Re:Shrisha Rao's reply to my letter- Digest Number 148

[Guest guest]

rajcaval.kkh (Raja R Cavale) wrote:

 

>When I mention to my learned friends in this country, who belong to the

>other system, that Veda is 'Impersonal'(Apourusheya), their answer is that

>the Vedas are subject to interpretation of the person who is propagating

>it. This is not because there was no person involved in creating it, but

>because it is due to the people who have kept the Vedas as 'a word of

>mouth' rather than writing down the original Scripture as a Book ( under

>the instruction of God).

 

That is an even weaker objection than the one I was (apparently incorrectly)

responding to.

 

It is accepted by all that the Vedas are not stand-alone items but have a

large quantity of supporting documentation that have been handed down from

time immemorial. For instance, the Brahma Suutra (which is written and not

just handed down word-of-mouth) is stated in the Bhagavad Gita to be the

text that decides the purport of the myriad Vedic statements:

 

R^ishhibhirbahudhA gItaM chha.NdobhirvividhaiH pR^ithak.h |

brahmasUtrapadaishchaiva hetumadbhirvinishchitaiH ||

 

-- in the thirteenth chapter, Krishna tells Arjuna that He will explain the

meanings of `xetra' and `xetraj~na' in a logical fashion, and the latter

should listen carefully; to cause interest, he quotes the above verse,

saying that the same material has been sung about a great deal by the Vedic

seers, and in many Vedic statements, whose purport is conclusively settled

by the logical exposition of the Brahma Suutra.

 

Also see the Br. Up. IV-4-10, where a whole host of expatiatory literature

(`sUtrANi, anuvyAkhyAnAni, vyAkhyAnAni', etc.) is attributed to the Supreme

in addition to the Vedas. This class of literature is profusely quoted from

by Srimad Acharya in his works.

 

Therefore, there is no difficulty in settling the purport of the Vedas based

on traditional literature.

 

>1. People of the other system (genuinely) can not think in any other terms

>of presentation of a belief system other than as it is presented about

>their own Scripture. It is because that is the only way, according to them,

>as right.

 

Their problem, not ours.

 

>2. For the sake of an argument they can agree that Vedas could be the real

>Truth that is there, but the people who transmit them can cause some

>distortion about the real message that the Vedas carry.

 

The care with which the Vedas are recited (with elaborate recitation forms

like pada/krama/ghana-pATha, etc.) ensures that distortions do not take

place; in fact, while there are no pAThAntara-s in case of the recited

verses, there are such all the time in case of texts transmitted only in

writing.

 

>3. Mr Shreesha Rao's explanation, if I am correct in understanding his

>statement, that the Vedas can not be the Truth as there was no author to

>it, was not what I meant. My learned friends can agree that the Vedas might

>be true, but their argument is that during the transmission from person to

>person, the meaning of Vedas has got distorted.

 

Are they saying the meaning *may* have been distorted, or that it *has* in

fact been distorted? In the latter case, one would have to inquire how the

fact is known to them. If the former, then the doubt essentially arises

from a failure to distinguish between the actual statements of the Vedas,

and their purport. It does not matter what purport the reciters of the

Vedas (or any other statements) attach to them; as long as the words and

other linguistic forms are kept intact, the meaning is not altered (even

though the reciter may not know the correct meaning).

 

>4. Their own Scripture is not what their prophet has told them to write

>down, he was only a messenger and the truth was actually revealed to him by

>the God who is said to have told him to write them down.

 

If that be the criterion for correctness, we have no difficulty either:

 

nityA vedAH samastAshcha shAshvatA vishhNubuddhigAH |

sarge sarge.amunaivaita udgIryante tathaiva cha |

tatkrameNaiva tairvarNaistaiH svaraireva na chAnyathA |

ataH shrutitvametAsA shrutA eva yato.akhilaiH |

janmAntare shrutAstAstu vAsudevaprasAdataH |

munInAM pratibhAsyanti bhAgenaiva na sarvashaH |

yatastA hariNA dR^ishhTAH shrutA evAparairjanaiH |

shrutayo dR^ishhTayashcheti tenochyante purAtanaiH ||

 

-- et cetera; the operative part being, of course, `janmAntare shrutAstAstu

vAsudevaprasAdataH; munInAM pratibhAsyanti' -- that which was learned in a

previous lifetime, is revealed to the muni-s again by the grace of Vasudeva.

 

>5 In the same way they try to equate Hinduism as a revealed truth by God

>but its true meaning has been distorted by the people who have transmitted

>the message from one generation to another generation.

 

`Hinduism' as a whole is an amorphous entity, not capable of being easily

and uniquely defined (the Supreme Court's definition in the 1986 case would

require that Maadhva-s be considered non-Hindu, for instance), so various

claims can be made.

 

>6. It is because of this polarised view, they get astonished by the fact

>that a cow is a sacred animal. When we mention cow as sacred, they think we

>believe it as God, because only God is sacred. This is a real statement

>made by one of my learned friend, " That poor animal which is grazing in the

>field, how can it be God and how can it create this universe and all? "

 

A very real objection in respect of vishishhTAdvaita and other doctrines

which incorrectly consider the icon worshipped to be a form of the Supreme:

`pratIkavishhayatvena na kAryA vishhNubhAvanA'.

 

>When I said in my previous letter, " I do not know how to get over this

>problem " ,

>I meant that they think that our Veda has been subject to distortion during

>the transmission, as there was no messenger or a written down message.

