What are the Vedas?

if we look through different lists of the biggest religions in the world hinduism is often at somewhere at the top of that list it is often ranked as the third or fourth largest religion in the world with an enormous following of over 1 billion people in this series of videos i want to explore the vast religion of hinduism as well as other religions with origins in the indian subcontinent which are often known as the dharmic religions but i will have a bit of a different approach to this i will not be asking questions like what is hinduism as that would be plagued with a lot of problems what we call hinduism is such a vast and broad term that it's questionable if it can even be called a religion at all it should really properly be seen as an umbrella term for a vast amount of different religious traditions from india which can sometimes be drastically different from each other now much of this can of course be said about other religions too christianity is also an umbrella term of sorts for a vast amount of different traditions as is islam but when it comes to hinduism this is true to an unusual degree some even want to say that hinduism is actually many different religions altogether that is only artificially sort of unified into a single whole and while this may be a question of semantics i generally don't like to go this far sure hinduism is a very slippery term that denotes many different sometimes very loosely connected religious traditions in india but they all have certain characteristics or core features that unify them and which also separates them from other religions in the region like buddhism or jainism and the primary unifying characteristic of this vast category called hinduism what ties it all together you could say is its bases in and relationship to the scriptures known as the vedas [Laughter] [Applause] so in this series i will not be asking questions like what is hinduism as i said but instead i will be focusing on specific subjects particular subjects that will serve as representations of this vast religion so that includes the different scriptures different great theologians and philosophers as well as how hinduism functions as a living religion both historically and today and what better place to start than with the foundational and most important sacred scriptures in hinduism the vedas now hinduism is sometimes called the oldest still existing religion in the world and this is somewhat of an oversimplification since many of the core features that we recognize as hinduism appears quite late in history in a few centuries into the common era but at the same time some of the foundations of what we call hinduism date back very far back in history indeed the earliest veda scriptures are some of the oldest surviving religious literature in all of history while they weren't written down until much later it is said that the earliest parts of the vedas were written sometime around 1500 bce the vedas are considered revealed scripture called shruti in sanskrit in other words they were not written by human hands but revealed directly by the gods to the ancient sages who then memorized them these sages and quote-unquote authors of the vedas are called rishis and the revelations that these rishis received are all in the language called sanskrit which is a language that belongs to the larger indo-iranian and indo-european language group the origins of this culture and its textual tradition is somewhat shrouded in mystery and there are many different theories generally it is thought that the vedic culture as it has become known immigrated into this indian subcontinent during the second millennium bce from west from the west and is part of the ethnic group known as the aryans it was thus not native to india but came from further west and shares cultural and religious origins with the people of what is today iran and with the greater persian region although this can be quite a controversial subject for some and as i said much of this is quite uncertain still what is clear is that the earliest veda text appeared in a religious context in northern india accompanied with certain ritual traditions that involved a ritual sacrifice the vedas can be quite complicated in their structure and and on different parts but generally they are divided into four categories the rig veda the sama veda the yayurveda and the afar veda the earliest of these is the rigveda composed as early as around 1500 bce the others were written during the following centuries being composed somewhere between 1200 to 800 bce the vedas were originally oral traditions and were not written down until later so if we take the oldest for example the rigveda the hymns and mantras that it contains were orally transmitted between masters and students with minute detail both the words and sounds but also specific melodies and pronunciations this tradition even continues to this day so that when you listen to priests reciting the vedas today you are listening to the exact way that they would have sounded thousands of years ago to quote michael with cell it's called something like a tape recording of circa 1500 to 500 bce the main parts of these four veda collections are consists of hymns to the gods and mantras to be recited while performing the ritual sacrifice the vedic culture and religion that had emerged at this time was a highly ritualized religion in which a class of priests called the brahmanas would perform various rites one of the central rituals and one that is mentioned a lot in the vedas is the soma ritual soma was a drink that was consumed and so naturally a lot of speculation has gone into figuring out what this drink actually was and or consisted of we don't