What Are the Vedas? Understanding Vedic Literature | Know Your Sources

[00:00:00]The Rigveda presupposes nothing of that which we know in Indian literature.

[00:00:04]While on the other hand, the whole of Indian literature and the whole of Indian life presupposes the Veda. These are the words of Alfred Ludwig, the scholar who in 1876 became the first person to translate the entire Rigveda into German.

[00:00:22]Now, pause for a moment and think about what he's really saying. Whenever we try to reconstruct the earliest chapters of Indian history, we are searching for the oldest evidence that has survived. And standing right at the beginning is a body of literature unlike anything else.

[00:00:42]It is in many ways the foundation beneath the foundation. Almost every later tradition in India, whether religious, philosophical, or literary, looks back to the Vedas. But the Vedas themselves look back to nothing.

[00:00:58]So, what exactly are the Vedas? What kind of literature are they? That is exactly what we are going to explore today.

[00:01:08]Welcome to Know Your Sources, a series in which we examine the texts and inscriptions that historians rely on to reconstruct India's past. In each episode, we take on one source, examine what it is, how it came down to us, and what it can and cannot tell us about history. And there is no better place to begin than with the oldest of them all, the Vedic literature. But what exactly do we mean by the Veda? The first thing we need to clear up is a very common misconception. When people hear the word Veda, they often think it simply refers to the four Vedas, the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda. It does not, at least not in the way most people imagine. The Vedas or the Veda is not just the four Vedas, the Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda. Nor is it a fixed collection that was put together at one particular moment in history. The Veda is an entire body of literature that took shape over many centuries, and for much of its history, none of it was written down. It survived entirely through oral tradition. Generation after generation, teachers recited it, students memorized it, and the text were preserved through an extraordinary disciplined system of oral transmission.

[00:02:32]Only much later were they committed to writing. Now, this enormous body of literature can broadly be divided into three major classes. The first consists of the Samhitas, literally collections.

[00:02:47]These are collections of hymns, prayers, incantations, and sacrificial formula used in ritual, and they are composed mostly in verse. The second consists of the Brahmanas. Unlike the Samhitas, these are large prose text. Their purpose is to explain the rituals, describe how sacrifices should be performed, and explore the meaning behind them. The third category brings together the Aranyakas and the Upanishads. Here, the focus gradually shifts away from ritual and towards philosophical reflection. These texts preserve the meditations of forest hermits and ascetics on the God, the universe, and the human condition. It is within them that we encounter some of the earliest expressions of Indian philosophy.

[00:03:38]Now, that we have a broad picture of what the Vedic literature is, let's begin where the tradition itself begins, with the Samhitas. But, almost immediately, we run into something interesting.

[00:03:52]According to the Vedic tradition, there were once many Samhitas. At first glance, that sounds as though there were dozens of completely different Vedic texts. Historians, however, think the reality was somewhat different. Rather than being entirely separate works, these were most likely different versions of the same Samhita, each preserved by different Vedic school.

[00:04:19]These schools were known as Shakhas, literally branches. Each branch transmitted its own recension of the text with small variation that developed over time through independent traditions of oral preservation. Of all those branches, only four Samhitas have survived that are clearly distinct from one another. The first is the Rigveda Samhita, the knowledge of the songs of praise. The second is the Atharvaveda, the knowledge of the magic formula. The third is the Samaveda Samhita, the knowledge of the melodies. The fourth is the Yajurveda, the knowledge of the sacrificial formula. The Yajurveda, however, is unique because it survives in two distinct traditions. One is the Black Yajurveda, known as Krishna Yajurveda, preserved most importantly in the Taittiriya and Maitrayani Samhita.

[00:05:16]The other is the White Yajurveda, known as Shukla Yajurveda, preserved in the Vajasaneyi Samhita. Now, you can probably see why people often speak of the Vedas in plural. It is these four Samhitas that are commonly referred to as the four Vedas. But, remember what we discussed a few moments ago. The Vedic literature is much larger than just these four collections. Every Brahmana, every Aranyaka, and every Upanishad belongs to one of these four Vedas. Take a few examples. The Aitareya Brahmana belongs to the Rigveda, the Shatapatha Brahmana belongs to the White Yajurveda or Shukla Yajurveda, and the Chandogya Upanishad belongs to the Samaveda.

[00:06:03]So, these four Samhitas are not simply four independent books. They are the foundation around which the entire corpus of Vedic literature is organized.

[00:06:17]Now that we understand the overall structure of the Vedic literature, let's begin with the oldest and the most important of the four Samhitas, the Rigveda Samhita.

