Considerable
debate exists with regard to the relationship of the Indus Valley civilization
and the later Vedic tradition that focused on fire worship. The scholarly
consensus for many years held that the Aryans, people who migrated from the
west through Iran, arrived in India no earlier than 1200 B.C.E., much too
recently to have participated in the Indus Valley world. These people were, the
view holds, associated with the transmission of the Vedas, India’s most sacred
and revered texts. This consensus has been challenged, primarily from the
Indian side, and continues to undergo scrutiny. The alternative view rejects
the notion that the people who gave India the Vedas were originally foreign to
India and sees a continuity between India’s earliest civilization and the
people of the Vedas.
The
Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.E.), which everyone agrees is the most ancient extant
Indian text, is the foundational text of Hinduism. It consists of about a
thousand hymns. The great majority of the hymns are from five to 20 verses in
length. The Rig Veda contains hymns of praise to a pantheon of divinities as
well as a few cosmogonic hymns that tell of the creation of the universe. These
stories are extremely important for the development of later Hinduism.
By
far the greatest number of the thousand plus hymns of the Rig Veda are devoted
to Indra, king of the gods, a deity connected with rain and storms who holds a
thunderbolt, and Agni, the god of fire. The rest of the hymns are devoted to an
array of gods, most prominently Mitra, Varuna, Savitri, Soma, and the Ashvins.
Less frequently mentioned are the gods who became most important in the later
Hindu pantheon, Vishnu and Rudra (one of whose epithets was shiva, the benign).
A number of goddesses are mentioned, most frequently Ushas, goddess of the
dawn, and Aditi, said to be the mother of the gods. The goddess of speech, Vach
(Vak), however, may be most important, since speech is one of the most powerful
sacred realities in Hindu tradition, although there are not many references to
her.
The
religion of the Rig Veda has for a long time been referred to as henotheistic,
meaning that the religion was polytheistic, but it recognized each divinity in
turn as, in certain ways, supreme. Certainly, later Hinduism continued and
enriched this henotheistic concept, and, through time, Hinduism has been able
to accept even Christ and Allah as being supreme “in turn.” The Rig Veda,
though, was the central text in a very powerful ritual tradition. Rituals
public and private, with sacred fire always a central feature, were performed
to speak to and beseech the divinities. Sacrifices of animals were a regular
feature of the larger public rites of the Vedic tradition.
Two
other Vedas, the Yajur and Sama Vedas, were based on the Rig Veda. That is,
most of their text is from the Rig Veda, but the words of the prior text are
reorganized for the purposes of the rituals. Yajur Veda, the Veda of
sacrificial formulas, which has two branches called the Black and the White
Yajur Vedas, contains the chants that accompany most of the important ancient
rites. The Sama Veda, the Veda of sung chants, is very much focused on the
praise of the god Soma, the personification of a drink taken at most rituals
that probably had psychedelic properties. Priests of the three Vedas needed to
be present for any larger, public ritual. Later a fourth Veda, the Atharva
Veda, became part of the tradition. This text consists primarily of spells and
charms used to ward off diseases or to influence events. This text is
considered the origin of Indian medicine, the system of Ayurveda. There are
also a number of cosmogonic hymns in the Atharva Veda, which show the
development of the notion of divine unity in the tradition. A priest of the
Atharva Veda was later included in all public rituals and the tradition evolved
to include four Vedas rather than three.
Two
important points must be understood about the Vedic tradition. First, none of
the Vedas is considered composed by humans. All are considered to be “received”
or “heard” by the rishis, divinely inspired sages, whose names are noted at the
end of each hymn. Second, none of the text of the Vedas was written down until
the 15th century C.E. The Vedic tradition was passed down from mouth to ear for
millennia and is, thus, the oral tradition par excellence. The power of the
word in the Vedic tradition is considered an oral and aural power, not a
written one. The chant is seen as a power to provide material benefit and
spiritual apotheosis. The great emphasis, therefore, was on correct
pronunciation and on memorization. Any priest of the tradition was expected to
have an entire Veda memorized, including its non-mantric portions.
