for canonical Tamil texts considered as Vernacular Veda by some South Indian Hindus 34 35 Other texts such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedanta Sutras are considered shruti or Vedic by some Hindu denominations but not universally within Hinduism The Bhakti movement and Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular extended the term veda to include the Sanskrit Epics and Vaishnavite devotional texts such as the Pancharatra 217 Puranas Main article Puranas The Puranas is a vast genre of encyclopedic Indian literature about a wide range of topics particularly myths legends and other traditional lore 218 Several of these texts are named after major Hindu deities such as Vishnu Shiva and Devi 219 220 There are 18 Maha Puranas Great Puranas and 18 Upa Puranas Minor Puranas with over 400 000 verses 218 The Puranas have been influential in the Hindu culture 221 222 They are considered Vaidika congruent with Vedic literature 223 The Bhagavata Purana has been among the most celebrated and popular text in the Puranic genre and is of non dualistic tenor 224 225 The Puranic literature wove with the Bhakti movement in India and both Dvaita and Advaita scholars have commented on the underlying Vedanta themes in the Maha Puranas 226 Authority of the VedasThe various Hindu denominations and Indian philosophies have taken differing positions on the authority of the Vedas Schools of Indian philosophy which acknowledge the authority of the Vedas are classified as orthodox astika note 23 Other sramaṇa traditions such as Charvaka Ajivika Buddhism and Jainism which did not regard the Vedas as authorities are referred to as heterodox or non orthodox nastika schools 15 27 Certain traditions which are often seen as being part of Hinduism also rejected the Vedas For example authors of the tantric Vaishnava Sahajiya tradition like Siddha Mukundadeva rejected the Vedas authority 228 Likewise some tantric Shaiva Agamas reject the Vedas The Anandabhairava tantra for example states that the wise man should not elect as his authority the word of the Vedas which is full of impurity produces but scanty and transitory fruits and is limited 229 Though many religious Hindus implicitly acknowledge the authority of the Vedas this acknowledgment is often no more than a declaration that someone considers himself or herself a Hindu 230 note 24 and most Indians today pay lip service to the Veda and have no regard for the contents of the text 231 Some Hindus challenge the authority of the Vedas thereby implicitly acknowledging its importance to the history of Hinduism states Lipner 232 Hindu reform movement such as Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj accepted the authority of Vedas 233 while the authority of the Vedas has been rejected by Hindu modernists like Debendranath Tagore and Keshub Chandra Sen 234 and also by social reformers like B R Ambedkar 235 Western IndologyFurther information Sanskrit studies The study of Sanskrit in the West began in the 17th century In the early 19th century Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to Vedic texts specifically the Upanishads The importance of Vedic Sanskrit for Indo European studies was also recognized in the early 19th century English translations of the Samhitas were published in the later 19th century in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Muller between 1879 and 1910 236 Ralph T H Griffith also presented English translations of the four Samhitas published 1889 to 1899 Rigveda manuscripts were selected for inscription in UNESCO s Memory of the World Register in 2007 237 See also Hinduism portal Books portal History portalHindu philosophy Historical Vedic religion Pyramid Texts Shakha Vedic chant BrahminismNotes a b c d e f It is certain that the hymns of the Rig Veda post date Indo Iranian separation of ca 2000 BCE and probably that of the relevant Mitanni documents of c 1400 BCE The oldest available text is estimated to be from 1200 BCE Philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to the second half of the second millennium Max Muller the hymns of the Rig Veda are said to date from 1500 B C 238 The EIEC s v Indo Iranian languages p 306 gives 1500 1000 BCE Flood and Witzel both mention c 1500 1200 BCE 2 57 Anthony mentions c 1500 1300 BCE 64 Thomas Oberlies Die Religion des Rgveda 1998 p 158 based on cumulative evidence sets a wide range of 1700 1100 BCE 65 Oberlies 1998 p 155 gives an estimate of 1100 BCE for the youngest hymns in book 10 239 Witzel 1995 p 4 mentions c 1500 1200 BCE According to Witzel 1997 p 263 the whole Rig Vedic period may have lasted from c 1900 BCE to c 1200 BCE the bulk of the RV represents only 5 or 6 generations of kings and of the contemporary poets 24 of the Puru and Bharata tribes It contains little else before and after this snapshot view of contemporary Rgvedic history as reported by these contemporary tape recordings On the other hand the whole Rgvedic period may have lasted even up to 700 years from the infiltration of the Indo Aryans into the subcontinent c 1900 B C at the utmost the time of collapse of the Indus civilization up to c 1200 B C the time of the introduction of iron which is first mentioned in the clearly post vedic hymns of the Atharvaveda Elisa Freschi 2012 The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school Freschi 2012 p 62 This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions For a table of all Vedic texts see Witzel 2003 pp 100 101 The Vedic Sanskrit corpus is incorporated in A Vedic Word Concordance Vaidika Padanukrama