The Vedas and a logical study on Vedic religion

The Vedas are essentially a compilation of prayers and hymns to various Gods, composed by different families and generations of poets and sages. The word Veda is derived from the Sanskrit word 'Vid' which means 'to know'. Priory the Vedas represents the oral tradition of the time, they were not written when they first composed, and thus it can't be dated absolutely.

The Vedas are also a canvas depicted a time frame (of around 1500 years) quite elaborately. The Vedas are the earliest scripture of the Hinduism and the Rig Veda is the earliest collection of hymns and prayers composed in the early Vedic period, i.e. 2000 BC-1000 BC. The later additions of the Sama, the Yagur, the Atharva Veda samhitas and the 10th mandala of the Rigveda samhita are the other Vedic texts, which are dated roughly between 1000 BC-600 BC. To compose the Vedas four different texts has been used, i.e. the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.

The four Vedas are:

The Rigveda samhita described the hymns and prayers, those contains several mythological and poetical accounts of the origin of the world, hymns praising the gods, and ancient prayers for life, prosperity, etc. along with the direction rituals followed by them. Which comprises 10 books or 'Mandalas' 

The Yagurveda elaborates the rituals which accompany of recitation of hymns also documented the social and political milieu of the period. that contains the mantras needed for sacrificial formula (Jajus), also for the jagnas. 

The Samvada samhita is a book of prayers and chants which are modified from Rigveda, a collection (samhita) of hymns, portions of hymns, and detached verses and set of tune for the explicit purpose of singing them during rituals. 

The Atharvavada contains the folk tradition of this period, like the cure of diseases, prayers for health, charms to produce harmony and also represents popular religion.

The Vedas

The religious views of Vedic people are mainly reflected in the hymns of the Rigveda. The early Vedic people venerated the natural forces around them, like: wind, water, rain, thunder, fire etc. specially which they could not control, and invested nature with divinity conceived in human forms. Like Indra, Rudra, Agni, Varun, Surya, Savitry, Yama etc. All these Gods control different kinds of natural forces, for ex: Indra - the God of Thunder and Rain, Agni - The fire God, Yama - God of death etc. After gaining some control on the nature the importance of the earlier Gods decreased and during later Vedic phase the three eternal Gods, i.e. Prajapati, Rudra and Vishnu became the supreme Gods, while Indra, who earlier was the most important become the less important.

Also, the hymns of Rigveda yield extensive evidence of the importance of cattle in the early Vedic society. Many linguistic expressions in the Rigveda are associated with GAU (the cow) also other domestic animals are also found in the most of the hymns and prayers. As Cattle was the chief measure of wealth in the Rigvedic period, which was centered on the rearing of cows. Thus the Hindus later developed some animal Gods, especially Gau.

Now some ritual was depicted to satisfy or to invoke the Gods, like yagna and sacrifice, as hymns and prayers were recited in these sacrifices and yagnas, in order to grant some boons or gain some property or child. As it was the period of the pastoral society and animal sacrifice was rampant in there, where older animals, which is no longer productive were killed, in order to lessen the burden of their owner, which is also materialistic in perspective. So the Vedic religion was not based on magico-ritual formulae or Gods were not worshiped for the spiritual upliftment of the people, nor for any other abstract philosophical concepts, but the rituals were invoked to grant material gains.

These sacrifice and yagnas were performed by the Brahmanas (priests) and the growing importance of rituals resulted in growing importance of Brahmanas as well. In early Vedic period rituals were performed to bring welfare of the entire tribe, but in later Vedic period it turns very elaborate and complicated, like the sacrifice rituals e.g. the Rajsuya, the Asvamedha etc. which could continued for years, there were even different sets of Brahmanas to perform different stages of the same ritual. Thus the rituals become a mechanism for ensuring the material and spiritual superiority of the Brahmanas. Also the distribution of dakshinas (donations), which status was at par with the God, made them the most superior among the other casts.

As the Brahmins superiority mentioned in 'the hymns of the primeval man', as it says;

"When they divided the man, into how many parts did they divide him? What was his mouth, what were his arms, what were his thighs and his feet called? 

- The Brahman was his mouth, of his arms made the Kshatriya, his thighs became the Vaisya, of his feet the Sudra was born."

In the earlier Vedic period the division of social groups was based on occupation alone and the society was still flexible, where one's occupation didn't depend on birth, so anybody can adopt any profession as per their ability, but later it was rigidly enforced by the birth right.

In Vedic culture the life was also divided in three stages, i.e. 1. brahmachari (studentship), 2 the grihastha (householder) and 3. vanaprasthi (retired). while a 4th stage, sanyas (renunciation) was implemented in the time the Upanishad was written. May be the Sannyasis (ascetics) were the protester against the social system, hence introduced in the later period.

So, the Vedas represented the religion and polity of a particular time frame, based on which the Hinduism constructed and molded over time as per the requirement of the administrators of the society. And now the Hindus preserved the Vedas, folded consciously, as their great spiritual collection, only some mantras from the Vedas are still enchanted.

Thanks & Regards:

Milan Chatterjee

P.S. There's a similarities in the language used in Vedas and Avesta, So some scholar believe both these books belonged to the same linguistic group, which was Aryans, as Aryans originated from West Asia and Iran. Later they migrated to different regions and spread the knowledge.
*I'm just a beginner in this cause.
© Milan Chatterjee