purpose of hindu literature

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Chapter 5: The Sacred Literature of Hinduism

The scriptures of mankind: an introduction by charles samuel braden.

"Mother" India, as she is lovingly called by her sons, has indeed been a mother of religions. Four of the eleven principal living faiths of the world were born in India: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and all have extensive sacred literatures. Hinduism itself, from which all the others have sprung, has a vast and highly variegated set of scriptures. In general there are two types of scripture that are regarded as authoritative in Hinduism: (1) sruti: that which may be regarded as the ipsissima verba, the very, very word of God. It was given by verbal inspiration to the rishiis or seers, and gathered into a closed Canon. From this nothing may be taken away and nothing may be added. This type of sacred writing has, in the course of time, come to be thought of very much as the Bible is thought of by Christian Fundamentalists: as infallible, incapable of error, because of its non-human character.

The second type of scripture is known as smriti. While admittedly of human origins, it has come to be thought of as authoritative also, in the expression of religious faith, and of very high value in the teaching of religion and morals. Though of less exalted origin, and not of equal value with sruti, as a basis of religious dogma, it is perhaps quite as influential in the lives of the people in inculcating and nourishing religious faith and practice. If all the books which are comprised within these two classes of sacred literature were to be brought together in a single collection, as has nowhere yet been done, they would fill many thousands of pages. While there is rather general agreement as to what may be considered as smriti, there is no closed canon. Sectarian groups differ to a considerable degree as to what may be so considered. Certainly they differ as to which particular books of this category are to be emphasized within their own groups. The rather generally tolerant attitude of Indians toward the religious beliefs of others inclines them to admit as sacred for others what they might not accept for themselves. As a matter of fact some sectarian groups make, practically, much greater use of non-sruti literature, as the basis for present belief and practice than they do of the recognized sruti writings. Indeed for them some books generally regarded as smriti have actually become sruti. There is nothing in Hinduism to prevent this from happening.

Within Hindu sacred literature may be found, as in most scripture, almost every type of writing. There is both poetry and prose. Examples of nearly every variety of poetic expression may be found. Some of it is lyric, some elegiac, some epic, some dramatic. Love songs abound. There is poetry of praise, poetry of lamentation, heroic verse, and poetry of despair, poetry of thanksgiving, poetry of devotion, poetry that is light, airy, fanciful, and poetry that seeks to express the most profound philosophic insight. Of prose there is every kind, the short story, the drama, the fable, legal lore, philosophic essays, history, drama. Only the epistolary, which is so important in the New Testament, seems to be lacking. There are prose passages of unusual beauty and strength; there are innumerable pages of dry dialectic material, without grace or charm, but none the less important for an understanding of Hinduism.

This Hindu literature like that of most other religions represents the work of many, many hands over a long period of time. It records the hopes, aspirations, ideals, triumphs, failures, strivings after meaning of a great people, across the centuries, as they developed from barbarism to the highly cultured society which is India today at its best. Out of the struggle upward the literature was born and by it India’s life has been shaped and controlled to a remarkable degree, for India’s sacred literature is no mere museum piece. The daily routine of the orthodox Hindu is probably much more determined by some part of his scriptures than that of the people of the West by the Bible, or for that matter than that of any other people by its scripture, save only the Moslems.

India’s sacred literature divides itself logically and to some extent chronologically, into four main groups: (1) Vedic literature, (2) Legal literature, (3) Epic literature and (4) Puranic literature. The exact chronology of some writings it is difficult to fix, and there is often a difference in time between the beginnings of a given body of literature and its final completion. The beginnings of the Epics may well have been within the late Vedic age, their completion more than a millennium later. The earliest formulation of legal codes may go well back into the past; the final fixing of the codes is comparatively late, and of course some codes are much earlier than others. Some of the Puranic lore is old. The Puranas, as now found, are the latest of all Hindu sacred writings. We consider first Vedic literature.

Vedic Literature

Vedic literature is sruti, the infallible, verbally inspired word of God. It is the most sacred of all. So sacred was it held to be at the time of the making of the Code of Manu, greatest of the law books, that it was therein decreed that a lowly Sudra, i.e., low caste man, who so much as listened to the sacred text would have molten metal poured into his ears, and his tongue cut out if he pronounced the sacred words of the holy Vedas. 1 ‘Whether such laws were ever actually enforced may be doubted. Certainly there is no evidence that they were, but they do serve to accentuate the degree of sacredness which attached to the Vedic literature.

Vedic literature comprises much more than the Vedas. These give their name to an extensive literature which grew out of them. Specifically regarded as part of the Veda are (1) the Brahmanas, (2) the Aranyakas, and (3) the Upanishads. It has become a dogma generally accepted that all that is found in these later writings is simply an outgrowth of the Vedas, the making explicit of what was therein implicit. They are therefore regarded as equally sacred. There is another reason -- perhaps the primary reason -- for considering them as Vedic, namely, that these writings, except the Vedanta Sutras, were physically attached to the Vedas in their written form.

Most basic of all Hindu sacred writings are the Samhitas, generally called the Vedas themselves, of which there are four, and most basic of the four is the Rig-Veda. The others, the Sama-Veda, the Yajur-Veda and the Atharva-Veda, all derive to a considerable extent from the Rig. Most of our attention will therefore be given to this highly important sacred book.

The name of the book, Rig-Veda, means probably "Verse Wisdom." It is a collection of hymns, 1017 in all according to Griffith. In bulk it is longer than the combined Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. Translated into English, and with some notes, the hymns make two quite substantial volumes. 2 In the original there are some 20,000 metrical verses in the whole collection.

For the Rig-Veda is just that, a collection, the work of a great many writers, or in some cases, guilds of writers. It consists chiefly of hymns to one or another of the numerous Vedic gods, designed for use in the worship of these divinities. It represents the oldest stratum of Hinduism of which very much is known. In recent times archaeological discoveries in the Indus valley have brought to light evidences of a highly developed culture in India long before the coming of the invading Aryans. Whereas, earlier, it had been believed that the Aryans found only peoples of relatively undeveloped culture, now it is known that at least some of these early Indians had developed the arts to a high degree, that they even had a kind of hieroglyphic writing, not yet deciphered, and probably an equally well developed religion which, suppressed for a time, gradually reasserted itself and greatly modified Vedic religion, gradually transforming it into the Hinduism as practiced in India today. (For an interesting account of this civilization see Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-daro, 3 volumes.)

Reference has been made to the Aryan invasion of India. Who were the Aryans? There is much that is not known concerning them, but it is known that long, long before they arrived in India they were part of a great migratory movement of people, sometimes identified incorrectly as a race, probably better as a people of a common culture. To this people, eventually, the name Indo-European came to be attached, since sure signs of their presence are to be found all the way from the British Isles on the West, to the Bay of Bengal on the East, and from the Scandinavian countries on the North to the Mediterranean on the South. Though possessing many common cultural traits found also in Europe and the West, the much closer similarities between the cultures of Iran or Persia and India have led scholars to distinguish an Indo-Iranian branch of the larger whole as having early separated itself from the central or original Aryan migration, perhaps moving eastward from the, as yet, not certainly located origin of the Aryan group. Later this segment again separated into two branches. One of these entered the Iranian plateau, amalgamated with the native populations and eventually gave rise to a new faith, Zoroastrianism, which developed its own sacred literature. The other crossed the Khyber pass and entered the land of India, gradually fanning out to cover the greater part of that vast subcontinent, but losing, in the course of its southern movement, much of its original character.

It was of this Aryan migration that the Vedic hymns were born. In a real sense they, at least the older of them, are not really Indian in origin at all, but were produced either before the Aryans had set foot on Indian soil, or were composed by Aryans, i.e., the foreign invaders, before India had had time to put her own impress upon them. When this invasion took place it is impossible to state with any certainty. It is rather generally supposed to have occurred some time within the period 2500-1500 B.C., though some Indian scholars put it at a much earlier date, even as early as 5000 B.C.

In modern times the term Aryan has become a racial term, as in Germany under the Nazis, when a sharp distinction was made between the Aryan and the Semitic elements in the population. But beyond the probable fact that the Aryan invaders were light rather than dark of skin, little can be alleged as to their racial character. This is evidenced by the lighter complexions of the present-day Indian in the northern parts of India where the Aryans mingled in largest proportion with the indigenous population, in contrast to the much darker complexion of southern Indians where the Aryan influence is least. Also it is an easily recognized fact that modern-day Indians, particularly of the northern half, or more, appear to have European features despite their darker color. Modern anthropologists and ethnologists give no support to the existence, now or at any time, of a pure Aryan race. They do attest to an Aryan culture widely spread over most of Europe, Persia and India, on the basis of evidences drawn from language, the archaeological discovery of artifacts and objects of art, and certain similarities of religious ideas to be found in the areas overrun by these far-ranging migrants.

Whatever the nature of the Aryans, it is a proudly held word in contemporary India. One vigorous modern reform movement in Hinduism which seeks to recapture the best of India’s religious heritage calls itself the Arya-Samaj, the Society of Aryans; another publishes a religious journal which it calls The Aryan Path. To behave as a true Aryan comes to have something of the meaning of the Confucian term, "the Superior Man," or the old English phrase of "the true gentleman."

The hymns of the Rig-Veda are much older, of course, than the collection itself. Most of them were composed for use in the cult, although there are hymns which seem to be the more or less spontaneous expression of the individual human spirit. At first this cult, or worship was conducted by the father of the household, but in time there arose a specialized priesthood for the performance of the appropriate sacrifices and rituals, and the hymns were probably largely produced by them and for their use in the cult. Not many hymns can be assigned to specific authors, though the Rig-Veda contains seven groups of hymns attributed to seven families, the Gritsamada, Visvamitra, Vamadeva, Atri, Bharadvaja, Vasistha, and Kanva. These may represent separate schools of poetry -- the hymns in any one group are certainly not all by the same individual. The collection was not made all at one time, as seems evident also in the Hebrew book of Psalms.

There are ten books in all. Of these, Books II through VII contain the greater number of the oldest hymns and were the first to be brought together, possibly at the command of some famous chief. Here a uniform arrangement appears. Hymns are grouped by families and within each family group they are arranged according to the gods to whom the hymns are addressed; and within these groups according to the number of stanzas, in descending order. Conjecturally, there were then collected and added what is now the second half of Book I, then the first half of Book I and Book VIII, then Book IX which is dedicated entirely to the god Soma, the intoxicant deity, and, finally, the latest of all the books, the tenth and last. Book IX, while collected later than most of the others, contains hymns which may well be as old as any.

From these hymns can be discovered much concerning the life and thought of the ancient Vedic Indians. It is a rare source book for the study of their culture. Here are disclosed not only their religious ideas, their deepest longings, their sins and failures, their ideas of good and evil, their hopes and fears; but also how they worked, how they played, how they fought, what they ate, how they dressed, the pattern of their domestic and public life. Indeed, all we can know about this people is here preserved, for they left no monuments, or buildings, or inscriptions from which the archaeologist might recapture their ancient civilization. It is not only the sacred literature of the period, it is the only literature that has been preserved, and it was preserved only because it became sacred.

From the older hymns it is clear that they were still an invading, conquering people, dependent upon military skill and power to make their way ever more deeply into India. Proof of this is the prominent place given to Indra who was their god of war. Much can be inferred as to the character and activity of people from the gods who hold positions of principal importance. In war times there has always been, and still is, a need for a god of battles to spur men on to fight. In modern times when men believe in but one god, his militant character always comes to the front in war time, and his more pacific character is played down. Nearly one-fourth of all the hymns of the Rig-Veda are to Indra. Of course he is more than a war god; he is also god of storm, beneficent, life-bringing storm, which makes grass to grow. The ruder, more destructive aspects of storm are assigned to Rudra, father of the Maruts, who are often associated with Indra in his hymns.

The Vedic people are still pastoral to a large degree. Cultivation of the soil has not yet become a primary source of their living. It is a cattle culture, as only a very cursory glance at the hymns will quickly disclose. Their prayers -- to Indra, and to others as well -- are largely for rich pasturage, great herds of cattle, long life, big families, and of course success in battle. Rain is a necessity if pastures are to be green. Indra is the slayer of the demon Vritra who herds the cloud cows into a cave and prevents the rains from coming. Prayers rise to Indra. He prepares himself by consuming ponds of Soma, the intoxicant, then sallies forth to slay the monster Vritra. This is all recalled in one of the hymns.

1. Let me tell out the manly deeds of Indra, Which he accomplished first of all, bolt-weaponed: He slew the serpent, opened up the waters, And cleft in twain the belly of the mountains.

3. With bull-like eagerness he sought the soma; Out of three vats he drank the pressed out liquor; Maghavan took in hand his bolt, the missile, And smote therewith the first-born of the serpents.

6. For, like a drunken weakling, Vritra challenged The mighty hero, the impetuous warrior; He did not meet the clash of Indra’s weapons, Broken and crushed he lay, whose foe was Indra.

13. Lightning and thunder profited him nothing, Nor mist nor hailstorm which he spread around him; When Indra and the serpent fought their battle, Maghavan won the victory forever.

15. Indra is king of that which moves and moves not, Of tame and horned creatures, too, bolt weaponed; Over the tribes of men he rules as monarch; As felly spokes, so holds he them together. 3

Indra’s close relationship to the preservation of cattle -- and therefore to wealth and prosperity of the people -- is seen in this hymn which reflects the naive character of a simple pastoral people:

The Kine have come and brought good fortune: let them rest in the cow-pen and be happy near us. Here let them stay prolific, many colored, and yield through many moms their milk for Indra.

Indra aids him who offers sacrifice and gifts; he takes not what is his, and gives him more thereto. Increasing ever more and ever more his wealth, he makes the pious dwell within unbroken bounds.

These are ne’er lost, no robber ever injures them: evil- minded foe attempts to harass them. The master of the Kine lives many a year with these, the Cows whereby he pours his gifts and serves the Gods. 4

But Indra also comes to be thought of at times as more than just a fertility and war god. In one of the hymns he assumes almost the character of a monotheistic creator god. If no other hymn of the whole collection had been preserved it would be easy to assume that Indra had indeed become the one god of the world. This is but an example of the habit of Vedic people to elevate momentarily first one divinity, then another to supremacy. To describe this attitude, Max Muller proposed a new synthetic word, henotheism. Here is a part of a hymn too long to quote entire:

1. He who as soon as born keen-thoughted, foremost, Surpassed the gods, himself, a god, in power; Before whose vehemence the worlds trembled Through his great valour; he, O men, is Indra.

2. He who the quivering earth hath firm established, And set at rest the agitated mountains; Who measured out the mid-air far-extending, And sky supported: he, O men, is Indra.

3. Who slew the snake and freed the seven rivers, Drove out the cattle by unclosing Vala; Who fire between two rocks hath generated, In battles victor: he, O men, is Indra.

13. Even the heavens and earth bow down before him, And at his vehemence the mountains tremble; Who, bolt in arm, is known as Soma-drinker, With hands bolt-wielding; he, O men, is Indra. 5

Fire plays an important role in the life of any people, and is coimmonly worshiped throughout the world. In Vedic India this element whether as in the hearthfire, in the lightning stroke, or in the blazing sun was an object of constant worship as Agni. 6 It is not easy in many of the hymns to say whether the object of cult is the fire itself or a god behind it; perhaps they themselves were not always sure either. Fire is a servant, fire is a friend, it is a purifier, a cleanser, and perhaps most important of all, it is that which transmutes the sacrifice into a holy food for the gods. Easily Agni becomes a mediator or priest god. One of the many hymns reads thus:

Agni, be kind to us when we approach thee, good as a friend to friend, as sire and mother. The races of mankind are great oppressors: burn up malignity that strives against us. Agni, burn up the unfriendly who are near us, burn thou the foeman’s curse who pays no worship. Burn, Vasu, thou who markest well, the foolish: Let thine eternal nimble beams surround thee. With fuel, Agni, and with oil, desirous, mine offering I pre-sent for strength and conquest, With prayer, so far as I have power, adoring -- This hymn divine to gain a hundred treasures. Give with thy glow, thou Son of Strength when lauded, great vital power to those who toil to serve thee. Give richly, Agni, to the Visvamitras in rest and stir. Oft have we decked thy body. Give us, O liberal Lord, great store of riches, for, Agni, such art thou when duly kindled. Thou in the happy singer’s home bestowest, amply with arms extended, things of beauty. 7

The entire ninth book consists of hymns to Soma. Soma is sometimes the plant, from which juice is extracted to become, when properly strained and mixed, Soma, the intoxicant, the food of the gods, the elixir of immortality, and finally Soma is one of the chief Vedic divinities. Nowhere in literature has the intoxicant been more lyrically described and exalted than in this ninth book. The writers never tire of describing the process of preparation of the divine drink. Every literary art is laid under tribute to glorify it. The press, the filter, or straining cloth, the utensils which contain it are described in loving detail. Soma is the drink of the gods. All seem to be entitled to a libation at intervals, and their standing within the pantheon can be pretty well determined by the amount and frequency of the offering of Soma to the different divinities. Indra more than all of them loves it. Three times each day he must have his meed of Soma, and for his major exploits in man’s behalf he quaffs unbelievable quantities of it, not measured by cups but by vats or ponds or lakes. To none of the intoxicant gods in the religions of the world have greater virtues or powers been attributed. Space limits permit only a few illustrations:

1. Sent forth by men, this mighty steed, Lord of the mind, who knoweth all, Runs to the woolen straining-cloth.

2. Within the filter hath he flowed. This Soma for the gods effused, Entering all their various worlds.

3. Resplendent is this deity, Immortal in his dwelling place, Foe-slayer, feaster best of gods.

4. Directed by the sisters ten, Bellowing on his way this bull Runs onward to the wooden vats.

5. This Pavamana made the sun To shine and all his various worlds, Omniscient, present everywhere.

6. This Soma filtering himself, Flows mighty and infallible, Slayer of sinners, feasting gods. 8

Here is a prayer for immortality, addressed appropriately enough to the god who represents, in physical form, the drink of immortality (although the god of the dead and of whatever other-worldly dwelling place awaited them was not Soma but Yama) .

7. Where radiance inexhaustible Dwells, and the light of heaven is set, Place me, clear-flowing one, in that Imperishable and deathless world. (O Indu, flow for Indra’s sake.)

8. Make me immortal in the place Where dwells the king Vaivasvata, Where stands the inmost shrine of heaven, And where the living waters are.

9. Make me immortal in that realm, Wherein is movement glad and free, In the third sky, third heaven of heavens, Where are the lucid worlds of light.

10. Make me immortal in the place Where loves and longings are fulfilled, The region of the ruddy (sphere) , Where food and satisfaction reign.

11. Make me immortal in the place Wherein felicity and joy, Pleasure and bliss together dwell, And all desire is satisfied. 9

One more quotation must suffice. A graduate student, reading it, was impressed and, being employed as a youth director in one of the local churches and in charge of a weekly worship service, undertook to modify it at certain points and use it as a litany in the Sunday morning service. It so happened that the pastor of the church visited the group that morning, and, impressed by the beautiful litany, inquired where she had found it. He was not a little surprised to learn that it was out of an ancient book of hymns of a pagan people dedicated to an intoxicant divinity. It reads in part:

O Soma flowing on thy way, win thou and conquer high renown; And make us better than we are. Win thou the light, win heavenly light, and, Soma, all felicities; And make us better than we are. Win skilful strength and mental power, O Soma, drive away our foes; And make us better than we are. Ye purifiers, purify Soma for Indra, for his drink; Make thou us better than we are. Give us our portion in the Sun through thine own mental power and aids; And make us better than we are. Through thine own mental power and aid long may we look upon the Sun: Make thou us better than we are. Well-weaponed Soma, pour to us a stream of riches doubly great; And make us better than we are. As one victorious, unsubdued in battle pour forth wealth to us; And make us better than we are. By worship Pavamana! men have strengthened thee to prop the Law: Make thou us better than we are. O Indu, bring us wealth in steeds, manifold, quickening all life; And make us better than we are. 10

It is in the hymns to the great god Varuna that the Vedas reach their highest point, judged from the standpoint of a Christian culture. Here they come closest in moral and spiritual insight to the Hebrew Psalms and the New Testament. Most of the Vedic religious aspiration moves at the level of the satisfaction of physical needs -- long life, food, shelter, protection, large families -- but in these hymns one finds a consciousness of sin and guilt and the need for forgiveness, as well also as guidance and direction in living.

1. Wise are the generations through the greatness Of him who propped the two wide worlds asunder; Pushed forth the great and lofty vault of heaven, The day-star, too; and spread the earth out broadly.

2. With mine own self I meditate this question: "When shall I have with Varuna communion? What gift of mine will he enjoy unangered? When shall I happy-hearted see his mercy?"

3. Wishing to know my sin I make inquiry, I go about to all the wise and ask them; One and the self-same thing even sages tell me; "Varuna hath with thee hot indignation."

4. O Varuna, what was my chief transgression, That thou wouldst slay a friend who sings thy praises? Tell me, god undeceived and sovereign, guiltless, Would I appease thee then with adoration.

5 . Set us free from the misdeeds of our fathers, From those that we ourselves have perpetrated; Like cattle-thief, O king, like calf rope-fastened, So set thou free Vasistha from the fetter.

6. ‘Twas not mine own will, Varuna, ‘twas delusion, Drink, anger, dice, or lack of thought, that caused it; An older man has led astray a younger, Not even sleep protects a man from evil.

7. O let me like a slave, when once made sinless, Serve him the merciful, erewhile the angry. The noble god has made the thoughtless thoughtful; He speeds the wise to riches, he a wiser.

8. May this my praise-song, Varuna, sovereign ruler, Reach unto thee and make thy heart complaisant; May it be well with us in rest and labour, Do yet protect us evermore with blessings. 11

Or, again in another hymn:

Against a friend, companion, or a brother, A fellow-tribesman, or against a stranger, Whatever trespass we have perpetrated, Do thou, O Varuna, from that release us. If we, like those that play at dice, have cheated, Have really sinned, or done amiss unwitting, Cast all these sins away, as from us loosened; So may we, Varuna, be thine own beloved. 12

One is reminded of Psalm 139 by the following hymn which reveals Varuna as all seeing, even to the inward thought of a man.

7. He knows the path of birds that through The atmosphere do wing their flight, And ocean-dwelling knows the ships.

8. He knows, as one whose law is firm, The twelve months with their progeny, Knows too the month of later birth.

9. He knows the pathway of the wind, The wide, the high, the mighty wind, And those that sit enthroned above.

10. Enthroned within his palace sits God Varuna whose law is firm, All-wise for universal sway.

11. From there the observant god beholds All strange and secret happenings, Things that are done or to be done.

12. Let him the all-wise Aditya Make all our days fair-pathed for us; May he prolong our earthly lives.

13. Wearing a golden mantle, clothed In shining garb, is Varuna; His spies are seated round about.

14. He whom deceivers do not dare Try to deceive, nor injurers To harm, nor th’ hostile to defy. 13

The tenth book is the latest of all, and in it are found at least the beginnings of speculation concerning the nature and origin of the world, which occupies so important a place in the later sacred literature of India. Take, for instance, the hymn to the Unknown God. If at the end the answer is given that it is Prajapati who has created everything, this is thought by many to have been a later addition.

1. The Golden Germ arose in the beginning, Born the sole lord of everything existing; He fixed and holdeth up this earth and heaven,-- Who is the god to worship with oblation?

2. He who gives breath and strength, he whose commandment All beings follow, yea the gods acknowledge; Whose shadow immortality and death is, -- Who is the god to worship with oblation?

3. He who through greatness hath become sole monarch Of all the moving world that breathes and slumbers; Who ruleth over quadrupeds and bipeds, -- Who is the god to worship with oblation?

5. He through whom sky is firm and earth is steady, Through whom sun’s light and heaven’s vault are supported; Who in mid-air is measurer of the spaces, -- Who is the god to worship with oblation?

8. He who in might surveyed the floods containing Creative force, the sacrifice producing; Who ‘mid all gods has been and is alone god,-- Who is the god to worship with oblation?

10. Prajapati, apart from thee no other Hath all these things embraced and comprehended; May that be ours which we desire when off’ring Worship to thee; may we be lords of riches. 14

The great hymn of creation which in some sense foreshadows the pantheism of later Hinduism is evidently quite late, for it describes the origins of caste, of which nothing is known in any of the other Vedic hymns. Only a few verses of it can be given here.

1. A thousand heads has Purusa, A thousand eyes, a thousand feet; He holding earth enclosed about, Extends beyond, ten fingers length.

2. Whatever is, is Purusa, Both what has been and what shall be; He ruleth the immortal world, Which he transcends through sacred food.

3. As great as this is Purusa, Yet greater still his greatness is; All creatures are one-fourth of him, Three-fourths th’ immortal in the heaven.

4. Three-fourths ascended up on high, One-fourth came into being here; Thence he developed into what Is animate and inanimate.

6. When gods performed a sacrifice With Purusa as their offering, Spring was its oil and Summer-heat Its fuel, its oblation Fall.

8. From that completely-offered rite Was gathered up the clotted oil; It formed the creatures of the air, And animals both wild and tame.

10. From that were horses born and all The beasts that have two rows of teeth; Cattle were also born from that, And from that spring the goats and sheep.

11. Then they dismembered Purusa; How many portions did they make? What was his mouth called, what his arms, What his two thighs, and what his feet?

12. His mouth became the Brahmana, And his two arms the Ksatriya; His thighs became the Vaisya- class , And from his feet the Sudra sprang.

13. The Moon was gendered from his mind, And from his eye the Sun was born; Indra and Agni from his mouth, And Vayu from his breath was born.

14. Forth from his navel came the air, And from his head evolved the sky; Earth from his feet and from his ear The quarters: thus they framed the worlds. 15

There are hymns to many different gods in the Rig-Veda, almost a fourth of them to Indra alone, and over two hundred to Agni, but to lovely Ushas, goddess of dawn, one of the very few goddesses of any independent character in the whole of Vedic religion, there are only twenty-one. Most goddesses are merely given the feminine form of the name of their more important consorts. Thus Indrani is the wife of Indra. There are hymns to numerous sun gods, Vishnu, Surya, Pusan, Mitra, who later appears in Mithraism as a rival of Christianity in the Mediterranean area; to Rudra, god of destructive storm, to Yama, god of the dead, and many others, from which it would be pleasant to quote if space allowed.

Only about thirty hymns are not concerned with the worship of some one or another of the gods. Two of these have already been cited. There are a dozen magical hymns: I, 191; II, 42, 43; X, 145, 162, 163, 166, 183. Two are riddles. Four are didactic, IX, 112; X, 71, 117, and X, 34. This latter has to do with gambling which was apparently very common in Vedic times, as later we shall find it recurring in the Epic literature.

