Vedic Texts

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THE VEDAS

In the Hindu tradition, the Vedas have the status of shruti (literally, ‘that which
has been heard’). They are thought to embody an eternal, self-existent truth
realized by the rishis (seers) in a state of meditation or revealed to them by the
gods. The category of smriti (literally, ‘remembered’) texts includes the
Vedanga, Puranas, epics, Dharmashastra, and Nitishastra.

The word Veda comes from the root vid (literally, ‘to know’) and means
‘knowledge’. There are four Vedas—Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva. The Rig
Veda contains the world’s oldest surviving poetry, some of it of extraordinary
beauty and philosophical depth. Each Veda has four parts, the last three of
which sometimes blend into each other—the Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka,
and Upanishad.

The Rig Veda Samhita is a collection of 1,028 hymns (suktas) arranged in 10


books (Mandalas). The Sama Veda consists of 1,810 verses, mostly borrowed
from the Rig Veda, arranged according to the needs of musical notation. The
original melodies are, however, lost. The Yajur Veda deals with the details of
the performance of rituals. The Atharva Veda is the latest Veda and contains
hymns (some from the Rig Veda), but also spells and charms which reflect
aspects of popular beliefs and practices. The Brahmanas (this term should not
be confused with the Brahmana varna or caste) are prose explanations of the
Samhita portions and give details and explanations of sacrificial rituals and their
outcome. The Aranyakas (forest books) interpret sacrificial rituals in a symbolic
and philosophical way. There are 108 Upanishads, among which 13 are
considered the principal ones. The Upanishads contain a great variety of
philosophical ideas about sacrifice, the body, and the universe, but are most
closely associated with the concepts of atman and brahman. Within the Vedic
corpus as a whole, Books 2–7 (known as the family books) of the Rig Veda
Samhita are considered the oldest; the later portions of this Samhita, along with
all the other Vedic texts, comprise later Vedic literature.

A major problem in using the Vedas as a source of history is the problem of


dating the Rig Veda. The dates that have been suggested for the composition of
this text range from c. 6000 BCE to 1000 BCE. Many historians take c. 1500–
1000 BCE as the period of composition of early Vedic literature and c. 1000–
500 BCE as that of later Vedic texts. This chronology is essentially based on the
tentative dates suggested by Max Müller in the 19th century.

Vedic literature forms an important part of the Brahmanical tradition—texts


preserved and transmitted by a section of Brahmana males. It reflects their
religious beliefs, practices, and points of view. As a source of history, these
texts are used for information about life in parts of north-western and northern
India during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. But apart from the question of
dates, as we shall see later on, there are several problems in co-relating the
evidence from the Vedas with archaeology.

USING THE VEDAS AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE

Extracting history from a literature as ancient, vast, and complex as the Vedas is
no easy task. Unfortunately, critical editions identifying the original core of the
texts are not available. The 19th century translations cannot be relied upon, and
recent authoritative translations, whether in the European or Indian languages,
are few. A great deal depends on the interpretation of words and phrases, whose
meanings may vary from one text and context to another.

The Vedic corpus was not a popular literature and, therefore, does not
necessarily represent popular ideas or practices. It was composed, preserved,
and transmitted by and for a section of the Brahmanas. (Here, the reference is to
Brahmanas as a social group. The Brahmanas are also a category of Vedic
texts.) The texts were transmitted orally for many centuries and it is not certain
when they were first written down. The earliest surviving manuscripts belong to
the 11th century CE. Many historians use a rough chronology of c. 1200–1000
BCE or 1500–1000 BCE for the composition of the earliest sections of the Rig
Veda. It is possible that parts of the Rig Veda were composed even earlier,
perhaps in c. 2000 BCE, but there are limits to how far back its dates can be
pushed. The uncertainty of the period of composition of the Rig Veda is a major
problem in using this text as a source of history.

Books 2–7, the oldest books of the Rig Veda Samhita, are also known as the
family books because their composition is attributed to the families of certain
seer-poets—Grit-samada, Vishvamitra, Vamadeva, Atri, Bharadvaja, and
Vasishtha. Books 1, 8, 9, and 10 seem to be of a later period. The hymns of this
Samhita are arranged in a precise pattern. In the family books, they are arranged
according to deity, number of stanzas, and metre. The number of hymns
increases in each successive book. Within a particular book, the hymns are
arranged in groups according to deity—first come the hymns to Agni, then
Indra, and then the other gods. And within a group of hymns addressed to a
particular deity, the arrangement follows a pattern of a decreasing number of
stanzas per hymn (i.e., the preceding hymns have more stanzas than the
succeeding ones). In instances where two hymns have the same number of
stanzas, the hymn which is in a metre requiring more syllables is placed first.
The arrangement of hymns in the other books of the Rig Veda Samhita follows
a different, but recognizable order.

The pattern of arrangement makes it possible to detect interpolations. Hymns


that disrupt the pattern must have been added to the collection later. This does
not necessarily mean that they were later in terms of their period of
composition. The ‘later’, i.e., less old books of the Rig Veda Samhita may
actually contain some very old hymns, and the ‘earlier’ books contain some not-
so-old hymns. Sometimes, certain hymns are assigned a later date because their
content or ideas seem different. However, such differences could be due to their
originating in a different milieu or reflecting different ideas current at the time.

The deliberate, careful arrangement of the hymns of the Rig Veda Samhita was
the work of its compilers. The language, and possibly also the content, of the
hymns may have been modified in the process of compilation, which may have
taken place in c. 1000 BCE. The Vedas may have been arranged and compiled
because of the desire of priests to create an authoritative text for the sacrifices
they performed. We know from other sources that there were various recensions
of the Rig Veda, which may have differed from each other in content,
arrangement, and traditions of interpretation. Of these recensions, only the
Shakala has survived into our own time.

Vedic texts can be used as sources of history for the areas in which they were
composed. The family books of the Rig Veda Samhita were composed in
eastern Afghanistan and the Punjab, the land of Sapta-Sindhu or the seven
rivers. The rivers in question were the Indus, its five tributaries, and the
Sarasvati (which can probably be identified with the modern Ghaggar-Hakra).
The core geographical area of later Vedic texts was Kuru– Panchala, which
comprised the Indo-Gangetic divide and the upper Ganga valley.

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