actually know for sure naturally of course many people have speculated that it may have contained certain psychedelic compounds and that maybe the rishis who composed the vedas did so under the influence of this soma drink another very important ritual at this time was the shrouta which involved a ritual fire in this ritual the priests would offer different objects like food and drink to the gods by throwing them into the fire while reciting certain mantras and prayers this fire throwing this fire sacrifice or fire offering was the main ritual in all of the early vedic religion and was central to the worldview and the order of the universe for the vedic people generally the ritual sacrifice and the offerings functioned as a kind of exchange the gods were given gifts and in return human beings received blessings of different sorts and this exchange between the human and divine world is what kept the universe a society and nature in its proper order so all of these vedas are deeply interconnected with the ritual practices of the brahman religion they are the contents of and you can say guidebooks for how to perform these vedic rites and the hymns that these vedas contain give us some loose idea of what the theology of the time looked like there are certain gods that are especially prominent like agni the god of fire and indra among many others but the specifics of how these gods functioned as a difficult question to answer there are clearly many different gods mentioned in the vedas which indicates a polytheistic religion but we also find statements like the following in the rig veda quote god is one men call him by various names which seems to indicate a theology where there is one god in reality and the other gods mentioned are only different names or aspects of this god and this does seem to predict certain later developments in hinduism some deities in the hymns seem to be personifications of things like natural phenomena but not all of them are some of the gods probably were old kings or human beings that were deified after death which was a very common practice for ancient polytheistic religions but we're gonna make things even more complicated so these four vedas the rigveda the sama veda the yayoid veda and the arthur veda are also divided into different sections so number one is the samhitas which this is the part that we discussed so far this is the oldest and main part of the vedas the hymns and mantras to the gods this is what we've been talking about sometimes when we talk about the vedas in a more narrow sense it is simply only referring to the samhitas so this is really the the central the main part of the vedic corpus but usually when we say the vedas we're talking about a larger collection of texts than simply these samhitas and this includes these other categories which includes number two the brahmanas which are commentaries that try to explain and contextualize the deeper meanings of the vedic rituals there is the aranyakas which discuss the ritual sacrifice and its deeper meanings as well and lastly there are the upanishads which is quite different from the rest the upanishads are philosophical texts that discuss various aspects of life and death the soul meditation and much much else so to make things extra clear each of the four vedas has all of these four sections or layers to them the last part of the vedas the upanishads are especially fascinating in this context and would come to play a very significant and important role in the later development of what we recognize as hinduism today whereas the other parts of the vedas are usually only really interested in the the rituals the vedic rituals and their meaning the upanishads are highly speculative philosophical and they introduce many new concepts and ideas that are not present or just doesn't seem to be present at least in the other parts of the vedas the upanishads are also sometimes referred to as vedanta which literally means the end of the vedas because it is literally the end of the vedas both in the sense of being the last part of the vedas that was written but also functions as the last section of the vedas written sometime in the middle of the 1st millennium bce the upanishads continue the speculation and tradition of the brahmana texts by trying to find the deeper meanings of the vedic rituals but it probably also has origins outside of this ritual culture primarily in the northeastern part of india there had appeared what is known as the shramana movement there is some disagreement on whether this was a part of the vedic religion that grew out of this already existing vedic tradition or if it was an independent movement altogether in any case the sramana movement was characterized by individuals living ascetic lives trying to find enlightenment or liberation through turning inward so instead of the vedic focus on external ritual and the centrality of the sacrifice for upholding the universe the shraman ascetics looked within themselves to find the answers and indeed it seems like it was with the sramana movement that some of the more characteristic aspects of the dharmic religions originated ideas like karma and samsara that is ideas about reincarnation and that are actions not just the ritual sacrifice but all our actions determine the nature of that reincarnation there is also among these mystics there was the idea of moksha or liberation the idea that the goal of life should be to end this cycle of rebirths and to be liberated from them altogether and this does not seem to have been present as an idea in the earlier vedic religion for those scholars who argue that the sramana movement was something separated from the vedic religion originally they argued that