The date of the completion of the collection of the Rig-Vedic hymns cannot be fixed with certainty. Scholars differ in their conjectures from as early as 1200 -- 1000 B.C. to as late as 800-600 B.C. All are agreed that it took place before the appearance of Buddha in the sixth century. But since also they are agreed that the later Vedic literature is also pre-Buddhist, and that these presuppose the existence of the Rig-Veda and indeed depend upon it, it would seem to this writer that a substantial lapse of time must be allowed for the very considerable development of religious thought to take place. Thus it would seem that a date not far from 1000-800 B.C. would be called for. That there were various rescensions of the original collection is doubtless true. The one which has come down to us is that of the Sakalaka school. The remarkable thing is that it was preserved and transmitted orally for centuries before it was reduced to writing, passed on from teacher to pupil. When the first written edition was made is not certainly known. I-tsing, Chinese traveller in India in the seventh century A.D., states that the Vedas were still transmitted orally. 16 This does not mean necessarily that there were no written copies, but only that dependence for authoritative transmission was not on the written copies which are so very much subject to error, but upon the painstaking oral transmission from teacher to pupil. It is probable that they were not consigned to written form until sometime not far from the beginning of the Christian era.

If this feat of memory seems almost incredible to the modern student, dependent upon his notebook and pen, let him recall that this was the work of specialists whose primary business it was to cultivate their memories, and who had a profound sense of the importance of transmitting, without error, the sacred text. Furthermore special devices were employed to insure that no word or line slipped out of place as so easily happens in copying a written text by hand, or setting it up in type. In general, the schemes were designed so that each separate word was linked with the word or words before and following it, so that it would be almost impossible either to omit anything from the text or add anything to it. Three separate schemes are known to have been employed.

The first was known as the step text, most easily seen if we designate the first word by the letter "a," the second by "b," and so on. The text was then learned thus: ab -- bc -- cd -- de. Employing this scheme in relation to Genesis 1:1 in the Bible it would read: In the, the beginning, beginning God, God created, created the, etc. etc. The next method, called the woven text, was more complex. It ran thus: ab -- ba -- ab; bc -- cb -- bc; cd -- dc -- cd; etc. "In the -- the in -- in the; the beginning --beginning the -- the beginning; etc. etc." One would think that any mistake with this system would be almost impossible, but just to be quite sure, an even more complicated system for learning the text was worked out. It was known as the Ghana-patha, the two previously given, respectively, as Krama-patha and Jata-patha. It reads as follows: ab -- ba -- abc -- cba --abc; bc -- cb -- bcd -- dcb -- bcd; or in Biblical terms: "In the -- the in -- in the beginning -- beginning the in -- in the beginning, etc."

Could error possibly creep in with this arrangement? The chances are that the Vedic text has been much more correctly transmitted than has the text of ancient holy writ of the Hebrew-Christian tradition, which came to us via the copyists and the printers.

The Rig-Veda is by far the most important of the four Vedas, and is to a large extent the source from which much of the content of the others, particularly the Sama-Veda and the Yajur Veda, is derived. Each of these two Samhitas, or collections, as they are called, arose as the cult developed and are of interest chiefly as revealing the nature of the Vedic cult. Both are essentially priestly documents.

As the cult developed it outgrew the simple household ministration of the father, and a priesthood arose. At first a single priest could perform all the rites. Even so, his various functions were given special names. At one time he was the Udgatri, or the singer of hymns, at the Soma-sacrifice. Again, he was the sacrificer, at the animal sacrifice or Hotri, performing himself the manual parts as well as reciting the ritual. As the cult became more complex an assistant was required to take care of the manual part of the sacrifice, leaving the Hotri free to give his whole attention to the reciting of praises. Eventually there were three ranks of priests, the Udgatri, the Hotri, and the Adhvaryu.

It was for the Udgatri that the Sama-Veda or "chant" Veda as it is sometimes called, was formed. All but seventy-five of its more than fifteen hundred verses are taken directly from the Rig-Veda. It is the musical Veda, created for the instruction of the Udgatri priests. The first part of it, the Archika or book of praises, consists of 585 single stanzas each to be sung to a separate tune. In ancient times the tunes were taught orally, but in written editions the music accompanies the words. Winternitz says that this part is like a song-book in which only the first stanza of the song is printed as an aid to the recall of the melody. The songs taken chiefly from the Rig-Veda are arranged according to the deities to which they are dedicated. The second, or Uttararchika, contains 1225 stanzas, usually three to each strophe, arranged according to the order of the principal sacrifices. Winternitz compares it to a songbook in which the words are given, assuming that the melody is already known. 17 Of importance in the study of Indian music, and as throwing light on the Vedic cult, it is of little popular interest, and adds nothing essential concerning Vedic life and belief to what is afforded by the Rig-Veda.

The Yajur-Veda was the Veda of the assisting priest or Adhvaryu, whose duty it was to perform the manual part of the sacrifice. From early times it was customary for the priest, while performing various manual acts of the sacrifice, to utter appropriate formulas. These may have been of the nature of magic or incantations. This became a part of the function of the specialized manual priest, leaving the more formal and public ritual utterances to the Hotri or sacrificing priest. Later to these utterances were added also certain praises and prayers derived from the Rig-Veda. It is this material for the use of the Adhvaryu that constitutes the Yajur-Veda collection. It is found in various versions as taught in differing schools. Some of these versions in addition to the above mentioned formulas have incorporated also a certain amount of theological material or Brahmana directly into the text. These constitute the so-called Black YajurVeda. The other, better known, White Yajur-Veda, has the Brahmana separated out from the formulas and prayers and carries it as an appendix at the end. Brief examples of phrases used by the Adhvaryu are as follows: When a piece of wood with which the sacred fire is to be kindled is dedicated, this formula is recited: "This, Agni, is thy igniter; through it mayst thou grow and thrive. May we also grow and thrive." He addresses the halter by which a sacrificial victim is bound to the stake thus: "Become no snake -- become no viper." To the razor with which the sacrificer’s beard is about to be shaved he says: "O knife, do not injure him." 18

Of the forty sections contained in the Yajur-Veda, the first twenty-five, and earliest, contain the prayers for the most important sacrifices, e.g., the sacrifices of the New and Full Moon, the Soma sacrifices in general, the Building of the Fire Altar, which requires a year, and the great Horse Sacrifice. The remaining fifteen are much later, and are more or less an appendix to the main body of the work. It is obvious that here is a highly specialized priestly literature of little popular interest. Nevertheless, it is of very great importance in the study of Vedic Hinduism.

The fourth of the Vedas, the Atharva, is of a still different kind. It has been characterized as a late book, but as containing a great deal of very ancient material, reflecting the folk religion of the early Aryans, and as carried along, it represents the cultural lag of the Vedic people. For, it is, to no small degree, a book of magic and charms. It is one of the most interesting books of antiquity and a very valuable source for an understanding of the folk religion of the Vedic period. A glance at the table of contents reveals a fascinating list of charms. There is, for example, a charm against a cough. It runs as follows:

1. As the soul with the soul’s desire swiftly to a distance flies, thus do thou, O cough, fly forth along the soul’s course of flight.

2. As a well sharpened arrow swiftly to a distance flies, thus do thou, cough, fly forth along the expanse of earth.

3. As the rays of the sun swiftly to a distance fly, thus do thou, O cough fly forth along the flood of the sea." 19

Here is a clear use of mimetic magic. As the soul’s desire, as a sharpened arrow, as the rays of the sun swiftly to a distance fly -- so let cough fly also. But just to help out there are certain things to be done besides repeating the charm. While reciting the sutra the patient takes several steps away from the home, again suggestive to the cough, but all this after being fed with a churned drink or hot porridge, i.e., making prudent use of a home remedy, like drinking hot lemonade, to make a cure doubly sure. A graduate student of English on reading this recalled the following from the Diary of the famous Samuel Pepys apparently quite soberly intended.

O cramp, be thou faintless As our Lady was sinless When she bare Jesus.

A charm for finding lost objects recalls practices of the writer’s own boyhood days. The formula is this:

On the distant path of the paths Pushan was born. . . He knows these regions all. . . . Pushan shall from the east place his right hand about us and shall bring again unto us what has been lost.

Those who seek lost property first have their hands and feet anointed. This is rubbed off and again they are anointed with ghi ( clarified butter) . Then twenty-one pebbles are thrown scatteringly upon a crossroad. These symbolize the lost objects and at the same time are supposed to counteract their lost condition. 20

We boys of a later day found lost objects sometimes by catching a daddy long-legs, saying over him a formula which unfortunately can no longer be recalled, when the great insect would solemnly point one of his long legs in the supposed direction of the lost object. Sometimes it was by the much less elegant method of spitting in the palm of the hand, striking it with a finger and seeking the lost object in the direction in which the largest spit ball flew. Innumerable examples of like folk beliefs and practices may be found in any so-called advanced culture.

Then there is a charm to promote the growth of hair (6:136) ; to obtain a husband (2:3) ; to obtain a wife (6:82) ; to secure the love of a woman (6:8) ; and to secure the love of a man (7:38) ; a charm to secure harmony (3:20) ; and one to procure influence in an assembly (3:30) ; a charm to ward off danger from fire (6:106) ; another to stop an arrow in its flight. There are prayers too, one on building a house (3:12) ; one for success at gambling (4:38) ; and particularly in playing at dice (7:50) ; an incantation for the exorcism of evil dreams (6:46) , etc. etc.

In addition there are repeated not a few hymns from the RigVeda, and still other theosophic and cosmogonic hymns of rare beauty and insight which do not seem to fit in with the cruder concept of religion apparent in the magical portions of the book.

Any anthology which presents only the high and noble points of a sacred literature really misrepresents that literature, for it is not all by any means of equal beauty or interest or of equal moral or religious insight. Most religious literatures have their high spots and their low. From the standpoint of general reader interest the Brahmanas represent the all-time low of Hindu sacred literature, and probably of all the sacred literatures of the world. The Bible has sections that are hard going. Many who bravely set out to read the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation bog down in Leviticus or sooner, and never finish. Well, Leviticus, in comparison with the greater part of the Brahmana literature, is far more interesting and intelligible to the nonpriestly reader. It has the advantage, too, that it is much shorter. Julius Eggeling, translator of the Satapatha Brahmana, says of them, "For wearisome prolixity of exposition, characterized by dogmatic assertion and a flimsy symbolism rather than serious reasoning, these works are perhaps not equalled anywhere unless indeed it be by the speculative vaporings of the gnostics, than which nothing more absurd has probably ever been imagined by rational beings." 21

The Brahmanas are strictly priestly books and are concerned primarily with the sacrifices which, with increasing complexity, had developed within Vedic Hinduism. Sacrifice had become of enormous importance. By sacrifice the gods could be at first won over to grant favors sought after; then as time went on, it became magical in its powers, and the gods themselves could not resist the prayer spell; indeed, what power they had they owed to the sacrifice. 22 It became a matter of primary importance that the sacrifice be properly performed, for in this its efficacy rested. The Brahmanas provide precisely that detailed direction. Nothing is left to the imagination or the discretion of the priest. Where he shall stand, which way he shall turn, either to right, or left, whether he shall use right hand or left, in what exact order the various ritual acts must be performed, all this is given in minutest detail.

Typical of the general character of the Brahmanas is the description of the horse sacrifice which occurs in the Satapatha Brahmana. This to be sure was the most complex as well as most important of all the Brahmanic sacrifices. It requires 166 pages in translation in the Sacred Books of the East, including extensive footnotes designed to explain the more obscure references in the text. It is much too long and involved to include here -- even a detailed description of the sacrifice, much less of the ritual associated with it. But a sample paragraph will suffice to reveal its general character. This one chosen at random, will do.

(He puts the halter on the horse, with Vag. S XXII, 3, 4,) "Encompassing thou art,"-- therefore the offer of the Asvamedha conquers all the quarters; -- "the world thou art," the world he thus conquers;-- "a ruler thou art, an upholder,"--he thus makes him an upholder; "go thou into Agni Vaisvanara," he thus makes him go to Agni Vaisvanara (the friend of all men) ;-- "of wide extent," -- he thus causes him to extend in offspring and cattle; -- "consecrated by Svaha (hail!) ," this is the Vashat -- call for it; -- "good speed (to) thee for the gods!"-- he thus makes it of good speed for the gods; "for Prajapati,"--the horse is sacred to Prajapati: he thus supplies it with his own deity. 23

If it is obscure to you, do not be troubled. Even if you read it in its context it would be but little more clear. Indeed, even with the learned translator’s detailed footnotes it still does not hold much meaning for one of our time and our culture. Reflect on the fact that this is less than one of some 160 pages of only one Kanda describing only one sacrifice, and that the Satapatha-Brahmana of which it is a part is but one of many Brahmanas, all of which were regarded as sacred by the early Hindus, and transmitted orally from priest to priest for centuries. Not only are directions given as to what to do and how to do it but, as appeared in the sample above, some explanation, of either the origin or significance of the act. This often

runs into rather profound speculations, or often into very obscure symbolism. Indeed, Eggeling calls them "theological treatises composed chiefly for the purpose of explaining the sacrificial texts as well as the origin and deeper meaning of the various rites." 24 Happily also in the midst of tiresome, repetitious instruction are to be found at least the beginnings of some important aspects of India’s later culture, philosophic speculation, grammar, astronomy, logic, and also a considerable amount of legend and myth.

Here are to be found, for example, a number of creation myths, not at all in agreement with each other. India never conceived of one single myth of the world’s creation, as found in the Bible and many other cultures. Here is a rather delightful account of the creation of night:

"Yama had died. The gods tried to persuade Yam (a twin sister) to forget him. Whenever they asked her, she said: "Only today he has died." Then the gods said: "Thus she will indeed never forget him; we will create night!" For at that time there was only day and no night. The gods created night; then arose a morrow; thereupon she forgot him. Therefore people say: "Day and night indeed. Let sorrow be forgotten." 25

Most scriptures have somewhere within them a flood story. Hindu literature is no exception, and it is found in the Brahmanas:

There lived in ancient time a holy man, Called Manu, who by penances and prayer Had won the favor of the Lord of Heaven. One day they brought him water for ablution; Then as he washed his hands a little fish Appeared, and spoke in human accents thus: "Take care of me, and I will be your savior." "From what wilt thou preserve me?" Manu asked. The fish replied, "A flood will sweep away All creatures. I will rescue thee from that." "But how shall I preserve thee?" Manu said. The fish rejoined, "So long as we are small, We are in constant danger of destruction, For fish eat fish. So keep me in a jar; When I outgrow the jar, then dig a trench And place me there; when I outgrow the trench Then take me to the ocean; I shall then Be out of reach of danger." Having thus Instructed Manu, straightway rapidly The fish grew larger. Then he spoke again, "In such and such a year the flood will come; Therefore construct a ship and pay me homage; When the flood rises enter thou the ship And I will rescue thee." So Manu did As he was ordered, and preserved the fish. Then carried it in safety to the ocean. And in the very year the fish enjoined He built a ship, and paid the fish respect, And there took refuge when the flood arose. Soon near him swam the fish, and to its horn Manu made fast the cable of the vessel. Thus drawn along the waters Manu passed Beyond the northern mountain; then the fish, Addressing Manu said, "I have preserved thee. Quickly attach the ship to yonder tree, But lest the waters sink from under thee, As fast as they subside, so fast shalt thou Descend the mountains gently after them." Thus he descended from the northern mountain, The flood had swept away all living creatures; Manu was left alone. Wishing for offspring, He earnestly performed a sacrifice. In a year’s time a female was produced; She came to Manu; then he said to her, "Who art thou?" She replied, "I am thy daughter." He said, "How, lovely lady, can that be?" "I came forth," she rejoined, "from thine oblations Cast upon the waters; thou wilt find in me A blessing; use me in the sacrifice." With her he worshiped, and with toilsome zeal Performed religious rites, hoping for offspring. Thus were created men called sons of Manu. Whatever benediction he implored With her, was thus vouchsafed in full abundance. 26

But if lacking in interest for the general readers, these dry, uninspired priestly directions are of very great importance to the student of India’s religion. Already may be seen a notable shift away from the old simple Vedic conceptions. The Vedic gods had largely lost their power and significance. New deities, particularly Prajapati, Lord of creatures, stand as the central figures. In the end, as may well be imagined, this luxuriant over-emphasis upon the power of the sacrifice, leading naturally to an exaltation of the power of the priests, who alone possessed the secrets of their proper performance, were the undoing of Vedic religion, and it finally disappears. New forms of religious faith take its place and new gods arise to replace the older ones, as we shall presently see. It represents a stage in transition from Vedic religion to the philosophic Hinduism and the sectarian, theistic Hinduism which has come down to our own time.

The date of the Brahmanas cannot be fixed with exactness, but they follow after the Vedas and precede the rise of the Upanishads which in turn are, the older ones, definitely pre-Buddhistic. The Brahmanas are found in connection with the various Vedas. As indicated above in the Black Yajur-Veda, the Brahmana material is interspersed throughout the Veda, while in the White Yajur-Veda the Brahmana forms an appendix to the Veda. They were undoubtedly at first designed for the training of priests. The earlier instruction may have been quite informal, but gradually it became stereotyped and finally unchangeable. There were, however, differences in the Brahmanas as taught in different schools.

But not all the development of religious thought was of priestly origin. Indeed, it may well have been that as the cult grew more complex and overgrown, lay members of the community became impatient with it and with the ideas behind it, and began to think about religion themselves. By this time, the stratification of society into fixed castes, a thing unknown in the Vedas, save in the late tenth book, was complete. The preferred position of the priest or Brahmin had been securely fixed. His was definitely the top ranking class, quite above the Kshatriya, the ruler-warrior class, and the Vaisya or farmer-merchant group, and his supremacy has continued into our own times. These three classes, known as the twice-born castes, were sharply set off from the lowly Sudra who was non-Aryan in origin, and carried on the heavy unpleasant work of the world. But by no means all the intelligence was to be found among the Brahmins. Even in the Brahmanas and again and again in the Upanishads there are stories of teachers seeking enlightenment on points of religious thought from kings or nobles. Nor were all members of the Brahmin caste priests. Buddhism very definitely arose out of the experience and ponderings of a prince, one of the Kshatriyas. And it is conjectured that much of the impulse to the profound religious and philosophical speculation which forms the basis of the Upanishads was from the non-Brahmin ranks.

Certain it is that before the time of the Upanishads, men of the non-Brahmin castes had undertaken to become ascetics and hermits and give themselves to contemplation of the great problems of religious and philosophic thought. The Brahmins, if they did not originate the custom, ultimately embraced it and integrated it into a system of Ashramas, or the four stages of life. The first stage was that of the student. Those of the twice-born castes were to begin early the study of the Vedas, which meant to live in the home of a teacher and serve him while learning the wisdom of the sacred texts. At an appropriate time the student was to become a householder, marry, rear a family, and perform the proper sacrifices to the gods. Then, when past middle age, he was to go apart from the common life, and to dwell in the forest, passing the time in contemplation and meditation. When at last old age had come he was supposed to abandon all connections with home, with family, and the common life, and become a sannyasin, or holy man, a wandering beggar for God.

Of course not every male of the twice-born castes followed this program, but many did. Upon what should these forest dwellers meditate? At first this may have been left wholly to the individual but in time it also became formalized, and there came into being what are known as the Aranyakas or Forest Treatises. These were sometimes included in the Brahmanas or appended to them, but they were of a different kind. No longer is the concern with the rules of sacrifice and ceremonies, but with mysticism and the symbolism of sacrifice, and with the more philosophic aspects of religion. There had grown up a body of secret doctrine, an esoteric type of thought; not to be taught to the uninitiated in the villages, but to be meditated upon in the forest. This all in time became a part of the Veda. There are Aranyakas belonging to the various schools, thus the Aitareya-Aranyaka, which contains the Aitareya-Upanishad, is attached to the Aitareya-Brahmana of the Rig-Veda. There is no clear line of distinction between the Aranyakas and the Upanishads which the non-specialist can easily discern.

The Upanishads, which, with the Aranyakas, form the Vedanta, or the end of the Veda, are probably the most important parts of the Veda. They are the basis of Indian philosophy and philosophic Hinduism, the religion of the intelligentsia of India, and have affected the thought of all India with reference to religion.

Save in the tenth book of the Rig-Veda, the Vedas in general, like the Old Testament, take the gods for granted. There is little or no reflection upon them. In the Brahmanas there is the beginning of questioning about the world and its origins. In the Aranyakas to a still greater degree it goes forward, but in the Upanishads it comes to flower. 27 Here the chief concern is to ask ultimate questions concerning man, and his world, and his final destiny. It represents both an intellectual and a religious interest. Concerned with the nature of the world ground, it is also interested in how man must relate himself to this ultimate reality in order to achieve what, in Christianity, is called salvation. To the Hindu it was Moksha.

It would be a mistake to think of the Upanishads as formal books of philosophy, abstruse discussions of highly profound and difficult subjects. They are, first of all, tied on bodily to the Vedas, Brahmanas and Aranyakas, sometimes contained within the latter. There is in them a great deal that has to do with sacrifice and the cult in general. There is also a good deal of myth and legend. There are long, tiresome, repetitious discussions of what seem, on first reading, to be puerile matters. One who has heard of the vast importance of the Upanishads, and has read scattered excerpts of rare beauty and insight, is likely to feel a sense of shock as he sits down to read through the whole collection of the 12 or 13 principal Upanishads. Some of it is crude, childish, and in such passages as give only the list of names of the teachers through whom the teachings have been handed down, one finds it about as inspiring as the "begatting" or genealogical chapters of the Old and New Testament. But if the reader persists he will come upon passages of deep insight, beauty of expression and profound understanding of the great problems of religion and human thought. One’s first excursion into these basic philosophic texts would best be through some modern expurgated edition or anthology, which has carefully weeded out the crudities, the repetitiousness, and contradictions that so much abound in the original. 28

The word Upanishad seems to mean "secret doctrine." It is also defined as meaning, literally, that which dispels darkness or ignorance completely. It may be written in prose, or in poetry. There are, all told, over 100 Upanishads in existence, many of them quite late. But of the earlier ones which may be surely said to be Vedic there are only a few, some recognize twelve, some fourteen. R. E. Hume’s book, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, 29 contains a translation of those which are rather generally accepted as basic to a study of Hindu religion and philosophy.

A great deal of the material of the Upanishads is in dialogue form. A seeker after knowledge comes to a recognized teacher to inquire about some phase of religion or thought. A somewhat Socratic dialogue ensues, in which the answer is finally given. It is interesting to note the variety of people who ask the questions, kings and commoners, some of very humble birth, both men and women. Apparently women enjoyed a relatively high status at that time.

As an example of dialogue that between Yajnavalkya, a famous teacher, and a woman, Gargi, may be cited. She approaches the teacher and begs permission to ask a question. Yajnavalkya replies graciously:

She said: "That, O Yajnavalkya, which is above the sky, that which is beneath the earth that which is between these two, sky and earth, that which people call the past and the present and the future -- across what is that woven, warp and woof?"

He said: ‘That, O Gargi, which is above the sky that which is between these two, sky and earth, that which people call the past, and present and future -- across space is that woven, warp and woof."

She said: "Adoration to you, Yajnavalkya, in that you have solved this question for me. Prepare yourself for the other."

"Ask, Gargi."

She said, "Across what then, pray, is space woven, warp and woof?"

He said: "That, O Gargi, Brahmans call the Imperishable (Aksara) . It is not coarse, not fine, not short, not long, not glowing (like fire) , not adhesive (like water) , without shadow and without darkness, without air and without space, without stickiness (intangible) , odorless, tasteless, without eye, without ear, without voice, without wind, without energy, without breath, without mouth, without personal or family name, unaging, undying, without fear, immortal, stainless, not uncovered, not covered, without measure, without inside and without outside.

"It consumes nothing soever.

"No one soever consumes it.

‘Verily, O Gargi, at the command of that Imperishable the sun and the moon stand apart. Verily, O Gargi, at the command of that Imperishable the earth and the sky stand apart. Verily, O Gargi, at the command of that Imperishable the moments, the hours, the days, the nights, the fortnights, the months, the seasons, and the years stand apart. Verily, O Gargi, at the command of that Imperishable some rivers flow from the snowy mountains to the east, others to the west, in whatever direction each flows. Verily, O Gargi, at the command of that Imperishable men praise those who give, the gods are desirous of a sacrificer, and the fathers (are desirous) of the Manes-sacrifice.

"Verily, O Gargi, if one performs sacrifices and worships and undergoes austerity in this world for many thousands of years, but without knowing that Imperishable, limited indeed is that (work) of his. Verily, O Gargi, he who departs from this world without knowing that Imperishable is pitiable. But, O Gargi, he who departs from this world knowing that Imperishable is Brahman.

"Verily, O Gargi, that Imperishable is the unseen Seer, the unheard Hearer, the unthought Thinker, the ununderstood understander. Other than It there is naught that sees. Other than It there is naught that hears. Other than It there is naught that understands. Across this Imperishable, O Gargi, is space woven, warp and woof." 30

On another occasion when Gargi had pushed Yajnavalkya back step by step, a device often used in the Upanishads and known as the regressus, to Brahman as the ultimate reality, she still persisted in asking what lay behind Brahman. Yajnavalkya said:

"Gargi, do not question too much, lest your head fall off. In truth, you

are questioning too much about a divinity about which questions cannot

be asked. Gargi, do not over-question."

Thereupon Gargi Vacaknaivi held her peace. 3 ’

Another regressus throws not a little light upon the shifting away from the old Vedic gods to the One, Brahman. It is given in slightly abbreviated form:

1. Then Vidagdha Sakalya questioned him. "How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?"

He answered in accord with the following Nivid ( invocationary formula) : "As many as are mentioned in the Nivid of the Hymn to All the Gods, namely, three hundred and three, and three thousand and three (=3306) ."

"Yes," said he, "but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?"

"Thirty-three."

"Two." "Yes," said he, "but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?"

One and a half."

There is space for only one final dialogue dealing with the At-man, which, together with Brahman, constitute the two major concepts dealt with in the Upanishads. Their ultimate identification in Brahman-Atman is the culmination of the long time trend toward the monistic or pantheistic world-soul which began in the tenth book of the Rig-Veda. Also the realized identification of the Atman, or self, or soul of man, with Brahman, constitutes moksha or salvation for some schools of philosophic Hinduism.

King Janaka of Videha once asked of Yajnavalkya;

2. "Yajnavalkya, what light does a person here have?"

"He has the light of the sun, O king," he said, "for with the sun, indeed, as his light, one sits, moves around, does his work, and returns.

"Quite so, Yajnavalkya.

3. "But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya, what light does a person here have?"

"The moon, indeed, is his light," said he, "for with the moon, indeed, as his light, one sits, moves around, does his work, and returns."