Koṣa prepared from 1930 under Vishva Bandhu and published in five volumes in 1935 1965 Its scope extends to about 400 texts including the entire Vedic Sanskrit corpus besides some sub Vedic texts Volume I Samhitas Volume II Brahmanas and Aranyakas Volume III Upanishads Volume IV Vedangas A revised edition extending to about 1800 pages was published in 1973 1976 a b Edward Roer Translator Shankara s Introduction at Google Books to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad at pp 1 5 The Vedas are divided in two parts the first is the karma kanda the ceremonial part also called purva kanda and treats on ceremonies the second part is the jnana kanda the part which contains knowledge also named uttara kanda or posterior part and unfolds the knowledge of Brahma or the universal soul As a skilled craftsman makes a car a singer I Mighty One this hymn for thee have fashioned If thou O Agni God accept it gladly may we obtain thereby the heavenly Waters Rigveda 5 2 11 Translated by Ralph T H Griffith 56 Gavin Flood sums up mainstream estimates according to which the Rigveda was compiled from as early as 1500 BCE over a period of several centuries 2 Broo 2016 p 92 quotes Harold G Coward and K Kunjunni Raja Of the complete Veda by pațha sala priestly schools as distinguished from the transmission in the puja the daily services 75 Several authors refer to the Chinese Buddhist Monk I Tsing who visited India in the 7th century to retrieve Buddhist texts and gave examples of mnemonic techniques used in India 80 In India there are two traditional ways in which one can attain great intellectual power Firstly by repeatedly committing to memory the intellect is developed secondly the alphabet fixes to one s ideas By this way after a practice of ten days or a month a student feels his thoughts rise like a fountain and can commit to memory whatever he has heard once 81 80 Staal this tradition of oral transmission is by far the more remarkable than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission not merely because it is characteristically Indian and unlike anything we find elsewhere but also because it has led to scientific discoveries that are of enduring interest and from which the contemporary West still has much to learn Schiffman 2012 p 171 quoting Staal 1986 p 27 Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians especially Paṇini had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by Noam Chomsky Chomsky himself has said that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini s grammar 85 These early Indian methods allowed the construction of discrete potentially infinite generative systems Remarkably these early linguistic systems were codified orally though writing was then used to develop them in some way The formal basis for Panini s methods involved the use of auxiliary markers rediscovered in the 1930s by the logician Emil Post 86 a b Artha may also mean goal purpose or essence depending on the context 125 a b Klostermaier 2007 p 55 Kautas a teacher mentioned in the Nirukta by Yaska ca 500 BCE a work devoted to an etymology of Vedic words that were no longer understood by ordinary people held that the word of the Veda was no longer perceived as meaningful normal speech but as a fixed sequence of sounds whose meaning was obscure beyond recovery The tenth through twelfth volumes of the first Prapathaka of the Chandogya Upanishad 800 600 BCE describe a legend about priests and it criticizes how they go about reciting verses and singing hymns without any idea what they mean or the divine principle they signify 91 According to Holdrege srotriyas a group of male Brahmin reciters who are masters of sruti 70 frequently do not understand what they recite when reciting the Samhitas merely preserving the sound of the text 89 Klostermaier Brahman derived from the root bŗh to grow to become great was originally identical with the Vedic word that makes people prosper words were the pricipan means to approach the gods who dwelled in a different sphere It was not a big step from this notion of reified speech act to that of the speech act being looked at implicitly and explicitly as a means to an end Klostermaier 2007 p 55 quotes Deshpande 1990 p 4 Coward 2008 p 114 For the Mimamsa the ultimate reality is nothing other than the eternal words of the Vedas They did not accept the existence of a single supreme creator god who might have composed the Veda According to the Mimamsa gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names The power of the gods then is nothing other than the power of the mantras that name them The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition with the first Pali Canon written many centuries after the death of the Buddha 96 Literally the meaning of the Vedas made manifest Sayana repeats Yaska see interpretation of the Vedas The Upanishads 52 Mookerji also refers to the Usana smriti 81 2 which states that mastery of mere text of Veda is to be followed up by its meaning by discussing the Vedanta 129 where after they were able to engage in doscourses on the Vedas 130 95 For example Hymn 1 164 34 What is the ultimate limit of the earth What is the center of the universe What is the semen of the cosmic horse What is the ultimate source of human speech Hymn 1 164 34 Who gave blood soul spirit to the earth How could the unstructured universe give origin to this structured world Hymn 1 164 5 Where does the sun hide in the night Where do gods live Hymn 1 164 6 What where is the unborn support for the born universe Hymn 1 164 20 a hymn that is widely