 

Again, is it syntactic distortion or semantic distortion that they're

worried about? Neither would amount to a tangible objection.

 

Regards,

 

Shrisha Rao

 

>Rajaram Cavale.

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

Shrisha Rao wrote:-

 

" If I may restate what you have said, the (possible) objection is as follows:

Because the Vedas don't have authors, there is no meaning that can be

attached to them at all, since meanings are given to sentences by their

authors, and an unauthored sentence cannot have a firmly-rooted purport.

 

This is not a new argument, and not (thanks to the light of the stalwarts in

the tradition) a particularly difficult one to overcome either........ "

 

I think Shrisha Rao has completely missed my point that I have made in my

previous letter.

 

When I mention to my learned friends in this country, who belong to the

other system, that Veda is 'Impersonal'(Apourusheya), their answer is that

the Vedas are subject to interpretation of the person who is propagating

it. This is not because there was no person involved in creating it, but

because it is due to the people who have kept the Vedas as 'a word of

mouth' rather than writing down the original Scripture as a Book ( under

the instruction of God). If I may write down some of the points as

numbered items:-

 

1. People of the other system (genuinely) can not think in any other terms

of presentation of a belief system other than as it is presented about

their own Scripture. It is because that is the only way, according to them,

as right.

 

2. For the sake of an argument they can agree that Vedas could be the real

Truth that is there, but the people who transmit them can cause some

distortion about the real message that the Vedas carry. As the Vedas were

kept in the people's memory rather than on a tangible structure like a book

or engravings, it can not be the original correct revelation of Truth.

 

3. Mr Shreesha Rao's explanation, if I am correct in understanding his

statement, that the Vedas can not be the Truth as there was no author to

it, was not what I meant. My learned friends can agree that the Vedas might

be true, but their argument is that during the transmission from person to

person, the meaning of Vedas has got distorted.

 

4. Their own Scripture is not what their prophet has told them to write

down, he was only a messenger and the truth was actually revealed to him by

the God who is said to have told him to write them down.

 

5 In the same way they try to equate Hinduism as a revealed truth by God

but its true meaning has been distorted by the people who have transmitted

the message from one generation to another generation.

 

6. It is because of this polarised view, they get astonished by the fact

that a cow is a sacred animal. When we mention cow as sacred, they think we

believe it as God, because only God is sacred. This is a real statement

made by one of my learned friend, " That poor animal which is grazing in the

field, how can it be God and how can it create this universe and all? "

 

When I said in my previous letter, " I do not know how to get over this problem " ,

I meant that they think that our Veda has been subject to distortion during

the transmission, as there was no messenger or a written down message.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Rajaram Cavale.

 

 

______

Don't forget to SPOT the DOT in my email address.

There is a spot in my email address before kkh - as below.

rajcaval.kkh.

[Guest guest]

Dear friend,

In reply to your specific point about distortion being

inevitable in transmission, I have 3 points to make :

1. Distortion can be in the words, sentences and structure of

the composition.

2. It can be there in the meaning ascribed to a faithful

rendering of the original.

3. It can be also there, when the original is not free from

ambiguity as in the case of say - The constitution of a country.

The first one can only be taken care of by the method of

transmission from one generation to the next. Let me quote Prof

Maxmuller on this - reg. the Vedas.- copied from an article

being written for Thathvavada (English)

As an introduction, let me quote some extracts from the book -

" What can India teach us? " containing some lectures by the

great Orientalist scholar F. Maxmuller. A few quotations have

been given at random mainly to show the profound effect that

western scholars with different cultural, civilisational and

intellectual perspectives have had on our thinking. I have no

intention here of critically evaluating these in depth.

" That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds

monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even these

monstrosities are interesting and instructive; nay, many of

them, if we can but make allowance for different ways of thought

and language, contain gems of truth and rays of light, all the

more striking, because breaking upon us through the veil of the

darkest night "

" Now the Rigveda alone, which contains a collection of ten books

of hymns addressed to various dieties consists of 1017 poems,

10580 verses and about 153,826 words. How were these poems

composed - for they are composed in very perfect metre - and

how, after having been composed, were they handed down from 1500

before Christ to 1500 after Christ, the time to which most of

our best Sanskrit MSS belong? Entirely by memory. This may

sound startling, but - what will sound still more startling, and

yet is a fact that can easily be ascertained by any body who

doubts it - at the present moment, if every MS of the Rigveda

were lost, we should be able to recover the whole of it - from

the memory of the Shrothriyas of India " .

There is no doubt what so ever that the method of their

retention in the racial memeory was carefully crafted that there

is no distortion with time.

Regarding the second point, one does require a continuing

civilisation and interpretational aids for the compositions -

which Hindus do have, unlike most others. Most of the theories

about " writing of the Vedas " ,

epics etc are attributable in their original form to western

scholars who have tried to sustain a calendar of events

corresponding to the Biblical age of earth.

Regrading the third point, amendments are needed when what is

being stated does not correspond to reality - due to change or

due to incomplete or ambiguous contents. This does not even

arise when eternal truths are being stated after their discovery

by great scholars with the blessings of the Supreme Being.

Let me sum up, by saying that we can not have any confidence in

a belief system which is unsupported by any structure other than

some thing like the Vedas - short of the Supreme being coming

down and PERSONALLY telling us the truths. No intermediaries can

be accepted for obvious reasons. Hindus strongly believe that

Truths are visualised and not just accepted on authority from

others.

NAPSRao