4. "But when the sun has set, and the moon has set, what light does a person here have?"

"Fire, indeed, is his light," said he, "for with fire," etc.

5. "But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya, and the moon has set, and the fire has gone out, what light does a person here have?"

"Speech, indeed, is his light," said he, "for . . . when a voice is raised (even in the dark) then one goes straight towards it."

6. "But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya, and the moon has set, and the fire has gone out, and speech is hushed, what light does a person here have?"

"The soul (atman) , indeed, is his light," said he, "for with the soul, indeed, as his light, one sits, moves around, does his work, and returns." 33

The famous phrase tat tvam asi, "that art thou," expressing the identity of the self of man with Brahman-Atman occurs over and over again in a long dialogue between Svetaketu and his father, for example:

Said the father:

1. "Place this salt in the water. In the morning come unto me. Then he did so.

Then he said to him: "That salt you placed in the water last evening -- please bring it hither."

Then he grasped for it, but did not find it, as it was completely dissolved.

2. "Please take a sip of it from this end," said he. "How is it?"

"Take a sip from the middle," said he. "How is it?"

"Take a sip from that end," said he. "How is it?"

"Set it aside. Then come unto me.

He did so, saying, "It is always the same."

Then he said to him: "Verily, indeed, my dear, you do not perceive Being here. Verily, indeed, it is here.

3. "That which is the finest, essence -- this whole world has that as its soul. That is Reality. That is Atman (Soul) . That art thou, Svetaketu."

"Do you, sir, cause me to understand even more.

"So be it, my dear," said he. 34

But how shall this moksha which is release from the round of rebirth be accomplished? To the authors of the Upanishads, Vedic sacrifice was unable to help one here. It could come only through knowledge or realization of the truth of the identity of the Atman of living man with Brahman-Atman. The Upanishads themselves suggest the way of meditation under direction of a teacher, but have little to say with regard to the precise methods to be employed. Later thinkers were to develop elaborate schemes whereby man might achieve this end. In general Yoga practice in one form or another, i.e., disciplined meditation, was the answer.

Here in the Upanishads come to full expression two doctrines unknown in the Vedas, that of Karma, ot the law of sowing and reaping, and that of reincarnation. Both are expressed in the following:

3. Now as a caterpillar, when it has come to the end of a blade of grass, in taking the next step draws itself together towards it, just so this soul in taking the next step strikes down this body, dispels its ignorance, and draws itself together (for making the transition) .

4. As a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, reduces it to another newer and more beautiful form, just so this soul, striking down this body and dispelling its ignorance, makes for itself another newer and more beautiful form like that either of the fathers, or of the Gandharvas, or of the gods, or of Prajapati, or of Brahman, or of other beings.

5. Verily, this soul is Brahma, made of knowledge, of mind, of breath, of seeing, of hearing, of earth, of water, of wind, of space, of energy and of non-energy, of desire and of non-desire, of anger and of non-anger, of virtuousness and of non-virtuousness. It is made of everything. This is what is meant by the saying "made of this, made of that."

According as one acts, according as one conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action. 35

Though the doctrine of reincarnation was worked out in much greater detail in subsequent Hindu sacred literature, it is expressed in the Lipanishads in rudimentary form thus:

15. Those who know this, and those, too, who in the forest truly worship (upasate) faith (sraddha) , pass into the flame (of the cremation-fire) ; from the flame, into the day; from the day, into the half month of the waxing moon; from the half month of the waxing moon, into the six months during which the sun moves northward; from these months, into the world of the gods (devaloka) ; from the world of the gods, into the sun; from the sun, into the lightning-fire. A person (purusa) consisting of mind (manasa) goes to those regions of lightning and conducts them to the Brahma-worlds. In those Brahma-worlds they dwell for long extents. Of these there is no return.

16. But they who by sacrificial offering, charity, and austerity conquer the worlds, pass into the smoke (of the cremation-fire) ; from the smoke, into the night; from the night, into the half month of the waning moon; from the half month of the waning moon, into the six months during which the sun moves southwaid; from those months, into the world of the fathers; from the world of the fathers, into the moon. Reaching the moon, they become food. There the gods -- as they say to King Soma, "Increase! Decrease!"-- even so feed upon them there. When that passes away for them, then they pass forth into this space; from space, into air; from air, into rain; from rain, into the earth. On reaching the earth they become food. Again they are offered in the fire of man. Thence they are born in the fire of woman. Rising up into the world, they cycle round again thus.

But those who know not these two ways, become crawling and flying insects and whatever there is here that bites. 36

Parts of the Upanishads are in verse. Here we have space for only three brief poems on Brahman, favorite theme of the writers of the "secret doctrine."

As oil in sesame seeds, as butter in cream, As water in river-beds, and as fire in the friction-sticks, So is the Soul (Atman) apprehended in one’s own soul, If one looks for Him with true austerity (tapas) . The Soul (Atman) , which pervades all things As butter is contained in cream, Which is rooted in self-knowledge and austerity -- This is Brahma, the highest mystic doctrine (upanishad) ! This is Brahma, the highest mystic doctrine! 37

The second illustrates the way in which the Brahman concept gathers up into itself the old Vedic gods.

Thou art Brahma, and verily thou art Vishnu. Thou art Rudra. Thou art Prajapati, Thou art Agni, Varuna, and Vayu. Thou art Indra. Thou art the Moon. Thou art food. Thou art Yama. Thou art the Earth. Thou art All. Yea, thou art the unshaken one!

For Nature’s sake and for its own Is existence manifold in thee. O Lord of all, hail unto thee! The Soul of all, causing all acts, Enjoying all, all life art thou! Lord (prabhu) of all pleasure and delight!

Hail unto thee, O tranquil Soul (santatman) ! Yea, hail to thee, most hidden one, Unthinkable, unlimited, Beginningless and endless, too! 38

And finally, from the Mundaka comes this summing-up of the whole in Brahman:

Brahma, indeed, is this immortal. Brahma before, Brahma behind, to right and to left. Stretched forth below and above. Brahma, indeed, is this whole world, this widest extent. 39

The Upanishads have had an extraordinary influence on all subsequent religious and philosophic thought. No writer on Indian philosophy would think of beginning anywhere but in the Veda, meaning primarily the Upanishads. Out of them have grown six historical schools of philosophic thought, and each of these has had its effect upon Indian religion. Best known in the West is the Vedanta school. Others are the Nayaya, the Mimansa, the Sankhya, the Yoga, and the Vaiseshika. 40

Religiously, the concept of Brahman has had a very profound effect on Indian religion. Since Brahman is the one and only real -- all the gods of whatever sectarian group can have no reality other than they have in Brahman. They can only be regarded as manifestations, at various levels, of the neuter world soul. Thus a cloak of unity is thrown over all kinds of religions which have appeared in India. Indeed, this concept provides Hinduism with an absorptive quality which enables it to accept any religion from any source as simply a phase of the ultimately real Brahman -- so long as it does not make exclusive claims for its deity as do Christianity and Islam. Here the resistance is rather on the part of the representatives of these aggressively exclusivist faiths to such an acceptance.

The Upanishads have been quite influential throughout the west. Schopenhauer, among European philosophers, has spoken of them in terms of high esteem:

In the whole world there is no study except that of the originals, as beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads (in translation) . It has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death.

From every s~ntence deep original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high, holy and earnest spirit. 41

Emerson got the inspiration from their reading for his great poem, Brahma. Thoreau read them and was influenced by them. The whole atmosphere of New England thought in the latter part of the nineteenth century was affected by them. In more recent times, as translations have been muhiplied, they have been read by vast numbers of people. A recent book, Vedanta for the Western World interprets them to an increasing circle of intelligent readers. Theosophy has taken over some of the basic ideas of the Upanishads and popularized them in the West, and their indirect influence is to be seen in a number of small modern religious movements in America. 42

The Upanishads are the source of the doctrines which furnish the basis for the Vedanta-Sutras of Badarayana, which are by some considered to be sruti literature. On this are based the commentaries of Shankara and of Ramanuja whose writings have influenced and are still influencing the religious thought of countless millions of Indians.

With the Upanishads we come to the end of the Veda, and also the end of the sruti sacred literature, with the exception of the Bhagavad Gita, which if not universally so recognized is, by great numbers of Indians, ranked along with the most sacred Vedic literature. To that we shall come back later. But we are only at the beginning of the discussion of literature of the smriti type, which, for all practical purposes, is quite as important in the religious life of the Indian people as the older sruti. Indeed, rather more so, for actually Vedic religion no longer exists. The old Vedic gods are gone, with the exception of a very few --chiefly Vishnu. Orthodox Indians regard their later literatures as growing out of and fulfilling the Vedas, but in no sense as abrogating them. Typical of the attitude of modern Hindu thought is the statement of D. S. Sarma in his Primer of Hinduism, written for the instruction of young Hindus in this faith:

Q. Why, if the Veda is our primary scripture, should we not go direct to it without caring for any of the secondary scriptures?

A. The Veda is like a mine of gold, and the later scriptures are like the gold coins of the various ages. When you want to procure things that would make you comfortable, you should have ready money and not a piece of rock with veins of gold in it straight from the mine. Of course every gold coin that is in the country is ultimately derived from the mine; but has undergone various processes that make it useful to us at once. The ore has been smelted, the dross has been removed, the true metal has been refined, put into moulds and stamped. Similarly the golden truths of the Veda have been refined by the wisdom of the ages and presented to us in a useful form, in our later scriptures. That is why I recommend to you the Gita, rather than the Upanishads. 43

While the application was in this case specifically to the Bhagavad Gita, note that he says "presented to us in our later scriptures."

Supplementary to the Vedas there grew up a great body of what is known as sutra literature. The name comes from the practice, adopted for mnemonic reasons, of couching what was to be remembered in very terse, almost telegraphic form, which then needed to be expanded, to make complete sentences. Thus: "four castes; Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras," requires adding "There are." "Of these the preceding one (is) always better, according to birth (than the succeeding one) ." The words in parentheses must be supplied. 44

The oldest of these sutras are found in connection with the Aranyakas and Brahmanas. Eventually there emerged the Kalpa or ritual sutras. Those dealing with the great public sacrifices are called Srauta sutras; those with the domestic rites the Grihya sutras. These latter deal with the simple household sacrifices and observances connected with such things as building a house, cattle breeding, farming, also rites for the prevention of disease, love rites, the ancestral and funeral rites. They constitute a veritable mine of information as to the home and family life of the people and also throw a great deal of light upon the way the Vedas were interpreted and used in actual practice.

There are also sutras concerning the Dharma. Dharma is a word not easily translated. It is sometimes rendered as law, custom, usage, and even religion. The Dharma sutras were, then, sutras covering a great variety of obligations, all the way from personal etiquette to formal law. These were formulated by different Vedic schools and purportedly based upon the Vedas. There are several important books of this character, some earlier, some later, the Apastamba -- the Baudhayana, the Institutes of Vishnu, and most important of all that of the Manavan School, the Manavan sutras, or, when, put into poetic form, as was actually done, the Manavan Dharma Sastras, better known as the Laws of Manu. These books have been of enormous importance in Indian life, even down to the present time. For example, until recently a British magistrate in India, where an Indian citizen had to be judged on the basis of the law of his particular religious community, had to be instructed in Hindu requirements as set forth in the Code of Manu, as well as in the Koran, which is the basis of Moslem law. When reforms have been pressed, for example with reference to child marriage, or the problem of permitting divorce, a strong appeal has been made by Orthodoxy to the Laws of Manu as having permanently fixed these relationships. They charge the government with infringement of religious freedom in setting aside what was therein written.

The Laws of Manu is a fascinating law book, comparable in many ways to the Code of Hammurabi or to the Hebrew codes found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. If one desires to know caste rules, or how women should be regarded, or the obligations of servant to master, or wife to husband, or children to parents, or king to people, or people to ruler, or concerning almost any question of social relationship, here may be found what, until quite recent modern times, was the characteristic Indian answer. 45

Ordinarily one would not regard the great national epics as scriptures though, in the case of the Iliad and the Odyssey, they come close to forming at least an equivalent of scripture for the Greek people, and to students of Greek religion they provide a rich mine of material with reference to the gods of classical Greek religion. But in India, if not sruti they are at least smriti, and play a highly significant role in Indian religion. D. S. Sarma in his Primer of Hinduism so classifies them along with the Puranas, the Agamas and Darsanas. This is an indication of how modern Indians regard them. 46

In his introduction to the Mahabharata of which he is the supposed author or compiler, Vyasa says: ‘The reading of the Bharata is sacred: all the sins of him who reads but one portion of it shall be obliterated without exception. He who in faith shall persevere in listening to the recital of this sacred book shall obtain long life, great renown and the way to heaven."

Romesh Dutt, translator of the Epics in Everyman’s Library says of them: "The Hindu scarcely lives, man or woman, high or low, educated or ignorant, whose earliest recollections do not cling to the story and the character of the great Epics. Even the traditions and tales which spoil the Epic have themselves a charm and an attraction; and the morals inculcated in these tales sink into the hearts of a naturally religious people, and form the basis of their moral education. Mothers in India know no better theme for imparting wisdom and instruction to their daughters, and elderly men know no richer storehouse for narrating tales to children, than these stories preserved in the Epics. No single work except the Bible has such influence in affording moral instruction in Christian lands as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in India. They have been the cherished heritage of the Hindus for three thousand years; they are to the present day interwoven with the thoughts and beliefs and the moral ideas of a nation." 47

The longer of the two great Indian Epics is the Mahabharata. Indeed, it is the longest epic in the world, consisting of about 220,000 lines. In comparison, the Iliad and Odyssey combined have some 30,000. It is not all strictly epic in character but a combination of epic and didactic material which has been incorporated into it. Modern scholars distinguish between the epic and the didactic epic.

The real epic consists of some 24,000 stanzas, almost twice the length of the Greek epics, but even this is not all of a piece, for in the epic itself there is reference to the fact that it originally had only 8,800 stanzas.

The original epic had its historic basis in the ancient conflict between two tribes -- the Kurus and Pandavas. This probably occurred at some time prior to 1000 B.C., though exact dating is impossible. Around this historic struggle grew up a collection of songs celebrating the prowess of outstanding leaders and this was handed down orally. This may then have been woven into a brief epic by some poet. The fact that in this epic, Brahma is the chief god is evidence to some scholars that it is still early, before the rise to prominence of the great divinities Vishnu or Shiva, who figure in the later stage of growth as on a par with Brahma. Here mention of the Greeks appears which would require a date as late as 300 B.C. or later. Macdonell assigns it to the period between 300 B.C. and the beginning of the Christian era. 48 The final stage in the development of the epic was the inclusion of a vast mass of didactic material in the epic -- doubtless in order to get it known. For the Epic was popular, and if some teaching matter could be incorporated into it, it might get attention which it would otherwise fail to receive. The process is comparable to the modern effort of teachers of religion and morals to attempt to get their material into the movies, on the radio, or in television, which are the media of mass appeal of today. So one thing after another was added, designed, says Macdonell, "to impress the people, especially kings, with the doctrines of a priestly caste. It thus at last assumed the character of a vast treatise on dharma in which the divine origin and immutability of Brahman institutions, the eternity of the caste system, and the subordination of all to the priest is laid down. 49

This was probably completed by about 400 AD. In the end it

comes out as a Vishnuite document in which the worship of Vishnu and his divine incarnations, especially Krishna, is promoted: This reaches its climax in the Bhagavad Gita which was one of the didactic sections included.

Sometimes the included material fits. There may be, after all, some appropriateness in inserting a lengthy discussion on immortality by two survivors of a dreadfully destructive battle as they survey the corpse-strewn battlefield. The Bhagavad Gita seems somewhat less appropriately placed. It interpolates at the precise moment when the battle lines are drawn and the warriors await only the blowing of the conch shell as signal to charge upon the enemy, a discussion running through eighteen chapters on very profound religious themes between Arjuna the warrior and Krishna the god, disguised as a charioteer. But to the Gita we will return later.

Only a very brief and inadequate summary of the Epic can be given here.

Of the house of Bharata there were two sons, Pandu and Dhrita-rashtra. Pandu had five sons called the Pandavas, by name Yudhisthira the eldest, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. Dhrita-rashtra, who was blind, had several sons of whom Duryodhana was the eldest and Duhsasana the bravest. This family was called the Kauravas.

On the death of Pandu, Dhrita-rashtra, the blind king, took his brother’s five sons into his own home to rear, and they were trained in the manly arts along with his own sons, by Drona. Arjuna proved the favorite. When they were all well trained Drona suggested a tournament in which they might exhibit their skill. This was a mistake, for Arjuna excelled all in his mastery of the bow, the sword, the spear, and aroused jealousy in the minds of his cousins, the Kauravas. The tournament ended in a general fight between the cousins. King Dhrita- rashtra saw the necessity of separating the rivals, so divided his kingdom, giving a distant section of it to the Pandavas. Yudhisthira, as eldest, exercised rule and soon won the love of his subjects.

Then one day the father of Draupadi, a very beautiful princess who had come to the age to wed, announced a swayamvara, at which a husband would be chosen for her, and all neighboring kings and princes were invited to contest for the hand of the lovely princess. This is quite a common literary device and recurs frequently in the epics and other Indian literature. It brought together a colorful company, not wholly unlike the tournaments associated with the knights of the Round Table in English lore. The particular test on this occasion was to shoot an arrow through a revolving wheel and strike the eye of a golden fish. The five Pandavas attended the event disguised as Brahmins. When none of the contestants could even bend and string the bow, Arjuna stepped forward in his Brahmin’s garb, to the surprise of the crowd which scorned the notion that a Brahmin could perform a feat of physical prowess. But Arjuna, putting aside his Brahmin’s robes, easily bent and strung the bow, then sent the arrow straight to its mark and by so doing won the beautiful princess, Draupadi. Returning home with the bride, one of the brothers called out to the mother on approaching the house: "We have made a fine acquisition today." She, not having seen what it was, replied: "Share it equally among yourselves, my sons." And the mother having spoken, her words could not be set aside. So, Draupadi became the wife of all five brothers. The irrevocability of a parent’s word is a widespread belief -- it will appear again in the Ramayana. In Hebrew custom the granting of the blessing to Jacob by Isaac is a good example.

The jealousy felt by the Kauravas was not lessened by this success of the Pandavas. They plotted their downfall. They invited them to a festival, and challenged them to a game of dice. Yudhisthira had a weakness for gambling. He lost steadily until he had staked all his possessions, his kingdom, his brothers and finally his wife -- and lost them all. This meant slavery for the cousins, but the blind king would not permit this. Instead, they were exiled to the forest for fourteen years. This, too, is a familiar motif in Indian literature. It appears again and again, notably in the Ramayana.

While they were in the forest saints came to visit them and, in order to entertain and encourage them, told a number of stories, among them the Ramayana itself, indicating that it is the older of the two. In this way there are introduced into the epic some remarkable stories which have no other connection with the epic than that they were recounted to the Pandavas. One of them, Savitri and Satyavan or Love Conquers Death, may have been introduced for didactic purposes, but aside from its teaching it is a good story, beautifully told. Briefly it is as follows:

Savitri, a beautiful princess, was the only daughter of King Asva-Pati. (The Indians, too, like stories of beautiful princesses and brave noble princes, just as English and American children do.) When she reached the age to marry instead of calling the usual swayamvara and inviting the princes to contend for her hand, she was permitted by her father to set out on a search for a husband -- certainly from the standpoint of the India of more recent times a very unusual thing for a woman to do. But she found no one who suited her. One day she came upon a hermit and his wife in a forester’s cottage and at first sight fell in love with their son Satyavan, a young woodsman. Really they were a royal family, deprived by wicked men of their rule. The king consented to their marriage. The sage Narada warned her that Satyavan was doomed to die in a year, but she braved widowhood, and insisted on the marriage.

So they were wed -- lived in a humble way in the forest, and were both very happy, but she with a secret dread. On the fateful day on which he was to die, she went with him to his wood-cutting, against his wish. He was suddenly stricken. She attempted to revive him, but to no avail. Yama, god of the dead, came to take his soul away. Savitri followed after him, unwilling to turn back, though importuned to do so by the ruler of the realm of the dead. "Wherever my lord is borne there shall I surely go; he is my all, I cannot leave him. I must go with thee." Yama offered her boon after boon if she would cease following him. Still she followed. To his insistent demand that she return she only replied, "I would go back if I could, but in your arms you carry my own life."

Finally, Yama, moved by her love, cried, "Thou art innocence itself, and tenderness and truth. Thou hast taught me lessons new of woman’s fidelity. Ask any boon thou wilt and it shall be thine." This time she cried: "I ask not wealth nor throne, nor heaven itself; I crave my heart, my life, give me my Satyavan." So Yama restored her beloved to her, and all was well. The parents were restored to their throne -- and they all lived happily ever afterward, we will suppose. 50

Another story told them was Nala and Damyanti. Both are princes. A swan carries to Damyanti the princess, word of Nala whom she has not seen, and she falls in love with him. When a swayamvara is set for her to choose a prince, four gods declare that Damyanti shall be for one of them and they send prince Nala as their messenger to woo for them, like John Alden in the Courtship of Miles Standish, despite the fact that he declares that he too loves her. Reluctantly he goes and pleads for them. She declares that it is him she loves and that she will reject the gods. They must all appear one day and she will choose him before them. On the given day princes and kings arrive, among them Nala and the gods, but they have all made themselves to appear exactly as Nala so that she may not be able to distinguish him from the rest. But she prays them so earnestly that at last they reveal themselves. She chooses Nala and the gods grant him eight boons. They are married and are very happy.

But Kali, another god (no connection with the goddess Kali, now so widely worshipped) is angered and swears vengeance. After several years of happy married life, two children having been born to them, Kali seeks to break up this home. He does so by means of gambling. Playing at dice, Nala, like Yudhisthira, gambles away everything, but refuses to throw for his wife. So he too is exiled.

She with true wifely devotion refuses to leave him, as Sita refuses to leave Rama. Under the spell of Kali, Nala abandons her. She, left alone and wandering in the forest, is about to be killed by a serpent, but is saved by a hunter who makes violent love to her. She calls down a curse upon him and he falls dead. Finally she becomes servant to a queen, and Nala the charioteer of the king. She eventually returns to her father but keeps up a constant search for Nala. At last she discovers his whereabouts. Then she asks her father to call a swayamvara for her to choose a husband. Nala comes as charioteer to the king he serves. They are reunited. He wins back his kingdom by a throw of the dice, the demon leaves him, and they live happily ever after. There is no moral not to gamble implied in the story.

After the long exile was ended preparations were made for a war between the two houses -- although attempts were made to effect a reconciliation between the rival clans. When these failed, before beginning the battle they drew up a set of rules of warfare-perhaps the first "London Conference" in the history of the human race. The provisions were most interesting, designed clearly to maintain good sportsmanship throughout. In what striking contrast they stand to the current practices in modern warfare. First, there must be no strategy or treachery. It must be a straightforward, honorable combat, everything above board! In intervals, between active fighting there was to be friendly intercourse between the camps. Since they were not to fight at night, this left time for fraternization. It must have made war so much pleasanter! Before they had finished they did fight at night also. Rules are so hard to keep in wartime! Fugitives were not to be killed. (Remember how in the last war prisoners were often machine gunned en masse.) Horsemen must fight only with horsemen, foot-soldiers with those likewise on foot. There must be a sporting chance given. No submarines attacking passenger ships, no airplanes bombing civilians. When fighting only with words -- it was the custom to hurl insults at each other endlessly before beginning to fight (cf. the Philistines and the Hebrew armies in the story of the slaying of Goliath 51 ) --

arms must not be taken up against the enemy. Nor should any attack be made without fair warning, no Pearl Harbors, no sudden air attacks on cities! And finally, when two were engaged in combat no third party should intervene. War was to be a fair contest of skill and prowess.

It need not be said that the rules were not always kept. There were acts of treachery, there was fighting at night, more than one did attack an enemy -- this is all related in the poem. Rules of war worked then about as well as now when it is the control of atomic weapons that is the desired goal of those who would make war more humane.

Finally the battle was joined and raged for eighteen days and some nights. There are recounted stories of valiant combat, individual and collective. Probably no stories of mortal struggle were ever more vividly told. One is reminded on page after page of the Iliad of Homer. Enormous numbers were engaged. Even chariots were counted by the millions. But at the end of the struggle only eleven survivors remained. The Pandavas were victorious but it was a tragic triumph. Yudhisthira, conscience-stricken at the vast sacrifice of life and property is about to abdicate his throne and become an ascetic. He is persuaded rather to perform the horse sacrifice and so relieve himself from his guilt. This he does. After he has given enormous quantities of gold to the priests he is freed from his sins and rules his kingdom justly and well.

But Krishna, who until now has been a warrior and friend and helper, becomes involved in another war and is killed by an arrow which struck him in the sole of the foot, his only vulnerable spot. He is to appear in the Bhagavad-Gita as god as we shall later see. Inconsolable for the death of their friend, Yudhisthira and his wife and brothers abandon the kingdom and set off on their last journey, wandering forth to the Himalaya mountains to the divine mountain Meru.