[00:06:30]Without any real dispute, this is the oldest work in the entire Vedic corpus, and indeed the oldest piece of Indian literature that that has survived. Like the other Vedas, the Rigveda too was once preserved in several different recensions, each belonging to a different Shakha or Vedic school. But of all those recensions, only one has survived in its entirety, the Shakala Shakha. It is this recension that we have today.

[00:07:00]The Shakala recension contains 1,028 hymns known as Sukta, arranged into 10 books, each of which is called Mandala, literally meaning a circle. But here something fascinating. Although we often speak of the Rigveda as though it were a single book written at a single point in time, that is not really the case. The language of the hymns tells us that the Rigveda is itself layered. Some hymns are older, others are later, and together they preserve centuries of composition within a single collection.

[00:07:37]Most of the oldest hymns are found in Mandalas two to 7, a group traditionally known as the family books. Why are they called that? Because each of these books is traditionally associated with a particular family of poets.

[00:07:55]These poets were known as Rishi.

[00:07:58]The word is usually translated as seers or sages. But according to the Vedic traditions, the Rishis did not compose these hymns in the ordinary sense of the word. They were believed to have seen or realized them through divine insight.

[00:08:16]This idea lies at the heart of the traditional understanding of the Vedas.

[00:08:21]The Vedas are regarded as Aparusheya, literally not of human authorship. In other words, they were not considered to be the creations of any individual, however great. The Rishis were not viewed as authors, but as seers through whom these eternal truths were revealed.

[00:08:41]That is why the hymns are traditionally said to have been seen rather than written or composed. Now, coming back to the family books, the six great priestly families associated with these books trace their ancestry through Gritsamada, Vishvamitra, Vamadeva, Atri, Bharadvaja, and Vashisht. The remaining Mandalas follow a slightly different pattern.

[00:09:05]There, the traditional lists identify the Rishi responsible for each individual hymn, rather than assigning an entire book to a single family. Among those names are the names of women.

[00:09:18]Their presence remind us that the composition and transmission of the Vedic hymns was not an exclusively male tradition, even though overwhelming majority of the hymns are attributed to men.

[00:09:32]Now, you might wonder if the Rigveda contains both earlier and later hymns, how do historians tell the difference? The answer is not as straightforward as it might seem.

[00:09:43]Language certainly provides clues, but language alone is not enough. Different kinds of hymn naturally employ different styles. An incantation, for example, may use a different vocabulary from a hymn praising Soma or Indra, but that does not necessarily mean one is older than the other. Similarly, a hymn dedicated to Soma may preserve more archaic linguistic features than one dedicated to Varuna, and yet both could still have been composed during roughly the same period. In other words, dating individual hymns within the Rigveda is a complex task. Historians must consider language, style, meter, and context together rather than relying on any single criterion. Now, if you expected the next Veda to introduce an entirely new collection of hymns, you are in for a surprise. The Sama Veda is unlike any of the other Vedas.

[00:10:43]Many Samhitas of the Sama Veda once existed, but only three of them have survived. Of these, the best known is the Kauthuma recension. The text itself is divided into two parts, the Archika and the Uttararchika.

[00:11:01]But what makes the Sama Veda truly remarkable is this: almost none of its verses are original. Of its nearly 1,500 verses, all but 75 are borrowed directly from the Rigveda, most of them from its eighth and ninth Mandalas. At first, that raises an obvious question. If the verses are already found in the Rigveda, why create another Veda at all? The answer lies in its purpose.

[00:11:34]The Samaveda was never primarily about preserving words. It was about preserving music. For the priest who chanted during the sacrifice, the Udgatar's, the melody was the essential thing. The verses were important, but only because they were meant to be sung.

[00:11:55]A student training to become an Udgatar priest first learned the melodies with the Archika. Only after mastering those melodies did he learn the chants as they were actually performed during the sacrifice using the Uttararchika. In fact, the word Saman originally meant nothing more than a melody or musical tone. The Vedic tradition explains this relation between words and music through a beautiful metaphor. It says that every melody is born from a verse. The verse, the Rich, was called the Yoni, the womb from which the melody emerged. A single verse could be sung to different melodies just as the same melody could accompany different verses. Yet, over time, particular verses became closely associated with particular melodies, and these verses came to regarded as the Yoni, the source from which these melodies were born. And this leads us to something extraordinary. The Archika and the Uttararchika preserve only the word.

[00:13:07]The melodies themselves were not originally written down.

