Veda

by A lover of Ancient Knowledge

The etymological root of the word Veda is vid, “to know,” or “divine knowledge.” They are the most ancient as well as the most sacred of the Sanskrit works. While orientalists, judging by exoteric garment of the few copies of the Vedas that are extant ascribe to it no more than a millennium and half or two BCE. The Esoteric tradition, however, has it that the vast corpus had been first taught orally for thousands of years and then compiled on the shores of the Lake Manasa-Sarovara (phonetically manasarovara) beyond the Himalayas, in Tibet.

Vedas were compiled in their final form by Veda-Vyasa, according to tradition, about 3100 years BCE when the Sage flourished. Therefore Vedas must be, at least, as old as this date.

Its antiquity is proven sufficiently by the fact that they are written in such an ancient form of Sanskrit, which is different from Sanskrit now in use, and very few can understand it.

Vedas are not a single work. There are four chief Vedas. Every hymn is the production of various authors, and written at various periods of the ethnological evolution of the Indo-Aryan race. Mr. Krishna Sastri Godbole shows that according to astronomical data which he compiled based on the evidence in the scripture of Zodiacal configuration of planets that the Vedas must have been written at least 25,000 years ago. (See Theosophist, vol. II, p. 238, et. Seq., Aug. 1881).

The Vedic writings are all classified in two great divisions – exoteric and esoteric. The exoteric is called Karma-Kanda, divisions of actions or works,” and Jnana Kanda, “division of (divine) knowledge. Upanishad – which are called Vedanta, meaning, the end of knowledge – comes under the latter category. Both these categories are regarded as Sruti or revelation. To each of the hymn of the Rig Veda the name of the Seer or Rishi to whom it was revealed is prefixed. These great Seers (such as Vasishta, Viswamitra, Narada, etc), as their very names tell, were born in various ages. Many thousands of years must have elapsed between the dates of their compositions. (Theosophical Glossary)

To be continued