It is one of the most fascinating sections of the Great Epic, beautifully translated into English by Sir Edwin Arnold under the title The Great Journey. They set out walking, but one by one failed and died. First Draupadi, the wife of the five brothers; then Bhima and the rest, until only Yudhisthira alone, followed by a dog, at last reached heaven’s gate. He was warmly welcomed but the dog was not permitted to enter with him:

Yudhisthira protested:

"O Most High, O Thousand-eyed and wisest! can it be That one exalted should seem pitiless? Nay, let me lose such glory: for its sake I cannot leave one living thing I loved." 52

But "he is unclean," asserted the gods, and unfit to pass through heaven’s portal. Unconvinced, the hero, Yudhisthira, still refused to enter without the dog. Thereupon the king of heaven smiled and said:

"There be four sins, O Sakra, grievous sins: The first is making suppliants despair, The second is to slay a nursing wife, The third is spoiling Brahmans’ goods by force, The fourth is injuring an ancient friend. These four I deem not direr than the crime, If one, in coming forth from woe to weal, Abandon any meanest comrade then." 53

As he spoke, the hound vanished and there stood in his stead the Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma. Then said Indra:

. . . "Because thou didst not mount This car divine, lest the poor hound be shent Who looked to thee, lo! there is none in heaven Shall sit above thee, King! -- Bharata’s son! Enter thou now to the eternal joys, Living and in thy form. Justice and Love Welcome thee, Monarch! thou shalt throne with us!" 54

But entering heaven, Yudhisthira did not find his brothers nor his lovely wife whom he had expected to discover already there. So he cried:

. . . "I will not live A little space without those souls I loved. O Slayer of the demons! let me go Where Bhima and my brothers are, and she, My Draupadi, the Princess with the face Softer and darker than the Vrihat-leaf, And soul as sweet as are its odors. Lo! Where they have gone, there will I surely go." 55

The gods besought him to remain, but he refused:

. . . "Show me those souls! I cannot tarry where I have them not. Bliss is not blissful, just and mighty Ones! Save if I rest beside them. Heaven is there Where Love and Faith make heaven. Let me go!" 58

So, forth he went from heaven. Guided by a golden Deva, and descending by a path evil and dark, he entered through the "Sinners Road" into one of the hells. Some idea of the grim nature of the Hindu concept of these hells may be seen in the following passage:

. . . The tread of sinful feet Matted the thick thorns carpeting its slope! The smell of sin hung foul on them; the mire About their roots was trampled filth of flesh Horrid with rottenness, and splashed with gore Curdling in crimson puddles; where there buzzed And sucked, and settled, creatures of the swamp, Hideous in wing and sting, gnat-clouds and flies, With moths, toads, newts, and snakes red-gulleted; And livid, loathsome worms, writhing in slime Forth from skull-holes and scalps and tumbled bones. 57

While in this dreadful place, he suddenly heard the voices of those he loved:

. . .-- words of woe Humble and eager! and compassion seized His lordly mind. 58

Then Yudhisthira called aloud, "Who speaks with me?" Out of the darkness came the voices of Karna and Bhima, Arjuna and the other brothers, and finally the voice of his wife, Draupadi. This angered him, for only recently he had seen in heaven men against whom he had fought in the great war, and he could not understand how such as they were accorded paradise, and those he loved consigned to hell. Every instinct urged him to turn back toward heaven, but to his angel guide he said:

. . . "Go to those thou serv’st; Tell them I come not thither. Say I stand Here in the throat of hell, and here will bide -- Nay, if I perish -- while my well-belov’d Win ease and peace by any pains of mine." 59

Whereupon the angel returned with the message to the gods. Then the gods answered Yudhisthira: "King Yudhisthira! O thou long-armed Lord, This is enough! All Heaven is glad of thee. It is enough! Come, thou most blessed one, Unto thy peace, well-gained. . . . 60

"Come thou to see! Karna, whom thou didst mourn, -- That mightiest archer, master in all wars, -- He hath attained, shining as doth the sun; Come thou and see! Grieve no more, King of men! Whose love helped them and thee, and hath its meed. Rajas and maharajas, warriors, aids, -- All thine are thine forever. Krishna waits To greet thee coming, ‘companied by gods, Seated in heaven, from toils and sorrows saved. Son! there is golden fruit of noble deeds, Of prayer, alms, sacrifice. The most just gods Keep thee thy place above the highest saints, Where thou shalt sit, divine, compassed about With royal souls in bliss, as Hari sits." 61

So everything ends happily: . . . the rejoicing King (Thy ancestor, O Liege!) proceeded straight Unto that river’s brink, which floweth pure Through the Three Worlds, mighty, and sweet, and praised. There, being bathed, the body of the King Put off its mortal, coming up arrayed In grace celestial, washed from soils of sin, From passion, pain, and change. So, hand in hand With brother-gods, glorious went Yudhisthir, Lauded by lovely minstrelsy, and songs Of unknown music, where those heroes stood -- The princess of the Pandavas, his kin -- And lotus-eyed and loveliest Draupadi, Waiting to greet him, gladdening and glad. 62

Unlike the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is traditionally supposed to be the work of a single poet, Valmiki. The story of its composition and recital before King Rama himself is told in the twelfth book of the poem itself. This is really a supplement to the real epic which properly ends with the happy return of lovely Sita to her lord after her long captivity by the Rakshasas. But first the story, one of the most interesting ever told. Very briefly, it is the story of King Rama and his faithful queen who was abducted by a demon and carried away to Lanka (Ceylon) where, despite all his blandishments, Sita remained unmoved and scrupulously loyal to Rama. Meanwhile Rama had for a long time vainly sought to find her, until aided by his monkey friend, Hanuman, he discovered her whereabouts and after a bitterly fought war he was victorious and rescued his beloved wife.

Rama was a prince of the Kosalas, eldest son of King Dasa-ratha and, as such, the heir apparent to the throne. Came a day when the good king decided to abdicate the throne and place his eldest son upon it. Great preparations were made for the event and with much enthusiasm the people awaited the crowning of their well-loved prince. But behind the scenes trouble stalked. Dasa-ratha had more than one queen and one of the younger ones coveted the throne for her son rather than for Rama. By a ruse Dasa-ratha was tricked into offering her any boon she might ask, and the beautiful, but wicked, Kaikeyi at once demanded that her son be enthroned instead of Rama, and that Prince Rama be banished for fourteen years to Dandak’s forest. The king was heart-broken by the cruel request, but having given his word, there was nothing he could do about it -- (cf. the story of Jacob and Esau, and the word of the mother of the Pandavas telling the brothers to share their prize, Draupadi. Isaac could not restore the inheritance to Esau, even though it had been secured by deceit. It must remain with Jacob, the supplanter, because the father had spoken.) This is a frequent motif in stories out of the ancient world.

Rama might have refused to accept this cruel reversal of the plan for his coronation. He might have lifted the standard of revolt and won by battle what had been snatched out of his grasp. But he did nothing of the sort. He quietly accepted his father’s word as law, and began to prepare for his exile in the great forest.

But Rama was married. He had won in a great tournament, described in the first book of the Epic, the princess of the Videhas, "soft-eyed" Sita. She must not accompany him in his banishment. She must remain at court, serve his mother, even his rival Bharat, half-brother, now crowned king, and await faithfully the day of his return. The rigors of forest life were not for her. However, Sita was of sterner stuff. She will not listen to him but cries:

"Lightly I dismiss the counsel which my lord hath lightly said, For it ill becomes a warrior and my husband’s princely grade. For the faithful woman follows where her wedded lord may lead. In the banishment of Rama, Sita’s exile is decreed. If the righteous son of Raghu wends to forest dark and drear Sita steps before her husband wild and thorny paths to clear." 63

Here speaks Indian womanhood, for Sita is the prototype of all that is lovely and virtuous in woman. She is the ideal woman of India, sweet, compliant, loyal, humble in the presence of her lord, utterly devoted to him and to his service. This ideal is breaking down at some points in modern India, but for centuries and even today in most respects Sita embodies the Indian ideal of feminine charm and loveliness and character. She was eventually deified. as was Rama, and is very widely worshipped by India’s women today.

Rama’s brother, Lakshman, also begged to accompany him in his exile, so the three set off, lamented by parents and by the citizens of Kosala, for their fourteen years in Dandak’s forest. Even when Bharat, the son for whom Kaikeyi had demanded the throne but who himself had had no part in the plot, came to beseech Rama to return, he would not do so, for "a righteous father’s mandate duteous son may not recall."

Bharat returned to rule but vowed to wear hermit’s garb for the duration. He besought Rama that he might have his sandals with which to decorate his throne, and if at the end of the fourteen years Rama should not return alive he declared he would die upon the pyre.

While dwelling in the forest there appeared a Rakshasa maiden, sister of the king of the Rakshasas who, when she saw Rama, fell violently in love with him and besought him to forsake Sita and marry her. Repulsed, she attacked Sita to kill her. Lakshman defended her, cutting off the Rakshasa’s nose and ears. This brought on a bloody struggle with other evil demons. These were vanquished but sought revenge. They had the power to assume any shape they desired. One of them became a lovely deer and wandered near where Sita one day sat. She at once wanted the deer captured or killed. Rama set out to do so, bidding Lakshman remain with Sita. Unable to overtake or trap the deer, Rama shot the animal, which as it fell sent out a piercing cry, imitating Rama’ s voice. "Speed my faithful brother, Lakshman, helpless in the woods I die." Reluctant to leave Sita he, nevertheless, urged by her insistent plea, left her for a moment to rescue Rama. This gave the opportunity which Ravan, the Rakshasa king, awaited, and taking the form of a hermit he appeared before Sita. Seeing her surpassing beauty he fell madly in love with her. Passionately he sought to woo her, but was vigorously repulsed. Undeterred by her piteous pleadings and her unheard calls to Rama, Ravan seized her and entering his celestial car was borne swiftly to Lanka, Ravan’s home.

Rama was heart-broken at the loss of his faithful wife and sought her, helped of course by Lakshman.

The monkey king Surgriva 64 had also had the misfortune to have been robbed of his wife and kingdom by his brother. Rama agrees to help him against his brother if Surgriva will aid him in finding Sita. Successful in a battle with his evil brother, by Rama’s aid, Surgriva commissions Hanuman, one of his counsellors and son of the Wind-god, to find Sita. He locates her in Lanka by the aid of a vulture who had witnessed the abduction. Arriving at the ocean, he is at first dismayed, but with a mighty leap he sails through the air for four days, reaches Ceylon, and finds Sita who, because she had repulsed Ravan’s advances, had been confined in an Asoka grove. He reassures her of her deliverance, takes to the air again and returns to report the success of his mission. Follows then the battle with Ravan. The monkey army is enabled to cross the straits by building a bridge and after fearful slaughter Ravan is slain in mortal combat with Rama. Like Hydra, he seems to have grown a new head when Rama’s sword severed one from his body. But at last Rama’s sword finds its way to the Rakshasa’s heart and he falls. Thus is Sita liberated.

But strangely enough, from our viewpoint, Rama will not receive her back as his wife. She, after bitter complaint, requests to die on a funeral pyre and Rama consents. Invoking the fire as witness of her innocence, she rushes into the flames, but Agni the fire-god arises out of the burning pyre and rescuing Sita, gives her to Rama. Rama, who now declares that he never had entertained doubts of her purity, receives her back, asserting that it was only to prove her innocence to the people that he permitted the ordeal. So they are reunited and rule happily over their kingdom.

Here scholars think probably the real Epic ended, but a final Book VII is added. In this it is recounted that suspicion was abroad concerning Sita, and the morals of the women of the land were being endangered. Unable to bear the reproach that he is setting a bad example to his people, Rama has Lakshman take Sita into the forest and desert her -- nice man! Here she finds shelter in the hermitage of Valmiki, an ascetic. Shortly after, she gives birth to twin sons, Kusa and Lava. Years pass; the twins, now grown, have become pupils of Valmiki. Rama organizes a horse sacrifice. Valmiki and his pupils attend and before Rama himself they recite in 500 cantos the story of Rama and Sita which Valmiki has composed.

Rama learns that the two young men are sons of Sita, and sends word by Valmiki asking her to purify herself by an oath before the whole assembled company. On the following day Valmiki brings Sita and the two boys, and solemnly declares that they are true sons of Rama. Rama declares himself satisfied, but still desires that Sita purify herself by means of an oath. Sita thereupon says, "As truly as I have never, even with so much as a single thought, thought of another than Rama -- may Goddess Earth open her arms to me! As truly as I have always, in thought, word and deed, honored only Rama -- may Goddess Earth open her arms to me. As I have here spoken the truth and never known another than Rama -- may Goddess Earth open her arms to me!" Whereupon, Mother Earth appears and vanishes with her into a funow.

So Sita whose very name means "the field-furrow" returns to her own element whence, as told in the first book, she had been miraculously born. Rama is greatly distressed and begs Mother Earth to restore her to him, but only god Brahma comes to comfort him with the hope that he will be reunited with her in heaven. Soon thereafter, Rama gives over his kingdom to his two sons and resumes his place in heaven as Vishnu, as whose incarnation he had been born, according to Book I.

It seems obvious on reading the entire Ramayana that both the first and last books are not real parts of the Epic, but later additions. In the Epic proper there is no indication that Rama is other than a hero. It was apparently after the deification of Rama that the other books were added. In the main part of the work it is Indra who is invoked wherever religion or mythology enters in. How long a time would be required for the process of deification to take place? Certainly a matter of centuries. Winternitz thinks that the poem had assumed its present form by about the end of the second century B.C., at least two centuries earlier than the Mahabharata. There is no agreement among specialists in the field. On the whole, however, the central core of the Mahabharata is generally considered older than the real epic story of the Ramayana.

What is significant from the standpoint of religion is that by the time these great poems were completed there had come about a very important set of changes in the religious outlook. Vedic religion was pretty well gone. The old gods, certainly in the didactic parts of both epics, had lost their power and a new group were now central, especially Vishnu, who had been but a minor sun deity in the Vedic period, was now a supreme God, who along with Brahma, the creator God, and Shiva the destroyer, was regarded as the Preserver -- and worshipped chiefly through his incarnations. The two most important of these were Krishna, found in the Mahabharata, and Rama in the Ramayana, first as hero, then as god incarnate in the later portions.

The Krishna incarnation, perhaps the most widely worshipped of all of them, finds his highest development as divinity in a portion of the didactic epic, known as the Bhagavad Gita or the Lord’s song. This excerpt from the Mahabharata has become perhaps the most widely read and best loved of all the scriptures of India. It is found in cheap editions, even vest pocket editions, of the sort almost anyone can own, and is avidly read by multitudes of Indians. It has also become the most widely diffused of the Indian sacred writings in the western world. It has been translated more frequently into English than any other Indian sacred work. Some years ago I found that it had been translated thirty-six times into English, and a number of editions have since appeared. Some of the more widely read translations are indicated on page 144. The writer’s own favorite version, is that of Sir Edwin Arnold which, while not as scholarly as many versions, has caught the spirit of the poet author and rendered it into very beautiful English poetic form.

The poem is a dialogue between Arjuna the great epic hero, and Krishna disguised as his charioteer, just on the eve of the great battle of the Bharatas. The foes are drawn up ready and waiting for the signal to attack. Then the warrior Arjuna, reflecting on how kinsmen were about to destroy each other in battle, suddenly speaks -- and in his speech gives utterance to one of the noblest protests against war ever uttered by a soldier. He says, in the translated version of Edwin Arnold:

"Krishna! as I behold, come here to shed Their common blood, yon concourse of our kin, My members fail, my tongue dries in my mouth, A shudder thrills my body, and my hair Bristles with horror; from my weak hand slips Gandiv, the goodly bow; a fever burns My skin to parching; hardly may I stand; . . .

"It is not good, O Keshav! nought of good Can spring from mutual slaughter! Lo, I hate Triumph and domination, wealth and ease, Thus sadly won! . . .

"Shall I deal death on these Even though they seek to slay us? Not one blow, O Madhusudan! will I strike to gain The rule of all Three Worlds; then, how much less To seize an earthly kingdom!" 65

But Krishna replies, and it is interesting that here it is the god, not the warrior, who is defending war and justifying the slaughter of his enemies. He says:

"How hath this Weakness taken thee? Whence springs The inglorious trouble, shameful to the brave Barring the path of virtue? Nay, Arjun! Forbid thyself to feebleness! it mars Thy warrior-name! cast off the coward-fit! Wake! Be thyself! Arise, Scourge of thy foes!" 66

The basis of that defense is that man cannot be killed. Only the body can be destroyed, the spirit lives on.

"He who shall say, ‘Lo, I have slain a man!’ He who shall think, ‘Lo, I am slain!’ those both Know naught. Life cannot slay. Life is not slain! . . .

"Nay, but as when one layeth His outworn robes away, And taking new ones, sayeth ‘These will I wear today!’ So putteth by the spirit Lightly its garb of flesh And passeth to inherit A residence afresh. I say to thee that weapons reach not the Life."

Then cried Krishna:

. . . "Do thy part Be mindful of thy name, and tremble not! Nought better can betide a martial soul Than lawful war; happy the warrior To whom comes joy of battle -- comes as now Glorious and fair, unsought, opening for him A gateway unto Heaven. But if thou shunn’st This honorable field -- a Kshatriya -- (member of warrior caste) If knowing thy duty and thy task, thou bidd’st Duty and task go by -- that shall be sin! And those to come shall speak the infamy From age to age; but infamy is worse For men of noble blood to bear than death!" 67

In this statement is found the very heart of Indian ethics. To perform the duty or dharma, corresponding to one’s position --that is to fulfil the requirements of ethics as Indians today see it.

The poem contains eighteen chapters, each treating of some special theme; one, of the way of salvation by work, another by knowledge -- but throughout there is emphasis upon salvation by faith or devotion to Krishna. There are passages here that seem to come right out of the New Testament. Only the name of Jesus would have to be substituted for that of Krishna to make it sound exactly like the gospels.

"Who cleave, who seek in Me Refuge from birth and death, those have the Truth." 68

"Thou too, when heart and mind are fixed on Me Shalt surely come to Me. All who cleave With never-wavering will of firmest faith Owning none other gods: all come to Me." 69

Perhaps the reason for its almost universal appeal is the fact that it is eclectic in its religious approach. One may seek salvation and find it by various paths. It becomes every man’s book. But it is preeminently a book of devotion. It has been compared to the Gospel of John, which, more than any other of the Gospels, has served as a devotional guide for Christians through the centuries. One writer says that if Christianity is ever to make an appeal to the educated Indian it will be through the Gospel of John, because it makes an appeal similar to that of the Gita. It is noteworthy that to many in the west who are no longer held by the ties of orthodoxy, the Gita has become a favorite bedside table book. Perhaps the thing that made it appeal to so many in India was its universalism. Salvation was for every man of every class -- for women as well as men. Krishna throws open the road to whosoever will come.

"Be certain none can perish, trusting Me! O Pritha’s Son! whoso will turn to Me, Though they be born from the very womb of Sin, Woman or man; sprung of the Vaisya caste Or lowly disregarded Sudra,-- all Plant foot upon the highest path; how then The holy Brahmans and My Royal Saints? Ah! ye who into this ill world are come-Fleeting and false -- set your faith fast on Me! Fix heart and thought on Me! Adore Me! Bring Offerings to Me! Make Me prostrations! Make Me your supremest joy! and, undivided, Unto My rest your spirits shall be guided." 70

In India many stories and legends have grown up about the Gita. Margaret Noble relates this one:

In the Gita is found a word of Krishna which says: "They who depend upon me, putting aside all care, whatsoever they need, I myself carry it to them." A Brahmin one day, copying the verse, hesitated when he came to the word "carry." This seemed to him somehow to be irreverent. How should Krishna "carry" anything? For in India to carry a load is a menial task. So he substituted for it the word, "send." A little later his wife said: "There is no food in the house." Then said he, "Let us ask the Lord to fulfil his promise. Meanwhile he went to bathe.

Soon a youth came to the door with a basket of food. "Who sent this?" the wife asked. "Your husband asked me to carry it," he replied, giving it to her: As she took the basket she noted cuts and gashes on the youth’s breast above his heart.

"Alas, who wounded thee?" she cried.

"Your husband, before he called me, cut me with a small sharp weapon." Then the youth vanished. The husband being reproved by his wife for his ill treatment of the young man, declared that he had not left the house. Then they knew. And they restored the word "carry" to its rightful place. 71

Mahatma Gandhi had the highest regard for the Gita. And, strangely enough, despite the defense of killing in war given by Krishna the god, he finds in it a support for his doctrine of satyagraha or soul-force by which non-violent means he achieved such signal victories and finally won the independence of India. He wrote of it on occasion:

Nothing elates me so much as the music of the Gita or the Ramayana by Tulasidas, the only two books in Hinduism I may be said to know. When I fancied I was taking my last breath, the Gita was my solace. 72

The literary problems raised by the Gita are numerous, and scholars are not at all in agreement as to its origin or the date. By some it is regarded as an original poem setting forth Krishnaism based upon the Sankhya-Yoga philosophy, but modified later by the additions in which the Vedanta is taught. 73 Others think that it is an old verse Upanishad worked over by a poet in the interest of Krishnaism, after the beginning of the Christian era. 74

S. Radhakrishnan, latest and perhaps most eminent of the translators and commentators on the Gita, thinks that "from its archaic construction and internal references we may infer that it is definitely a work of the pre-Christian era. Its date may be assigned to the fifth century B.C., though the text may have received many alterations in subsequent times". 75

For our purposes it does not greatly matter. It will be enough to say that somewhere, not far from the beginning of the Christian era it attained its present form and has been since that time the highest expression of the essentially devotional type of Hinduism at its best. It is a tribute to its worth that in the course of time it should have taken its place alongside the Veda as sruti.

"Is the teaching of the Gita 76 as authoritative as that of the Sruti?" runs a question asked in D. Sarma’s Primer of Hinduism.

"Yes, the Gita being the essence of the Upanishads is considered as authoritative as the Sruti. 77

The Puranas have had much less attention from scholars than has the literature of India thus far studied. Yet contemporary Hinduism is perhaps more influenced by them than by the other scriptures. They are the scriptures of the sectarian branches of Hinduism which, while paying lip service to the Vedas as most precious, draw much of their belief about the gods of their own primary devotion and worship from these books. For most of the gods which now are popularly worshipped 78 in India are gods of little importance, or quite unknown to the Vedas. Vishnu is, to be sure, a not very important sun-god in the Rig-Veda, but Rama, Shiva, Sita, Kali, Durga, Uma, Parvati, Ganesha, Lakshmi are strangers to the Veda. They are, some of them, known in the Epics, but these in religious belief if not in time, are closer to contemporary religions than they are to the Veda.

Puranic literature which by very definition of the word Purana means old or ancient, is purportedly the record of the very beginnings of the world, i.e., they are books of origins like Genesis in the Old Testament. Certainly they are the source of the popular ideas of the creation of the world, the gods, and early history of the race. They are, it need hardly be said, largely legendary. Theoretically a Purana is supposed to deal with five subjects: (1) the creation; (2) re-creation, the periodical destruction and renewal of the worlds; (3) the genealogy of the gods and the ancient Rishis; (4) the great time periods, each of which has a primal ancestor or Manu; and (5) the history of the early dynasties which trace their origin to the sun or the moon. Actually the existing Puranas do not all follow this scheme. This may have been the stereotyped form of ancient Puranas to which reference is made in very early literary sources, but certainly not of the Puranas of today.

The Puranas themselves mention eighteen Puranas which are the generally recognized ones today. Strangely enough each lists them as though no one is older than any other. Obviously this listing would be a late addition. They are, usually listed in this order:

(1) Brahma (B) ; (2) Padma (V) ; (3) Vishnu (V) ; (4) Shiva (S) ; or Vayu; (5) Bhagavata (V) ; (6) Narada (V) ; (7) Markandeya (B) ; (8) Agni (S) ; (9) Bhavisya (B) ; (10) Brahmavaivarta (B) ; (11) Linga (S) ; (12) Varaha (V) ; (13) Skanda (S) ; (14) Vamana (B) ; (15) Kaurma (S) ; (16) Matsya (S) ; (17) Garuda (V) ; (18) Brahmananda (B) .

They are generally sectarian in content. The particular divinity to which each is partial is indicated in the above list by the initial letter following the name of the Purana -- "V" for Vishnu, "S" for Shiva and "B" for Brahma. It should be said that, in general, Brahma here means not the "neuter world soul," but the personal creator god who with Vishnu and Shiva forms the Hindu Trimurti, sometimes translated Trinity.

A typical legend establishing one of the gods as the preferred divinity of worship is found in the Padma Purana, and incidentally reveals the strong sectarian bias of that Purana which is clearly Vishnuite.

Once a quarrel arose among the Rishis as to which of the three great gods, Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva, was most deserving of worship. Accordingly the great ascetic Bhrgu was commissioned to go to the gods and judge for himself personally which was best. He first goes to the mountains Kailasa to visit Shiva. But Shiva is enjoying the love of his wife and doesn’t admit him at all. Bhrgu thereupon pronounces a curse upon Shiva, condemning him to take the form of the generative organs -- thus apparently accounting for the worship of the Yoni and Linga. 79

He goes then to the world of Brahma but he is seated upon his lotus throne surrounded by all the gods, and, filled with pride, does not even acknowledge the homage of Bhrgu. He too is cursed by the Rishi, to the effect that no one shall worship him -- an explanation, doubtless, of the fact that almost no worship is actually accorded Brahma.

Coming to the abode of Vishnu, the Rishi finds the god asleep. Roughly kicking him in the chest, Vishnu is awakened, only to stroke gently the sage’s foot and express his gratitude and honor at his visit. He rises and with his wife does honor to the guest. Whereupon Bhrgu bursts into tears of joy, and cries: "Thou alone shalt be worshipped by the Brahmans. No other of the gods is worthy to be worshipped." He then returns and makes his report to the assembled Rishis. 80

In this same Purana, Shiva, talking with his wife, himself declares the power and glory of Vishnu and his incarnations. In the course of his eulogy he tells the Rama story. He further declares, in answer to a question of Parvati, that the adherents of the Shivite sect are heretics. Undoubtedly equally sectarian proof of the superiority of Shiva occurs in the Shivite Puranas.

In the fifth book of the Vishnu-Purana which is given up wholly to stories of Krishna, chief avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, is to be found some of the most interesting material for the general reader. The stories are almost exactly like those found in the Harivamsa, usually considered by Indians as an appendix to the Mahabharata, but hardly to be distinguished from the Puranas in general style, character, or content. Here we can only sketch a few of the Krishna stories.

First of all the manner of his birth. A prophecy was made to an evil king Kamsa that the eighth son of Devaki his aunt, and wife of Vasudeva, would kill him. Accordingly he determined that the child should be destroyed. But immediately after Krishna’s birth he was exchanged for a child of a cowherd, Nanda and his wife. This child was slain by Kamsa, and Krishna grew up as a child of humble cowherd folk. Remarkable stories are told of his childhood which remind one of some of the stories told of the child Jesus in the apocryphal gospels.

One day his foster mother left him lying asleep under a wagon. Awakening and impatient for food, little Krishna with one foot upset the wagon. Another time to keep him from running away, she tied a rope around his waist and secured it to a heavy mortar. "Now get away, if you can," she said. But Krishna simply walked off with it. When it caught between two trees, he tore the trees out by their roots.

He became a trickster and played all sorts of jokes not only upon his playmates, but upon older folk as well. On one occasion he came upon a group of gopis or milkmaids bathing in a pool. He seized their robes and hid them.

As a youth he was handsome and amorous. The gopis all fell ‘in love with him. The amorous exploits of the youthful bucolic lover, told in this and in other Puranas, were later to become the basis of an erotic phase of Krishna worship in which the sports of Krishna were taken all too literally as cult practices. Others, less literal-minded, made them symbolic of mystic experience of the soul with god.

He slays monsters and dragons, and overcomes evil rulers. He rebels at the worship of Indra, and bids his followers arrange a mountain sacrifice instead. Indra is infuriated and sends upon them a terrible storm. Krishna lifts a mountain and holds it over them as an umbrella and they are protected. He attends a festival arranged by Kamsa, the bad king, bends and breaks a bow which not even the gods could bend, tears out the tusk of a great elephant which sought to trample him, and kills the beast, and finally slays Kamsa himself. He even descends into the realm of the dead, overcomes Yama, the god of death, and restores the son of a teacher who, as his fee, had required that Krishna bring back the son who had drowned at sea.