cited in the Upanishads as the parable of the Body and the Soul Two birds with fair wings inseparable companions Have found refuge in the same sheltering tree One incessantly eats from the fig tree the other not eating just looks on Sources a Antonio de Nicholas 2003 Meditations Through the Rig Veda Four Dimensional Man ISBN 978 0 595 26925 9 pp 64 69 Jan Gonda A History of Indian Literature Veda and Upanishads Volume 1 Part 1 Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 pp 134 135 Rigveda Book 1 Hymn 164 Wikisource Elisa Freschi 2012 The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school 227 This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions Lipner quotes Brockington 1981 The sacred tread p 5 References a b c d e Witzel 2003 p 69 a b c d e f Flood 1996 p 37 Construction of the Vedas VedicGranth Org Archived from the original on 17 July 2021 Retrieved 3 July 2020 Veda Random House Webster s Unabridged Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary Online accessed 8 April 2023 see e g Radhakrishnan amp Moore 1957 p 3 Witzel 2003 p 68 MacDonell 2004 pp 29 39 Sanskrit literature 2003 in Philip s Encyclopedia Accessed 2007 08 09 Sanujit Ghose 2011 Religious Developments in Ancient India in World History Encyclopedia a b c Gavin Flood 1996 An Introduction to Hinduism Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 43878 0 pp 35 39 Bloomfield M The Atharvaveda and the Gopatha Brahmana Grundriss der Indo Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde II 1 b Strassburg 1899 Gonda J A history of Indian literature I 1 Vedic literature Samhitas and Brahmanas I 2 The Ritual Sutras Wiesbaden 1975 1977 a b A Bhattacharya 2006 Hindu Dharma Introduction to Scriptures and Theology ISBN 978 0 595 38455 6 pp 8 14 George M Williams 2003 Handbook of Hindu Mythology Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 533261 2 p 285 a b Jan Gonda 1975 Vedic Literature Saṃhitas and Brahmaṇas Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 a b Bhattacharya 2006 pp 8 14 a b c Holdrege 1995 pp 351 357 a b c d Flood 1996 p 82 a b Apte 1965 p 887 a b Apte 1965 apauruSeya a b Sharma 2011 pp 196 197 a b Westerhoff 2009 p 290 a b Todd 2013 p 128 a b Pollock 2011 pp 41 58 a b c Scharfe 2002 pp 13 14 a b c d e f Wood 2007 a b c Hexam 2011 p chapter 8 a b Dwyer 2013 a b c d e Holdrege 1996 p 347 a b astika and nastika Encyclopaedia Britannica Online 20 April 2016 a b Monier Williams 1899 p 1015 Apte 1965 p 856 see e g Pokorny s 1959 Indogermanisches etymologisches Worterbuch s v u e id Rix Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben u ei d Monier Williams 1899 p 1017 2nd Column Monier Williams 1899 p 1017 3rd Column Vasudha Narayanan 1994 The Vernacular Veda Revelation Recitation and Ritual University of South Carolina Press ISBN 978 0 87249 965 2 p 194 a b John Carman 1989 The Tamil Veda Pillan s Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 09305 5 pp 259 261 a b Vasudha Narayanan 1994 The Vernacular Veda Revelation Recitation and Ritual University of South Carolina Press ISBN 978 0 87249 965 2 pp 43 117 119 according to ISKCON Hindu Sacred Texts Hindus themselves often use the term to describe anything connected to the Vedas and their corollaries e g Vedic culture Prasad 2020 p 150 37 575 are Rigvedic Of the remaining 34 857 appear in the other three Samhitas and 16 405 are known only from Brahmanas Upanishads or Sutras a b c Klostermaier 1994 pp 67 69 a b Brahmana Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013 a b Michael Witzel Tracing the Vedic dialects in Dialectes dans les litteratures Indo Aryennes ed Caillat Paris 1989 97 265 a b Biswas et al 1989 Cosmic Perspectives Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 34354 1 pp 42 43 a b c Jan Gonda 1975 Vedic Literature Saṃhitas and Brahmaṇas Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 pp 424 426 a b c Michaels 2004 p 51 William K Mahony 1998 The Artful Universe An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination State University of New York Press p 271 ISBN 978 0 7914 3579 3 a b c d Wendy Doniger 1990 Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism 1st Edition University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 61847 0 pp 2 3 Quote The Upanishads supply the basis of later Hindu philosophy they alone of the Vedic corpus are widely known and quoted by most well educated Hindus and their central ideas have also become a part of the spiritual arsenal of rank and file Hindus Wiman Dissanayake 1993 Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice Editors Thomas P Kasulis et al State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 7914 1080 6 p 39 Quote The Upanishads form the foundations of Hindu philosophical thought and the central theme of the Upanishads is the identity of Atman and Brahman or the inner self and the cosmic self Michael McDowell and Nathan Brown 2009 World Religions Penguin ISBN 978 1 59257 846 7 pp 208 210 Patrick Olivelle 2014 The Early Upanisads Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 535242 9 p 3 Quote Even though theoretically the whole of vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth shruti in reality it is the Upanishads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu Upanishads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism Witzel 2003 pp 100 101 Bartley 2001 p 490 a b Holdrege 1996 p 30 a b c Nakamura 1983 p 409 a b Bhattacharya 2006 p 9 a b Knapp 2005 pp 10 11 Seer of the Fifth Veda Kr ṣṇa Dvaipayana Vyasa in the Mahabharata Bruce M Sullivan Motilal Banarsidass pp 