MEANING AND HISTORY

Meaning :

In Sanskrut the word Ved means Knowledge or Truth.

 

The Ved contain hymns, rituals, and mantras. There are 4 Ved's namely Rig Ved, Sam Ved, Yajur Ved and Atharv Ved.

 

The original text of the Ved is known as the Samhita. However the Samhitas are supplemented by many commentaries and explanations, forming the 'Shruti' as a whole.

The most developed of these commentaries, the Upanishads, engage in philosophical speculation about the implications of the ancient invocations and rituals recorded in the Samhitas. Thus the Veds are structured rather like a venerated work of classic literature supported by elaborate footnotes and introductory essays explaining its hidden complexities.

 

The veds carry not only spiritual revelation but more topically, scientific insights that we are just discovering with sophisticated gadgetry. The veds talk about the sun and the moon and the waters of the earth, about evaporation and rain. It talks about many things at an age, when language was said to be almost non-existent. So, the point is that, the sheer depth and vividness of the veds with a vocabulary of over 35,000 words, suggest that there was a language prevalent at that time which could not have had an ordinary origin.

 

The same cosmic revelation which made ancient Indians understand the mysteries of space and this lonely planet, should have given birth to the language of the veds. So, it is not a mere man-made assembly phonetics but a medium of much higher reason. The most interesting aspect of the veds is that it understood its audience.

 

There is one aspect of the veds which gives it the name para-vidya or mundane knowledge. In this the content is fragmented into many branches like we have now. Physics apparently is a different subject from botany. The truth is otherwise. More advanced minds can perceive that forms of knowledge could be integrated into one and attributed to one Supreme Being who comes with many names. This school of thought is called apara vidya or the medium of the supreme.

History :

 

A lot of people have heard the word Veds. Why is it so vital to the Indian soul? How has it survived the onslaught of time? The answer lies in the veds themselves. If you read the veds as a guide to conduct life, you will not question it, no matter where you are or in which time warp. Ved literally means Knowledge. Ved means To Know. There are four veds the Rig Ved, the Yajur Ved, the Sam Ved and the Atharv Ved. Centuries ago the veds were referred to as trayi meaning three. It is believed that originally there were only three veds.

 

The Atharv Ved, apparently, has been added later in time. Each of the veds is divided into two parts the Samhita and the Brahmans. Samhita is the incantation and Brahmans is the explanation of the incantation. It's not clear who actually composed the Veds and when. Some say that it was composed sometime during 6000 BC but no matter when it was composed, rest assured the veds are timeless today.

 

You will be fascinated to know that there were four layers of priest who uttered the veds during a sacrifice of yagna. The first class where the officiating priests or hotris who chanted the Rig Ved. The second class was called ugadtri who changed the Sam Ved. Then third class of priests were recites who were called adhvaryu who recited the Yajur Ved. The fourth class was overseeing priests who were called Brahmans. They chanted the Atharv Ved, which is actually addition to the original three veds.

The word trayi which is used to referred to the Rig, Yajur and Sam veds, has a special significance in that it also means that there are three paths to salvation knowledge, karma (action) and devotion. The Rig ved is the path of knowledge, the Yajur Ved is that path of karma and the Sam Ved is the path of devotion. Learned gurus tell us that it's not always in our hands to choose the path. The path, the say, chooses us.