Space forbids further indication of the detailed content of these books. In their legendary accounts of the world and the gods they are the basis of much of the religious faith of India. In their regulations for daily living, in their glorification of sacred places and acts of worship they are a great stimulant to the religious practices of the people.

While it is generally agreed that there were some very ancient Puranas, upon which, to some extent, the Puranas as we have them are based, they are the latest of all the sacred writings. Puranas or at least writings that purport to be Puranas, usually called Upapuranas, have continued to appear until within relatively recent times. They all purport to come from Vyasa, reputed author of the Mahabharata, but obviously they represent a slow growth across the centuries. In literary style they stand far below the great earlier writings. They are diffuse, confused, and contradictory both within and among themselves, but India has never been primarily concerned with consistency in her literature. Indeed, there is found in one of the sacred law books this statement in effect: "If within this book there are found contradictory statements they are both to be taken as true."

Thus we come to the end of this very sketchy, yet relatively lengthy, account of Indian sacred literature. In it is to be found heights and depths of spiritual understanding that compare favorably with the best that have been found anywhere. Its vastness, its diversity, on the whole, its lack of discriminating judgment as to what may be called sacred -- so that it includes both the highly moral and the base -- make it a literature difficult for peoples of Hebrew-Christian backgrounds to appreciate fully. But that it is interesting to study, challenging to scholarship, and not without great interest in many of its parts for the general reader, there can be no doubt. To Hindus it contains the clue to salvation and the good life as at various levels they apprehend it.

Sacred Literature of Hinduism

Sources for Further Reading

References have been made to specific books on the several dlvisions or books of Hindu sacred writings. Here are mentioned sets, or series of volumes, or single volumes which contain translations of some parts of that literature.

On The Vedas

Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 32 and 42 and 46 (42 Atharva Veda) . Sacred Books and Literature of the East, Vol. 9

A. A. Macdonell, Hymns of the Big-Veda, Association Press, Calcutta, 1922.

R. T. H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig-Veda, E. J. Lazarus, Benares, 2nd Edition, 1896-1897.

On The Brahmanas

Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 12 and 44.

Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 25.

Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 9.

On The Upanishads

Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 1 and 15.

H. E. Hume, Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Charles Scribner’s Sons, N. Y

On The Epics

Romesh Dutt, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Everyman’s Edition, E. P. Dutton and Company, N. Y., 1929.

Sir Edwin Arnold, Indian Idylls, Roberts Brothers, Boston. The Ramayana, translated by R. T. H. Griffith, 5 Vols.

On The Bhagavad Gita

Sir Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial, Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1885. It has appeared in many editions.

Franklin Edgerton, The Bhagavad Gita, 2 Vols., Harvard University Press, 1946.

S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavad Gita with Sanskrit Text and English translation and notes, Harper and Brothers, N. Y., 1948.

There are nearly two score English translations in circulation.

On The Legal Literature

Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 2, 7,14 and 25. The last is the most famous Laws of Manu.

On The Puranas

H. W. Wilson, The Vishnu Purana, 5 vols., London, 1864 --1877.

In the Anthologies

Hindu Scripture, edited by Nicol MacNicol, Everyman’s Library, J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1938.

The Wisdom of China and India, edited by Lin Yutang, Random House, Inc., NewYork, 1942, pp. 1-315.

Harvard Classics, Vol. 45, pp. 799-884.

Lewis Browne, The World’s Great Scriptures, pp. 57-132.

Ruth Smith, The Tree of Life, pp. 71-114.

Ballon, The Bible of the World, pp. 3-180.

Grace Turnbull, Tongues of Fire, pp. 27-42, 245-267.

Frost, Sacred Writings of the World’s Great Religions, pp. 9-68.

Sohrab, The Bible of Mankind, pp. 31-90.

1. This is given by Winternitz, Vol. I, p. 35, f.n., as from law book of Gautama XII, 4-6. 2. R.T.H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig-Veda 3. H.D. Griswold, The Religion of the Rig-Veda , Vol. 1, Book VI: 28, pp. 589-590 4. Ralph T.H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig-Veda , Vol. 1, Book VI: 28, pp. 589-590. 5. H.D. Griswold, The Religion of Rig-Veda , pp. 192, 193. 6. Cf. Latin ignus for fire. 7. Ralph T.H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig-Veda, Vol.I, pp.335-336. 8. H.D. Griswold, The Religion of Rig-Veda, p.222. 9. Griswold, The Religion of Rig-Veda, pp.241-242. 10. Ralph T.H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig-Veda , Vol. II, Book IX: 4, pp. 271-272. 11. Book VII, 86, Griswold, Religion of the Rig-Veda pp. 121-122. 12. Ibid., Book V. 85, 7-8 p. 124. 13. H.D. Griswold, op. cit ., Book I, 25, p.128 14. H.D. Griswold, Religion of the Rig-Veda , Book X, 121, pp. 348-349 15. H.D. Griswold, Religion of the Rig-Veda , Book X, 90, pp. 344-346. 16. Winternitz, Vol. I, p. 36, f.n. Takakusu translation, p. 182. 17. Op. cit ., I, p. 178. 18. Quoted by Winternitz, II, p. 178 19. Sacred Books of the East , Vol. 42, p. 8. 20. Sacred Books of the East , Vol. 42, pp. 159-160. 21. Sacred Books of the East , Vol. 2. Introduction p.ix 22. Winternitz I, p. 96. 23. Satapatha-Brahmana XIII, 1,2,3. Sacred Books of the East , Vol. 44, pp. 276-277. 24. Sacred Books of the East , Vol. 12. Introduction, p.xxii. 25. Maitrayani-Samhita I, 5,12. Quoted by Winternitz 26. Monier-Williams’ Translation, Indian Wisdom , p. 32 27.Some Scholars make no distinction between the Aranyakas and the Upanishads. 28. Selections will be found in The Bible of the World, pp. 38-77; Lewis Browne, Scriptures of the Great Religions. pp. 66-96; Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India, pp. 31-53; The Ten Principal Upanishads, put into English by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats, The Macmillan Co., N. Y., 1939. 29. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1931. 30. Reprinted from Thirteen Principal Upanishads, by Robert E. Hume; 2nd ed. copyright 1931 by Oxford University Press; used by permission of the publishers. Pp. 118-119. 31. R. E. Hume, Thirteen Principal Upanishads, p. 113. 32. Hume, The Thirteen Principle Upanishads , pp. 119-120. 33. Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads , p. 133. 34. Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads , p. 163 35. Ibid ., p. 140 36. Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishshads , p. 163 37. Hume, The Thirteen Principals Upanishads , pp. 396-397 38. Ibid ., p. 423 39. Ibid ., p. 373 40. A very brief, rather oversimplified discussion of the main features of each of these schools is to be found in Theos Bernard, Hindu Philosophy, The Philosophical Library, New York, 1947. Two great treatises by contemporary Indian philosophers are S. N. Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, 3 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1922-1940, and S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 yols., George Allen and Unwin, London, 1927. 41. Quoted in Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 9, P. 67. 42. See my These Also Believe , Macmillan, N.Y. (1949) 43. Sarma, Primer of Hinduism , p. 24 44. Apastamba, I, 1,1, 4-8. Sacred Books of the East , Vol.II,p.1. 45. It is translated in Vol. 25, Sacred Books of the East. Other law books are: The Institutes of Vishnu, Vol. VII, Sacred Books of the East. The Apastamba and Baudhayana, Vol. XI; Gautama and Vasishtba, Vol. XIV; Grihya Sutras, Vol. XXIX, XXX. Briefer selections of some of these are to be found in the Sacred Books and Literature of the East, Vol. 9. 46. D.S. Sarma, Primer of Hinduism , p. 10. 47. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata , pp. 332-333. 48. A. A. Macdonell, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 286. It should be said that, in general, Indian scholars incline to assign the Epics to an earlier date than do western scholars. 49. Op. cit ., p. 286 50. This poem is to be found in Dutt’s translation of the epic, in The Ramayana and Mahabharata, pp. 217-230, Everyman’s Library, E. P. Dutton & Co., N. Y. 51. I Samuel 17:1-49. 52. Edwin Arnold, Indian Idylls , p.292. 53. Ibid ., p. 294. 54. Ibid ., p. 295. 55. Edwin Arnold, Indian Idylls , p. 298. 56. Ibid ., p. 305. 57. Ibid ., p. 306. 58. Ibid ., p. 309. 59. Edwin Arnold, Indian Idylls , p. 311. 60. Ibid ., p. 314 61. Ibid ., pp. 315-316 62. Edwin Arnold, Indian Idylls , p. 318. 63. Romesh Dutt, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Everyman’s Library, E . P. Dutton & Co., N. Y., 1929, p. 34. 64. Dutt explains that this reference to monkeys is only the result of "that contempt for aboriginal races which has marked civilized conquerors in all ages." This led the poet to describe the indigenous peoples among whom Rama found himself as monkeys and bears, or as the monkey people and the bear people. Op. cit., p. 89. 65. Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial , pp. 17-19 66. Ibid ., p. 21. 67. Pp. 26-28, passim 68. P. 77. 69. P. 81. 70. Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial , pp.93-94. 71. Web of Indian Life , p. 211. 72. Gandhi, Young India , pp. 800-801. 73. R. Garbe, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics , Vol. 2, p. 53 74. Farquhar, Outlines of Religious Literature of India , p. 92. 75. The Bhagavad Gita, Harper and Brothers, N.Y., 1948, p. 14 76. Some of the better known translations of the Gita are the following: S. Radhakrishnan. The Bhagavad Gita, with an introductory essay, Sanskrit Text, English translation and notes. Harper and Brothers, N. Y., 1948. Franklin Edgerton, The Bhagavad Gita, translated and interpreted. 2 vols. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1946. The first volume contains the Sanskrit text and Edgerton’s translation. Vol. 2 contains his interpretation and also Edwin Arnold’s translation. Sir Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial, published in many separate editions. To be found also in Sacred Books and Literature of the East, Vol. 9. Swami Paramananda, The Blessed Lord’s Song, in Lin Yutang, Wisdom of China and India, pp. 57-114. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, Marcel Rodd Co., Hollywood, Cal., 1946, The Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God. Excerpts included in Lewis Browne, The World’s Great Scriptures, pp. 99-119. Mrs. Annie Besant, The Bhagavad Gita, The Lord’s Song. Excerpts included in Ballou, The World Bible, pp. 85-101. Mrs. Besant was a Theosophist leader. 77. P. 13. 78. Many modern Hindus, ofcourse, regard these all as but different aspects of the same reality. 79. The female and the male sex organs. 80. As given in Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, I, pp. 542-543.

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Lessons of the Indian Epics: The Ramayana

Sculpture of Shiva in copper alloy from India (Tamil Nadu).

Wikimedia Commons

“You do not know dharma, or worldly affairs, or the laws governing enjoyment, nor the people's behavior in different conditions and circumstances: and yet you blame me. The whole earth belongs to the kings descended from Manu and therefore my forefather Iksvaku. The present ruler in the dynasty of Iksvaju is my noble brother Bharata. He is the supreme monarch of the whole earth: and I derive my mandate from him, to ensure that all the subjects of that noble emperor observe the laws of virtue.” —Rama, p. 190-1)

The Ramayana (ram-EYE-ya-na) and the Mahabharata (ma-ha-BA-ra-ta), the great Indian epics, are among the most important works of literature in South Asia. Both contain important lessons on wisdom, behavior and morality, and have been used for centuries not only as entertainment, but also as a way of instructing both children and adults in the exemplary behavior toward which they are urged to strive and the immoral behavior they are urged to shun. Elements of the stories can be found in South Asian literature, theater, sculpture, dance, music, architecture, film, personal and place names, and even in statecraft.

The Ramayana is the story of Rama, the crown prince of ancient Ayodhya, and an earthly incarnation of the Hindu god, Vishnu. He is also the hero of the poem, whose focus is the epic telling of Rama's quest. In this lesson, students will read an abridged version of the Ramayana , and will explore the ways in which the story of Rama contains elements, such as the Epic Hero Cycle , that place it within the epic poetry tradition.

Guiding Questions

What makes the Ramayana an epic poem?

How does this story fit the Epic Hero Cycle?

What lessons are taught through the examples- both good and bad- of the Ramayana's characters?

Learning Objectives

Retell the basic narrative of the Ramayana, and be able to identify the main characters.

Identify elements of the Ramayana that fulfill the required elements of an epic poem.

Understand the poem as a tool for teaching proper behavior through the examples of Rama and Sita.

Lesson Plan Details

• Review the lesson plan, then find and bookmark relevant websites and useful materials. Download and print out the documents you will be using in class, such as the guiding charts for reading the Ramayana text and elements of the Epic Hero Cycle . Also read the list of elements common to epic poetry , which can be accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• Familiarize yourself with the story of the Ramayana . Read the background materials related to the Ramayana listed on the EDSITEment-approved resource Asia Society . Also familiarize yourself with the story by reading an abridged version of the epic , which students and instructors should download and read. All of these materials can be accessed through the EDSITEment resource Asia Society .

Activity 1. Reading the Ramayana as an Epic Poem

The Ramayana is an epic poem that tells the story of Rama, the crown prince of Ayodhya and an avatar (or incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu. The narrative follows Rama as he is exiled to the forest, and where his wife Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. Rama must find and defeat Ravana in order to save Sita, and he is aided along the way by his loyal brother Lakshmana, as well as a monkey army headed by the monkey general Hanuman. Eventually, Ravana is defeated, Sita is saved, and Rama, his exile complete, returns to the throne of Ayodhya.

• Explain to students what an epic poem is, and what elements are common to epic poems. You may want to use the definition of epic poetry accessible through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library. For a more in-depth look at epic poetry, you may want to teach this lesson in conjunction with the EDSITEment lesson plan A Story of Epic Proportions: What makes a poem and epic?
• Who is the hero of the story?
• Who is the villain of the story?
• For example, a student might write a few sentences about Rama, noting that he is not only the hero of the story, but that he is a divine being (Vishnu) reborn in human form specifically to defeat Ravana. In addition, students should answer the questions provided for each section of the story listed on the PDF. This will help students with both seeing the narrative structure clearly, and with learning new and unfamiliar people and place names.
• Divide students into groups. Ask each group to use their notes and character charts to make a list of the main characters, and of the most pivotal moments in the narrative.
• Distribute the Epic Hero Cycle chart . Ask student groups to discuss how the elements and actions of the Ramayana fulfill the criteria of epic poetry and of the Epic Hero Cycle. Many of the elements are fulfilled by more than one character or action. Have students work together to fill in the far right side of the Epic Hero Elements chart with examples from the Ramayana . Wherever it is possible, students should note where in the text their example can be found. An example of a list of Epic Hero Cycle elements in the Ramayana students should note can be found in the following chart. In many cases several examples may be found in the text, and this is not an exhaustive list of the Epic Hero Cycle elements in the text, however, this example of the Epic Hero Cycle elements in the Ramayana can be used as a guideline.

Activity 2. Learning the Lessons of the Ramayana

As with many epic poems or heroic stories, the Ramayana is designed to not only entertain listeners, but also to impart lessons to its audience. In this activity students will investigate what those lessons might be.

• Ask students to work together to make a list of stories and poems they know whose purpose is not only to entertain, but also to teach a lesson. This list might include fables, fairy tales, poems and short stories, from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid , to Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken , to J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Rings . Once students have compiled a list, ask them to divide into groups, taking with them at least two of the works from the list with which they are familiar. Ask each group to brainstorm on the lessons that the creator of the stories or poems wanted to impart to his or her audience.
• Ask students to read over their list of lessons. Are there any lessons that are repeated from one work to another? Are there lessons that are similar in their message? Ask students to think about the way in which the lessons of each story are imparted. How is the lesson taught? By stating the lesson? By showing examples of good and bad behavior?
• Have students read through their answers to the guiding questions and the character chart for the Ramayana . Do they think that the Ramayana is teaching a lesson? How does it teach its lessons?
• Assign each group to one of the Ramayana 's main characters, and ask them to work together to find the lesson presented by that character's example. It may be a lesson on how to behave, or how not to behave, or even a combination of the two.

Ask students to write a short expository essay on why the Ramayana is considered an epic poem. They should review the definition of epic poetry found at the Glossary of Literary Terms accessible from the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library, their notes and the chart they filled in on the Ramayana and the Epic Hero Cycle. Students should explain and cite from the text moments in the narrative when the story is fulfilling the criteria of epic poetry. They should answer the criteria contained in the definition of epic poetry including the Epic Hero Cycle and beyond, including questions such as:

• Is the poem written in high style?
• Does the story cover a large physical area, such as multiple kingdoms?
• Does the hero possess supernatural abilities or qualities?
• Do even human and animal characters possess seemingly supernatural strength and courage?

In addition, students should complete their Epic Hero Cycle charts with examples from the text of the elements listed in the chart.

Once students have worked together to define what the lessons each character presents to listeners through his or her example, students should write a brief description of the character his or her group discussed, and the lesson that character imparts. Students should support their assertion with at least one example from the text where the character's behavior conveys that lesson.

• The lessons of the Ramayana are deeply rooted within the Hindu concept of dharma, or right behavior. You can extend this lesson by utilizing the EDSITEment lesson plan The Lessons of the Indian Epics: Following the Dharma.
• Traditionally, epic poems are the stories not just of heroes, but have been the stories of national heroes. Audiences understand the narrative not as a simple narrative, but as a story that has a factual antecedent. The Ramayana is replete with real Indian place names, and the movements of Rama and Hanuman's monkey army can be mapped as they are in the Ramayana map . This map can be compared to a modern political map of India . Discuss with students how the meaning and weight of the Ramayana might be different for a student in India, where many people see Rama in themselves, and the Ramayana as a story about their ancestors and country.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Abridged version of the Ramayana
• Dharma and the Ramayana
• What is the Ramayana ?
• Map of Rama's route
• Modern political map of India
• Elements of epic poetry in the Glossary of Terms

Materials & Media

Lessons of the indian epics: the ramayana: worksheet 1 - reading guide for the ramayana, lessons of the indian epics: the ramayana: worksheet 2 - guiding questions for the ramayana, lessons of the indian epics: the ramayana: worksheet 3 - elements of the epic hero cycle, lessons of the indian epics: the ramayana: worksheet 4 - elements of the epic hero cycle, teacher version, related on edsitement, rudyard kipling's "rikki-tikki-tavi": mixing fact and fiction, fables and trickster tales around the world, morality “tales” east and west: european fables and buddhist jataka tales, lessons of the indian epics: following the dharma.

Vedic Literature, Types, Shruti, Smriti and Importance

Vedic literature, foundational to Hinduism, is a rich tapestry encompassing the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmanas. Check here Types of Vedic Literature in detail here.

Table of Contents

Vedic Literature refers to the ancient sacred texts that form the foundation of Hinduism. These texts are among the oldest religious scriptures in the world and are considered the authoritative source of knowledge in various fields, including philosophy, theology, science, and ritual. The term “Vedic” is derived from the Sanskrit word “Veda,” which means knowledge or wisdom. The Vedic Literature is classified into four main categories: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. Each category serves a specific purpose and contributes to the comprehensive understanding of Vedic philosophy and spirituality.

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What is Vedic Literature?

The ancient and sacred texts of Hinduism were penned in the initial era’s Sanskrit, encompassing the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads in traditional belief. These Vedas stand as a testament to India’s profound cultural and religious traditions, encapsulating the essence of the nation’s heritage.

Their significance lies in more than just language; it extends to the richness of expression, understanding, and profound insights they offer. The Vedic literature serves as a repository of detailed information, providing insights into the socio-cultural origins of ancient India, the prevailing way of life, intricate rituals and ceremonies, societal norms, and the profound teachings of ancient Indian wisdom. This literary heritage not only reflects the cultural exuberance of the country but also serves as a timeless source for understanding the roots and evolution of Indian civilization.

Types of Vedic Literature

Vedic literature is broadly categorized into two main types: Shruti literature and Smriti literature, constituting the oldest Hindu writings and the earliest Sanskrit literature. The Vedas, regarded as the foundational scriptures, have been transmitted across generations through oral tradition. Let’s delve into each category in more detail:

Shruti Vedic Literature

Shruti literature comprises writings that hold fundamental significance in Hinduism, recognized for their profound insights and considered as repositories of indisputable truths. This category includes:

• Vedas: The core and oldest texts, the Vedas are divided into four parts – Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda. Each Veda consists of Samhitas (hymns), Brahmanas (rituals and ceremonies), Aranyakas (forest texts), and Upanishads (philosophical teachings).
• Brahmanas: These texts provide detailed explanations and instructions for the rituals and ceremonies mentioned in the Vedas. They offer a deeper understanding of the symbolic significance behind the rituals.
• Aranyakas: Bridging the gap between the ritualistic Brahmanas and the philosophical Upanishads, Aranyakas are associated with hermits and ascetics dwelling in the forest, focusing on contemplative practices.
• Upanishads: Representing the culmination of Vedic thought, Upanishads explore profound philosophical concepts, such as the nature of reality (Brahman) and the self (Atman). They encourage introspection and meditation for spiritual realization.

Check Here: Rig Vedic Period

Smriti Vedic Literature

In contrast, Smriti literature refers to works composed after the Vedic period and is often considered as remembered or traditional literature. This category includes:

• Puranas: These are vast compilations of myths, legends, and genealogies of gods, goddesses, and heroes. Puranas serve to disseminate religious and moral teachings in a narrative form.
• Upangas: Supplementary limbs of the Vedas, the Upangas cover various subjects, including grammar, metrics, astronomy, and law.
• Tantras: Focused on rituals, meditation, and worship, Tantras provide instructions for various spiritual practices.
• Upveda: Comprising four disciplines associated with each Veda – Ayurveda (related to medicine), Dhanurveda (archery and war), Gandharvaveda (music and performing arts), and Sthapatyaveda (architecture).
• Itihasa: Epic narratives, including the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which offer moral and philosophical teachings through captivating stories.

Check Here: Later Vedic Period

Vedic Literature – Vedas

The Vedas, foundational texts of Hinduism, are classified into four types:

• Rig Veda: The oldest and most significant Veda, consisting of hymns dedicated to various deities. Notable for its portrayal of early Vedic gods and includes the famous Gayatri mantra and Purusha Shukta.
• Sama Veda: Comprised of chants and melodies used during worship and rituals. Linked to the Rig Veda, it is the shortest of the four Vedas.
• Yajur Veda: Known as the ritual book, it provides guidelines for sacrificial ceremonies. It is divided into the Krishna Yajur Veda and Shukla Yajur Veda.
• Atharvaveda: Often referred to as the Veda of magic formulas, it contains hymns and incantations addressing various aspects of life outside the scope of traditional sacrifices.

Check here: Difference Between Early and Later Vedic Periods

Vedic Literature – Brahmanas

Brahmanas are prose texts embedded within each Veda, explaining the hymns and incorporating myths and legends. They serve as instructional material for Brahmins, detailing Vedic rituals. Brahmana literature also explores scientific knowledge, including observational astronomy and geometry related to altar construction. Some Brahmanas contain mystical and philosophical content, leading to the development of Aranyakas and Upanishads.

• Each Veda has its own Brahmanas, associated with specific Shakhas or Vedic schools.
• Fewer than twenty Brahmanas are extant today due to loss or destruction.
• The dating of Brahmanas is controversial, with the oldest dated around 900 BCE and the youngest around 700 BCE.

Vedic Literature – Aranyakas

Aranyakas, known as “Forest Books,” interpret sacrificial rituals in a symbolic and philosophical manner. They serve as a transition from external rituals to more internal, contemplative practices.

Vedic Literature – Upanishads

Upanishads are philosophical texts that explore profound ideas. Key points include:

• There are 108 Upanishads, with 13 considered major.
• Upanishads delve into the concepts of ‘Atman’ (individual self) and ‘Brahman’ (universal consciousness).
• They philosophically explore ideas related to sacrifice, the body, and the universe.

Vedic Literature – Vedangas

Vedangas, referred to as the limbs of the Veda, are six auxiliary disciplines essential for understanding and interpreting the Vedas. Mentioned in the Mundaka Upanishad, the Vedangas include:

• Siksha (pronunciation): Focuses on the correct pronunciation and phonetics of Vedic mantras.
• Kalpa (rituals): Deals with the procedures and rituals associated with Vedic ceremonies.
• Vyakarana (grammar): Concerned with the grammatical rules for understanding the Vedic texts.
• Nirukta (etymology): Involves the interpretation of Vedic words and their etymology.
• Chhanda (meter): Explores the meters and rhythms used in Vedic poetry.
• Jyotisa (astrophysics): Pertains to Vedic astronomy and timekeeping.

Vedic Literature – Shad-Darshana

The Shad-Darshana encompasses six schools of philosophical thought in India, each presenting distinct perspectives on life and existence. These are:

• Uttara Mimamsa: Concerned with the interpretation of the latter part of the Vedas, specifically the Upanishads.
• Nyaya: Deals with logic and reasoning.
• Vaisheshika: Explores atomic theory and metaphysics.
• Sankhya: Focuses on enumeration and the concept of dualism.
• Yoga: Explores the practice of spiritual discipline and meditation.
• Purva Mimamsa: Concerned with the interpretation of the earlier part of the Vedas, particularly the rituals and ceremonies.

These philosophical texts are written in a concise, direct, and aphoristic (Sutra) style, aiming to spread the values of righteous living.

Puranas are sacred texts providing a wealth of information on creation, ancestral lineage, moral guidelines, various worlds, and myths. While considered newer than the Vedas, they discuss the “later deities” like Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Some well-known Puranas include Devibhagavata, Bhagavata, and Vishnu-Puranas.

Itihasas, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are epic narratives. The Ramayana, authored by Maharishi Valmiki, consists of 24,000 verses, while the Mahabharata, composed by Maharishi Vyas, contains 100,000 verses.

Tantras encompass three main categories: Shaiva, Shakta, and Vaishnava. Tantric Literature, not consistently coherent, is primarily concerned with theistic worship and can include Agamas, Nigamas, and Samhitas. Saiva Tantras are often referred to as Agamas, Vaisnava Tantras as Samhitas, and Sakta Tantras as Tantras.

Agamas are instructional guides for deity worship, including Tantras, Mantras, and Yantras. They provide guidance on how to worship deities outside the body, such as in idols and temples, emphasizing four attributes: Jnana (Knowledge), Yoga (Concentration), Kriya (Esoteric Ritual), and Charya (Exoteric Worship).

