Unit : Introduction to Indian Knowledge system

Sub topic : Introduction to Vedas

Concept of four Vedas :
The word ‘Veda’, is generally derived from the Sanskrit root vid; vid means to
know. So, Veda in some way is a set of knowledge, vast body of knowledge and
what is this knowledge? This is about eternal spiritual values and principles,
practices for gainful and happy living and these are actually ideas revealed to
the rishis through their deep meditation. And of course, these are preserved
and transmitted through an oral tradition
Vedas are called shruti; shruti means that “which is heard”. So, this is what
Vedas is in a nutshell. Now, Hindu tradition, accords Vedas the highest position
in its canonical literature. It is also considered the fountain head of Indian
culture and human civilization and you may be surprised to know UNESCO has
recognized Vedas as a Heritage for preservation.
Now, there are Three broad issues addressed in Vedas, it is easy to put it in
roughly Three sort of compartments. The first one, one can call it as Karma-
kanda; basically it is about a lot of things that we can do in our day-to-day life,
how to lead a life from morning to evening, but if you look at it, it basically
nudges an individual to obtain purity of mind at the end of the day as we
actually engage in the world.
Then you have what is called second set called Upasana-kanda; Upasana
means focusing on something. So, Upasana-kanda helps an individual develop
single pointedness of mind through contemplation and focus. Therefore, there
you know there are exercises to contemplate and focus on something, that
kind of ideas are there which is very important to us at some point in time. It is
very very important for us.
And the third is Jnana-kanda, which indeed opens the mind of an individual to
its limits and facilitates much deeper inquiry about oneself about nature, about
you know the universe so many things that we always want to know, such
ideas are also there which we call it as Jnanakanda
Vedic living one of the primary thing is doing sacrifice, yajnas. So, basically
there is an Yajna the Altar is there right that is where the Aahuti everything
they do and it is done by the Yajamana and his Yajamana patni, his wife;
because they are the Adhikaris, they are the one who are going to do the Yajna
and you see there, there are 4 groups of people; you have Hotr-gana, which
means there is a Hota, who is sort of a captain and 3 assistants for [Link]
means group of people , Adhikaris.
The Hotr-gana is from Rgveda; the Adhvaryu-gana is from Yajurveda; the
Udgatr-gana is from Samaveda and the Brahma-gana is from Atharvaveda and
all of them have specific roles to play. So, essentially it is a nice sort of a project
management kind of a structure, where there are definite roles, people take
responsibilities, therefore four vedas in existence
A synopsis of the four Vedas
Vedas actually existed for a long time. Historicity of Vedas people have not been
able to establish although some of the researchers have taken it to 5000 years
back and so on or 8000 years back and so on
But since they existed for a long time there was a need to organize them very
systematically. That need was felt so that the society can put it to a certain kind
of a use. So, all these were thought about and Krishna Dvaipayana who was also
known as Vyasa, what he did was he did this important task of you know
collecting all of them and putting it into certain sort of compartments ,he
appointed four disciples to propagate it down the generations. And that is how
the four vedas came; Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda
Rigveda is represents the earliest sacred book of India, oldest and biggest
amongst all four vedas. 10700 odd mantras are there in Rigveda Samhita. And
these are nothing but the utterances of the Vedic sages on variety of topics in
the form of poetry Rigveda has discussed variety of topics - origin of universe,
marriage, nature and its importance
Then comes Yajurveda, the second one. And Yajurveda the word is derived from
the root yaj. Yaj means to worship with sacrifice to perform a sacrifice. From
that only the word you know yaj has come . Yajurveda has details on various
yajnas that are to be performed So, therefore, the other topics discussed in
Yajurveda includes human anatomy, metals, constellation, seasons, numbers,
geometry, grains, yogic insights.
The third veda is Samaveda and again this word Samaveda, Sama veda is derived
from the Sanskrit root Sama. Sama means to please, pacify or satisfy Samaveda
people sing in praise of the devata and please them. The origin of Indian classical
music actually lies in Samaveda.
Then the last veda is Atharvaveda. Atharvaveda is in some sense believed to be
a later rather than saying addition maybe part of it is addition, part of it is
reclassification of the original set from the other three vedas, that is how we can
take it . And one-sixth of the mantras in Atharvaveda are taken from Rigveda.
So, Rigveda is the primordial source in some ways even Yajurveda also has taken
some mantras from Rigveda. And Atharvaveda in all has about 6077 mantras
which are organized under 736 suktas that is how they are all organized.
Atharvaveda priest whose main job is the overall coordination and monitoring
of the entire Vedic ritual .

Sub-classification of Vedas

Each Veda can be classified into basically at the first level it can be classified
into two; Mantras also called Samhita and the Brahmana. Brahmana does not
anyway relate to the modern word of a Brahmin or a Brahmana, it is not that.
This Brahmana three parts, the Brahmana ,Aranyaka and Upanishad.
Samhita for example, constitutes the main portion of each Veda and it consists
of a certain number of mantras and presented in a metrical form
Brahmanas prescribed the mantras from the Samhita that need to be recited
for the rituals Brahmana also provides detailed instructions for preparing the
altar for the yajna.
The word Upanishad, actually has upa, ni and shad. They are the three things
which are you know in Sanskrit you can put them in a particular way and get
Upanishad. It essentially means sitting near a guru and receiving the wisdom
through a teaching-learning process that is what Upanishad is; Upanishad is set
like that actually
The Aranyakas main interest is to explain the symbolism and the philosophical
aspects of a ritual. Aranyakas are bridge between Brahmanas and Upanishad
Aranyakas is upasanakand of veda
Messages in Vedas
Message for prosperity and peace in form of mantras in the Vedas and what is
distinctive about them is these prayers are invariably including all living
organisms in the universe, not just the mankind. So, the prayers are made for
everyone; you know everybody must peacefully coexist, that is the kind of
message that you see whenever you see prayers

