What are the Vedas?

Knowledge passed from mouth to ear

The word Veda comes from the Sanskrit vid, ‘knowledge’, as in vidyā. There are four Vedas: the Ṛig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sāma Veda and the Atharva Veda. They are the most ancient texts of India and among the most ancient in the world.

The Vedas are made of thousands of hymns, prayers in the form of poems and songs, composed in the Sapta Sindhava region of the northwest. They were recited, not written. Experts’ dates for the Ṛig Veda, the oldest, range from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE, so for 100 to 200 generations the hymns were memorised through rigorous training and passed on with hardly any change. That is why, in 2008, UNESCO recognised Vedic chanting as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.

Who composed them, and for whom

The hymns were composed by rishis, male seers or sages, and rishikas, female ones, in an early form of Sanskrit. They were addressed to many deities, such as Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Mitra, Sarasvatī and Uṣhas, who with the seers sustained ṛitam, truth and order in human life and in the cosmos.

The message of the Vedas

The early seers saw the gods and goddesses as one, not as separate beings. A famous hymn says ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti: the Existent, the supreme reality, is one, but sages give it many names. Truth was a central value, often another name for God, and the last mantras of the Ṛig Veda ask people to come together, speak together and share one mind and purpose.

Vedic society

Early Vedic society was organised in janas, or clans. The Ṛig Veda alone lists over 30, such as the Bharatas, Purus, Kurus, Yadus and Turvaśhas, each linked to a region of the northwest. We know little about how they were governed, but the words rājā (king or ruler), sabhā and samiti (assemblies) give clues. The texts mention many professions: agriculturist, weaver, potter, builder, carpenter, healer, dancer, barber and priest.

Rituals, the Upaniṣhads and new schools

Vedic culture developed rituals called yajña, often read as ‘yagya’, usually prayers and offerings to Agni, the deity of fire, which grew more complex over time. A group of texts, the Upaniṣhads, built on Vedic ideas and introduced new ones, such as rebirth, taking birth again and again, and karma, our actions or their results.

In the school known as Vedanta, human life, nature and the universe are one divine essence called brahman, not to be confused with the god Brahmā. The ātman, the Self in every being, is ultimately one with brahman. Two mantras put it simply: aham brahmāsmi, ‘I am brahman’, and tat tvam asi, ‘You are That’. If all is one, everything is connected, which explains the prayer sarve bhavantu sukhinah, ‘May all creatures be happy’. Early in the 1st millennium BCE, more schools grew out of the Vedas, such as Yoga, which developed methods to realise brahman in one’s consciousness. Together, these became the foundations of what we call Hinduism today.

Stories that ask questions

The Upaniṣhads teach through stories in which men, women and children ask questions:

• Śhvetaketu: his father shows him that, as a banyan seed holds the whole tree, everything comes from one subtle essence: ‘You are That’.
• Nachiketa: he keeps asking Yama, the god of death, what happens after death, and learns that the ātman is never born and never dies.
• Gārgī: a rishika, she questions the rishi Yājñavalkya at King Janaka’s court until he explains brahman.

Read about the schools that did not accept the Vedas in Buddhism and Jainism. Answers to the textbook questions are in the NCERT solutions for Chapter 7; see all of Chapter 7 notes.