Upavedas encompass four traditional branches of applied knowledge:

• Dhanurveda (art of warfare): Deals with military strategy and tactics.
• Gandharvaveda (music): Explores musical theory and practice.
• Silpaveda (art and architecture): Concerned with artistic principles and architectural design.
• Ayurveda (medicine): Focuses on traditional medical knowledge and practices.

Importance of Vedic Literature

• Spiritual Wisdom: Vedas, especially Upanishads, contain profound philosophical insights and spiritual teachings.
• Religious Guidance: Vedic literature provides detailed instructions for Hindu rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
• Moral Lessons: Puranas and Itihasas embed moral and ethical teachings in mythological narratives.
• Historical Record: Offers glimpses into the socio-cultural aspects and lifestyle of ancient India, aiding in historical reconstruction.
• Linguistic Foundations: Vedangas, particularly Vyakarana, contribute to Sanskrit linguistics and grammar development.
• Astrological and Scientific Insights: Jyotisa in Vedic literature provides ancient Indian astronomy and scientific knowledge.
• Cultural Identity: Shapes the cultural identity of India and contributes to a shared heritage among its people.
• Basis for Later Texts: Many later Hindu scriptures draw inspiration and references from Vedic literature.
• Unity in Diversity: Serves as a common thread uniting followers across diverse Hindu sects and traditions.

Vedic Literature UPSC

Vedic literature, foundational to Hinduism, is a rich tapestry encompassing the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmanas, and more. The Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharvaveda constitute the core Vedas. They offer spiritual wisdom, ritual guidance, and moral lessons. Vedangas provide linguistic and grammatical foundations, while Puranas contribute historical and cultural insights. The Itihasas, including Ramayana and Mahabharata, narrate epic stories. The importance of Vedic literature lies in shaping Hindu philosophy, providing historical records, and influencing cultural identity, making it a pivotal topic in the UPSC examination for its multifaceted impact on India’s heritage.

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Vedic Literature FAQs

Vedic literature refers to the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism, including the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmanas, and related texts.

How many Vedas are there?

There are four Vedas: Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharvaveda.

What is the significance of the Rig Veda?

Rig Veda is the oldest and most significant Veda, containing hymns dedicated to various deities and foundational texts of Hinduism.

What do Vedangas focus on?

Vedangas are auxiliary disciplines focusing on pronunciation, rituals, grammar, etymology, meter, and astrophysics.

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Language and Testimony in Classical Indian Philosophy

Speculations about the nature and function of language in India can be traced to its earliest period. These speculations are multi-faceted in that one detects many different strands of thought regarding language. Some of these speculations are about what one may call the principle of language, but others are about specific languages or specific uses of these languages. One sees speculations regarding the creation of language as well as the role of language in the creation of the universe. Language appears in relation to gods as well as humans, and occupies the entire width of a spectrum from being a divinity herself to being a means used by gods to create and control the world, and ultimately to being a means in the hands of the human beings to achieve their own religious as well as mundane purposes. Gradually, a whole range of questions are raised about all these various aspects of language in the evolving religious and philosophical traditions in India, traditions which shared some common conceptions, but thrived in full-blooded disagreements on major issues. Such disagreements relate to the ontological nature of language, its communicative role, the nature of meaning, and more specifically the nature of word-meaning and sentence-meaning. On the other hand, certain manifestations of language, whether in the form of specific languages like Sanskrit or particular scriptural texts like the Vedas, became topics of contestation between various philosophical and religious traditions. Finally, one must mention the epistemic role and value of language, its ability or inability to provide veridical knowledge about the world. In what follows, I intend to provide a brief account of these diverse developments in ancient, classical and medieval India. (For an approximate chronology of Indian philosophers, see the supplement .)

1. Pre-systematic conceptions of language in Vedic texts

2. conception of language among sanskrit grammarians, 3. general philosophical approaches to the status of vedic scriptures, 4. language and meaning, 6. different views regarding sentence-meaning, 7. some important conceptions, 8. why the differences, other internet resources, related entries.

The Vedic scriptural texts (1500–500 bce ) consist of the four ancient collections, i.e., the Ṛgveda , the Sāmaveda , the Yajurveda , and the Atharvaveda . The next layer of Vedic texts, the Brāhmaṇas , consists of prose ritual commentaries that offer procedures, justifications, and explanations. The last two categories of Vedic literature are the Āraṇyakas , “Forest Texts”, and the Upaniṣads , “Secret Mystical Doctrines”.

The word saṃskṛta is not known as a label of a language variety during the Vedic period. The general term used for language in the Vedic texts is vāk , a word historically related to “voice”. The Vedic poet-sages perceived significant differences between their own language and the languages of the outsiders. Similarly, they perceived important differences between their own use of language in mundane contexts and the use of language directed toward Gods. The Gods are generically referred to by the term deva , and the language of the hymns is said to be devī vāk , “divine language.” This language is believed to have been created by the Gods themselves. The language thus created by the Gods is then spoken by the animate world in various forms. The divine language in its ultimate form is so mysterious that three-quarters of it are said to be hidden from the humans who have access only to a quarter of it. The Vedic poet-sages say that this divine language enters into their hearts and that they discover it through mystical introspection. Just as the language used by the Vedic poet-sages is the divine language, the language used by the non-Vedic people is said to be un-godly ( adevī ) or demonic ( asuryā ).

In the Vedic literature, one observes the development of mystical and ritual approaches to language. Language was perceived as an essential tool for approaching the gods, invoking them, asking their favors, and thus for the successful completion of a ritual performance. While the Gods were the powers that finally yielded the wishes of their human worshipers, one could legitimately look at the resulting reward as ensuing from the power of the religious language, or the power of the performing priest. This way, the language came to be looked upon as having mysterious creative powers, and as a divine power that needed to be propitiated before it could be successfully used to invoke other gods. This approach to language ultimately led to deification of language and the emergence of the Goddess of Speech ( vāk devī ), and a number of other gods who are called “Lord of Speech” ( brahmaṇaspati , bṛhaspati , vākpati ).

In contrast with the valorous deeds of the divine language, the language of the non-Vedic people neither yields fruit nor blossom ( Ṛgveda , 10.71.5). “Yielding fruit and blossom” is a phrase indicative of the creative power of speech that produces the rewards for the worshiper. From being a created but divine entity, the speech rises to the heights of being a divinity in her own right and eventually to becoming the substratum of the existence of the whole universe. The deification of speech is seen in hymn 10.125 of the Ṛgveda where the Goddess of Speech sings her own glory. In this hymn, one no longer hears of the creation of the speech, but one begins to see the speech as a primordial divinity that creates and controls other gods, sages, and the human beings. Here the goddess of speech demands worship in her own right, before her powers may be used for other purposes. The mystery of language is comprehensible only to a special class of people, the wise Brāhmaṇas , while the commoners have access to and understanding of only a limited portion of this transcendental phenomenon.

The “Lord of Speech” divinities typically emerge as creator divinities, e.g., Brahmā , Bṛhaspati , and Brahmaṇaspati , and the word brahman which earlier refers, with differing accents, to the creative incantation and the priest, eventually comes to assume in the Upaniṣads the meaning of the creative force behind the entire universe. While the Vedic hymns were looked upon as being crafted by particular poet-sages in the earlier period, gradually a rising perception of their mysterious power and their preservation by the successive generations led to the emergence of a new conception of the scriptural texts. Already in the late parts of the Ṛgveda (10.90.9), we hear that the verses ( ṛk ), the songs ( sāma ), and the ritual formulas ( yajus ) arose from the primordial sacrifice offered by the gods. They arose from the sacrificed body of the cosmic person, the ultimate ground of existence. This tendency of increasingly looking at the scriptural texts as not being produced by any human authors takes many forms in subsequent religious and philosophical materials, finally leading to a wide-spread notion that the Vedas are not authored by any human beings ( apauruṣeya ), and are in fact uncreated and eternal, beyond the cycles of creation and destruction of the world. In late Vedic texts, we hear the notion that the real Vedas are infinite ( ananta ) and that the Vedas known to human poet-sages are a mere fraction of the real infinite Vedas.

In the late Vedic traditions of the Brāhmaṇas , we are told that there is perfection of the ritual form ( rūpasamṛddhi ) when a recited incantation echoes the ritual action that is being performed. This shows a notion that ideally there should be a match between the contents of a ritual formula and the ritual action in which it is recited, further suggesting a notion that language mirrors the external world in some way. In the Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads , language acquires importance in different ways. The Upaniṣads , emphasizing the painful nature of cycles of rebirths, point out that the ideal goal should be to put an end to these cycles of birth and rebirth and to find one’s permanent identity with the original ground of the universal existence, i.e., Brahman . The term brahman , originally referring to creative ritual chants and the chanters, has now acquired this new meaning, the ultimate creative force behind the universe. As part of the meditative practice, one is asked to focus on the sacred syllable OM, which is the symbolic linguistic representation of Brahman. Here the language, in the form of OM, becomes an important tool for the attainment of one’s mystical union with Brahman. The Sanskrit word akṣara refers to a syllable, but it also means “indestructible.” Thus, the word akṣara allowed the meditational use of the holy syllable OM to ultimately lead to one’s experiential identity with the indestructible reality of Brahman .

The role of language and scripture in the Upaniṣadic mode of religious life is complicated. Here, the use of language to invoke the Vedic gods becomes a lower form of religious practice. Can Brahman be reached through language? Since Brahman is beyond all characterizations and all modes of human perception, no linguistic expression can properly describe it. Hence all linguistic expressions and all knowledge framed in language are deemed to be inadequate for the purpose of reaching Brahman. In fact, it is silence that characterizes Brahman, and not words. Even so, the use of OM-focused meditation is emphasized, at least in the pre-final stages of Brahman-realization.

By the time we come to the classical philosophical systems in India, one more assumption is made by almost all Hindu systems, i.e., that all the Vedas together form a coherent whole. The human authorship of the Vedic texts has long been rejected, and they are now perceived either as being entirely uncreated and eternal or created by God at the beginning of each cycle of creation. Under the assumption that they are entirely uncreated, their innate ability to convey truthful meaning is unhampered by human limitations. Thus if all the Vedic texts convey truth, there cannot be any internal contradictions. If an omniscient God, who by his very nature is compassionate and beyond human limitations, created the Vedas, one reaches the same conclusion, i.e., there cannot be any internal contradictions. The traditional interpretation of the Vedas proceeds under these assumptions. If there are seeming contradictions in Vedic passages, the burden of finding ways to remove those seeming contradictions is upon the interpreter, but there can be no admission of internal contradictions in the texts themselves.

Before the emergence of the formalized philosophical systems or the darśanas , we see a number of philosophical issues relating to language implicitly and explicitly brought out by the early Sanskrit grammarians, namely Pāṇini, Kātyāyana and Patañjali. Pāṇini (400 bce ) composed his grammar of Sanskrit with a certain notion of Sanskrit as an atemporal language. For him, there were regional dialects of Sanskrit, as well as variation of usage in its scriptural ( chandas ) and contemporary ( bhāṣā ) domains. All these domains are treated as sub-domains of a unified language, which is not restricted by any temporality.

Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya refers to the views of Vyāḍi and Vājapyāyana on the meaning of words. Vyāḍi argued that words like “cow” denote individual instances of a certain class, while Vājapyāyana argued that words like “cow” denote generic properties or class properties ( ākṛti ), such as cowness, that are shared by all members of certain classes. Patañjali presents a long debate on the extreme positions in this argument, and finally concludes that both the individual instances and the class property must be included within the range of meaning. The only difference between the two positions is about which aspect, the individual or the class property, is denoted first, and which is understood subsequently. This early debate indicates philosophical positions that get expanded and fully argued in the traditions of the Nyāya - Vaiśeṣikas and the Mīmāṃsakas .

The early commentators on Pāṇini’s grammar from the late Mauryan and post-Mauryan periods, Kātyāyana and Patañjali (200–100 bce ), display a significant reorganization of Brahmanical views in the face of opposition from Jains and Buddhists. For Kātyāyana and Patañjali, the Sanskrit language at large is sacred like the Vedas. The intelligent use of Sanskrit, backed by the explicit understanding of its grammar, leads to prosperity here and in the next world, as do the Vedas. Kātyāyana and Patañjali admit that vernaculars as well as Sanskrit could do the function of communicating meaning. However, only the usage of Sanskrit produces religious merit. This is an indirect criticism of the Jains and the Buddhists, who used vernacular languages for the propagation of their faiths. The grammarians did not accept the religious value of the vernaculars. The vernacular languages, along with the incorrect uses of Sanskrit, are all lumped together by the Sanskrit grammarians under the derogatory terms apaśabda and apabhraṃśa , both of which suggest a view that the vernaculars are degenerate or “fallen” forms of the divine language, i.e., Sanskrit. Kātyāyana says: “While the relationship between words and meanings is established on the basis of the usage of specific words to denote specific meanings in the community of speakers, the science of grammar only makes a regulation concerning the religious merit produced by the linguistic usage, as is commonly done in worldly matters and in Vedic rituals” (first Vārttika on the Aṣṭādhyāyī ). Kātyāyana refers to these “degenerate” vernacular usages as being caused by the inability of the low-class speakers to speak proper Sanskrit. The grammarians tell the story of demons that used improper degenerate usages during their ritual and hence were defeated.

The relationship between Sanskrit words and their meanings is said to be established ( siddha ) and taken as given by the grammarians. Patañjali understands this statement of Kātyāyana to mean that the relationship between Sanskrit words and their meanings is eternal ( nitya ), not created ( kārya ) by anyone. Since this eternal relationship, according to these grammarians, exists only for Sanskrit words and their meanings, one cannot accord the same status to the vernaculars, which are born of an inability on the part of their speakers to speak proper Sanskrit.

While Pāṇini uses the term prakṛti to refer to the derivationally original state of a word or expression before changes effected by grammatical operations are applied, Kātyāyana and Patañjali use the term vikṛta to refer to the derivationally transformed segment. However, change and identity are not compatible within more rigid metaphysical frameworks, and this becomes apparent in the following discussion. In his Vārttikas or comments on Pāṇini’s grammar, Kātyāyana says that one could have argued that an item partially transformed does not yet lose its identity ( Vārttika 10 on P. 1.1.56). But such an acceptance would lead to non-eternality ( anityatva ) of language ( Vārttika 11, Mahābhāṣya , I, p. 136), and that is not acceptable. Patañjali asserts that words in reality are eternal ( nitya ), and that means they must be absolutely free from change or transformation and fixed in their nature. If words are truly eternal, one cannot then say that a word was transformed and is yet the same. This points to the emerging ideological shifts in philosophical traditions, which make their headway into the tradition of grammar, and finally lead to the development of newer conceptions within the tradition of grammar and elsewhere.

In trying to figure out how the emerging doctrine of nityatva (“permanence”, “immutability”) of language causes problems with the notion of transformation ( vikāra ) and how these problems are eventually answered by developing new concepts, we should note two issues, i.e., temporal fixity or flexibility of individual sounds, and the compatibility of the notion of sequence of sounds, or utterance as a process stretched in time. From within the new paradigm of nityatva or eternality of sounds, Kātyāyana concludes that the true sounds ( varṇa ) are fixed in their nature in spite of the difference of speed of delivery ( Vārttika 5 on P. 1.1.70, Mahābhāṣya , I, p. 181). The speed of delivery ( vṛtti ) results from the slow or fast utterance of a speaker ( vacana ), though the true sounds are permanently fixed in their nature. Here, Kātyāyana broaches a doctrine that is later developed further by Patañjali, and more fully by Bhartṛhari. It argues for a dual ontology. There are the fixed true sounds ( varṇa ), and then there are the uttered sounds ( vacana , “utterance”). It is Patañjali who uses, for the first time as far as we know, the term sphoṭa to refer to Kātyāyana’s “true sounds which are fixed” ( avasthitā varṇāḥ ) and the term dhvani (“uttered sounds”). Patañjali adds an important comment to Kātyāyana’s discussion. He says that the real sound ( śabda ) is thus the sphoṭa (“the sound as it initially breaks out into the open”), and the quality [length or speed] of the sound is part of dhvani (“sound as it continues”) (Mahābhāṣya , I, p. 181). The term sphoṭa refers to something like exploding or coming into being in a bang. Thus it refers to the initial production or perception of sound. On the other hand, the stretching of that sound seems to refer to the dimension of continuation. Patañjali means to say that it is the same sound, but it may remain audible for different durations.

This raises the next problem that the grammarians must face: can a word be understood as a sequence or a collection of sounds? Kātyāyana says that one cannot have a sequence or a collection of sounds, because the process of speech proceeds sound-by-sound, and that sounds perish as soon as they are uttered. Thus, one cannot have two sounds co-existing at a given moment to relate to each other. Since the sounds perish as soon as they are uttered, a sound cannot have another co-existent companion ( Vārttikas 9 and 10 on P. 1.4.109). Kātyāyana points out all these difficulties, but it is Patañjali who offers a solution to this philosophical dilemma. Patañjali suggests that one can pull together impressions of all the uttered sounds and then think of a sequence in this mentally constructed image of a word ( Mahābhaṣya , I, p. 356). Elsewhere, Patañjali says that a word is perceived through the auditory organ, discerned through one’s intelligence, and brought into being through its utterance ( Mahābhaṣya , I, p. 18). While Patañjali’s solution overcomes the transitoriness of the uttered sounds, and the resulting impossibility of a sequence, there is no denial of sequentiality or perhaps of an imprint of sequentiality in the comprehended word, and there is indeed no claim to its absolutely unitary or partless character. Patañjali means to provide a solution to the perception of sequentiality through his ideas of a mental storage of comprehension. But at the same time, this mental storage and the ability to view this mental image allows one to overcome the difficulty of non-simultaneity and construct a word or a linguistic unit as a collection of perceived sounds or words, as the case may be. Kātyāyana and Patañjali specifically admit the notion of samudāya (“collection”) of sounds to represent a word and a collection of words to represent a phrase or a sentence ( Vārttika 7 on P. 2.2.29). Thus, while the ontology of physical sounds does not permit their co-existence, their mental images do allow it, and once they can be perceived as components of a collection, one also recognizes the imprint of the sequence in which they were perceived. Neither Kātyāyana nor Patañjali explicitly claim any higher ontological status to these word-images. However, the very acceptance of such word-images opens up numerous explanatory possibilities.

Although Kātyāyana and Patañjali argue that the notion of change or transformation of parts of words was contradictory to the doctrine of nityatva (“permanence”) of language, they were not averse to the notion of substitution. The notion of substitution was understood as a substitution, not of a part of a word by another part, but of a whole word by another word, and this especially as a conceptual rather than an ontological replacement. Thus, in going from “ bhavati ” to “ bhavatu ”, Pāṇini prescribes the change of “ i ” of “ ti ” to “ u ” (cf. P.3.4.86: “ er uḥ ”). Thus, “ i ” changes to “ u ”, leading to the change of “ ti ” to “ tu ”, and this consequently leads to the change of “ bhavati ” to “ bhavatu ”. For Kātyāyana and Patañjali, the above atomistic and transformational understanding of Pāṇini’s procedure goes contrary to the doctrine of nityatva (“permanence”) of words. Therefore, they suggest that it is actually the substitution of the whole word “ bhavati ” by another whole word “ bhavatu ”, each of these two words being eternal in its own right. Additionally they assert that this is merely a notional change and not an ontological change, i.e., a certain item is found to occur, where one expected something else to occur. There is no change of an item x into an item y , nor does one remove the item x and place y in its place ( Vārttikas 12 and 14 on P. 1.1.56). This discussion seems to imply a sort of unitary character to the words, whether notional or otherwise, and this eventually leads to a movement toward a kind of akhaṇḍa - pada - vāda (“the doctrine of partless words”) in the Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari. While one must admit that the seeds for such a conception may be traced in these discussions in the Mahābhāṣya , Patañjali is actually not arguing so much against words having parts, as against the notion of change or transformation ( Mahābhāṣya on P. 1.2.20, I, p. 75).

Kātyāyana and Patañjali clearly view words as collections of sounds. Besides using the term “ samudāya ” for such a collection, they also use the word “ varṇasaṃghāta ” (“collection of sounds”). They argue that words are built by putting together sounds, and that, while the words are meaningful, the component sounds are not meaningful in themselves. The notion of a word as a collection ( saṃghāta ) applies not only in the sense that it is a collection of sounds, but also in the sense that complex formations are collections of smaller morphological components.

This leads us to consider the philosophical developments in the thought of Bhartṛhari (400 ce ), and especially his departures from the conceptions seen in Kātyāyana and Patañjali. Apart from his significant contribution toward an in depth philosophical understanding of issues of the structure and function of language, and issues of phonology, semantics and syntax, Bhartṛhari is well known for his claim that language constitutes the ultimate principle of reality ( śabdabrahman ). Both the signifier words and the signified entities in the world are perceived to be a transformation ( pariṇāma ) of the ultimate unified principle of language.

For Kātyāyana and Patañjali, the level of padas (“inflected words”) is the basic level of language for grammar. These words are freely combined by the users to form sentences or phrases. The words are not derived by Kātyāyana and Patañjali by abstracting them from sentences by using the method of anvaya - vyatireka (“concurrent occurrence and concurrent absence”) ( Vārttika 9 on P. 1.2.45). On the other hand, they claim that a grammarian first derives stems and affixes by applying the procedure of abstraction to words, and then in turn puts these stems and affixes through the grammatical process of derivation ( saṃskāra ) to build the words. Here, Kātyāyana and Patañjali do make a distinction between the levels of actual usage ( vacana ) and technical grammatical analysis and derivation. While full-fledged words ( pada ) occur at the level of usage, their abstracted morphological components do not occur by themselves at that level. However, they do not seem to suggest that the stems, roots, and affixes are purely imagined ( kalpita ).

Bhartṛhari has substantially moved beyond Kātyāyana and Patañjali. For him, the linguistically given entity is a sentence. Everything below the level of sentence is derived through a method of abstraction referred to by the term anvaya - vyatireka or apoddhāra . Additionally, for Bhartṛhari, elements abstracted through this procedure have no reality of any kind. They are kalpita (“imagined”) ( Vākyapadīya , III, 14, 75–76). Such abstracted items have instructional value for those who do not yet have any intuitive insight into the true nature of speech ( Vākyapadīya , II. 238). The true speech unit, the sentence, is an undivided singularity and so is its meaning which is comprehended in an instantaneous cognitive flash ( pratibhā ), rather than through a deliberative and/or sequential process. Consider the following verse of the Vākyapadīya (II.10):

Just as stems, affixes etc. are abstracted from a given word, so the abstraction of words from a sentence is justified.

Here, the clause introduced by “just as” refers to the older more widely prevalent view seen in the Mahābhāṣya . With the word “so,” Bhartṛhari is proposing an analogical extension of the procedure of abstraction ( apoddhāra ) to the level of a sentence.

Without mentioning Patañjali or Kātyāyana by name, Bhartṛhari seems to critique their view that the meaning of a sentence, consisting of the interrelations between the meanings of individual words, is essentially not derived from the constituent words themselves, but from the whole sentence as a collection of words. The constituent words convey their meaning first, but their interrelations are not communicated by the words themselves, but by the whole sentence as a unit. This view of Kātyāyana and Patañjali is criticized by Bhartṛhari ( Vākyapadīya II.15–16, 41–42). It is clear that Bhartṛhari’s ideas do not agree with the views expressed by Kātyāyana and Patañjali, and that the views of these two earlier grammarians are much closer, though not identical, with the views later maintained by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas and Mīmāṃsakas. For Bhartṛhari, the sentence as a single partless unit conveys its entire unitary meaning in a flash, and this unitary meaning as well as the unitary sentence are subsequently analyzed by grammarians into their assumed or imagined constituents.

Finally, we should note that Bhartṛhari’s views on the unitary character of a sentence and its meaning were found to be generally unacceptable by the schools of Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya - Vaiśeṣika , as well as by the later grammarian-philosophers like Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa and Nāgeśabhaṭṭa. Their discussion of the comprehension of sentence-meaning is not couched in terms of Bhartṛhari’s instantaneous flash of intuition ( pratibhā ), but in terms of the conditions of ākāṅkṣā (“mutual expectancy”), yogyatā (“compatibility)”, and āsatti (“contiguity of words”). In this sense, the later grammarian-philosophers are somewhat closer to the spirit of Kātyāyana and Patañjali.

Early Vedic notions about the authorship of the Vedic hymns are different from philosophical views. Vedic hymns use words like kāru (“craftsman”) to describe the poet, and the act of producing a hymn is described as ( Ṛgveda 10.71.2): “Like cleansing barley with a sieve, the wise poets created the speech with their mind”. The poets of the Vedic hymns are also called mantrakṛt (“makers of hymns”). Further, each hymn of the Veda is associated with a specific poet-priest and often with a family of poet-priests. But, already in the Ṛgveda , there are signs of the beginning of an impersonal conception of the origin of the Vedas. For instance, the famous Puruṣa -hymn of the Ṛgveda describes the hymns of the Ṛgveda , the formulae of Yajus and the songs of Sāman as originating from the primordial sacrifice of the cosmic being ( Ṛgveda 10.90.9). This trend to ascribe impersonal origin to the Vedas gets further accentuated in the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads .

Later Hindu notions about the Vedic scriptures and their authority are in part reflections of Hindu responses to the criticisms of the Vedas launched by the Buddhists and the Jains. The early Buddhist critique of the Vedas targets the authors of the Vedic hymns. Vedic sages like Vasiṣṭha, Viśvāmitra, and Bhṛgu are described as the ancient authors of the mantras ( porāṇā mantānaṃ kattāro ), but they are criticized as being ignorant of the true path to the union with Brahmā ( Tevijjasutta ; Dīghanikāya ; Suttapiṭaka ). So the Vedas are depicted as being words of ignorant human beings who do not even recognize their own ignorance. How can one trust such authors or their words? The Buddhist and the Jain traditions also rejected the notion of God, and hence any claim that the Vedas were words of God, and hence authoritative, was not acceptable to them. On the other hand, the Jain and the Buddhist traditions claimed that their leading spiritual teachers like Mahāvīra and Buddha were omniscient ( sarvajña ) and were compassionate toward humanity at large, and hence their words were claimed to be authoritative.

