Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [155]
The oldest sacred Sanskrit writings, the Vedas were thought to be composed beginning about 1400 BCE over a period of nearly 1,000 years, an era in India’s history called the “Vedic period.” The Vedas are considered to be older than the sacred writings of any other major existing religion, including the Hebrew Old Testament. Only the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts are older. Like many mythic and religious documents, the Vedas probably first existed in oral form for centuries, and may go back as far as 4000 BCE. Hindu tradition holds that they were composed in 3500 BCE, in the time of Krishna, an earthly incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, before they were finally written down by some anonymous scribes.
There are four Vedas, beginning with the oldest and most famous, the Rig-Veda. (The later Vedas include Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda.) Written in archaic Sanskrit and first translated for the West by Max Müller in the mid-nineteenth century, the Vedas have been studied not only for their religious significance, but for their connection to the early history of the Indo-European languages, including the Greek, Latin, Germanic, and Slavic language families, which are derived from archaic Sanskrit. Ancient Sanskrit is also the original source for many languages spoken in modern India, including Hindi and Urdu. To many Westerners, Sanskrit is more obscure and indecipherable than Greek or Latin. But many linguists consider ancient Sanskrit a highly polished and systematic language with precise rules of grammar.
The word “Veda” means “knowledge,” and sacred knowledge in particular. Roughly equivalent to the Hebrew Psalms of the Old Testament, the Vedas are poetic collections that provided the songbook for the holy rites of the early Vedic religion. The Rig-Veda contains more than one thousand hymns, totaling more than ten thousand verses—an enormous number, compared to the 150 biblical Psalms.
Later additions to the Rig-Veda include two other important texts, which were composed as commentaries on the Vedas—the Brahmanas and the Upanishads.
Brahmanas are long prose essays; they explain the myths and theology behind the sacred rituals that include offerings to gods, chanting, pilgrimages, and acts of charity or self-denial, such as food taboos. According to Devdutt Pattanaik’s Indian Mythology, “The human custodian of these manuals was known as the brahmana. As keepers of Vedic lore…brahmanas served as the link between the material and spiritual realms. They knew the secret of the cosmos…. As people, communities and tribes mingled and merged, the Vedic brahmanas tried to retain their superior position and their spiritual purity by not sharing food or their daughters with nonbrahmanas.” Organized around this priesthood, the system came to be called Brahminism, led by the Vedic priests who came to be known as Brahmins (also spelled Brahmans), a hereditary priesthood occupying the highest place in society. And just as Christianity’s sacred religious language, Latin, was written and read almost exclusively by the priesthood, Sanskrit became the preserve of the Brahmins. Knowledge is, was, and always has been Power.
Upanishads are deeply philosophical works, one hundred and eight of which have been preserved; they appeared between 800 and 600 BCE and formed a basic part of Hinduism as it evolved. “Upanishads” roughly means “sitting near devotedly,” or “to sit close to.” They were composed, like certain works of Greek philosophy, as dialogues between a teacher and student.
At the core of the Upanishads is the notion of Brahman, the divine universal power that lives in the whole of creation, including the human soul, which is believed to be eternal. Expressing the idea that knowledge brings spiritual uplift, the Upanishads also introduced the notion that one lifetime is not enough to gather all the necessary knowledge. By accumulating knowledge over many rebirths, one can finally be rejoined