85 86 The Rig Veda Mandala 5 Hymn 2 a b c Witzel 1995 p 4 Anthony 2007 p 49 Witzel 2008 p 68 Frazier 2011 p 344 Holdrege 2012 pp 249 250 Dalal 2014 p 16 Dutt 2006 p 36 a b Anthony 2007 p 454 a b Oberlies 1998 p 158 Kumar 2014 p 179 Witzel 2003 p 68 a b c d e Witzel 2003 p 69 For oral composition and oral transmission for many hundreds of years before being written down see Avari 2007 p 76 a b Holdrege 1995 p 344 a b c d e Holdrege 1996 p 345 a b c Broo 2016 p 92 Pruthi 2004 p 286 Holdrege 2012 p 165 Prasad 2007 p 125 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 pp 344 345 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 p 345 Banerji 1989 pp 323 324 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 pp 477 495 Rath 2012 p 22 a b c Griffiths 1999 p 122 a b c Rath 2012 p 19 Doniger 2010 p 106 a b Wilke amp Moebus 2011 p 479 Schiffman 2012 p 171 An event in Kolkata Archived May 10 2012 at the Wayback Machine Frontline Kadvany John 2007 Positional Value and Linguistic Recursion Journal of Indian Philosophy 35 5 6 487 520 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 565 2083 doi 10 1007 s10781 007 9025 5 S2CID 52885600 Galewicz 2004 p 328 a b c Mookerji 2011 p 35 a b c d Holdrege 1996 p 346 a b c Klostermaier 2007 p 55 Paul Deussen Sixty Upanishads of the Veda Volume 1 Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 1468 4 pages 80 84 Jackson 2016 p Sayana Vidyaranya s brother Holdrege 1996 pp 346 347 Holdrege 1996 pp 346 347 a b Frazier 2011 p 34 Donald S Lopez Jr 1995 Authority and Orality in the Mahayana PDF Numen 42 1 21 47 doi 10 1163 1568527952598800 hdl 2027 42 43799 JSTOR 3270278 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 p 192 Goody 1987 Lopez 2016 pp 35 36 Olson amp Cole 2013 p 15 a b Avari 2007 pp 69 70 76 Brodd Jeffrey 2003 World Religions Winona MN Saint Mary s Press ISBN 978 0 88489 725 5 Jamison Stephanie W Brereton Joel P 2014 The Rigveda The Earliest Religious Poetry of India Volume 1 Oxford University Press p 18 ISBN 978 0 19 972078 1 Cultural Heritage of Nepal Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project University of Hamburg Archived from the original on 18 September 2014 Retrieved 4 November 2014 Buswell amp Lopez 2013 Frazier 2011 p 34 Walton Linda 2015 Educational institutions in The Cambridge World History Vol 5 Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 122 ISBN 978 0 521 19074 9 Sukumar Dutt 1988 1962 Buddhist Monks And Monasteries of India Their History And Contribution To Indian Culture George Allen and Unwin Ltd London ISBN 81 208 0498 8 pp 332 333 Deshpande 1990 p 33 Misra 2000 p 49 a b Holdrege 1996 p 354 Jackson 2016 ch 3 Coward Raja amp Potter 1990 p 106 a b Mookerji 2011 p 34 Mookerji 2011 p 30 Holdrege 1996 pp 355 356 357 a b Galewicz 2004 p 40 Galewicz 2011 p 338 Collins 2009 237 Sayana a b Galewicz 2004 p 41 Galewicz 2004 pp 41 42 Michaels 2016 pp 237 238 Mookerji 2011 pp 29 31 Mookerji 2011 pp 29 34 See Sanskrit English Dictionary University of Kloen Germany 2009 Karl Potter 1998 Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Volume 4 ISBN 81 208 0310 8 Motilal Banarsidass pp 610 note 17 Mookerji 2011 pp 34 35 Mookerji 2011 pp 35 36 Mookerji 2011 p 36 a b c Mookerji 2011 p 196 Mookerji 2011 p 29 a b Flood 1996 p 39 a b c d e Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu Harvard University in Witzel 1997 pp 261 264 a b Jamison and Witzel 1992 Vedic Hinduism Harvard University p 6 J Muir 1872 Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India their religion and institutions Vol 1 at Google Books 2nd Edition p 12 Albert Friedrich Weber Indische Studien herausg von at Google Books Vol 10 pp 1 9 with footnotes in German For a translation Original Sanskrit Texts at Google Books p 14 For an example see Sarvanukramaṇi Vivaraṇa Univ of Pennsylvania rare texts collection R gveda sarvanukramaṇi Saunakakr taʼnuvakanukramaṇi ca Maharṣi Katyayana viracita OCLC 11549595 Staal 1986 a b Filliozat 2004 p 139 Witzel 2003 p 69 almost all printed editions depend on the late manuscripts that are hardly older than 500 years Radhakrishnan amp Moore 1957 p 3 Witzel 2003 p 68 Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 pp 257 348 MacDonell 2004 pp 29 39 Jamison and Witzel 1992 Vedic Hinduism Harvard University p 21 Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 p 286 a b Original Sanskrit Rigveda 10 129 Wikisource Translation 1 Max Muller 1859 A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature Williams and Norgate London pp 559 565 Translation 2 Kenneth Kramer 1986 World Scriptures An Introduction to Comparative Religions Paulist Press p 21 ISBN 978 0 8091 2781 8 Translation 3 David Christian 2011 Maps of Time An Introduction to Big History University of California Press pp 17 18 ISBN 978 0 520 95067 2 see e g Avari 2007 p 77 For 1 028 hymns and 10 600 verses and division into ten mandalas see Avari 2007 p 77 For characterization of content and mentions of deities including Agni Indra Varuna Soma Surya etc see Avari 2007 p 77 Witzel 1997 p 261 Prasad 2020 pp 150 151 Prasad 2020 p 151 Original text translated in English The Rig Veda Mandala 10 Hymn 117 Ralph T H Griffith Translator C Chatterjee 1995 Values in the Indian Ethos An Overview Journal of Human Values Vol 1 No 1 pp 3 12 Michael Witzel The Rigvedic religious system and its central Asian and Hindukush antecedents in The Vedas Texts Language and Ritual Editors Griffiths and Houben 2004 Brill Academic ISBN 978 90 6980 149 0 pp 581 627 From saman the term for a melody applied to a metrical hymn or a song of praise