Beginning around 200 bce , Hindu ritualists ( Mīmāṃsakas ) and logicians ( Naiyāyikas and Vaiśeṣikas ) began to defend their religious faith in the Vedas and in the Brahmanical religion with specific arguments. Some of these arguments have precursors in the discussions of the early Sanskrit grammarians, Kātyāyana and Patañjali. The Mīmāṃsakas accepted the arguments of the Buddhists and the Jains that one need not accept the notion of a creator-controller God. However, the Mīmāṃsakas attempted to defend the Vedas against the criticism that the ancient human sages who authored the hymns of the Vedas were ignorant, while the figures like the Buddha and Mahāvīra were omniscient. They contested the notion of an omniscient person ( sarvajña ), and argued that no humans could be omniscient and free from ignorance, passion, and deceit. Therefore, the Buddha and Mahāvīra could not be free from these faults either, and hence their words cannot be trusted. On the other hand, the Vedas were claimed to be eternal and intrinsically meaningful words, uncreated by any human being ( apauruṣeya ). Since they were not created by human beings, they were free from the limitations and faults of human beings. Yet the Vedas were meaningful, because the relationship between words and meanings was claimed to be innate. The Vedas were ultimately seen as ordaining the performance of sacrifices. The Mīmāṃsakas developed a theory of sentence-meaning which claimed that the meaning of a sentence centers around some specific action denoted by a verb-root and an injunction expressed by the verbal terminations. Thus, language, especially the scriptural language, primarily orders us to engage in appropriate actions.

In this connection, we may note that Mīmāṃsā and other systems of Hindu philosophy developed a notion of linguistic expression as one of the sources of authoritative knowledge ( śabdapramāṇa ), when other more basic sources of knowledge like sense perception ( pratyakṣa ) and inference ( anumāna ) are not available. Particularly, in connection with religious duty ( dharma ), and heaven ( svarga ) as the promised reward, only the Veda is available as the source of authoritative knowledge. For Mīmāṃsā , the Veda as a source of knowledge is not tainted by negative qualities like ignorance and malice that could affect a normal human speaker.

To understand the Mīmāṃsā doctrine of the eternality of the Vedas, we need to note that eternality implies the absence of both a beginning and an end. In Indian philosophy, two kinds of persistence are distinguished, namely the ever unchanging persistence ( kūṭastha - nityatā ), like that of a rock, and the continuous and yet incessantly changing existence of a stream like that of a river ( pravāha - nityatā ). The persistence claimed for the Vedas by the Mīmāṃsakas would appear to be of the kūṭastha (“unchanging persistence”) kind, while its continuous study from time immemorial would be of the pravāha - nitya (“fluid persistence”) kind. Further, the meanings which the words signify are natural to the words, not the result of convention. Mīmāṃsā does not think that the association of a particular meaning with a word is due to conventions among people who introduce and give meanings to the words. Further, words signify only universals. The universals are eternal. Words do not signify particular entities of any kind which come into being and disappear, but the corresponding universals which are eternal and of which the transient individuals are mere instances. Further, not only are the meanings eternal, the words are also eternal. All words are eternal. If one utters the word “chair” ten times, is one uttering the same word ten times? The Mīmāṃsakas say that, if the word is not the same, then it cannot have the same meaning. The word and the meaning both being eternal, the relation between them also is necessarily so. An important argument with which the eternality of the Vedas is secured is that of the eternality of the sounds of a language.

The Mīmāṃsā conceives of an unbroken and beginningless Vedic tradition. No man or God can be considered to be the very first teacher of the Veda or the first receiver of it, because the world is beginningless. It is conceivable that, just as at present, there have always been teachers teaching and students studying the Veda. For the Mīmāṃsakas, the Vedas are not words of God. In this view, they seem to accept the Buddhist and the Jain critique of the notion of God. There is no need to assume God. Not only is there no need to assume that God was the author of the Vedas, there is no need to assume a God at all. God is not required as a Creator, for the universe was never created. Nor is God required as the Dispenser of Justice, for karman brings its own fruits. And one does not need God as the author of the Vedas, since they are eternal and uncreated to begin with. The Ṛṣis, Vedic sages, did not compose the Vedas. They merely saw them, and, therefore, the scriptures are free from the taint of mortality implicit in a human origin. The Mīmāṃsā notion of the authority of the authorless Veda also depends upon their epistemic theory, that claims that all received cognitions are intrinsically valid ( svataḥ pramāṇa ), unless and until they are falsified by subsequent cognitions of higher order.

The traditions of the Naiyāyikas and the Vaiśeṣikas strongly disagreed with the views of the Mīmāṃsakas and they developed their own distinctive conceptions of language, meaning, and scriptural authority. They agreed with the Mīmāṃsakas that the Vedas were a source of authoritative knowledge ( śabda - pramāṇa ), and yet they offered a different set of reasons. According to them, only the words of a trustworthy speaker ( āpta ) are a source of authoritative knowledge. They joined the Mīmāṃsakas in arguing that no humans, including Buddha and Mahāvīra, are free from ignorance, passion, etc., and no humans are omniscient, and therefore the words of no human being could be accepted as infallible. However, they did not agree with the Mīmāṃsakas in their rejection of the notion of God. In the metaphysics of the Nyāya - Vaiśeṣika tradition, the notion of God plays a central role. In defending the notion of God (as in the Nyāyakusumāñjali of Udayana), they claimed that God was the only being in the universe that was omniscient and free from the faults of ignorance and malice. He was a compassionate being. Therefore, only the words of God could be infallible, and therefore be trusted. For the Naiyāyikas and Vaiśeṣikas, the Vedas were words of God, and not the words of human sages about God. The human sages only received the words of God in their meditative trances, but they had no authorship role.

On a different level, this argument came to mean that God only spoke in Sanskrit, and hence Sanskrit alone was the language of God, and that it was the best means to approach God. God willfully established a connection between each Sanskrit word and its meaning, saying “let this word refer to this thing.” Such a connection was not established by God for vernacular languages, which were only fallen forms of Sanskrit, and hence the vernaculars could not become vehicles for religious and spiritual communication. The Naiyāyikas argued that vernacular words did not even have legitimate meanings of their own. They claimed that the vernacular words reminded the listener of the corresponding Sanskrit words that communicated the meaning.

The term artha in Sanskrit is used to denote the notion of meaning. However, the meaning of this term ranges from a real object in the external world referred to by the word to a mere concept of an object which may or may not correspond to anything in the external world. The differences regarding what meaning is are argued out by the philosophical schools of Nyāya , Vaiśeṣika , Mīmāṃsā , various schools of Buddhism, Sanskrit grammar, and poetics. Among these schools, the schools of Nyāya , Vaiśeṣika , and Mīmāṃsā have realist ontologies. Mīmāṃsā focuses mainly on interpreting the Vedic scriptures. Buddhist thinkers generally pointed to language as depicting a false picture of reality. Sanskrit grammarians were more interested in language and communication than in ontology, while Sanskrit poetics focused on the poetic dimensions of meaning.

The modern distinction of “sense” versus “reference” is somewhat blurred in the Sanskrit discussions of the notion of meaning. The question Indian philosophers seem to raise is “what does a word communicate?” They were also interested in detecting if there was some sort of sequence in which different aspects of layers of meaning were communicated. Generally, the notion of meaning is further stratified into three or four types. First there is the primary meaning, something that is directly and immediately communicated by a word. If the primary meaning is inappropriate in a given context, then one moves to a secondary meaning, an extension of the primary meaning. Beyond this is the suggested meaning, which may or may not be the same as the meaning intended by the speaker.

The various Indian theories of meaning are closely related to the overall stances taken by the different schools. Among the factors which influence the notion of meaning are the ontological and epistemological views of a school, its views regarding the role of God and scripture, its specific focus on a certain type of discourse, and its ultimate purpose in theorizing.

In the Western literature on the notion of meaning in the Indian tradition, various terms such as “sense,” “reference,” “denotation,” “connotation,” “designatum,” and “intension” have been frequently used to render the Sanskrit term artha . However, these terms carry specific nuances of their own, and no single term adequately conveys the idea of artha . Artha basically refers to the object signified by a word. In numerous contexts, the term stands for an object in the sense of an element of external reality. For instance, Patañjali says that when a word is pronounced, an artha “object” is understood. For example: “bring in a bull”, “eat yogurt”, etc. It is the artha that is brought in and it is also the artha that is eaten.

The schools of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika set up an ontology containing substances, qualities, actions, relations, generic and particular properties, etc. With this realistic ontology in mind, they argue that if the relation between a word and its artha (“meaning”) were a natural ontological relation, there should be real experiences of burning and cutting in one’s mouth after hearing words like “ agni ” (“fire”) and “ asi ” (“sword”). Therefore, this relationship must be a conventional relationship ( saṃketa ), the convention being established by God as part of his initial acts of creation. The relationship between a word and the object it refers to is thought to be the desire of God that such and such a word should refer to such and such an object. It is through this established conventional relationship that a word reminds the listener of its meaning. The school of Mīmāṃsā represents the tradition of the exegesis of the Vedic texts. However, in the course of discussing and perfecting principles of interpretation, this system developed a full-scale theory of ontology and an important theory of meaning. For the Mīmāṃsakas, the primary tenet is that the Vedic scriptural texts are eternal and uncreated, and that they are meaningful. For this orthodox system, which remarkably defends the scripture but dispenses with the notion of God, the relationship between a word and its meaning is an innate eternal relationship. For both Nyāya -Vaiśeṣikas and Mīmāṃsakas, language refers to external states of the world and not just to conceptual constructions.

The tradition of grammarians, beginning with Bhartṛhari, seems to have followed a middle path between the realistic theories of reference ( bāhyārthavāda ) developed by Nyāya - Vaiśeṣika and Mīmāṃsā on the one hand, and the notional/conceptual meaning ( vikalpa ) of the Buddhists on the other. For the grammarians, the meaning of a word is closely related to the level of understanding. Whether or not things are real, we do have concepts. These concepts form the content of a person’s cognitions derived from language. Without necessarily denying or affirming the external reality of objects in the world, grammarians claimed that the meaning of a word is only a projection of intellect ( bauddhārtha , buddhipratibhāsa ). The examples offered by Sanskrit grammarians such as “ śaśaśṛṅga ” (“horn of a rabbit”) and “ vandhyāsuta ” (“son of a barren woman”) remain meaningful within this theory. Sanskrit grammarians are thus not concerned with ontological or truth functional values of linguistic expressions. For them the truth of an expression and its meaningfulness are not to be equated.

By the middle of the second millennium of the Christian era, certain uniformity came about in the technical terminology used by different schools. The prominent schools in this period are the new school of Nyāya initiated by Gaṅgeśa, the schools of Mīmāṃsā , Vedānta, and Sanskrit grammar. While all these schools are engaged in pitched battles against each other, they seem to accept the terminological lead of the neo-logicians, the Navya-Naiyāyikas. Following the discussion of the term artha by the neo-logician Gadādharabhaṭṭa, we can state the general framework of a semantic theory. Other schools accept this general terminology, with some variations.

It may be said that the term artha (“meaning”) stands for the object or content of a verbal cognition or a cognition that results from hearing a word ( śābda - bodha - viṣaya ). Such a verbal cognition results from the cognition of a word ( śābda - jñāna ) on the basis of an awareness of the signification function pertaining to that word ( pada - niṣṭha - vṛtti - jñāna ). Depending upon the kind of signification function ( vṛtti ) involved in the emergence of the verbal cognition, the meaning belongs to a distinct type. In general terms:

• When a verbal cognition results from the primary signification function ( śakti / abhidhāvṛtti / mukhyavṛtti ) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called primary meaning ( śakyārtha / vācyārtha / abhidheya ).
• When a verbal cognition results from the secondary signification function ( lakṣaṇāvṛtti / guṇavṛtti ) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called secondary meaning ( lakṣyārtha ).
• When a verbal cognition results from the suggestive signification function ( vyañjanāvṛtti ) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called suggested meaning ( vyaṅgyārtha / dhvanitārtha ).
• When a verbal cognition results from the intentional signification function ( tātparyavṛtti ) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called intended meaning ( tātparyārtha ).

Not all the different schools of Indian philosophy accept all of these different kinds of signification functions for words, and they hold substantially different views on the nature of words, meanings, and the relations between words and meanings. However, the above terminology holds true, in general, for most of the medieval schools. Let us note some of the important differences. Mīmāṃsā claims that the sole primary meaning of the word “bull” is the generic property or the class property ( jāti ) such as bull-ness, while the individual object which possesses this generic property, i.e., a particular bull, is only secondarily and subsequently understood from the word “bull”. The school called Kevalavyaktivāda argues that a particular individual bull is the sole primary meaning of the word “bull,” while the generic property bull-ness is merely a secondary meaning. Nyāya argues that the primary meaning of a word is an individual object qualified by a generic property ( jāti - viśiṣṭa - vyakti ), both being perceived simultaneously.

Sanskrit grammarians distinguish between various different kinds of meanings ( artha ). The term artha stands for an external object ( vastumātra ), as well as for the object that is intended to be signified by a word ( abhidheya ). The latter, i.e., meaning in a linguistic sense, could be meaning in a technical context ( śāstrīya ), such as the meaning of an affix or a stem, or it may be meaning as understood by people in actual communication ( laukika ). Then there is a further difference. Meaning may be something directly intended to be signified by an expression ( abhidheya ), or it could be something which is inevitably signified ( nāntarīyaka ) when something else is really the intended meaning. Everything that is understood from a word on the basis of some kind of signification function ( vṛtti ) is covered by the term artha . Different systems of Indian philosophy differ from each other on whether a given cognition is derived from a word on the basis of a signification function ( vṛtti ), through inference ( anumāna ), or presumption ( arthāpatti ). If a particular item of information is deemed to have been derived through inference or presumption, it is not included in the notion of word-meaning.

The scope of the term artha is actually not limited in Sanskrit texts to what is usually understood as the domain of semantics in the western literature. It covers elements such as gender ( liṅga ) and number ( saṃkhyā ). It also covers the semantic-syntactic roles ( kāraka ) such as agent-ness ( kartṛtva ) and object-ness ( karmatva ). Tenses such as the present, past, and future, and the moods such as the imperative and optative are also traditionally included in the artha s signified by a verb root, or an affix. Another aspect of the concept of artha is revealed in the theory of dyotyārtha (“co-signified”) meaning. According to this theory, to put it in simple terms, particles such as ca (“and”) do not have any lexical or primary meaning. They are said to help other words used in construction with them to signify some special aspects of their meaning. For instance, in the phrase “John and Tom”, the meaning of grouping is said to be not directly signified by the word “and”. The theory of dyotyārtha argues that grouping is a specific meaning of the two words “John” and “Tom”, but that these two words are unable to signify this meaning if used by themselves. The word “and” used along with these two words is said to work as a catalyst that enables them to signify this special meaning. The problem of use and mention of words is also handled by Sanskrit grammarians by treating the phonological form of the word itself to be a part of the meaning it signifies. This is a unique way of handling this problem.

Most schools of Indian philosophy have an atomistic view of meaning and the meaning-bearing linguistic unit. This means that a sentence is put together by combining words and words are put together by combining morphemic elements like stems, roots, and affixes. The same applies to meaning. The word-meaning may be viewed as a fusion of the meanings of stems, roots, and affixes, and the meaning of a sentence may be viewed as a fusion of the meanings of its constituent words. Beyond this generality, different schools have specific proposals. The tradition of Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā proposes that the words of a sentence already convey contextualized inter-connected meanings ( anvitābhidhāna ) and that the sentence-meaning is not different from a simple addition of these inherently inter-connected word-meanings. On the other hand, the Naiyāyikas and the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas propose that words of a sentence taken by themselves convey only uncontextualized unconnected meanings, and that these uncontextualized word-meanings are subsequently brought into a contextualized association with each other ( abhihitānvaya ). Therefore, the sentence-meaning is different from word-meanings, and is communicated through the concatenation ( saṃsarga ) of words, rather than by the words themselves. This is also the view of the early grammarians like Kātyāyana and Patañjali.

For the later grammarian-philosopher Bhartṛhari, however, there are no divisions in speech acts and in communicated meanings. He says that only a person ignorant of the real nature of language believes the divisions of sentences into words, stems, roots, and affixes to be real. Such divisions are useful fictions and have an explanatory value in grammatical theory, but have no reality in communication. In reality, there is no sequence in the cognitions of these different components. The sentence-meaning becomes an object or content of a single instance of a flash of cognition ( pratibhā ).

The terms śakyatāvacchedaka and pravṛttinimitta signify a property which determines the inclusion of a particular instance within the class of possible entities referred to by a word. It is a property whose possession by an entity is the necessary and sufficient condition for a given word being used to refer to that entity. Thus, the property of potness may be viewed as the śakyatāvacchedaka controlling the use of the word “pot”.

The concept of lakṣaṇā (“secondary signification function”) is invoked in a situation where the primary meaning of an utterance does not appear to make sense in view of the intention behind the utterance, and hence one looks for a secondary meaning. However, the secondary meaning is always something that is related to the primary meaning in some way. For example, the expression gaṅgāyāṃ ghoṣaḥ literally refers to a cowherd-colony on the Ganges. Here, it is argued that one obviously cannot have a cowherd-colony sitting on top of the river Ganges. This would clearly go against the intention of the speaker. Thus, there is both a difficulty of justifying the linkage of word-meanings ( anvayānupapatti ) and a difficulty of justifying the literal or primary meaning in relation to the intention of the speaker ( tātparyānupapatti ). These interpretive difficulties nudge one away from the primary meaning of the expression to a secondary meaning, which is related to that primary meaning. Thus, we understand the expression as referring to a cowherd-colony “on the bank of the river Ganges”.

It is the next level of meaning or vyañjanā (“suggestive signification function”) which is analyzed and elaborated more specifically by authors like Ānandavardhana in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics. Consider the following instance of poetic suggestion. With her husband out on a long travel, a lovelorn young wife instructs a visiting young man: “My dear guest, I sleep here and my night-blind mother-in-law sleeps over there. Please make sure you do not stumble at night.” The suggested meaning is an invitation to the young man to come and share her bed. Thus, the poetic language goes well beyond the levels of lexical and metaphorical meanings, and heightens the aesthetic pleasure through such suggestions.

The nuances of these different theories are closely related to the markedly different interests of the schools within which they developed. Sanskrit poetics was interested in the poetic dimensions of meaning. Grammarians were interested in language and cognition, but had little interest in ontological categories per se, except as conceptual structures revealed by the usage of words. For them words and meanings had to be explained irrespective of one’s metaphysical views. Nyāya -Vaiśeṣikas were primarily into logic, epistemology, and ontology, and argued that a valid sentence was a true picture of a state of reality. The foremost goal of Mīmāṃsā was to interpret and defend the Vedic scriptures. Thus, meaning for Mīmāṃsā had to be eternal, uncreated, and unrelated to the intention of a person, because its word par excellence, the Vedic scripture, was eternal, uncreated, and beyond the authorship of a divine or human person. The scriptural word was there to instruct people on how to perform proper ritual and moral duties, but there was no intention behind it. The Buddhists, on the other hand, aimed at weaning people away from all attachment to the world, and hence at showing the emptiness of everything, including language. They were more interested in demonstrating how language fails to portray reality, than in explaining how it works. The theories of meaning were thus a significant part of the total agenda of each school and need to be understood in their specific context.

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• Iyer, K. A. S., 1966. Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, with the Vṛtti, and the Paddhati of Vṛṣabhadeva, Kāṇḍa I (Series: Deccan College Monograph Series, No. 32), Pune: Deccan College.
• Joshi, S. D., 1967. The Sphoṭanirṇaya of Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa , edited with Introduction, Translation, and Critical and Exegetical Notes (Series: Publications of the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, Class C, No. 2), Pune: University of Pune.
• Keeting, Malcolm, 2019. Language, Meaning and Use in Indian Philosophy, An Introduction to Mukula's Fundamentals of the Communicative Function , New York: London, Bloomsbury Academic.
• Matilal, B. K., 1971. Epistemology, Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis , The Hague, Paris: Mouton.
• –––, 1985. Logic, Language and Reality: an introduction to Indian philosophical studies , Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
• –––, 1998. The Character of Logic in India , Albany: State University of New York Press.
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• Padoux, A., 1990. Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras , translated from French by J. Gontier, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Pandeya, R. C., 1963. The Problem of Meaning in Indian Philosophy , Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
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• Shaw, Jaysankar Lal, and Matilal, Bimal Krishna (eds.), 1985. Analytical philosophy in comparative perspective : exploratory essays in current theories and classical Indian theories of meaning and reference , Dordrecht – Boston: D. Reidel.
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• –––, 1969. “Sanskrit Philosophy of Language,” in T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics (Volume 5: Linguistics in South Asia), The Hague: Mouton, pp. 499–531).
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• –––, 1988. Universals: Studies in Indian Logic and Linguistics , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Thieme, P., 1982–3. “Meaning and form of the ‘grammar’ of Pāṇini,” Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik , 8/9: 23–28.
• Wada, Toshihiro, 2020, Navya-Nyāya Philosophy of Language , New Delhi: D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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• Bibliography , by Karl Potter, in the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies (archived website at archive.org).

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: November 16, 2023 | Original: October 6, 2017

Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion, according to many scholars, with roots and customs dating back more than 4,000 years. Today, with more than 1 billion followers , Hinduism is the third-largest religion worldwide, after Christianity and Islam . Roughly 94 percent of the world’s Hindus live in India. Because the religion has no specific founder, it’s difficult to trace its origins and history. Hinduism is unique in that it’s not a single religion but a compilation of many traditions and philosophies: Hindus worship a number of different gods and minor deities, honor a range of symbols, respect several different holy books and celebrate with a wide variety of traditions, holidays and customs. Though the development of the caste system in India was influenced by Hindu concepts , it has been shaped throughout history by political as well as religious movements, and today is much less rigidly enforced. Today there are four major sects of Hinduism: Shaivism, Vaishnava, Shaktism and Smarta, as well as a number of smaller sects with their own religious practices.

Hinduism Beliefs, Symbols

Some basic Hindu concepts include:

• Hinduism embraces many religious ideas. For this reason, it’s sometimes referred to as a “way of life” or a “family of religions,” as opposed to a single, organized religion.
• Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic, which means they worship a single deity, known as “Brahman,” but still recognize other gods and goddesses. Followers believe there are multiple paths to reaching their god.
• Hindus believe in the doctrines of samsara (the continuous cycle of life, death, and reincarnation) and karma (the universal law of cause and effect).
• One of the key thoughts of Hinduism is “atman,” or the belief in soul. This philosophy holds that living creatures have a soul, and they’re all part of the supreme soul. The goal is to achieve “moksha,” or salvation, which ends the cycle of rebirths to become part of the absolute soul.
• One fundamental principle of the religion is the idea that people’s actions and thoughts directly determine their current life and future lives.
• Hindus strive to achieve dharma, which is a code of living that emphasizes good conduct and morality.
• Hindus revere all living creatures and consider the cow a sacred animal.
• Food is an important part of life for Hindus. Most don’t eat beef or pork, and many are vegetarians.
• Hinduism is closely related to other Indian religions, including Buddhism , Sikhism and Jainism.

There are two primary symbols associated with Hinduism, the om and the swastika. The word swastika means "good fortune" or "being happy" in Sanskrit, and the symbol represents good luck . (A hooked, diagonal variation of the swastika later became associated with Germany’s Nazi Party  when they made it their symbol in 1920.)

The om symbol is composed of three Sanskrit letters and represents three sounds (a, u and m), which when combined are considered a sacred sound. The om symbol is often found at family shrines and in Hindu temples.

Hinduism Holy Books

Hindus value many sacred writings as opposed to one holy book.

The primary sacred texts, known as the Vedas, were composed around 1500 B.C. This collection of verses and hymns was written in Sanskrit and contains revelations received by ancient saints and sages.

The Vedas are made up of:

• The Rig Veda
• The Samaveda
• Atharvaveda

Hindus believe that the Vedas transcend all time and don’t have a beginning or an end.

The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, 18 Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata are also considered important texts in Hinduism.

Origins of Hinduism

Most scholars believe Hinduism started somewhere between 2300 B.C. and 1500 B.C. in the Indus Valley, near modern-day Pakistan. But many Hindus argue that their faith is timeless and has always existed.

Unlike other religions, Hinduism has no one founder but is instead a fusion of various beliefs.

Around 1500 B.C., the Indo-Aryan people migrated to the Indus Valley, and their language and culture blended with that of the indigenous people living in the region. There’s some debate over who influenced whom more during this time.

The period when the Vedas were composed became known as the “Vedic Period” and lasted from about 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. Rituals, such as sacrifices and chanting, were common in the Vedic Period.

The Epic, Puranic and Classic Periods took place between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500. Hindus began to emphasize the worship of deities, especially Vishnu, Shiva and Devi.

The concept of dharma was introduced in new texts, and other faiths, such as Buddhism and Jainism, spread rapidly.

Hinduism vs. Buddhism

Hinduism and Buddhism have many similarities. Buddhism, in fact, arose out of Hinduism, and both believe in reincarnation, karma and that a life of devotion and honor is a path to salvation and enlightenment. 

But some key differences exist between the two religions: Many strains of Buddhism reject the caste system, and do away with many of the rituals, the priesthood, and the gods that are integral to Hindu faith.

Medieval and Modern Hindu History

The Medieval Period of Hinduism lasted from about A.D. 500 to 1500. New texts emerged, and poet-saints recorded their spiritual sentiments during this time.

In the 7th century, Muslim Arabs began invading areas in India. During parts of the Muslim Period, which lasted from about 1200 to 1757, Islamic rulers prevented Hindus from worshipping their deities, and some temples were destroyed.

Mahatma Gandhi

Between 1757 and 1947, the British controlled India. At first, the new rulers allowed Hindus to practice their religion without interference, but the British soon attempted to exploit aspects of Indian culture as leverage points for political control, in some cases exacerbating Hindu caste divisions even as they promoted westernized, Christian approaches.

Many reformers emerged during the British Period. The well-known politician and peace activist, Mahatma Gandhi , led a movement that pushed for India’s independence.

The partition of India occurred in 1947, and Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. British India was split into what are now the independent nations of India and Pakistan , and Hinduism became the major religion of India.

Starting in the 1960s, many Hindus migrated to North America and Britain, spreading their faith and philosophies to the western world.

Hindus worship many gods and goddesses in addition to Brahman, who is believed to be the supreme God force present in all things.

Some of the most prominent deities include:

• Brahma: the god responsible for the creation of the world and all living things
• Vishnu: the god that preserves and protects the universe
• Shiva: the god that destroys the universe in order to recreate it
• Devi: the goddess that fights to restore dharma
• Krishna: the god of compassion, tenderness and love
• Lakshmi: the goddess of wealth and purity
• Saraswati: the goddess of learning

Places of Worship

Hindu worship, which is known as “puja,” typically takes place in the Mandir (temple). Followers of Hinduism can visit the Mandir any time they please.

Hindus can also worship at home, and many have a special shrine dedicated to certain gods and goddesses.

The giving of offerings is an important part of Hindu worship. It’s a common practice to present gifts, such as flowers or oils, to a god or goddess.

Additionally, many Hindus take pilgrimages to temples and other sacred sites in India.

Hinduism Sects

Hinduism has many sects, and the following are often considered the four major denominations.

