Vedic period

“ The history of Hindu religions begins with the Rig Veda, and in this period the worship of Manes and that of natural phenomena were distinct, nor are there any indications that the latter was ever developed from the former. It is not denied that the Hindus made gods of departed men. They did this long after the Vedic period. But there is no proof that all the Vedic gods, as claims Spencer, were the worshipped souls of the dead. No argumentum a fero can show in a Vedic dawn-hymn anything other than a hymn to personified Dawn, or make it probable that this dawn was ever a mortal's name. ”

“ The Vedic Period [3]
The term veda—i.e. “knowledge,” (sacred) “lore”—embraces a body of writings the origin of which is ascribed to divine Saṃhitās. revelation (śruti, literally “hearing”) , and which forms the foundation of the Brāhmanical system of religious belief. This sacred canon is divided into three, or (according to a later scheme) four co-ordinate collections, likewise called Veda: (1) the Ṛig-veda, or lore of praise (or hymns) ; (2) the Sāma-veda, or lore of tunes (or chants) ; (3) the Yajur-veda, or lore of prayer (or sacrificial formulas) ”

“ Certain of the Aryan tribes, for instance, buried their dead in Varuna's "house of clay", while a growing proportion cremated their dead and worshipped Agni, the fire god. At the close of the Vedic period there were fresh invasions into middle India, and the "late comers" introduced new beliefs, including the doctrines of the Transmigration of Souls and of the Ages of the Universe. Goddesses also rose into prominence, and the Vedic gods became minor deities, and subject to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. ”

“ Such being the case, definite dates do not begin to appear in Indian literary history till about 500 A.D. The chronology of the Vedic period is altogether conjectural, being based entirely on internal evidence. Three main literary strata can be clearly distinguished in it by differences in language and style, as well as in religious and social views. For the development of each of these strata a reasonable length of time must be allowed; but all we can here hope to do is to approximate to the truth by centuries. ”

“ The first authentic inscription in India is of Buddhist origin, belonging to the third century before Christ.
In the most ancient Vedic period the language had become complete. There is no growing language in the Vedas.
In regard to the age of these Vedic writings, we will quote the words of Max Müller, at the conclusion of his admirable work on the "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," from which most of this section has been taken:—
"Oriental scholars are frequently suspected of a desire to make the literature of the Eastern nations appear more ancient than it is. ”

“ Max Muller has divided the Vedic literature into four arbitrary periods, the Chhandas, Mantra, Brahmana and Sutra and by assigning two hundred years for each period he arrives at about 1200 B.C. as the latest date at which the Vedic hymns have been composed. As opposed to this linguistic method of ascertaining the age of the Vedas, there is the astronomical method which though condemned by European scholars as inaccurate and conjectural, can, if properly applied, lead us to good results. ”

“ How far back this period extends it is impossible to tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period anterior to 1000 b.c.
Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who approve and confirm our discoveries. ”

“ Of these so-called prehistoric periods of human thought, however, we must always speak with great reserve. We must never forget that they are constructions of our own, and that we shall never be able to appeal to historical facts in support of our theories. Facts are given us for the first time during the Etymological Period of languages, and afterwards, but at a much later time, by the scant remains to be gathered from the Sacred Books of the East. And here the Vedic hymns will always hold their foremost place. ”

“ Once more then, if we mean by primitive, people who inhabited this earth as soon as the vanishing of the glacial period made this earth inhabitable, the Vedic poets were certainly not primitive. If we mean by primitive, people who were without a knowledge of fire, who used unpolished flints, and ate raw flesh, the Vedic poets were not primitive. ”

“ I maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with the Veda. I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his history, or for his intellectual development, a study of Vedic literature is indispensable; and that, as an element of liberal education, it is far more important and far more improving than the reigns of Babylonian and Persian kings. ”

“ We are not called upon either to admire or to despise that ancient Vedic literature; we have simply to study and to try to understand it.
There have been silly persons who have represented the development of the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime philosophy than our own. ”

“ THE VEDAS AND OTHER SACRED BOOKS.—The Vedas (knowledge or science) are the Bible of the Hindus, the most ancient book of the Aryan family, and contain the revelation of Brahm which was preserved by tradition and collected by Vyasa, a name which means compiler. The word Veda, however, should be taken, as a collective name for the sacred literature of the Vedic age which forms the background of the whole Indian world. Many works belonging to that age are lost, though a large number still exists. ”

“ Whatever date we may ascribe to it as incorporated in the Rig-Veda, many generations of thinkers must have passed before such questions could have been asked or could have been answered. As yet we see the Vedic age only as through a glass darkly. The first generation of Vedic scholars is passing away. It has done its work bravely, though well aware of its limits. Let the next generation dig deeper 234and deeper. What is wanted is patient, but independent and original work. ”

“ Our troglodyte ancestors, and their sweet feeling for the spiritual aspect of landscape, are thus brought into relation with the Rishis of the Vedas, the sages and poets of a pleasing civilisation. The reverence felt for such comparatively refined or remote things as fire, the sun, wind, thunder, the dawn, furnished a series of stepping-stones to the Vedic theology, if theology it can be called. It is impossible to give each step in detail ”

“ The ancient Vedic poetry was said to be, if not of foreign origin, at least very much infected by foreign, and more particularly by Semitic influences. It had always been urged by Sanskrit scholars as one of the chief attractions of Vedic literature that it not only allowed us an insight into a very early phase of religious thought, but that the Vedic religion was the only one the development of which took place without any extraneous influences, and could be watched through a longer series of centuries than any other religion. ”

“ They arose from the study of the Vedas, which was prompted by the increasing difficulty of understanding the hymns, and of reciting them correctly, in consequence of the changes undergone by the language. Their chief object was to ensure the right recitation and interpretation of the sacred text. One of the most important classes of this ancillary literature comprises the Prātiçākhya Sūtras, which, dealing with accentuation, pronunciation, metre, and other matters, are chiefly concerned with the phonetic changes undergone by Vedic words when combined in a sentence. ”

“ With all the qualifications now stated, the Veda must retain a position of high importance for all who study Indian thought and life. The religious stamp which the compilers of the Veda impressed so widely and so deeply has not been obliterated in the course of thirty centuries.
Their religion is Nature-worship. The prevailing aspect of the religion presented in the Vedic hymns may be broadly designated as Nature-worship.
[Pg 16] All physical phenomena in India are invested with a grandeur which they do not possess in Physical phenomena in India.northern or even southern Europe. ”

“ Or apply the same test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences [225] none can doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. ”

“ We have not to deal with hard formulas only, with unintelligible ceremonies, or petrified fetiches. We can see how the human mind arrives by a perfectly rational process at all its later irrationalities. This is what distinguishes the Veda from all other Sacred Books. Much, no doubt, in the Veda also, and in the Vedic ceremonial, is already old and unintelligible, hard, and petrified. ”

“ Yet, as the oldest treatises on ritual practices extant in any literature, they are of great interest to the student of the history of religions in general, besides furnishing much important material to the student of Indian antiquity in particular. It results from what has been said that the contrasts between the two older phases of Vedic literature are strongly marked. The Vedas are poetical in matter and form; the Brāhmaṇas are prosaic and written in prose. The thought of the Vedas is on the whole natural and concrete; that of the Brāhmaṇas artificial and abstract. ”

“ If a great Pandit should tell you that the Vedas are eternal, do not believe him unless you can find reasonable evidence in the Vedas themselves of their eternal existence; and if Professor Max Müller should tell you that the Vedic mythology is nothing but a series of Solar myths, never believe him unless you find, according to your own lights, that that is the only rational explanation which it admits of. Never surrender your judgment to authority in matters like these.
The writings of no European orientalist are more popular among the natives of India than those of Professor Max Müller ”

“ Special interest attaches to this mythology, because it represents an earlier stage of thought than is to be found in any other literature. It is sufficiently primitive to enable us to see clearly the process of personification by which natural phenomena developed into gods. Never observing, in his ordinary life, action or movement not caused by an acting or moving person, the Vedic Indian, like man in a much less advanced state, still refers such occurrences in Nature to personal agents, which to him are inherent in the phenomena. ”

“ Problems such as the beginning of language, of thought, of mythology and religion, were started with youthful hope that the Veda would solve them all, as if the Vedic Rishis had been present at the first outburst of roots, of concepts, nay, that like Pelops and other descendants of Zeus, those Vedic poets had enjoyed daily intercourse with the gods, and had been present at the mutilation of Ouranos, or at the over-eating of Kronos. ”

“ In the Veda there is a nature-religion and an ancestor-religion. These approach, but do not unite; they are felt as sundered beliefs. Sun-myths, though by some denied in toto, appear plainly in the Vedic hymns. Dead heroes may be gods, but gods, too, are natural phenomena, and, again, they are abstractions. He that denies any one of these sources of godhead is ignorant of India. ”

“ It is certain that the Indians, when they came to reflect and philosophise on their own religion (and they had reached this point before the Veda was compiled) , were themselves horrified by the immoralities of some of their gods. Yet in Vedic times these gods were already acknowledged as beings endowed with strong moral attributes and interested in the conduct of men. ”

“ Even a stone may have something of the same effect, for it connects the deity with the events, rites and ideas of a locality. But the earliest stratum of Vedic religion is worship of the powers of nature—such as the Sun, the Sky, the Dawn, the Fire—which are personified but not localized or depicted. ”

“ Lastly, the life of a Vedic scholar is, in these days, a life of poverty, unless you can add to your devotion to the Vedas the energetic pursuit of some other calling more likely to soothe the pangs of hunger.
These are the difficulties in your way, but let us not forget that although a knowledge of Sanskrit is more general in this country than in Europe, there are probably more Vedic scholars in Europe than in this country. True, Europeans have not to contend with the same difficulties that we have. ”