VEDA

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Veda in its wider sense is not the name of any particular book, but of the literature of a particular epoch extending over a long period, say two thousand years or so. Of it, belong the Samhitas, the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas.

The Samhitas

There are four collections or Samhitas, namely Rg-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda and Atharva-Veda.

Of these the Rg-Veda (Rig-Veda) is probably the earliest.
The cosmogony of the Rig-Veda may be looked at from two aspects, the mythological and the philosophical.
The mythological aspect has in general two currents:
- The one regards the universe as the result of mechanical production, the work of carpenter's and joiner's skill;
- The other represents it as the result of natural generation.

The most remarkable and sublime hymn in which the first germs of philosophic speculation with regard to the wonderful mystery of the origin of the world are found is the 129th hymn of Rig-Veda.
The earliest commentary on this is probably a passage in the Satapatha Brahmana (x. 5. 3. I) which says that:
"There was then neither the non-existent nor the existent' for Mind was, as it were, neither existent nor non-existent. This Mind when created, wished to become manifest, more defined, more substantial: it sought after a self (a body); it practised austerity: it acquired consistency."

On an eschatological point of view, there seems to be a belief in the Vedas that the soul could be separated from the body in states of swoon, and that it could exist after death, though we do not find there any trace of the doctrine of transmigration in a developed form.
In the Satapatha Brahmana it is said that those who do not perform rites with correct knowledge are born again after death and suffer death again. It is also said there that everyone is born again after death, is weighed in a balance, and receives reward or punishment according as his works are good or bad.
It is easy to see that scattered ideas like these with regard to the destiny of the soul of man according to the sacrifice that he performs or other good or bad deeds form the first rudiments of the later doctrine of metempsychosis.

These ideas of the possibilities of a necessary connection of the enjoyments and sorrows of a man with his good and bad works when combined with the notion of an inviolable law or order, was gradually growing with the conception of Rta, and the unalterable law which produces the effects of sacrificial works, led to the Law of Karma and the doctrine of transmigration.

The words which denote soul in the Rig-Veda are manas, atman and asu.
The word atman however which became famous in later Indian thought, is generally used to mean vital breath. And Manas is regarded as the seat of thought and emotion, and it seems to be regarded as dwelling in the heart.

In the pre-Upanishad Vedic literature atman probably was first used to denote "vital breath" in man, then the self of the world, and then the self in man.

It is from this last stage that we find the traces of a growing tendency to looking at the self of man as the omni-present supreme principle of the universe, the knowledge of which makes a man sinless and pure.

The Sama-Veda has practically no independent value, for it consists of stanzas taken (excepting only 75) entirely from the Rg-Veda, which were meant to be sung to certain fixed melodies, and may thus be called the book of chants.

The Yajur-Veda however contains in addition to the verses taken from the Rg- Veda many original prose formulas.
The arrangement of the verses of the Sama-Veda is solely with reference to their place and use in the Soma sacrifice; the contents of the Yajur-Veda are arranged in the order in which the verses were actually employed in the various religious sacrifices.
It is therefore called the Veda of Yajus-sacrificial prayers. These may be contrasted with the arrangement in the Rg-Veda in this, that there the verses are generally arranged in accordance with the gods who are adored in them. Thus, for example, first we get all the poems addressed to Agni or the Fire-god, then all those to the god Indra and so on.

The fourth collection, the Atharva-Veda, probably attained its present form considerably later than the Rig-Veda.
In spirit, however, it is not only entirely different from the Rigveda but represents a much more primitive stage of thought. While the Rigveda deals almost exclusively with the higher gods as conceived by a comparatively advanced and refined sacerdotal class, the Atharva-Veda is, in the main a book of spells and incantations appealing to the demon world, and teems with notions about witchcraft current among the lower grades of the population, and derived from an immemorial antiquity.

The Brahmanas

After the Samhitas there grew up the theological treatises called the Brahmanas, which were of a distinctly different literary type. They are written in prose, and explain the sacred significance of the different rituals to those who are not already familiar with them.
They reflect the spirit of an age in which all intellectual activity is concentrated on the sacrifice, describing its ceremonies, discussing its value, speculating on its origin and significance.
These works are full of dogmatic assertions, fanciful symbolism and speculations of an unbounded imagination in the field of sacrificial details. The sacrificial ceremonials were probably never so elaborate at the time when the early hymns were composed.
But when the collections of hymns were being handed down from generation to generation the ceremonials became more and more complicated. Thus there came about the necessity of the distribution of the different sacrificial functions among several distinct classes of priests. We may assume that this was a period when the caste system was becoming established, and when the only thing which could engage wise and religious minds was sacrifice and its elaborate rituals.
Free speculative thinking was thus subordinated to the service of the sacrifice, and the result was the production of the most fanciful sacramental and symbolic system, unparalleled anywhere but among the Gnostics.

The complications of ritualism were gradually growing in their elaborate details. The direct result of this growth contributed however to relegate the gods to a relatively unimportant position, and to raise the dignity of the magical characteristics of the sacrifice as an institution which could give the desired fruits of themselves.

The offerings at a sacrifice were not dictated by a devotion with which we are familiar under Christian or Vaishnava influence. The sacrifice taken as a whole is conceived to be a kind of machinery in which every piece must tally with the other.
Thus when Tvashtri performed a sacrifice for the production of a demon who would be able to kill his enemy Indra, owing to the mistaken accent of a single word the object was reversed and the demon produced was killed by Indra. But if the sacrifice could be duly performed down to the minutest detail, there was no power which could arrest or delay the fruition - of the object. Thus the objects of a sacrifice were fulfilled not by the grace of the gods, but as a natural result of the sacrifice.

The performance of the rituals invariably produced certain mystic or magical results by virtue of which the object desired by the sacrificer was fulfilled in due course like the fulfilment of a natural law in the physical world.
Sacrifice is thus regarded as possessing a mystical potency superior even to the gods, who it is sometimes stated attained to their divine rank by means of sacrifice.
Sacrifice was regarded as almost the only kind of duty, and it was also called karma or kriya (action).

It is well to note here that the first recognition of a cosmic order or law prevailing in nature under the guardianship of the highest gods is to be found in the use of the word Rita (literally the course of things). This word was also used to denote the ‘order’ in the moral world as truth and 'right' and in the religious world as sacrifice or ' rite'" and its unalterable law of producing effects.
It is interesting to note in this connection that it is here that we find the first germs of the law of karma, which exercises such a dominating control over Indian thought up to the present day.

It is now generally believed that the close of the Brahmana period was not later than 500 B.c.

The Aranyakas

 As a further development of the Brahmanas however we get the Aranyakas or forest treatises. These works were  probably composed for old men who had retired into the forest and were thus unable to perform elaborate sacrifices requiring a multitude of accessories and articles which could not be procured in forests.
In these, meditations on certain symbols were supposed to be of great merit, and they gradually began to supplant the sacrifices as being of a superior order. It is here that we find that amongst a certain section of intelligent people the ritualistic ideas began to give way, and philosophic speculations about the nature of truth became gradually substituted in their place. To take an illustration from the beginning of the Brhadaranyaka we find that instead of the actual performance of the horse sacrifice (ashvamedha) there are directions for meditating upon the dawn (Ushas) as the head of the horse, the sun as the eye of the horse, the air as its life, and so on. This is indeed a distinct advancement of the claims of speculation or meditation over the actual performance of the complicated ceremonials of sacrifice.

The growth of the subjective speculation, as being capable of bringing the highest good, gradually resulted in the supersession of Vedic ritualism and the establishment of the claims of philosophic meditation and self-knowledge as the highest goal of life.

Thus we find that the Aranyaka age was a period during which free thinking tried gradually to shake off the shackles of ritualism which had fettered it for a long time. It was thus that the Aranyakas could pave the way for the Upanishads, revive the germs of philosophic speculation in the Vedas, and develop them in a manner which made the Upanishads the source of all philosophy that arose in the world of Hindu thought.

To summarize the evolution of the Indian mind, up to this point, we find the simple faith and devotion of the Vedic hymns being supplanted by the growth of a complex system of sacrificial rites, which in turn, bends its course towards a monotheistic or philosophic knowledge of the ultimate reality of the universe.

Looking at this advancement of thought in the Rig-Veda we find first that a fabric of thought was gradually growing which not only looked upon the universe as a correlation of parts or a construction made of them, but sought to explain it as having emanated from one great being who is sometimes described as one with the universe and surpassing it, and at other times as being separate from it; the agnostic spirit is seen at times to be so bold as to express doubts even on the most fundamental questions of creation: "Who knows whether this world was ever created or not?"

Secondly, the growth of sacrifices has helped to establish the unalterable nature of the law by which the (sacrificial) actions produced their effects of themselves.
It also lessened the importance of deities as being the supreme masters of the world and our fate, and the tendency of henotheism [a belief in single gods, each in turn standing out as the highest; as each worshiper ascribe to that particular god the most power in the matter, and who they call, in their special concerns and desires;] while at the same time advancing toward a more monotheistic tendency.

Thirdly, the soul of man is described as being separable from his body and subject to suffering and enjoyment in another world according to his good or bad deeds; the doctrine that the soul of man could go to plants, etc., or that it could again be reborn on earth, is also hinted at in certain passages, and this may be regarded as sowing the first seeds of the later doctrine of transmigration. The self (atman) is spoken of in one place as the essence of the world, and when we trace the idea in the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas we see that atman has begun to mean the supreme essence in man as well as in the universe, and has thus approached the great Atman doctrine of the Upanishads.