A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 1.4 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday 18, April 2025, 17:00.

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Srimad Bhagavad Gita

A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 1.4.

Chapter 1: The Vedas

The Vedas and Their Classification

Swami Krishnananda.

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Chapter 1: The Vedas

The Vedas and Their Classification:

It is customary for historians of the philosophy and religion of India to commence their studies with the Rig-Veda, which is regarded as the earliest sacred text of ancient Indian culture. A study of the Vedas forms generally the beginning of an advanced learning in the philosophical and religious literature of India. The Rig-Veda is a book of metrical hymns and is divided into ten parts called Mandalas. Another division of the book is into eight sections called Ashtakas. The hymns of the Rig-Veda, called mantras, are powerfully constructed poems, with an amazing power of rhythm, spontaneity and sublimity of effect, and charged with soulful inspiration, usually with four feet of the metre into which every poem is cast. The poem is pregnant with great meaning and force which can be directed, by a proper recitation of it, for or against any objective here or hereafter. The hymn has the power to protect (trayate) the one who contemplates (mananat) on it, and hence the name mantra. The mantras of the Vedas are intended to invoke the deities to whom they are addressed, and to summon the power of the deities for executing an ideal. They are the means of connection with the denizens of the celestial world and the divinities that immanently guard and perform different functions in the various planes of existence. There are also mantras addressed in glorification of the Universal Being or the Absolute.  

The Vedas are classified into four groups, called Rik, Yajus, Saman and Atharva. The Rig-Veda is primarily concerned with panegyrics to the gods in the heavens, and is the main book of mantras. The Yajur Veda is classified into the Krishna (black) and Sukla (white) recensions. The Yajur Veda contains mainly sacrificial formulae in prose and verse to be chanted at the performance of a sacrifice. The Sama Veda consists mostly of verses from the Rig-Veda set to music for singing during the sacrifice. The Atharva Veda abounds mainly in spells and incantations in verse meant for different lower purposes than the purely spiritual.  

Every Veda has four divisions, called the Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka and Upanishad. The Samhita portion of the Vedas embodies the hymns or prayers offered to deities, as already mentioned. The Brahmanas are the ritualistic portion of the Vedas which expatiate on the details of performing sacrifices. The most famous and costly of these sacrifices are the Rajasuya, Asvamedha, Agnishtoma and Soma Yaga, undertaken either for earthly sovereignty or for heavenly joy. There are many minor sacrifices for the performance of which directions are given in the Brahmanas. The mantras of the Samhitas are supposed to be recited in the sacrifices, mainly. They can, however, also be used as pure spiritual exercises in prayer and meditation, which aspect received emphasis in a development that led to the philosophic mysticism of the Upanishads, as we shall see later.

The Theme of the Vedas:

The Veda Mantras are, as stated above, praises offered to the deities, or Devas, who are regarded as capable of bestowing any blessing on man. It does not mean, however, that the poets of the Samhitas were ignorant of the existence of the Supreme Being and that the gods of the Vedas are mere puerile personifications of the processes of Nature, as many Western orientalists are inclined to think. The Veda Mantras are not the ignorant prattle of immature cattle grazers, the pastoral hymns of primitive minds, as certain historians opine. The historical evaluation should not be oblivious of the logical grounding of process, whether of thought or of society. The trend of visualising the manifold as expressions of the One, and the One as revealing itself in the many is unmistakably traceable in the hymns of the Rig-Veda. It is true that the main gods of the Vedas are Indra, Varuna, Agni, Surya (Aditya or Savitr), Soma, Yama, Vayu, Asvins, Brihaspati and Brahmanaspati; and a correct chanting of the mantras, summoning the power of the divinities could produce supernatural results, and even the actual materialisation of them here. But it is easy to discover at the same time, in the Rig-Veda, the germinal sources of the concepts of Vishnu, Rudra and Prajapati or Hiranyagarbha as universal divine presences and as the supreme gods of the cosmos. We must reserve for treatment another grander concept – the Supreme Being enunciated in the Purusha Sukta and the Nasadiya Sukta.  

In the Purusha Sukta or the hymn of the Cosmic Person, we have the most magnificent description of the spiritual unity of the cosmos. Here is given, perhaps, the earliest complete presentation of the nature of Reality as both immanent and transcendent. The all-encompassing Purusha, who is all-heads, all-eyes and all-limbs, everywhere, envelops and permeates creation from all sides and stands above it as the glorious immortal. The Purusha is all that was, is and shall be. The whole universe is a small fraction of Him, as it were, for He ranges above it in His infinitude of glory. Such is the majestic Purusha, the God of all gods. From Him proceeds the original creative Will (later identified with Brahma, Hiranyagarbha or Prajapati), by which this vast universe was projected in space and time. The Purusha Sukta proclaims once and for all, the organic inseparability of the constituents of society. The Vedic seer loved mankind and creation as much as he loved God.  

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Continued

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