Vedas: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Vedas

Vedas (Sanskrit). The "revelation". the scriptures of the Hindus, from the root vid, "to know ", or "divine knowledge". They are the most ancient as well as the most sacred of the Sanskrit works.

The Vedas on the date and antiquity of which no two Orientalists can agree, are claimed by the Hindus themselves, whose Brahmans and Pundits ought to know best about their own religious works, to have been first taught orally for thousands of years and then compiled on the shores of Lake Manasa-Sarovara (phonetically, Mansarovara) beyond the Himalayas, in Tibet. When was this done? While their religious teachers, such as Swami Dayanand Saraswati, claim for them an antiquity of many decades of ages, our modern Orientalists will grant them no greater antiquity in their present form than about between 1,000 and 2,000 B.C.

As compiled in their final form by Veda-Vyasa, however, the Brahmans themselves unanimously assign 3,100 years before the Christian era, the date when Vyasa flourished. Therefore the Vedas must be as old as this date. But their antiquity is sufficiently proven by the fact that they are written in such an ancient form, of Sanskrit, so different from the Sanskrit now used, that there is no other, work like them in the literature of this eldest sister of all the known languages, as Prof. Max Muller calls it. Only the most learned of the Brahman Pundits can read the Vedas in their original. It is urged that Colebrooke found the date 1400 B.c. corroborated absolutely by a passage which he discovered, and which is based on astronomical data.

But if, as shown unanimously by all the Orientalists and the Hindu Pundits also, that

(a) the Vedas are not a single work, nor yet any one of the separate Vedas; but that each Veda, and almost every hymn and division of the latter, is the production of various authors; and that

(b) these have been written (whether as sruti, "revelation ", or not) at various periods of the ethnological evolution of the Indo-Aryan race, then - what does Mr. Colebrooke’s discovery prove? Simply that the Vedas were finally arranged and compiled fourteen centuries before our era; but this interferes in no way with their antiquity.

Quite the reverse; for, as an offset to Mr. Colebrooke’s passage, there is a learned article, written on purely astronomical data by Krishna Shastri Godbole (of Bombay), which proves as absolutely and on the same evidence that the Vedas must have been taught at least 25,000 years ago. (See Theosophist, Vol. II., p. 238 et seq., Aug., 1881.) This statement is, if not supported, at any rate not contradicted by what Prof. Cowell says in Appendix VII., of Elphinstone’ History of India: "

There is a difference in age between the various hymns, which are now united in their present form as the Sanhita of the Rig Veda; but we have no data to determine their relative antiquity, and purely subjective criticism, apart from solid data, has so often failed in other instances, that we can trust but little to any of its inferences in such a recently opened field of research as Sanskrit literature. [ a fourth part of the Vaidik literature is as yet in print, and very little of it has been translated into English (1866).] The still unsettled controversies about the Homeric poems may well warn us of being too confident in our judgments regarding the yet earlier hymns of the Rig -Veda. . . . When we examine these hymns . . . they are deeply interesting for the history of the human mind, belonging as they do to a much older phase than the poems of Homer or Hesiod." The Vedic writings are all classified in two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former being called Karma-Kanda, "division of actions or works ", and the Jnana Kanda, "division of (divine) knowledge", the Upanishads (q.v.) coming under this last classification. Both departments are regarded as Sruti or revelation.

To each hymn of the Rig -Veda, the name of the Seer or Rishi to whom it was revealed is prefixed. It, thus, becomes evident on the authority of these very names (such as Vasishta, Viswamitra, Narada, etc.), all of which belong to men born in various manvantaras and even ages, that centuries, and perhaps millenniums, must have elapsed between the dates of their composition.

.

.

For articles related to Vedas , see: Vedas , Occultism, Occultism Dictionary, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul.

.

.

.

Definition of  Vedas is extracted from the home page of United Lodge of  Theosophists and THE THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY BY H. P. BLAVATSKY (Printed 1892).

PREFACE.

"The Theosophical Glossary purposes to give information on the principal Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Tibetan, Pâli, Chaldean, Persian, Scandinavian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Kabalistic and Gnostic words, and Occult terms generally used in Theosophical literature, and principally to be found in Isis Unveiled, Esoteric Buddhism, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, etc.; and in the monthly magazines, The Theosophist, Lucifer and The Path, etc., and other publications of the Theosophical Society. The articles marked [w.w.w.] which explain words found in the Kabalah, or which illustrate Rosicrucian or Hermetic doctrines, were contributed at the special request of H.P.B. by Bro. W. W. Westcott, M.B., P.M. and P.Z., who is the Secretary General of the Rosicrucian Society, and Præmonstrator of the Kabalah to the Hermetic Order of the G.D."

G. R. S. MEAD.

LONDON, January, 1892

Please visit http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org  for more information.