Apte 1965 p 981 a b c d Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 pp 269 270 M Bloomfield Rig veda Repetitions p 402 at Google Books pp 402 464 For 1875 total verses see the numbering given in Ralph T H Griffith Griffith s introduction mentions the recension history for his text Repetitions may be found by consulting the cross index in Griffith pp 491 499 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 p 381 a b Witzel 2003 pp 76 77 The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools Michael Witzel Harvard University Autochthonous Aryans Michael Witzel Harvard University Early Sanskritization Archived 20 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine Michael Witzel Harvard University Antonio de Nicholas 2003 Meditations Through the Rig Veda Four Dimensional Man ISBN 978 0 595 26925 9 pp 273 274 Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 pp 270 271 Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 pp 272 274 Paul Deussen Sixty Upanishads of the Veda Volume 1 Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 1468 4 pp 217 219 Michaels 2004 p 52 Table 3 CL Prabhakar 1972 The Recensions of the Sukla Yajurveda Archiv Orientalni Volume 40 Issue 1 pp 347 353 Paul Deussen The Philosophy of the Upanishads Motilal Banarsidass 2011 Edition ISBN 978 81 208 1620 6 p 23 Patrick Olivelle 1998 Upaniṣhads Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 282292 6 pp 1 17 a b c d Michaels 2004 p 56 Frits Staal 2009 Discovering the Vedas Origins Mantras Rituals Insights Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 309986 4 pp 136 137 Frits Staal 2009 Discovering the Vedas Origins Mantras Rituals Insights Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 309986 4 p 135 Alex Wayman 1997 Untying the Knots in Buddhism Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 1321 2 pp 52 53 The latest of the four Vedas the Atharva Veda is as we have seen largely composed of magical texts and charms but here and there we find cosmological hymns which anticipate the Upanishads hymns to Skambha the Support who is seen as the first principle which is both the material and efficient cause of the universe to Prana the Breath of Life to Vac the Word and so on Zaehner 1966 p vii Laurie Patton 2004 Veda and Upanishad in The Hindu World Editors Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby Routledge ISBN 0 415 21527 7 p 38 a b Jan Gonda 1975 Vedic Literature Saṃhitas and Brahmaṇas Vol 1 Fasc 1 Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 pp 277 280 Quote It would be incorrect to describe the Atharvaveda Samhita as a collection of magical formulas Kenneth Zysk 2012 Understanding Mantras Editor Harvey Alper Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 0746 4 pp 123 129 On magic spells and charms such as those to gain better health Atharva Veda 2 32 Bhaishagykni Charm to secure perfect health Maurice Bloomfield Translator Sacred Books of the East Vol 42 Oxford University Press see also chapters 3 11 3 31 4 10 5 30 19 26 On finding a good husband Atharva Veda 4 2 36 Strijaratani Maurice Bloomfield Translator Sacred Books of the East Vol 42 Oxford University Press Atharvaveda dedicates over 30 chapters to love relationships sexuality and for conceiving a child see e g chapters 1 14 2 30 3 25 6 60 6 78 6 82 6 130 6 132 On peaceful social and family relationships Atharva Veda 6 3 30 Maurice Bloomfield Translator Sacred Books of the East Vol 42 Oxford University Press Kenneth Zysk 1993 Religious Medicine The History and Evolution of Indian Medicine Routledge ISBN 978 1 56000 076 1 pp x xii Witzel M The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu in Witzel 1997 pp 275 276 Moriz Winternitz 2010 A History of Indian Literature Volume 1 Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 0264 3 pp 175 176 Klostermaier 1994 p 67 a b c d Max Muller Chandogya Upanishad The Upanishads Part I Oxford University Press p lxxxvii with footnote 2 Paul Deussen Sixty Upanishads of the Veda Volume 1 Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 1468 4 p 63 The Development of the Female Mind in India p 27 at Google Books The Calcutta Review Volume 60 p 27 Jan Gonda 1975 Vedic Literature Saṃhitas and Brahmaṇas Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 pp 319 322 368 383 with footnotes AB Keith 2007 The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 0644 3 pp 489 490 Max Muller The Upanishads Part 1 Oxford University Press p lxxxvi footnote 1 Olivelle 1998 p liii a b Olivelle 1998 p lv Mahadevan 1952 p 59 a b PT Raju 1985 Structural Depths of Indian Thought State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 88706 139 4 pp 35 36 Wiman Dissanayake 1993 Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice Editors Thomas P Kasulis et al State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 7914 1080 6 p 39 Quote The Upanishads form the foundations of Hindu philosophical thought and the central theme of the Upanishads is the identity of Atman and Brahman or the inner self and the cosmic self Michael McDowell and Nathan Brown 2009 World Religions Penguin ISBN 978 1 59257 846 7 pp 208 210 Patrick Olivelle 2014 The Early Upanisads Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 535242 9 p 3 Quote Even though theoretically the whole of vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth shruti in reality it is the Upanishads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu Upanishads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism Sound and meaning of Veda 11 September 2022 a b c Olivelle 1999 