Vedas: Encyclopedia II - Vedas - Organization

Vedas - Organization

The Mantras are collected into anthologies called Samhitas. There are four Samhitas, the Rk (= Poetry), Sāman (=Song), Yajus(=Prayer) and Atharvan (=A kind of priest) commonly referred to as the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda. Each Samhita is preserved in a number of versions or recensions (shakhas), the differences among them being minor, except in the case of the Yajur Veda, where two "White" (shukla) recensions contain the Mantras only, while four "Black" (krishna) recensions interspersed the Brahmana parts among the Mantras.

The Rigveda contains the oldest part of the corpus, and consists of 1028 hymns. The Samaveda is mostly a rearrangement of the Rigveda for musical rendering. The Yajurveda gives sacrificial prayers and the Atharvaveda gives charms, incantations, magic formulas etc. Apart from these there are some stray secular material, legends, etc.

The next category of texts are the Brahmanas. These are ritual texts that describe in detail the sacrifices in which the Mantras were to be used, as well as commenting on the meaning of the sacrificial ritual. The Brahmanas are associated with one of the Samhitas. The Brahmanas may either form separate texts, or in the case of the Black Yajur Veda, can be partly integrated into the text of the Samhita. The most important of the Brahmanas is the Shatapatha Brahmana of the White Yajur Veda.

The Aranyakas and Upanishads are theological and philosophical works. They often form part of the Brahmanas (e.g. the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad). They are the basis of the Vedanta school of Darsana.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Organization", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki