Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 18)

October 25, 2000

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 17 were posted earlier. This is part 18. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 18

PART I, SECTION 1: DEFINITION AND EULOGY OF THE VEDAS AND VEDANTA

Chapter 2: Some Preliminary Definitions

a) The "Veda" Is the Sum Total of Eternal Truths

Most of the great religions of the world owe allegiance to certain books which they believe are the words of God or some other supernatural beings, and which are the basis of their religion. Now, of all these books, according to the modern savants of the West, the oldest are the Vedas of the Hindus. A little understanding, therefore, is necessary about the Vedas. (1)

The knowledge of God is what is meant by the Vedas (vid - to know). (2)

Veda means the sum total of eternal truths. (3)

Truth is of two kinds: (1) that which is cognizable by the five ordinary senses of man and by reasonings based thereon; (2) that which is cognizable by the subtle, supersensuous power of yoga.

Knowledge acquired by the first means is called science; and knowledge acquired by the second is called the Vedas. (4)

Our own realization is beyond the Vedas, because even they depend upon that. The highest Vedas is the philosophy of the Beyond. (5)

With regard to the whole Vedic collection of truths discovered by the Aryan race, this also has to be understood that those portions alone which do not refer to purely secular matters and which do not merely record tradition or history, or merely provide incentives to duty form the Vedas in the real sense.

Although the supersensuous vision of truths is to be met with in some measure in our Puranas and Itihasas and in the religious scriptures of other races, still the fourfold scripture known among the Aryan race as the Vedas being the first, the most complete, and the most undistorted collection of spiritual truths, deserves to occupy the highest place among all scriptures, command the respect of all nations of the earth, and furnish the rationale of their respective scriptures. (6)

b) The Upanishads Are the "New Testament" of the Vast, Traditional Vedic Literature

The Vedas are, in fact, the oldest sacred books in the world. Nobody knows anything about the time they were written, or by whom. They are contained in many volumes, and I doubt that any one person ever read them all. (7)

The Sanskrit in which the Vedas were written is not the same Sanskrit in which books were written about a thousand years later than the Vedas - the books that you read in your translations of poets and other classical writers of India. The Sanskrit of the Vedas was very simple, archaic in its composition, and possibly it was a spoken language. (8)

That branch of the Aryan race which spoke the Sanskrit language was the first to become civilized and the first to begin to write books and literature. So they went on for thousands of years. How many thousands of years they wrote no one knows. There are various guesses - from 3,000 to 8,000 BC - but all of these dates are more or less uncertain. (9)

This Sanskrit has undergone very much change as a matter of course, having been spoken and written through thousands of years. It necessarily follows that in other Aryan languages, as in Greek and Roman, the literature must be of much later date than Sanskrit. Not only so, but there is this peculiarity, that of all regular books that we have in the world, the oldest are in Sanskrit - and that is the mass of literature called the Vedas. There are very ancient pieces in the Babylonian or Egyptian literature, but they cannot be called literature or books, but just a few notes, a short letter, a few words, and so on. But as finished, cultured literature, the Vedas are the oldest. (10)

The Vedas existed as a mass of literature, and not as a book - just as you find the Old Testament, the Bible. Now, the Bible is a mass of literature of different ages; different persons are the writers, and so on. It is a collection. [in the same way], the Vedas are a vast collection. I do not know whether, if all the texts were found - nobody has found all the texts; nobody, even in India, has seen all the books - if all the books were known, this room would contain them. It is a huge mass of literature, carried down from generation to generation from God, who gave the scriptures. (11)

The Vedas are divided into four parts. One is called the Rig Veda, another Yajur Veda, another Sama Veda, and the fourth, Atharva Veda. Each one of these, again, was divided into many branches. For instance, the Sama Veda had one thousand branches, of which only about five or six remain; the rest are all lost. So with the others. The Rig Veda had 108, of which only one remains; and the rest are all lost. (12)

This vast mass of literature - the Vedas - we find in three groups. The first group is the Samhitas, a collection of hymns. The second group is called the Brahmanas, or the [group dealing with different kinds of] sacrifice. The word brahmana [by usage] means [what is achieved by means of] the sacrifice. And the other group is called the Upanishads (sittings, lectures, philosophic books). Again, the first two parts together - the hymns and the rituals - are called the Karma Kanda, the work portion; and the second, or philosophic portion (the Upanishads), is called the Jnana Kanda, the knowledge portion. This is the same word as your English word knowledge and the Greek word gnos - just as you have the word in agnostic, and so on. (13)

The Upanishads are the Bible of India. [in relation to the Vedas] they occupy the same place as the New Testament does [to the Old]. There are [more than] a hundred books comprising the Upanishads, some very small and some big, each a separate treatise.... They are [as it were] shorthand notes taken down of discussions in [learned assemblies], generally in the courts of kings. The word Upanishad may mean "sittings" [or "sitting near a teacher"]. Those of you who may have studied some of the Upanishads can understand how they are condensed shorthand sketches. After long discussions had been held, they were taken down, possibly from memory.... The origin of ancient Sanskrit is 5,000 BC; the Upanishads [are at least] two thousand years before that. Nobody knows exactly how old they are. (14)

It is the aim of the modern scholar to restore [the sequence of the Vedic compositions]. The old, orthodox idea is quite different, as your orthodox idea of the Bible is quite different from the modern scholar’s. (15)

To be Continued.......