Any
of the four Vedas is properly divided into two parts, the mantra, or verse
portion, and the Brahmana, or explicatory portion. Both of these parts of the
text are considered revelation, or shruti. The Brahmanas reflect on both the
mantra text and the ritual associated with it, giving very detailed, varied,
and arcane explication of them. The Brahmanas abound in equations between
ritual aspects, the ritual performers, and cosmic, terrestrial, and divine
realities. Early Western scholars tended to discount these texts, as being
nothing but priestly mumbojumbo. But most recent work recognizes the central
importance of the Brahmanas to the development of Indian thought and
philosophy.
The
name Brahmana derives from a central word in the tradition, brahman. Brahman is
generically the term for “prayer” but technically refers to the power or magic
of the Vedic mantras. (It also was used to designate the one who prays, hence
the term Brahmin.) Brahman is from the root brih, “to expand or grow,” and
refers to the expansion of the power of the prayer itself as the ritual
proceeds; this power is understood as something to be “stirred up” by the
prayer. In later philosophy, the term brahman refers to the transcendent, all-encompassing
reality.
The
culmination of Brahmana thought is often considered to be the Shatapatha
Brahmana of the White Yajur Veda. It makes explicit the religious nature of the
agnichayana fire ceremony, the largest public ritual of the tradition.
Shatapatha Brahmana makes clear that this public ritual is, in fact, a
reenactment of the primordial ritual described in Rig Veda X. 90, the most
important cosmogonic hymn of the Vedas. This myth describes the ritual
immolation of a cosmic “Man,” whose parts are apportioned to encompass all of
the visible universe and everything beyond it that is not visible. That is, the
cosmic “Man” is ritually sacrificed to create the universe. Shatapatha Brahmana
delineates how, at the largest public ritual in the tradition, the universe is
essentially re-created yearly. The Brahmana understands that, at its most
perfect, the Vedic ritual ground is identical to all of the universe, visible
and invisible.
Within
the Brahmanas two subdivisions are important in the development of later
tradition. One of the subdivisions is called the Aranyaka. From its name one can
understand that this portion of the text pertained to activity in the forest
(aranya). These specially designated portions of the Brahmanas contain evidence
that some Vedic yajna, or ritual, was now performed internally, as an esoteric
practice. This appears to be a special practice done by adepts, who would
essentially perform the ritual mentally, as though it were being done in their
own body and being. This practice was not unprecedented, since the priests of
the Atharva Veda did not chant as other priests, but rather were required at
public rituals to perform mentally the rituals that other priests performed
externally. But the Aranyaka notion was distinctive in that the ritual was
performed only internally. From this interpretation originated the notion that
the ritualist himself was the yajna, or ritual.
Last,
the Brahmanas included (commonly within the Aranyaka portion) the Upanishads,
the last of the Vedic subdivisions or literary modes (no one really knows when
these subdivisions were designated). As do the Brahmanas, many of these texts
contained significant material that reflected on the nature of the Vedic
sacrifice. Thus, the division between Brahmana proper, Aranyaka, and Upanishad
is not always clear. The most important feature of the Upanishad was the
emergence of a clear understanding of the unity of the individual self or atman
and the all-encompassing brahman, understood as the totality of universal
reality, both manifest and unmanifest.
The
genesis of the Upanishadic understanding, that the self and cosmic reality were
one, is clear. First, the Shatapatha Brahmana stated that the most perfect
ritual was, in fact, to be equated to the universe itself, visible and
invisible. Second, the Aranyakas made clear that the individual initiated
practitioner was the ritual itself. So, if the ritual equals all reality and
the individual adept equals the ritual, then the notion that the individual
equals all reality is easily arrived at. The Upanishads were arrived at, then,
not by philosophical speculation, but by ritual practice. Later Upanishads of
the orthodox variety (that is, early texts associated with a Vedic collection)
omitted most reference to the ritual aspect and merely stated the concepts as
they had been derived. Most importantly, the concepts of rebirth
(reincarnation) and the notion that actions in this life would have consequence
in a new birth (karma) were first elaborated in the Upanishads.
This
evidence shows that the concept of karma, or ethically conditioned rebirth, had
its roots in earlier Vedic thought. But the full expression of the concept was
not found until the later texts, the Upanishads, which are called the Vedanta,
or the end or culmination of the Vedas. Therefore, the notion of reaching unity
with the ultimate reality was seen as not merely a spiritual apotheosis, but
also a way out of the trap of rebirth (or re-death).
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