[00:13:11]Like the rest of the Vedic tradition, they survived through oral transmission from teacher to student generation after generation. But unlike the hymns, they were transmitted not simply as words to be recited, but as music to be performed. So far, we have encountered two very different ways in which the Vedic hymns were used. The Rigveda preserved the hymns themselves, the Samaveda transformed many of those same hymns into melodies to be sung during the sacrifice. The Yajurveda takes us one step further. Its concern is not simply with the words that were spoken or the songs that were sung, but with the performance of the sacrifice itself.

[00:13:56]It served as the handbook of the Adhvaryu priest, the priest who were responsible for carrying out the ritual.

[00:14:04]It was his duty to measure the sacrificial ground, construct the altar, prepare the offerings, and perform every physical act that the ceremony required.

[00:14:15]And every one of those actions had to be accompanied by the correct mantra or sacred formula. The ancient grammarian Patanjali tells us that there were once 101 schools of the Yajurveda. That number may seem astonishing at first, but it becomes easier to understand when we consider the nature of the Vedic ritual. The sacrifice demanded extraordinary precision. Every gesture, every movement, and every mantra had to be performed exactly as prescribed. Even small differences in ritual practice could eventually give rise to a separate Vedic school.

[00:14:52]Today, only five shakhas or branches of the Yajurveda survives.

[00:14:57]Four of them belong to what is known as black or Krishna Yajurveda, the Kathaka, the Kapishthala Katha, Maitrayani, and Taittiriya traditions.

[00:15:10]Standing apart from them is the Vajasaneyi Samhita, the principal recension of the white or Shukla Yajurveda. It takes its name from the sage Yagnavalkya Vajasaneya, the chief teacher of this Vedic tradition.

[00:15:26]The Vajasaneyi Samhita survives in two recensions, the Kanva and the Madhyandina. Though the differences between them are very slightly. Now this naturally raises another question. Why do we speak of a black and a white Yajurveda? The distinction has nothing to do with chronology or religious importance. It lies in how the texts are organized. The white or Shukla Yajurveda contains only the mantras recited by the Adhvaryu priests during the sacrifice.

[00:15:59]The black or Krishna Yajurveda, however, contains something more. Alongside the mantra, it also preserves explanations of the rituals themselves and discussion of their meaning, precisely the kind of material that later came to be known as Brahmana literature. That arrangement was perfectly natural. The Adhvaryu priest's primary responsibility was to perform the ritual correctly. The spoken formula formed only one part of his work. The actions themselves and the explanations that justified them were just as important. So in the older black or Krishna Yajurveda, ritual instructions and sacred formula remained woven together in a single collection.

[00:16:47]Only did later did scholars separate the two, producing a Samhita that contained nothing but the mantras. That became the white Yajurveda. So far the three Vedas we have discussed have one thing in common. Whether through hymns, melodies, or ritual formulae, they all revolve around the Vedic sacrifice. The Atharva Veda is different. Its verses deal with illness and healing, blessing and curses, protection from enemies, evil spirits, and the uncertainties of everyday life. Rather than focusing exclusively on the great public sacrifices, many of its hymns reflect that the hopes, fears, and anxieties of ordinary people. Its oldest name was Atharvangirasa, a name formed from two ancient priestly families, the Atharvan and the Angiras.

[00:17:45]That name itself tells us a great deal about the character of this Veda. The Atharvans were associated with the formula for healing diseases and bringing prosperity. While the Angirases were associated with curses directed against enemies, rivals, and evil magicians. Together, these two traditions form the heart of the Atharvaveda. Many shakhas of Atharvaveda once existed, but only two survive today, the Shaunak and the Paippalada recensions. Of these, the Shaunak Samhita is the better known and more widely studied. It contains 731 hymns comprising roughly of 6,000 verses arranged into 20 books. But the collection did not come into being all at once. In fact, about 1/7 of the Atharvaveda has been borrowed directly from the Rigveda with more than half of these borrowed hymns appearing in the 20th and final book. Its language and meter still resemble those of the Rigveda, but they also reveal important changes. We begin to encounter later and more popular forms of the language, the meter becomes less rigid, and prose starts to appear alongside verse. The 15th book, for example, is written entirely in prose. The world reflected in Atharvaveda also belongs to a somewhat later stage of Vedic history.

[00:19:18]By this time, the Vedic people had expanded further east into the Ganga plains. Animals that never appear in the Rigveda now enter the picture. One extra striking example is the tiger, an animal native to the forests of eastern India, which is described as the most powerful and most feared of all the beasts of prey. The gods too appear in somewhat different role. We still encounter familiar deities such as Agni and Indra, but their earlier character as personifications of natural forces has begun to recede. Since many Atharvavedic hymns are concerned with wardings of demons and harmful supernatural forces, the gods are invoked primarily as protectors and destroyers of evil. For a long time, however, the Atharvaveda did not enjoy the same status as the other three Vedas.

[00:20:16]The earlier texts often speak only of the trayi vidya, the threefold knowledge, consisting of Rigveda, Yajurveda, and Samaveda. The Atharvaveda is frequently mentioned only afterwards and sometimes omitted altogether. Even the early Buddhist texts describe learned Brahmins as those proficient in three Vedas, not four. But we should be careful not to misunderstand what this means. The fact that the Atharvaveda in its present form is later than the Rigveda does not mean that all of its hymns are younger. Its magical poetry is at least as ancient as the sacrificial poetry of the Rigveda, and many preserves traditions reaching just as far back into the prehistoric past. Only the later portions of the collection appear to have been composed under the influence of the Rigveda. So, these are the four Samhitas, the oldest layer of Vedic literature. Together, they preserve hymns, melodies, ritual formulas, and prayers composed and transmitted over many centuries. But, the Vedic tradition did not stop with the Samhitas. As the ritual system grow more elaborate and need to explain the sacrificial text increased, an entirely new class of literature began to emerge.

[00:21:43]These were the Brahmanas. The emergence of the Brahmanas was not a sudden development. In fact, we have already seen this process begin with the black or Krishna Yajurveda itself. Their explanations had to had already started to stand alongside the mantras. Ritual instructions and their interpretations were woven together into a single collection. But, as Vedic ritual became increasingly elaborate, this explanatory tradition continued to grow. The sacrifices became more and more complex, the number of priests increased, and every ritual action came to be governed by precise rules and traditions.

[00:22:24]Naturally, questions began to arise. Why was a particular offering made? Why was one mantra recited at one stage of the sacrifice and another mantra at another stage? Why was a ritual performed in one way rather than another?

[00:22:42]The Samhitas themselves rarely answered such questions. A new kind of literature was needed, one that did not merely preserve the sacred words, but explained them. That literature is known as the Brahmanas.

[00:22:58]The word Brahmana is derived from Brahman, which in the Vedic context refers to the sacred utterance or ritual formula rather than the later philosophical concept of the absolute.

[00:23:12]Accordingly, the Brahmanas are texts devoted to explaining the significance of the Brahman, that is the mantra and the sacrificial rituals which which with which they are associated. Each Veda develop its own Brahmanas. Among the most important are the Aitareya Brahmana of the Rigveda, the Shatapatha Brahmana of the Yajurveda, and the Taittiriya Brahmana of the Krishna or Black Yajurveda. The Atharvaveda is associated with the Gopatha Brahmana. Although these texts differ considerably in style and content, they share a common purpose. They explain how a sacrifice should be performed, why each ritual act is necessary, and what cosmic or symbolic meaning lies behind it.

[00:24:01]For the composers of the Brahmanas, every detail of the sacrifice mattered.

[00:24:06]Nothing was accidental. The shape of the altar, the sequence of the offerings, the choice of wood, the direction in which the priest faced, even the smallest ritual gesture was believed to possess a profound symbolic significance. The Brahmanas therefore do much more than prescribe ritual.

[00:24:28]They attempt to uncover the hidden logic of the sacrificial universe, and in doing so, they preserve some of the earliest Indian reflection on symbolism, cosmology, mythology, and the relationship between human action and cosmic order. Yet, even as the Brahmanas elaborated the ritual tradition, a different current of thought was beginning to emerge. Some Vedic thinkers gradually turned away from the crowded sacrificial arena and withdrew into the solitude of the forest. There the questions they asked became very different. Not how should a sacrifice should be performed, but what is the deeper meaning behind the sacrifice itself. That shift bring us to the next layer of the Vedic literature, the Aranyakas. The word Aranyaka literally means belonging to the forest. According to later tradition, these texts were to be studied in the solitude of the forest away from the bustle of ordinary life.

[00:25:30]Whether this was always true historically remains uncertain.

[00:25:34]But the name captures the spirit of these works remarkably well.

[00:25:39]The Aranyakas occupy transitional position within the Vedic literature. On the one hand, they remain deeply rooted in the ritual tradition inherited from the Brahmanas. On the other hand, they began to move beyond the external performance of sacrifice and explore its deeper symbolic and philosophical significance. In the Brahmanas, the sacrifice itself remained the center of attention. The Aranyakas, however, increasingly reinterpret that sacrifice.

