How We Got the Vedas

[Guest guest]

Let's be proud to be Indian How We Got the VedasThe Vedas we know contain eternal truths, and of allthe truths, the knowledge of god or Atman is the mostimportant one. Swami Vivekananda says ' the Vedasshould be studied through the eyeglass of evolution.They contain the whole history of the progress ofreligious consciousness, until religion has reachedperfection in unity.' So the Vedas contain everything.The question is how did the Vedic truth appear inverse form? Who brought them to us?An interesting incident happened some years ago. Weshall not say whether the repercussions were good orbad; that's not our concern. But our concern is theincident itself. A revered monk sat as the presidentin some meeting. A musician started singing someMantras from the Vedas set to her tunes.Unfortunately, the lady belonged to a race that findsit difficult to pronounce Sanskrit

correctly. To thisrace, so becomes sho, ksha becomes sko. They pronouncedaksha as dakko, Om becomes ong; sati as shoti, sahanavavatu as shohono bhobotu. She began singing theMantras with the pronunciation characteristic of herrace. This troubled the monk and he walked away.Immediately, there was an uproar that it was an insultto humanity; that woman were being insulted, that themonk had to be condemned. Perhaps, the monk was painedover something else. And what was that?Imagine those bygone days of thousands and thousandsof years ago when there was no writing imagine thosedays when there was no other civilization but theAryan. Imagine the river and the sunrise and thetrees. And the sages repeating Vedic truths to theirdisciples. And then the disciples memorizing them. Fortens of thousands of years, this tradition of theteacher repeating mantras and the students memorizingthem went on. It went on and on until

writing wasintroduced. Suppose you could record the chants of twosages ten thousands years apart on two differentcassettes-one sage of 15000 BC and another of 5000 BCand suppose you played both the cassettessimultaneously. You would not find any disharmony inthe chants at all. Both sages, though thousands ofyears apart, would repeat the mantras in the same way,in the same tune, in the same rhythm and style. Thatwas the wonder and greatness of our sages! So havetruths, discovered some twenty thousands years back,come down to us today in their pristine purity, asthey were! Only in modern times they have changed thetunes etc. but how did our Rishis achieve such awonder?The Vedic sages had scientific methods to propagateVedic knowledge. They had the vedangas.Siksha meant that Vedas had to be recited compulsorilyevery day in a systematic manner. The mantras had tobe chanted in a methodical, scientific way. For

this,there was jata-patha had two forms : ayvakritajata-patha or 'reversed recitation'. To repeatishavasyam, as it is was termed avyakrita and toreverse it as vasyam isha meant it was vyakrita. Thissystem was so complex and so scientific those modernscientific minds would be bewildered at their ownhaphazard ways of training! Then there wasghana-patha, and so on. This was the grand style ofteaching so that not a single letter was lost. Vyakarana or grammar helped teachers teach the rulesof conjunction and interjection, sandhis and samasas,the lingas and vibhaktis etc., so that no truth ormantra was distorted. Chandas was meant to give tunes to the Vedic mantras.Suppose students were to repeat mantras in a dry mode.They would become bored. So, the wonderful tunes ofmantras, especially of the Sama chants. Nirukta was meant to serve the purpose of a thesaurus.Sage yaska used the dictionary. Nighantu, to

developthis system. Jyotisha. The sages were not parrots, just keeping themantras in memory had they been parrots, the mantraswould have been powerless and useless and Hinduismwould not have had its vitality today. So, each sageperformed sacrifices described in the Vedas, practicedsadhana as described everyone could not perform allthe sacrifices and all the sadhanas mentioned, theywere divided into schools and institutions, and eachindependent schools and institutions, and eachindependent school became a custodian of a particularsacrifice rite and portion of the Veda. In order tofollow Vedic injunction at the right time and at theright season, the science of astrology or Jyotisha wasdeveloped. Calculating the Zodiacal positions, thenature, position, effects etc, of the stars andplanets was a wonderful science that was developedindependently to help humanity. I generally ask thisquestion to those physicists

who decry Jyotisha asnonsense: How many centuries ago did modern sciencediscover that the sun is in the Centre and there arenine planets revolving around it? How many aeons agodid Indian scientists of old discover this truth? Justbecause Galileo Galilee said that sun was the centre,priests tortured him and Giordano Bruno was burned atthe stake in 1600 AD! The problem with the scientistsis what's available to the five senses and to theinstruments that bring knowledge to these senses,alone is true. The rest is simply false. And every daya scientific theory is tumbling out. If science wereeverything, why did they fool people all these yearswith their big bang theory? Now they say that was amistake! Kalpa is the science of performing sacrifices,composed in the form of aphorisms. There are fourKalpas: Shrauta Sutras, Grihya Sutras, Dharma Sutrasand Sulba Sutras. These Sutras guided the sages intheir lifestyles

and activities. We can clearly see from this simple introductionitself how great the Indian science of the Vedas was!It was not a cock-and-bull story written by fools. Itwas a wonderful system developed over millenniums!Just one challenge to modern scientific people: Pleaseshow us one single case of grammar in any otherlanguage of the world which has a Sutra system likethat of Panini. Please show us a single dictionary inthe worlds in verse form like that of our Amarakosha.It's simply impossible to imagine how our ancientscientist thought of such systems. India is great;Indian history is great; Indian thoughts are great.Let's bow down in all humility to Indian thought andlearn from it. Let's study the Vedas. The Vedas arenot terrific Sanskrit things. Anyone can read themusing transaction. And there are wonderfultranslations. If foreigners can study them and do sucha lot of work on them, why not we? Our

ancientknowledge has come to us after much difficulty andtremendous sacrifice. Millions have died in the handsof invaders to save Hinduism. Let's not forget theirsacrifice.You may ask: If Indian Vedas are so great, if it issuch a perfect science, why did India suffer so much?Why is there no development at all here? The reason isthis: Exactly one thousands years ago, gold was soldon the streets of India like we sell groundnuts! Theworld envied Indian progress. Indian scientist taughtthe whole world! Nalanda, Taxila and otheruniversities were the oxford and Cambridge of theworld! We lost everything because of Muslim invadersand the subsequent occupations. Now, once again thereis interest in the Vedas and we shall rise once againthere is interest in the Vedas and we shall rise onceagain, Swamiji has declared time and again: 'Indiawill be raised, not with the power of the flesh, butwith the power of the spirit;

not with the flag ofdestruction, but with the flag of peace and love..'. 'I see in my mind's eye the future perfect India risingout of this chaos and strife.'.From Guru to disciple, from disciple to disciple-theriver of Vedic knowledge flowed in this way. And nowwe have every gadget under the Sun. But today we don'tfollow the metres and Chandas that the Rishis havefollowed. We want to set film tunes to Mantras andsing them in such a way that the deergha becomes ahrasva, a word becomes three words, a sentence becomesmeaningless and the pronunciation is simplypreposterous. This we call modernity! Modernityindeed! To preserve knowledge through all thevicissitudes without changing even a single letter forthousands of years is not a joke. Reporters can'treport what they see the previous day correctly, notto speak of thousands of years!Today, everyone is only too eager to criticizeBrahmins. Who were the sages?

They were Brahmins,mostly, though people from all communities were sages.Brahmins may have done some wrong, but to blame themfor every wrong under the Sun is silly. We must begrateful to them for all that they have done tohumanity. Simply condemning some race for no reason.Let's memorize this sentence from Vivekananda: 'Thereis no new religious idea preached anywhere which isnot found in the Vedas.' Thanks & Regards,

Mail for Mobile Take Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.