Veda: The Age of Wonderment

"Let's now speak with wonder of the births of the gods - so that some one may see them when the hymns are chanted in this later age" 

(RigVeda - Translation by Wendy Doniger)

Thank God that spring is finally here, bringing an end to the long winter and its many snow storms. Maybe some of you have started thinking of doing a camping trip this spring or summer. Can anything beat that great feeling of being outdoors and sitting around a camp fire? Just imagine the bliss of lying down on a sand dune and watching the clear night sky with its thousands of stars and the beautiful full-moon. Wouldn't a sense of wonderment come over you then?  Where did all these stars and planets come from? What is out there in this large galaxy? How in the world did we, human kind, come to be here on Earth?

This ability to wonder and explore is unique to being human. Unfortunately some of us tend to lose this inborn ability to be dismayed about nature as we grow up, letting the grind and rush of everyday living to overcome it. If you have this sense of wonderment within you, please do make sure to hang on to it tight because one day you will come to realize how precious it is!

As we discussed last time, in the beginning of the second millennium of BCE, the Hindu civilization had started making its journey crossing the mountains of Himalayas into the plains of India. There were some highly insightful thinkers among them, known as Rishis, who happened to have a great sense of wonderment. They probably camped outside throughout this journey and had plenty of time to ask some of these big questions themselves. But unlike most of us, they didn't stop with wondering about the world but also thought hard to find the answers. Fortunately for us, these seers of yonder did have the insight required to answer such deep, philosophical questions. Same time, they also hid them in mystic sayings, riddles and symbolic rituals making them hard to decipher. Maybe, like good old grand parents they too wanted to enjoy the pleasure of playing a game with the many grand children to come!

In their wisdom, the Rishis had come to a conclusion that the future of mankind is going to be critically dependent on gaining, organizing and sharing knowledge. Therefore, they collected and organized their wisdom into books that they named as 'Veda' which means 'what is known'. The Vedas are essentially  the books of knowledge of the ancient Hindu civilization.

The Veda are also the Hindu religion's oldest scriptures. There are four of them - Rik, Yajus, Sama and Atharva Veda. Though the content of Veda had started to accumulate since around 2000 BCE, or even earlier, their organization into the four books did not happen until around 1500 to 1200 BCE. Obviously, all the content were also not created at one time.

Initially, the content of Veda were probably like a whole bunch of partly assembled Lego pieces lying around. Many hymns were composed by different Rishis who were trying to convey what they knew. The person who took these 'Lego pieces' and assembled them nicely was a great sage named Veda Vyasa. We will get to more on Veda Vyasa later but now to understand about Veda better, let us focus little bit on one Veda that contains the oldest of hymns, the 'Rigveda'

When the Rishis tried to understand the world, they came up with the insight that there were some common underlying principles essential to the world's existence. By 'principle' they meant things like what made water fluid, fire hot and air freely moving. They called each of these principle as 'Deva' or Divinity. They postulated that these principles should have got created before any manifestation based on them got created.  For example, the principle of heat, Agni - the God of Fire, is supposed to have been created before any other source of heat came into being.

But then, who created these principles or 'Deva' ?The Rishis again said that there is this One God from whom the entire universe as well as the different Deva had originated. Most of the hymns in Veda are dedicated to this One God who is called as the 'purusha' and the different Divinities.  Many western scholars have been confused by these multiple Divinities in Hindu religion and wrongly conclude it to be polytheistic, meaning a religion with many Gods. The Hindu religion not only believes that there is One God but also that everything that exists came from that One God.

The most popular of the Divinities mentioned in the Veda are Agni, the Fire God; Varuna, the God of Waters; Indra, the King of Gods;  Surya, the Sun God; Ushas the Goddess of Dawn; Vayu, the Wind God; Prajapati, the Creator God etc.

A number of historians tend to believe that the Hindu divinities originated from the tribal fear of natural forces. Nothing could be farther from truth and an affront to the intelligence of the Rishis. What the Rishis  had done was to embed many ideas that were difficult for the common mind to grasp, within the stories, poetry and rituals. This has helped their great ideas to be preserved for centuries even by those who had no idea what they were preserving!

The entire Veda text is like a rich field of great philosophic wisdom, laid obscure to the unimaginative and skeptical but highly promising to the committed explorer. I hope you will be one of those explorers destined to uncover some of those treasures from Vedas for yourself as well as the world!
(Image courtesies: to the wonderful sources on Internet!)