Shaivism is one of the largest denominations of Hinduism, and its followers worship Shiva, sometimes known as “The Destroyer,” as their supreme deity.

Shaivism spread from southern India into Southeast Asia and is practiced in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia as well as India. Like the other major sects of Hinduism, Shaivism considers the Vedas and the Upanishads to be sacred texts.

Vaishnavism is considered the largest Hindu sect, with an estimated 640 million followers, and is practiced worldwide. It includes sub-sects that are familiar to many non-Hindus, including Ramaism and Krishnaism.

Vaishnavism recognizes many deities, including Vishnu, Lakshmi, Krishna and Rama, and the religious practices of Vaishnavism vary from region to region across the Indian subcontinent.

Shaktism is somewhat unique among the four major traditions of Hinduism in that its followers worship a female deity, the goddess Shakti (also known as Devi).

Shaktism is sometimes practiced as a monotheistic religion, while other followers of this tradition worship a number of goddesses. This female-centered denomination is sometimes considered complementary to Shaivism, which recognizes a male deity as supreme.

The Smarta or Smartism tradition of Hinduism is somewhat more orthodox and restrictive than the other four mainstream denominations. It tends to draw its followers from the Brahman upper caste of Indian society.

Smartism followers worship five deities: Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, Ganesh and Surya. Their temple at Sringeri is generally recognized as the center of worship for the denomination.

Some Hindus elevate the Hindu trinity, which consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Others believe that all the deities are a manifestation of one.

Hindu Caste System

The caste system is a social hierarchy in India that divides Hindus based on their karma and dharma. Although the word “caste” is of Portuguese origin, it is used to describe aspects of the related Hindu concepts of varna (color or race) and jati (birth). Many scholars believe the system dates back more than 3,000 years.

The four main castes (in order of prominence) include:

• Brahmin: the intellectual and spiritual leaders
• Kshatriyas: the protectors and public servants of society
• Vaisyas: the skillful producers
• Shudras: the unskilled laborers

Many subcategories also exist within each caste. The “Untouchables” are a class of citizens that are outside the caste system and considered to be in the lowest level of the social hierarchy.

For centuries, the caste system determined most aspect of a person’s social, professional and religious status in India.

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When India became an independent nation, its constitution banned discrimination based on caste.

Today, the caste system still exists in India but is loosely followed. Many of the old customs are overlooked, but some traditions, such as only marrying within a specific caste, are still embraced.

Hindus observe numerous sacred days, holidays and festivals.

Some of the most well-known include:

• Diwali : the festival of lights
• Navaratri: a celebration of fertility and harvest
• Holi: a spring festival
• Krishna Janmashtami: a tribute to Krishna’s birthday
• Raksha Bandhan: a celebration of the bond between brother and sister
• Maha Shivaratri: the great festival of Shiva

Hinduism Facts. Sects of Hinduism . Hindu American Foundation. Hinduism Basics . History of Hinduism, BBC . Hinduism Fast Facts, CNN .

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Hinduism and hindu art.

Krishna Killing the Horse Demon Keshi

Standing Four-Armed Vishnu

Linga with Face of Shiva (Ekamukhalinga)

Standing Parvati

Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja)

Standing Ganesha

Standing Female Deity, probably Durga

Ardhanarishvara (Composite of Shiva and Parvati)

Vaikuntha Vishnu

Krishna on Garuda

Durga as Slayer of the Buffalo Demon Mahishasura

Seated Ganesha

Kneeling Female Figure

Hanuman Conversing

The Goddess Durga Slaying the Demon Buffalo Mahisha

Loving Couple (Mithuna)

Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Shaiva Saint

Vidya Dehejia Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

February 2007

According to the Hindu view, there are four goals of life on earth, and each human being should aspire to all four. Everyone should aim for dharma , or righteous living; artha , or wealth acquired through the pursuit of a profession; kama , or human and sexual love; and, finally, moksha , or spiritual salvation.

This holistic view is reflected as well as in the artistic production of India. Although a Hindu temple is dedicated to the glory of a deity and is aimed at helping the devotee toward moksha , its walls might justifiably contain sculptures that reflect the other three goals of life. It is in such a context that we may best understand the many sensuous and apparently secular themes that decorate the walls of Indian temples.

Hinduism is a religion that had no single founder, no single spokesman, no single prophet. Its origins are mixed and complex. One strand can be traced back to the sacred Sanskrit literature of the Aryans, the Vedas, which consist of hymns in praise of deities who were often personifications of the natural elements. Another strand drew on the beliefs prevalent among groups of indigenous peoples, especially the faith in the power of the mother goddess and in the efficacy of fertility symbols. Hinduism, in the form comparable to its present-day expression, emerged at about the start of the Christian era, with an emphasis on the supremacy of the god Vishnu, the god Shiva, and the goddess Shakti (literally, “Power”).

The pluralism evident in Hinduism, as well as its acceptance of the existence of several deities, is often puzzling to non-Hindus. Hindus suggest that one may view the Infinite as a diamond of innumerable facets. One or another facet—be it Rama, Krishna, or Ganesha—may beckon an individual believer with irresistible magnetism. By acknowledging the power of an individual facet and worshipping it, the believer does not thereby deny the existence of many aspects of the Infinite and of varied paths toward the ultimate goal.

Deities are frequently portrayed with multiple arms, especially when they are engaged in combative acts of cosmic consequence that involve destroying powerful forces of evil. The multiplicity of arms emphasizes the immense power of the deity and his or her ability to perform several feats at the same time. The Indian artist found this a simple and an effective means of expressing the omnipresence and omnipotence of a deity. Demons are frequently portrayed with multiple heads to indicate their superhuman power. The occasional depiction of a deity with more than one head is generally motivated by the desire to portray varying aspects of the character of that deity. Thus, when the god Shiva is portrayed with a triple head, the central face indicates his essential character and the flanking faces depict his fierce and blissful aspects.

The Hindu Temple Architecture and sculpture are inextricably linked in India . Thus, if one speaks of Indian architecture without taking note of the lavish sculptured decoration with which monuments are covered, a partial and distorted picture is presented. In the Hindu temple , large niches in the three exterior walls of the sanctum house sculpted images that portray various aspects of the deity enshrined within. The sanctum image expresses the essence of the deity. For instance, the niches of a temple dedicated to a Vishnu may portray his incarnations; those of a temple to Shiva , his various combative feats; and those of a temple to the Great Goddess, her battles with various demons. Regional variations exist, too; in the eastern state of Odisha, for example, the niches of a temple to Shiva customarily contain images of his family—his consort, Parvati, and their sons, Ganesha, the god of overcoming obstacles, and warlike Skanda.

The exterior of the halls and porch are also covered with figural sculpture. A series of niches highlight events from the mythology of the enshrined deity, and frequently a place is set aside for a variety of other gods. In addition, temple walls feature repeated banks of scroll-like foliage, images of women, and loving couples known as mithunas . Signifying growth, abundance, and prosperity, they were considered auspicious motifs.

Dehejia, Vidya. “Hinduism and Hindu Art.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hind/hd_hind.htm (February 2007)

Further Reading

Dehejia, Vidya. Indian Art . London: Phaidon, 1997.

Eck, Diana L. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. 2d ed . Chamberburg, Pa.: Anima Books, 1985.

Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. Reprint . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Mitter, Partha. Indian Art . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Additional Essays by Vidya Dehejia

• Dehejia, Vidya. “ Buddhism and Buddhist Art .” (February 2007)
• Dehejia, Vidya. “ Recognizing the Gods .” (February 2007)
• Dehejia, Vidya. “ South Asian Art and Culture .” (February 2007)

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3.1: Hinduism

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Hinduism is also known as ‘ sanatana dharma ‘ to Hindus. Considered the oldest organized religion in the world, Hinduism originated in the Indus River Valley about 4,000 years ago in what is now northwest India and Pakistan. With about 1.2 billion followers, about 15% of the world’s population, Hinduism is the third largest of the world’s religions. Hindus believe in a divine power that can manifest as different entities or avatars. Hindu practice has many seemingly independent centers of tradition, often with distinctive sacred texts, deities, myths, rituals, saintly figures, codes of conduct, festivals and so on, but on closer scrutiny these different centers can be seen to link up with each other. This also explains how, while other faiths and civilizations have come and gone, Hinduism continues to thrive and put out new shoots and roots, even when old ones have died away. Diversity is accepted in Hindu traditions, as it considers each path one of value.

Three main incarnations of the divine, called the Trimurti—Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—are sometimes compared to the manifestations of the divine in the Christian Trinity. They are considered the deities of creation, preservation and destruction. They are a part of Brahman–the One Ultimate Reality. Although there are many deities beyond these three, and many images of those deities, in various shrines, temples and holy places, there are no images of Brahman. That One Ultimate Reality is unknowable and beyond human comprehension. But all deities are a part of that One Ultimate Reality. And human goals are to become united with that One–to achieve moksha.

Hinduism developed within a group of tribes who referred to themselves as Aryans. There are disputes concerning where they originated; some scholarship says that they were already present in western India, others that they came into the area from Central Asia, or even that they came from further west, including eastern Europe. It is known that the Aryans began to assert their presence in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent at about the beginning of the second millennium BCE, interacting with the Indus civilization that already existed there. The Indus civilization is so named because it seems to have spread out from settlements on the Indus river. They called the Indus river ‘ Sindhu ’, and it is from this term that ‘Hindu’ comes. Hinduism thus signifies the Aryans’ culture and religious traditions as they developed over time, incorporating elements from other cultures that the Aryans encountered along the way.

The religious tradition that emerged early on (almost before anything that looks like modern Hinduism) had a variety of gods and was centered on priests performing sacrifices using fire and sacred chants. This is much like traditions in many places around the continent.

The Indus river valley people create sacred texts, collectively called the Vedas, that contain hymns and rituals from ancient India and are mostly written in Sanskrit. The term Vedas means ‘knowledge’. The Vedas were believed to have arisen from the infallible ‘hearing’ ( śruti ), by ancient seers, of the sacred deposit of words whose recitation and contemplation bring stability and wellbeing to both the natural and human worlds. The Vedas are believed to have developed over a span of 2000 years. The hymns in particular were largely directed at transcendent powers, most of whom were called devas and devīs (misleadingly translated as ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’). These powers, individually or in groups, were thought to exercise control over the world through cosmic forces. In this early phase of the Veda, there is reference to a One ( ekam ) that undergirds all being. During later periods of this earliest pre-Hindu tradition, questioning and changes in spiritual philosophy produced the Upanishads, an addition to the Vedas. These are also written in Sanskrit and contain some of the central philosophical concepts and ideas of the Hinduism we now know. These works record insights into external and internal spiritual reality (Brahman and Atman) that can be directly experienced.

Hindus generally believe in a set of principles called dharma , which refer to one’s duty in the world that corresponds with “right” actions. Hindus also believe in karma , or the notion that spiritual ramifications of one’s actions are balanced cyclically in this life or a future life (reincarnation).

Introduction to Hinduism: Discovering Sacred Texts in the British Library, PBS Learning

This excellent introduction to Hinduism is found at the really impressive British Library website exploring Sacred Texts of the world. Start here:

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/worldreligionsthespiritsearching/?p=48

After this, watch this simple introduction to Hindu Concepts from PBS Learning Media:

• Core Tenants of Hinduism

Two other dharma -texts of a different order, the Mahabharata (‘The Great Tale of the Bharatas’) and the Ramayana (‘The Coming of Rama) came later. Both compositions were originally compiled in Sanskrit verse over several hundreds of years, beginning from about the middle of the first millennium BCE. The Mahabharata narrates the story of the rivalry between two groups of cousin warriors, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. With the aid of hundreds of supporting characters and intriguing sub-plots, the story contains teaching about the nature of dharma . Embedded in book 6 of the Mahabharata is perhaps the most famous devotional sacred text of Hinduism, the 700 verse Bhagavad Gita , or ‘Song of (Krishna as) God’. The Gita , as it is often called, mainly contains teachings by Krishna, as Supreme Being, to his friend and disciple Arjuna about how to attain union with him in his divine state.

The Ramayana recounts the adventures of the exiled king Rama and his various companions as they make their way to the island-kingdom of Lanka – off the southern tip of India – to rescue Rama’s wife Sita, who had been abducted by Ravana, the ten-headed ogre-king of Lanka. For a great many Hindus, the Ramayana , and devotion to the avatar (the chief representation of the Supreme Being in human form) Rama offers an accessible path to salvation.

The mysticism and abstractness of materials in the Vedas is balanced with practical religious elements that form the everyday spirituality of most Hindus. This practical approach described in the Gita states that one should first work to meet one’s social obligations in life. Then the Gita recommends four paths, or yogas , that take into account one’s caste and personality type. The paths of knowledge (jnana), action (karma), devotion (bhakti), or meditation (raja) may be practiced. Other yogas combine elements of these four. Yoga is considered a form of spiritual work in Hinduism.

The term Brahman stands for a monistic outlook that sees one invisible and subtle essence or source of all reality—human, divine, and cosmic. All is ultimately one. (Monism is the metaphysical and theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions between anything, and that a unified set of laws underlie all of nature. The universe, at the deepest level of analysis, is then one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff.) Brahman is the term used to describe “god” as this Oneness of the universe. Supreme Universal Spirit might serve as a better or more broad way to express this concept of Brahman. (do not confuse Brahma from the Trimurti with Brahman. They are completely different!)

Atman is the innermost spirit within all human beings, which ultimately is identical with Brahman. Sometimes we talk about the soul in about the same way. It refers to the real self beyond ego or false self.

Maya reflects a sense of magic and mystery and accounts for the perception of different forms or multiplicity in the world. Maya hides or veils the underlying unity of all things.

For more than two thousand years in Indian society there has been an organization of the society in the form of the Caste system, although this phrase is a 19th century term. Organization of Indian society had its own structure that, with the coming of the British in the colonial era, took on a much more rigid approach.

Varna is a term that literally means type, order, or class   and it groups people into classes, a structure that was first used in Vedic times. The four classes were the Brahmins (priestly people), the Kshatriyas (rulers, administrators and warriors), the Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers), and Shudras (laboring classes). It had an additional category, identifying people beyond societal status, considered the untouchables.

Jati is a term used in India to refer to a person’s lineage and kinship group. Indians identify themselves by the community they belong to and these jati are sub-groups of specific castes. The status of the jati one is born into is still a factor in marriage selection, even though the strict isolation of caste in India is softening. Each jati, or subgroup of a caste level, has a set of jobs common to their position, but this can change with effort on the part of the community. Jatis are much less obvious in their caste associations than was previously thought.

The Indian Constitution outlawed the concept of Untouchability in 1947 upon receiving Indian independence from Britain, and the group called Dalit (once considered the untouchables) are working even now towards their civil rights.

The Indian Government has established special quotas in schools and Parliament to aid the lowest jatis. Caste discrimination is not permitted in gaining employment and access to educational and other opportunities. But this does not mean that caste is illegal or has faded away. Caste groups as political pressure groups work very well in a democratic system. Caste may provide psychological support that people seem to need. Economists and political scientists are finding that caste is no real barrier to economic development or political democracy. [1]

Key Takeaway: The Dalit movement in the 20th century

Take some time to read this interview about the Dalits in modern India. Michael Collins is a 2020 Kluge Fellow from the University of Gottingen. Collins is working on a project titled “ From Boycotts to Ballots: Democracy and Social Minorities in Modern India.” Boris Granovskiy, who recently detailed at the Kluge Center, interviewed Collins on his work.

The 20th Century Transformation of the Dalit Movement in India

Karma and rebirth/reincarnation are important aspects of the Hindu worldview. Justice is built into the very fabric of reality. The moral consequences of one’s actions will be experienced in this life or the next. So a belief in reincarnation is central to Hindu belief. One moves up or down the caste ladder depending on the caliber of one’s life just lived.

Moksha represents the idea of final liberation or freedom from all limitations, especially the round of death and rebirth. Moksha entails going beyond egoism and identifying with the unity and sacredness that everything shares. After enough lifetimes, and learning achieved, one eventually leaves the cycle of rebirth and is liberated.

There are 4 goals in life:

According to Hinduism, the meaning (purpose) of life is four-fold: to achieve Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha .

The first, dharma , means to act morally and ethically throughout one’s life. However, dharma also has a secondary aspect; since Hindus believe that they are born in debt to the gods and people, dharma calls for Hindus to remember these debts. These include debts to the Gods for various blessings, debts to parents and teachers, debts to guests, debts to other human beings, and debts to all other living beings.

The second meaning of life according to Hinduism is Artha , which refers to the pursuit of wealth and prosperity in one’s life. Importantly, one must stay within the bounds of dharma while pursuing this wealth and prosperity (i.e. one must not step outside moral and ethical grounds in order to do so). So it is considered good to prosper, but not at the expense of others.

The third purpose of a Hindu’s life is to seek Kama. In simple terms, Kama can be defined as obtaining enjoyment from life. Again, this is not to be done at the expense of others, but it is considered a good thing in life to have joy and pleasure.

The fourth and final meaning of life according to Hinduism is Moksha , enlightenment. By far the most difficult meaning of life to achieve, Moksha may take an individual just one lifetime to accomplish (rarely) or it may take several. However, it is considered the most important meaning of life and offers such rewards as liberation from reincarnation, self-realization, enlightenment, or unity with God. Often, in human lives, people focus on this goal as elders. As a young person, the other goals may be more important, or more demanding.

There are stages to human living, too, according to Hinduism:

Ashrama, also spelled asrama, Sanskrit āśrama, in Hinduism, is any of the four stages of life through which a Hindu ideally will pass.

The stages are those of:

• the student ( Brahamacari) , marked by chastity, devotion, and obedience to one’s teacher,
• the householder ( Grihastha) , requiring marriage, the begetting of children, sustaining one’s family and helping support priests and holy men, and fulfillment of duties toward gods and ancestors,
• the forest dweller ( Vanaprastha ), beginning after the birth of grandchildren and consisting of withdrawal from concern with material things, pursuit of solitude, and ascetic and yogic practices, and
• the homeless renouncer ( Sannyasi ), involving renouncing all one’s possessions to wander from place to place begging for food, concerned only with union with brahman (the Absolute). Traditionally, moksha (liberation from rebirth) should be pursued only during the last two stages of a person’s life.

Exercise: Flashcards

One fun way to get a handle on difficult or new terms is through flashcards. Try these, just for fun

• Brainscape on Hinduism

The multiple gods and goddesses of Hinduism are a distinctive feature of the religion. However, Professor Julius Lipner [2] explains that Hinduism cannot be considered polytheistic and discusses the way in which Hindu culture and sacred texts conceptualize the deities, as well as their role in devotional faith. (the full texts, of which this material is only excerpts, can be found at The Hindu Sacred Image and Iconography, Hindu Deities )

“One of the most striking features of Hinduism is the seemingly endless array of images of gods and goddesses, most with animal associates, that inhabit the colorful temples, and wayside shrines and homes of its adherents. Because of this, Hinduism has been called an idolatrous and polytheistic religion.

Hinduism can be likened to an enormous banyan tree extending itself through many centers of belief and practice which can be seen to link up with each other in various ways, like a great network that is one, yet many. The concepts of deity, worship and pilgrimage in Hinduism are a prime example of this ‘polycentric’ phenomenon.

Deities are a key feature of Hindu sacred texts. The Vedic texts describe many so-called gods and goddesses ( devas and devīs ) who personify various cosmic powers through fire, wind, sun, dawn, darkness, earth and so on. There is no firm evidence that these Vedic deities were worshipped by images; rather, they were summoned through the sacrificial ritual ( yajña ), with the deity Agni (fire) generally acting as intermediary, to bestow various boons to their supplicants on earth in exchange for homage and the ritual offering. Some Vedic texts speak of a One that seemed to undergird the plurality of these devas and devīs as their support and origin. In time, in the Upanishads, this One ( Brahman ) was envisaged as either the transcendent, supra-personal source of all change and differentiation in our world which would eventually dissolve back into the One, or as the supreme, personal Lord who was the mainstay and goal of all finite being. In both conceptions, we have the basis for subsequent notions of a transcendent reality that is accessible to humans by meditation and/or prayer and worship.

Exercise: watch this short video about Hindu deities

It is in the Bhagavad Gita that we first find sustained textual evidence of developed thinking about devotional faith in a personal God, named Krishna. In this text, Krishna teaches his friend and disciple, Arjuna, about his divine nature and relationship with the world, and how the devoted soul can find liberation ( moksha ) from the sorrows and limitations of life through loving communion with him. Here, also for the first time in Hinduism, we encounter the doctrine of the avatāra (also known as avatar ), which teaches that the Supreme Being descends periodically into the world in embodied form for, according to the Gita , ‘re-establishing dharma , protecting the virtuous and destroying the wicked.’ The doctrine of multiple avatars with their specific objectives was to develop subsequently over the centuries in various sacred texts.

Places of worship

The first archaeological evidence we have of standing temple construction and its implication of image-worship of the deity occurs in about the 3rd century BCE – of a Vishnu temple (in eastern Rajasthan) and of a Shiva temple not too far away. Presumably, since these were constructions of mud, timber, brick, stone etc., the process of temple-building had begun appreciably earlier, though we cannot say exactly where or when. We can also assume from textual and archaeological evidence that image-worship in Hinduism was present by about the 6th to the 5th century BCE.

Most deities have an animal associate ( vāhana ) which helps identify the deity and express the latter’s specific powers; this was achieved too by an artistic device that attributed multiple body-parts, such as hands and heads, adorned by weapons and other objects, to the image. There are many stories, especially in the Purāṇas, which describe the origin and role of the vāhana and the weapons and other attributes associated with the image.

Other than by forms of temple worship, which include both personal prayer and various rituals conducted by priests, the deity may be worshipped at home too, in a format called puja. In its simplest form, puja usually consists of making an offering of flowers or fruit to an image of a god at a home shrine. It can also happen by way of meditation ( dhyāna ). Dhyāna can include highly specialized kinds of visualization of the deity invoked, in which the deity is often envisaged as communicating with the worshipper.

Another form of worshipping the deity in Hinduism is through pilgrimage ( yātrā ). Pilgrimage is a way of creating a sacred landscape, of indicating that the whole world, including the pilgrim, belongs to the deity and is under its rulership. Through every pilgrimage, Hindus encounter a tīrtha , a sacred ford or crossing-point between heaven and earth, by which they may come to terms with this world of sorrows and arrive at the threshold of liberation. Over time, a great many tīrthas have developed across the Hindu sacred landscape.”

How to look at Hindu mythology

You may be finding the concept of the divine, or dealing with all these deities, really confusing. Try listening to this Ted Talk, which may help:

A TED element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/worldreligionsthespiritsearching/?p=48

Dr Rishi Handa [3] looks at bhakti in Hinduism, exploring its common modes, the Hindu concept of enlightenment and how to achieve it, the importance of the Divine Name and the veneration of forms of the deities.

“If any aspect of religiosity can be said to pervade India, it is bhakti . In a land whose culture is filled with a plethora of devīs (goddesses) and devas (gods), it is the foremost way by which Hindus express and experience the Transcendent.

Bhakti is best rendered in English as ‘loving devotion’, but it is much more than that. While common objects of bhakti can be one’s guru (teacher) and one’s country, this bhāva (emotion or feeling) is typically directed to īśvara (the divine, ‘God’). Bhakti can be articulated through gratitude, honoring of the deities, engaging in formal ritual service to a deity, hymn-singing, reading devotional scriptures, and constantly remembering the name of one’s deity. This list is certainly not exhaustive.

The nine modes of bhakti

According to a number of Hindu texts, there are nine ways of expressing bhakti . These differ depending on the text. According to two of the key Purāṇas of Hinduism, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa centred on Krishna (also spelt Kṛṣṇa), and the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (focused on Vishnu, also spelt Viṣṇu), the nine ways are:

• Shravana : Hearing the Lord’s virtues, glories and stories.
• Kīrtana : Singing the Lord’s glories in the form of hymns.
• Smarana : Remembering the Lord at all times.
• Pādasevana : Serving the Lord’s Feet.
• Archanā : Honouring the Lord.
• Vandanā : Prayer and prostration unto the Lord.
• Dāsya bhakti : Being a servant of the Lord.
• Sākhya bhakti : Friendship with the Lord.
• Ātma-nivedana : Self-surrender to the Lord.

A little summary…

You might be feeling a little overwhelmed by all of this detail and history. Try a summary from Crash Course:

“Discovering Sacred Texts: Hinduism.” The British Library , The British Library, 13 Sept. 2019, www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/videos/hinduism.

Lipner, Julius. “Hindu Deities.” The British Library: Discovering Sacred Texts , The British Library, 3 Dec. 2018, www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/hindu-deities#authorBlock1.

Lipner, Julius. “The Hindu Sacred Image and Its Iconography.” The British Library: Discovering Sacred Texts , The British Library, 17 May 2019, www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/the-hindu-sacred-image-and-its-iconography.

Lipner, Julius. British Library , Discovering Sacred Texts, 2019, www.bl.uk/sacred-texts/articles/sacred-texts-in-hinduism.

Breiner, Andrew. “The 20th Century Transformation of the Dalit Movement in India.” The 20th Century Transformation of the Dalit Movement in India | Insights: Scholarly Work at the John W. Kluge Center , 31 July 2020, blogs.loc.gov/kluge/2020/07/the-20th-century-transformation-of-the-dalit-movement-in-india/.

“The Core Tenets of Hinduism.” PBS LearningMedia , GBH, 16 Dec. 2020, illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/sj14-soc-hinduism/the-core-tenets-of-hinduism/#.WiF-ukqnFPY.

Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/.

Green, John. “Crash Course Hinduism.” Crash Course , 11 Sept. 2012, youtu.be/0tpVZrsvK-k.

“Indian Pantheons: Crash Course World Mythology #8.” Crash Course , 14 Apr. 2017, youtu.be/V_NJAJGCKD8.

Johnson, Jean, and Donald Johnson. “Jati: The Caste System in India.” Asia Society , 2021, asiasociety.org/education/jati-caste-system-india.

• https://asiasociety.org/education/ja...e-system-india ↵
• Julius Lipner is Professor Emeritus in Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He specializes in Hindu philosophical theology and modern Hinduism and in the relationship between Hinduism and Christianity. His published works include The Face of Truth: A Study of Meaning and Metaphysics in the Vedāntic Theology of Rāmānuja (1986), Brahmabandhab Upadhyay: The Life and Thought of a Revolutionary (1999), Ānandamath or The Sacred Brotherhood (2005), Hindus: their religious beliefs and practices (2nd ed. 2010), and Hindu Images and their Worship with special reference to Vaişņavism: A Philosophical-Theological inquiry (2017), and numerous journal articles. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. ↵
• Dr Rishi Handa is Head of Sanskrit at St James Senior Boys school. ↵