p xxiii James Lochtefeld 2002 Vedanga in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism Vol 1 A M Rosen Publishing ISBN 0 8239 2287 1 pp 744 745 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 pp 391 394 with footnotes 416 419 Coward Raja amp Potter 1990 pp 105 110 Eggeling Hans Julius 1911 Hinduism In Chisholm Hugh ed Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 13 11th ed Cambridge University Press pp 501 513 see page 505 Wilke amp Moebus 2011 pp 472 532 Coward Raja amp Potter 1990 p 18 Rajendra Prasad 2009 A Historical developmental Study of Classical Indian Philosophy of Morals Concept p 147 ISBN 978 81 8069 595 7 BR Modak The Ancillary Literature of the Atharva Veda New Delhi Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan 1993 ISBN 81 215 0607 7 Monier Williams 1899 p 207 Apte 1965 p 293 Upaveda Oxford University Press Retrieved 7 December 2014 Narayanaswamy V 1981 Origin and Development of Ayurveda A Brief History Ancient Science of Life 1 1 1 7 PMC 3336651 PMID 22556454 Frawley David Ranade Subhash 2001 Ayurveda Nature s Medicine Lotus Press p 11 ISBN 978 0 914955 95 5 Retrieved 6 January 2015 Paul Kuritz 1988 The Making of Theatre History Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 547861 5 p 68 Sullivan 1994 p 385 Sanskrit original Chandogya Upanishad Wikisource English translation Chandogya Upanishad 7 1 2 G Jha Translator Oriental Book Agency p 368 Natyashastra PDF Sanskrit Documents Coormaraswamy and Duggirala 1917 The Mirror of Gesture Harvard University Press pp 2 4 Goswami Satsvarupa 1976 Readings in Vedic Literature The Tradition Speaks for Itself S l Assoc Publishing Group p 240 ISBN 978 0 912776 88 0 a b Greg Bailey 2001 Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy Editor Oliver Leaman Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 17281 3 pp 437 439 Ludo Rocher 1986 The Puranas Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 02522 5 pp 1 5 12 21 Nair Shantha N 2008 Echoes of Ancient Indian Wisdom The Universal Hindu Vision and Its Edifice Hindology Books p 266 ISBN 978 81 223 1020 7 Ludo Rocher 1986 The Puranas Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN 978 3 447 02522 5 pp 12 13 134 156 203 210 Greg Bailey 2001 Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy Editor Oliver Leaman Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 17281 3 pp 442 443 Dominic Goodall 1996 Hindu Scriptures University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 20778 3 p xxxix Thompson Richard L 2007 The Cosmology of the Bhagavata Purana Mysteries of the Sacred Universe Motilal Banarsidass Publishers p 10 ISBN 978 81 208 1919 1 Dominic Goodall 1996 Hindu Scriptures University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 20778 3 p xli BN Krishnamurti Sharma 2008 A History of the Dvaita School of Vedanta and Its Literature Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 1575 9 pp 128 131 Freschi 2012 p 62 Young Mary 2014 The Baul Tradition Sahaj Vision East and West pp 27 36 SCB Distributors Dyczkowski Mark S G 1988 The Canon of the Saivagama and the Kubjika Tantras of the Western Kaula Tradition p 9 SUNY Press Lipner 2012 p 16 Axel Michaels 2004 Hinduism Past and Present Princeton University Press p 18 see also Julius Lipner 2012 Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices Routledge p 77 and Brian K Smith 2008 Hinduism p 101 in Jacob Neusner ed Sacred Texts and Authority Wipf and Stock Publishers Lipner 2012 pp 15 17 Muhammad Khalid Masud 2000 Travellers in Faith Studies of the Tablighi Jamaʻat as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal BRILL p 50 ISBN 978 90 04 11622 1 Rambachan 1994 p 272 Nagappa 2011 p 283 It is said that the Varna system Sanatan Hindu Muller Friedrich Max author amp Stone Jon R author editor 2002 The essential Max Muller on language mythology and religion Illustrated edition Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 0 312 29309 3 Source 1 accessed Friday May 7 2010 p 44 Rig Veda in UNESCO Memory of the World Register Muller 1892 Oberlies 1998 p 155 SourcesAnthony David W 2007 The Horse The Wheel And Language How Bronze Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World Princeton University Press Apte Vaman Shivaram 1965 The Practical Sanskrit English Dictionary 4th revised amp enlarged ed Delhi Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 0567 5 Search Avari Burjor 2007 India The Ancient Past London Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 35616 9 Banerji Sures Chandra 1989 A Companion to Sanskrit Literature Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 0063 2 Bartley Christ 2001 Shankara in Leaman Oliver ed Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy Routledge ISBN 978 0 4151 7281 3 Bhattacharya Ashim 2006 Hindu Dharma Introduction to Scriptures and Theology ISBN 978 0 595 38455 6 Broo Mans 2016 Rites of Burial and Immersion Hindu Ritual practices on Disposing of Sacred Texts in Vrindavan in Myrvold Kristina ed The Death of Sacred Texts Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions Routledge Buswell Robert E Lopez Donald S Jr eds 2013 Nalanda The Princeton dictionary of Buddhism Princeton Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1 4008 4805 8 Collins Randall 2009 The Sociology of Philosophies Harvard University Press Coward Harold G Raja K Kunjunni Potter Karl eds 1990 Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Volume 5 The Philosophy of the Grammarians Princeton University Press ISBN 978 81 208 0426 5 Coward Harold 2008 The perfectibility of human nature in