There are several other issues inquiring into the origin of the universe and the
human beings, intricate relationship with the nature, there are a few suktas
which actually talk about them and you know reflect on how, what is this
nature what is our relationship and things of that kind. Reflecting on some
observed celestial happenings leading to some astronomical insights such kind
of messages are there
There are suktas which talk about marriage, health and wellness. There are
also larger questions such as our purpose in life which are addressed in in this
part of the Vedas. Many methods of inquiring into all these subjects are also to
be found. So, you know it is really a large diverse repository of very different
ideas
There are advices on one’s own mode of living with reference to the society
and oneself. You know the mantras like “Sathyam Dharma Chara Dharmam”,
“Sathyam Vada Dharmam Chara”, “Acharya devo Bhava”, “Atithi Devo Bhava”
all those are part of that actually, how do you handle your guest, how do you
treat your father and mother and the teacher and so on, that is what it is.
Regulating one’s relationship with the previous generation and the present
elders some ideas.
Introduction to Vedāṅgas
There are six Vedāṅgas The first one is called siksha/Siksa . Second one is called
vyakarana. The third one is called nirukta. Then you have what is called chandas,
kalpa and jyotisha. These are the 6 vedangas which are required. One must have
a good knowledge of these. Only then we will get what is intended in the veda
in full measure
siksha, the job of siksha is actually to make sure that oral preservation is intact.
So, it is all about phonetics and pronunciation.
Vyakarana which gives the grammatical structure
Nirukta because the words used in the veda have specific meanings at times.
Nirukta that ensures that we get the correct meaning. Otherwise we may end
up with understanding it differently.
Chandas is required so that you know when you utter you do not miss a mantra,
miss a syllable, because if you miss a syllable the meter will go out of place. So,
that way it ensures that it will prevent corruption of the mantras and the
pronunciation and uccharan everything is all in place
kalpa, which is like a operations manual. It establishes all norms and rules and
practices required for doing the yajna and other things.
Jyotisha which is the methodology for timing events and future prediction ;
when do guys do it, do I do it at 9 o'clock in the morning, 7:30 or you know 11
o'clock. So, there are some concepts which are established in jyotisha
Prologue on Śikṣā and Vyākaraṇa
Siksa shastra is a very systematic approach to the art and practice of phonetics.
So, what we are talking about is phonetics because pronunciation is what? It is
about phonetics and this is where the charm of this whole Vedanga is because
as preserving the Vedic text from any form of corruption is the most important
thing Siksa directs our attention to all the details of the process involved in
pronunciation
Basically it is all about the nada, the sound. And the ancestors have actually
analysed it in great detail and they have somehow come to this conclusion that
the sound is generated by the confluence of air and space in the vocal cord and
you know it can be at different places So, the sounds the smallest form of sound
called varna comes on some strange combination of the space and the air. This
is what our ancestors have found and somehow they have analyzed and found
that these different sounds come because of the contact made between various
parts of the tongue and the places of articulation. This is the interesting part of
this science of pronunciation which our ancestors have developed. This is a very
interesting and a very keen observation our ancestors have perhaps done and
they have been able to come to a conclusion that you need to use different parts
of your body in the nasal cavity and the oral cavity to generate the sound
This is all behind shiksha and this is what has ensured that even after thousands
of years the mantras are not pronounced any differently and we have not lost
anything, they are in their original form. This is about shiksha.

Vyakarana is grammar and actually the tradition of vyakarana dates to the Vedic
period which means must be some 10000, 8000, 9000 years
Panini who lived in 600 BCE which is about 2700 years before for presenting a
structured work of Sanskrit vyakarana and Panini created what is called
Ashtadhyayi which became so popular because of its brevity. That is why it is
very popular and basically vyakarana means vya karana means to divide,
separate or analyse
Sanskrit grammar is very unique because it devises unambiguous and rule-based
methods to construct a word
Vyakarana brings the syntax and the grammatical dimension to the language

Basics of Nirukta and Chandas.

Nirukta is basically the the thesaurus or the set of synonyms for this is actually
called Nighantu. Nirukta is nothing but, organizing the Nighantu into certain
portions. So, we have here as you see here there are 3 Kandas here; there is a
Naighantuka kanda, which has 3 Adhyayas, 3 chapters. In the first chapter you
have 17 groups of synonyms consisting of 415 words
In the second chapter, you have 22 groups of synonyms, which has 516 words.
In the third chapter you have 30 groups of synonyms which have 410 words.
Then you have the second one called Naigama Kanda, in which there are 278
words, with multiple meanings organized into 3 groups and then there is a
Daivata Kanda, in which there are 151 words, which has names of Devatas in 3
groups.
All these equivalences, all these synonyms, going to actually make sense of the
Vedic mantras

Checks and balances of the Vedic mantra , Chandas is actually the meter of a
poetic composition.
Chandas brings us to understand Vedas. In the process of developing the Chanda
shastra, which Pingala did in 200 BCE, and laid foundation for binary
mathematics