it was as a result of the meeting of the vedic ritualized religion and the surah movement that produced the upanishads this kind of synthesis between these two religious traditions the upanishads in fact seem to take ideas and concepts and themes from the earlier veda scriptures and give them a new philosophical meaning inspired by the ideas of the sramana movement but others interpret them not as new meanings but simply as deeper meanings or understandings of the already existing vedic concepts so there's a bit of disagreement here as well for example the concept of brahman which had previously signified the power of the ritual sacrifice and its ability to uphold the world became a central theme in the upanishads and was extended even further to mean the very foundation and ground of existence and the universe everything comes from the brahmana everything returns to the brahman and according to some interpretation everything is the brahman another very important theme that appears in the upanishads is the idea of the atman or the transcendent self which seems in some way to be connected to part of or even identical with the brahman and many different traditions and interpretations of these upanishads appeared over the coming centuries which have together often come to be known as vedanta so and this can look very different so for example the scholar adi shankara interpreted the upanishads in a very in a non-dual way which gave rise to the school known as advaita vedanta whereas on the other hand the scholar madhvacharya interpreted them in a dualistic way and gave rise to dvita vedanta which is quite different and we will indeed be exploring many of these thinkers and schools in future videos indeed these sages behind the upanishads can in some way represent a form or a certain strand of the suramar movement that adopted the earlier vedic text as authoritative scriptures whereas other sramana movement indeed religions like buddhism and jainism actually originated as sramana movements and and but they can be seen as shramana ascetics that did not accept the authority of the vedas the vedas are not sacred scriptures to either the buddhists or the jains so this is a difference between them there were shaman ascetics who did not accept the authority of the vedas which created things like buddhism and jainism but the sages that did accept the authority of the vedas it is they who seem to have produced the the upanishads and which also then led to hinduism thus through the meeting of the sramana movement and the court tradition of brahmana vedic ritual religion and their consolidation in the literature of the upanishads the vedic religion was fundamentally transformed ideas like samsara karma and moksha became central concepts that would remain cornerstones of all the traditions the religious traditions in india that followed in other words through this last part of the vedas and their influence we are one step closer to something resembling hinduism today to put it simply the vedas are a massive collection of texts of many different parts and different kinds of texts and will take further centuries of an enormous amount of different commentaries and interpretations and schools of thought before we reach something that resembles hinduism so let me know in the comments if there's any other specific topic within this larger subject of hinduism or the dharmic religions that you would like me to to tackle or cover there's a lot to to go through here of course and and i have a lot of things that i want to talk about of course but i would love to hear your suggestions as well as always i want to thank my patreon supporters who make this channel possible it is really only through your support that i'm able to for example buy books to research these videos and then for many other things so it is really you guys who keep this channel going so thank you thank you so much as always of course i would like to also go through some of the recent arrival to our patron team i would like to thank muhammad babiker yasir haan yatshuba davis ethan ross muhammad and pervez rasheed thank you all so much for your support i hope this introduction to the most sacred scriptures of hinduism wasn't too complicated it is a difficult topic of course and a vast one than one that is shrouded in a lot of mystery and yet it is one that is very important to understand hinduism which is after all one of the largest and most influential religions in the world so i'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 552,190

Keywords: What are the Vedas, Vedas, Upanishads, Hindu scriptures, Hindu Bible, Sacred scripture, Hinduism, Hindu religion, Vedas explained, History of hinduism, early hinduism, What is the Hindu bible, Rigveda, Samaveda, Atharveda, Origins of Hinduism, What is Hinduism, Hinduism explained, Oldest religious text, Polytheism, Vedic culture, Aryan invasion

Id: cEqATHUJQHc

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/chakrax]

Thanks for the silver, kind redditor. I feel the author of the video deserves it more than I do.

[u/k12563]

A few mistakes- 1. no theology in the Vedas and hence no theologians. 2. The Vedas were not revealed ‘by the Gods’ - Vedas the knowledge of the Brahman are born with the ‘creation’ and heard by the Rishis. 3. Aryan Invasion is a myth and was made up to divide the Hindus and has been debunked many times and no point repeating the same. 4. Most estimate the time of the Vedas to 5000 Bce and this may be revised to even further in the past.

[u/astro_karu]

I stopped it the moment this “white” guy said “the vedic culture came from the west.” you can hear the emphasis on the word “west” as if to convey some notion about western superiority