[00:26:12]The fire altar is no longer merely an altar. The sacrificial fire is no longer merely a physical flame. Every ritual act begins to acquire an inner symbolic meaning. The emphasis gradually shifts from external action to internal understanding. This does not mean that the ritual was abandoned. Rather, the ritual was transformed into an object of contemplation. The external sacrifice increasingly came to be understood as a reflection of processes taking place within the individual and the universe itself. Not every Veda possess a separate Aranyaka, but several important examples have survived. Among them are the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rigveda, the Taittiriya Aranyaka of the Krishna Yajurveda, and the Brihadaranyaka, which forms the concluding portions of the Shatapatha Brahmana, and that belong to the Shukla Yajurveda. It is within these texts that we begin to encounter some of the most earliest reflections on questions that would later dominate Indian philosophy. What is the true nature of the individual? What is the relationship between human beings and the cosmos? Can ritual alone lead to ultimate knowledge?

[00:27:34]These questions point beyond the world of sacrifice altogether, and from within the Aranyakas themselves emerge the most influential and philosophically profound texts of the entire Vedic tradition. The Upanishads.

[00:27:51]If the Brahmanas sought to explain the sacrifice and the Aranyakas sought to uncover its inner meaning, the Upanishads move beyond sacrifice altogether.

[00:28:03]The questions are no longer centered on how a sacrifice should be performed or even what it symbolizes. Instead, they turn towards the deepest questions of human existence. Who are we? What is the ultimate reality behind the universe?

[00:28:19]What happens after death? Can true knowledge liberate us from the cycle of birth and death?

[00:28:25]The oldest Upanishads are so closely intertwined with the Aranyakas that it is often difficult to say where one ends and the other begins. In fact, many Upanishads originally formed the concluding section of the Aranyakas themselves. Together, these concluding portions came to be known as the Vedant, literally the end of the Veda.

[00:28:50]At one level, the name is simply descriptive. The Upanishads belonged to the final layer of Vedic literature, and most of the principal Upanishads were composed towards the close of the Vedic period, but the expression carries a deeper meaning as well. The intimate relationship between teacher and student is reflected even in the very name Upanishad. The word is derived from the root sad, meaning to sit, together with the prefixes upa, meaning near, and ni, meaning down. Literally, it conveys the idea of sitting down near. The image is a powerful one. A student sits beside the teacher receiving knowledge that is not proclaimed publicly, but transmitted personally from one prepared mind to another. It is this idea of the intimate instruction and the transmission of profound wisdom that the word Upanishad came to embody. Like the rest of the Vedic literature, the Upanishads were not composed by a single author, nor did they emerge at a single moment in history. They were composed over several centuries.

[00:29:58]The number of Upanishad is commonly given as around 112, though some have counted more than 200. The oldest group include Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya, Aitareya, Kaushitaki, and the Taittiriya, and the Kena as well. A later group composed in verse include the Katha, possibly composed in 6th century before the common era, before the rise of the Buddha, and the Isha, which forms the very last chapter of the Vajasaneyi Samhita. And what do these Upanishads contain? For the most part, dialogues on the true nature of reality called by two names, Brahman and Atman. The influence of these texts extend far beyond the Vedic age. Almost every major school of Indian philosophy looked to the Upanishads for inspiration and authority. So, the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, Aranyaka and Upanishads together constitute the core of the Vedic literature. But, the story does not end there. Closely connected with the Vedas is another important class of works that, strictly speaking, does not form part of the Vedic corpus itself.

[00:31:17]These are the Kalpa Sutras, often referred simply as Sutra. The Kalpa Sutras are traditionally divided into three categories. The Shrauta Sutra lay down rules for the great public sacrifices, elaborate rituals extending over many days involving several sacred fires and numerous priests. The Grihya Sutra deal with the simpler ceremonies of domestic life. They prescribe the rituals associated with birth, marriage and death, as well as other household rituals. The Dharma Sutra move beyond ritual altogether, concerned with both spiritual and secular law. They constitute the earliest law books of ancient India. Like the earlier Vedic literature, each of these works is associated with one of the four Vedas.

[00:32:12]Yet, an important distinction separates them from everything we have discussed so far. The Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads were regarded as Shruti, that which was heard or revealed. The Kalpa Sutras, on the other hand, were regarded as works of human authorship, rather than divine revelation. For this reason, they came to be classified among the Vedanga, the limbs of the Veda. The auxiliary disciplines that support, preserve, and facilitate the proper understanding and transmission of the Vedic tradition.

[00:32:52]Now, if you would like to understand what life was actually during the period when this literature was being composed, I have already made these videos. You can watch them. Just one small warning.

[00:33:06]These were among the very first videos I made on this channel. So, please forgive the production quality and especially my narration. Hopefully, the content has aged much better than my presentation.

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[00:33:23]Thank you for watching.