eastern and western thought ISBN 978 0 7914 7336 8 Dalal Roshen 2014 The Vedas An Introduction to Hinduism s Sacred Texts Penguin UK ISBN 978 81 8475 763 7 Deshpande Madhav M 1990 Changing Conceptions of the Veda From Speech Acts to Magical Sounds The Adyar Library Bulleting archived from the original on 1 August 2020 retrieved 7 June 2020 Doniger Wendy 2010 The Hindus An Alternative History Oxford University Press Dutt Sagarika 2006 India in a Globalized World Manchester University Press ISBN 978 1 84779 607 3 Dwyer Rachel 2013 What Do Hindus Believe Granta Books ISBN 978 1 84708 940 3 Filliozat Pierre Sylvain 2004 Ancient Sanskrit Mathematics An Oral Tradition and a Written Literature in Chemla Karine Cohen Robert S Renn Jurgen et al eds History of Science History of Text Boston Series in the Philosophy of Science Dordrecht Springer Netherlands pp 137 157 doi 10 1007 1 4020 2321 9 7 ISBN 978 1 4020 2320 0 Flood Gavin 1996 An Introduction to Hinduism Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 43878 0 Flood Gavin ed 2003 The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism Malden Massachusetts Blackwell ISBN 978 1 4051 3251 0 Flood Gavin ed 2008 The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism New York John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 0 4709 9868 7 Frazier Jessica ed 2011 The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies London Continuum ISBN 978 0 8264 9966 0 Freschi Elisa 2012 Duty Language and Exegesis in Prabhakara Mimamsa Brill ISBN 978 90 04 22260 1 Galewicz Cezary 2004 Changing Canons What did Sayana think he commented upon in Balcerowicz Piotr Mejor Marek eds Essays in Indian Philosophy Religion and Literature Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Galewicz Cezary 2011 Why Should the Flower of Dharma be Invisible Sayana s Vision of the Unity of the Veda in Squarcini Federico ed Boundaries Dynamics and Construction of Traditions in South Asia Anthem Press Goody 1987 The interface between the written and the oral Cambridge University Press Griffiths Paul J 1999 Religious Reading The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion Oxford University Press Hexam Irving 2011 Understanding World Religions An Interdisciplinary Approach Wilfrid Laurier Univ Press ISBN 978 0 310 31448 6 Holdrege Barbara A 1995 Veda and Torah Transcending the Textuality of Scripture SUNY Press ISBN 978 0 7914 1640 2 Holdrege Barbara A 1996 Veda and Torah Transcending the Textuality of Scripture SUNY Press ISBN 978 0 7914 1639 6 Holdrege Barbara A 2012 Veda and Torah Transcending the Textuality of Scripture SUNY Press ISBN 978 1 4384 0695 4 Holdrege Barbara A 2012b Veda and Torah The Word Embodied in scripture in Goodman Hananya ed Between Jerusalem and Benares comparative studies in Judaism and Hinduism SUNY Press ISBN 978 1 4384 0437 0 Jackson W J 2016 Vijayanagara Voices Exploring South Indian History and Hindu Literature Routledge Kumar Jay 2014 Ayurveda and Early Indian Medicine in Johnston Lucas F Bauman Whitney eds Science and Religion One Planet Many Possibilities Routledge Klostermaier Klaus 1994 A Survey of Hinduism second ed State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 7914 2109 3 Klostermaier Klaus 2007 A Survey of Hinduism third ed State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 7914 7082 4 Knapp Stephen 2005 The Heart of Hinduism The Eastern Path to Freedom Empowerment and Illumination ISBN 978 0 595 35075 9 Lipner Julius 2012 Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices Routledge ISBN 978 1 135 24060 8 Lopez Donald S Jr 2016 Elaborations on Emptiness Uses of the Heart Sutra Princeton University Press MacDonell Arthur Anthony 1900 A History of Sanskrit Literature New York D Appleton and Co OCLC 713426994 full text online MacDonell Arthur Anthony 2004 A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary Motilal Banarsidass ISBN 978 81 208 2000 5 Mahadevan T M P 1952 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Ardeshir Ruttonji Wadia Dhirendra Mohan Datta eds History of Philosophy Eastern and Western George Allen amp Unwin OCLC 929704391 Michaels Axel 2004 Hinduism Past and Present Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 08953 9 Michaels Axel 2016 Homo Ritualis Hindu Ritual and Its Significance for Ritual Theory Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 026263 1 Misra Kamal K 2000 Textbook of Anthropological Linguistics Concept Publishing Company Monier Williams Monier ed 2006 originally published in London by W H Allen and Co in 1851 Dictionary English and Sanskrit reprint ed Springfield VA Nataraj Books ISBN 978 1 881338 58 1 OCLC 1020546789 Monier Williams Monier 1899 A Sanskrit English Dictionary Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo European Languages Oxford Clarendon Press OCLC 685239912 Mookerji R 2011 1947 Ancient Indian Education Brahmanical and Buddhist Motilal Banarsidass Publishers ISBN 978 81 208 0423 4 Muir John 1858 Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the Religion and Institutions of India their religion and institutions Part 3 Williams and Norgate Muller Max 1891 Chips from a German Workshop New York C Scribner s sons Muller Max 1892 Veda and Vedanta 7th lecture inIndia What Can It Teach Us A Course of Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge Nagappa Gowda K 2011 The Bhagavadgita in the Nationalist Discourse Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 908847 8 Nakamura Hajime 1983 A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy part 2 Motilal Banarsidass Publ Oberlies Thomas 1998 Die Religion des Rgveda Kompositionsanalyse der Soma Hymnen des R gveda Wien Institut fur Indologie der Universitat Wien Olivelle Patrick 1998 1996 Upanișads A New Translation by Patrick Olivelle Oxford s World Classics ISBN 978 0 19 954025 9 Olivelle Patrick 1999 Dharmasutras The Law Codes of Ancient India Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 283882 7 Olson David R Cole Michael 2013 Technology Literacy and the Evolution of Society Implications of the Work of Jack Goody Psychology Press Pollock Sheldon 2011 Squarcini Federico ed Boundaries Dynamics and Construction of Traditions in South Asia Anthem ISBN 978 0 85728 430 3 Prasad Leela 2007 Poetics of conduct oral narrative and moral being in a South Indian town New York Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0 231 13921 2 Prasad R U S 2020 The Rig Vedic and Post Rig Vedic Polity 1500 BCE 500 BCE Vernon Press Pruthi R K 2004 Vedic Civilisation Discovery Publishing ISBN 81 7141 875 9 Radhakrishnan Sarvepalli Moore Charles A eds 1957 A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy 12th Princeton Paperback ed Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01958 1 Rambachan Anantanand 1994 Redefining the authority of scripture The rejection of Vedic infallibility by Brahmo Samaj in Patton Laurie L ed Authority Anxiety and Canon Essays in Vedic Interpretation SUNY Press ISBN 978 0 7914 1938 0 Rath Saraju 2012 Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India Leiden Brill ISBN 978 90 04 21900 7 Scharfe Hartmut 2002 Handbook of Oriental Studies Brill Academic ISBN 978 90 04 12556 8 Schiffman Harold 2012 Linguistic Culture and Language Policy Routledge Sharma D 2011 Classical Indian Philosophy A Reader Columbia University Press Singh Upinder 2008 A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India From the Stone Age to the 12th Century Pearson Education India Staal Frits 1986 The Fidelity of Oral Tradition and the Origins of Science Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie voor Wetenschappen North Holland Publishing Company Smith Brian K 1992 Canonical Authority and Social Classification Veda and Varṇa in Ancient Indian Texts History of Religions 32 2 103 125 doi 10 1086 463320 JSTOR 1062753 S2CID 162276531 Sullivan B M Summer 1994 The Religious Authority of the Mahabharata Vyasa and Brahma in the Hindu Scriptural Tradition Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 1 377 401 doi 10 1093 jaarel LXII 2 377 Todd Warren Lee 2013 The Ethics of Saṅkara and Santideva A Selfless Response to an Illusory World ISBN 978 1 4094 6681 9 Westerhoff Jan 2009 Nagarjuna s Madhyamaka A Philosophical Introduction Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 538496 3 Wilke Annette Moebus Oliver 2011 Sound and Communication An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 018159 3 Witzel Michael 1995 Early Sanskritization Origin and Development of the Kuru state PDF EJVS 1 4 archived from the original PDF on 20 February 2012 Witzel Michael 1997 The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools The Social and Political Milieu PDF in Witzel Michael ed Inside the Texts Beyond the Texts New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas Harvard Oriental Series Opera Minora vol 2 Cambridge Harvard University Press Witzel Michael 2001 Autochthonous Aryans The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts PDF Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7 3 1 115 Witzel Michael Vedas and Upaniṣads In Flood 2003 Witzel Michael Vedas and Upaniṣads In Flood 2008 Wood Michael 2007 The Story of India Hardcover BBC Worldwide ISBN 978 0 563 53915 5 Zaehner R C 1966 Hindu Scriptures Everyman s Library London J M DentFurther readingOverviewsGonda J 1975 Vedic Literature Saṃhitas and Brahmaṇas vol 1 Veda and Upanishads Wiesnaden Harrassowitz A History of Indian literature ISBN 978 3 447 01603 2 Santucci J A 1976 An Outline of Vedic Literature Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion Shrava S 1977 A Comprehensive History of Vedic Literature Brahmana and Aranyaka Works Pranava Prakashan A Vedic Concordance an alphabetic index to every line every stanza of the Vedas published before 1906 Harvard University Maurice Bloomfield 1906 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint others link The Vedas at sacred texts com Sacred Texts ConcordancesBloomfield M 1907 A Vedic Concordance Bandhu Vishva Dev Bhim 1963 Bhaskaran Nair S ed Vaidika Padanukrama Koṣa A Vedic Word Concordance Hoshiarpur Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute An Enlarged Electronic Version of Bloomfield s A Vedic Concordance Harvard University Press Conference proceedingsGriffiths Arlo 2004 Houben Jan E M ed The Vedas texts language amp ritual proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop Leiden 2002 Groningen Forsten Groningen Oriental Studies 20 ISBN 90 6980 149 3 Michael Witzel On the History and the Present State of Vedic Tradition in Nepal PDF JournalsArnold Edward Vernon 1897 Sketch of the Historical Grammar of the Rig and Atharva Vedas Journal of the American Oriental Society 18 203 353 doi 10 2307 592303 ISSN 0003 0279 JSTOR 592303 External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vedas Look up Veda or Vedic in Wiktionary the free dictionary Wikiquote has quotations related to Vedas GRETIL etexts Goettingen Vedas at Curlie Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Vedas amp oldid 1152607157, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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