The Vedas

As per Kalyan's request, this post gives my perception of different Vedas. I dont think going in detail will be of any help right now. Of course, we can always carry the discussion forward 'offline'.

The word 'Veda' arises from the word 'Vid', meaning 'to know'. The whole set of Vedic canon existed as one, and at one point of time in ancient past, it was divided into three parts-- rig, sAma and yajur vedas, based on the kind of the mantras that form the majority. AtharvaNa veda seems to have been composed a little while later.

Mantras are divided into riks, sAmans, and yajus.

Riks are mantras that are poetic, have a rhythmic meter, and are extremely mystic in nature. A collection of riks is called a sukta. These riks and suktas are verbal representations of truths revealved to Rishis who obtained them after immense tapasya. Rig Veda has more than 10,000 riks arranged into more than 1,000 suktas in turn arranged into 10 books. The most famous ones are PuruSa suktam, ViSnu suktam, nAsadIya suktam, hiranya-garbha suktam, etc. The most famous mantra of all-- the gAyatri mantra occurs as 3.62-10, i.e., 10th rik of the 62nd sukta of the 3rd book. The sukta is written by Vishwamitra Rishi.

sAmans are mantras that are sung in a particular style. The normal chanting of the Veda has three pitches. But sAmans have 5. One must listen to sAma Veda to really understand what I am trying to say (http://sanskrit.safire.com/Audio.html). Gandharva veda is an upaveda (branch) of sAma vEda and the indian musical system has developed from it.

Yajus are the vedic prose that detail the various ritualistic procedures to be carried out. AyurvEda is considered as an upaveda born from Yajurveda. Yajurveda comes in two editions-- Shukla Yajur veda and Krishna Yajur Veda. Generally, north Indians follow the former and south Indians, the latter. The famous mantra 'rudram', which is in praise of Rudra Shiva is in Yajurveda. Some of the riks that are found in rudram are not there even in rigveda.

Atharva Veda is the only veda to be named after a person-- rishi Atharvan. It is a parallel book that deals extensily with philosophy, morality, medicine, and even warfare. Here, chemical and bio-weapons are explicity mentioned, which might be a reason why Buddhist and Jainist texts are particularly against this veda. Only two of the nine editions survive. I dont want to imagine what more weapons were mentioned in the original atharveda!!

From the exterior, many mantras appear to be meaningless, and many others seem to be contradicting one-another. This is because Sanskrit is a language in which a word can have, and frequently does have, multiple meanings, and the translators have taken the contemporay meaning for a word. But when right meanings are assigned to the words of the mantras, esp. riks, the whole collection of mantras in the veda seems to make complete sense and in coherence.

Most of the riks are found in RigVeda, and are repeated in YajurVeda. But there are some riks in Yajurveda, as mentioned above, that are not found in RigVeda. This is because each veda has undergone a series of recensions (editings) and some of the mantras seem to have been deleted from each veda this way. One can only wonder what secrets did those deleted mantras hold!