VEDA Root, vid, ‘know.’ ‘Divine knowledge.’ The Vedas are the holy books which are the foundation of the Hindu religion. They consist of hymns written in an old form of Sanskrit; and according to the most generally received opinion they were composed between 1500 and 1000 B.C. But there is no direct evidence as to their age, and opinions about it vary considerably. Some scholars have thought that the oldest of the hymns may be carried back a thousand years farther. It seems likely that some of the hymns were composed before the arrival of the Aryan immigrants in India, and there is no doubt that the hymns vary greatly in age and spread over a very considerable period.

There are various statements as to the origin of the Vedas. One is that the hymns emanated like breath from Brahma, the soul of the universe. It is agreed that they were revealed orally to the Rishis or sages whose names they bear; and hence the whole body of the Veda is known as Sruti, ‘what was heard.’

The Vedas are now four in number:- (1.) Rig, (2.) Yajur, (3.) Sama, (4.) Atharva; but the Atharva is of comparatively modern origin. The other three are spoken of by Manu as the “three Vedas,” and are said by him to have been “milked out as it were,” from fire, air, and the sun. In reality the Rig-veda is the Veda, the original work; for the Yajur and the sama are merely different arrangements of its hymns for special purposes.

Each Veda is divided into two parts, Mantra and Brahmana. The Mantra, or ‘instrument of conveying thought,’ consists of prayer and praise embodied in the metrical hymns. The Brahmana, a collective term for the treatises called Brahmanas, is of later date than the Mantra. It is written in prose, and contains liturgical and ritualistic glosses, explanations, and applications of the hymns illustrated by numerous legends. To the Brahmanas are added the Aranyakas and Upanishads, mystical treatises in prose and verse, which speculate upon the nature of spirit and of God, and exhibit a freedom of thought and speculation, which was the beginning of Hindu philosophy. All the Vedic writings are classified in two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric: the Karma-kanda, ‘department of works,’ the ceremonial; and the Jnana-kanda, ‘department of knowledge.’ The hymns and prayers of the Mantra come under the first, the philosophical speculations of the Brahmanas, and especially of the Upanishads, under the second division. All are alike Sruti or revelation. See Brahmana, Upanishad, &c.

The Mantra or metrical portion is the most ancient, and the book or books in which the hYJn1l8 are collected are called Sanhitas. The Rig-veda and the Sama-veda have each one Sanhita the Yajur-veda has two Sanhitas.

As before stated, the Rig-veda is the original Veda from which the Yajur and Saman are almost exclusively derived. It consists of 1017 Suktas or hymns, or with eleven additional hymns called Valakhilyas of an apocryphal character, 1028. These are arranged in eight Ashtakas, ‘octaves,’ or Khandas, ‘sections,’ which are again subdivided into as many Adhyayas, ‘chapters,’ 2006 Vargas or ‘classes,’ 10,417 Riks or ‘verses,’ and 153,826 Padas or ‘words.’ There is another division, which runs on concurrently with this division, in ten Mandalas, ‘circles’ or ‘classes,’ and 85 Anuvakas or ‘sections.’ The total number of hymns is the same in both arrangements. It is a generally received opinion that the hymns of the tenth Mandala are later in date than the others.

A few hymns of the Rig-veda; more especially some of the later hymns in the tenth Mandala, appear to contain some vague, hazy conception of one Supreme Being; but as a whole they are addressed directly to certain personifications of the powers of nature, which personifications were worshipped as deities having those physical powers under their control From these powers the Vedic poets invoked prosperity on themselves and their flocks; they extolled the prowess of these elemental powers in the struggles between light and darkness, warmth and cold, and they offered up joyous praise and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and personal protection. Chief among the deities so praised and worshipped were Agni, Indra, and Surya. More hymns are addressed to Agni (Ignis), ‘fire,’ than to any other deity, and chiefly in its sacrificial character, though it receives honour also for its domestic uses. Indra was honoured as the god of the atmosphere, who controlled the rains and the dew, so all-important to an agricultural people. Surya, ‘the sun,’ was ‘the source of heat,’ but he shared this honour with Agni, the sun being considered a celestial fire. Among the most ancient of the myths was that of Dyaus-pitar, ‘heavenly father,’ the regent of the sky. Others were Aditi, ‘the infinite expanse;’ Varuna (**), ‘the investing sky,’ afterwards god of the waters; Ushas (**), ‘the dawn,’ daughter of the sky: the two Aswins, ‘twin sons of the sun,’ ever young and handsome, and riding in a golden car as precursors of the dawn. Prithivi, ‘the broad one,’ as the earth was called, received honour as the mother of all beings. There were also the Maruts or storm-gods, personifications of the wind, the especial foes of Vritra, the spirit of drought and ungenial weather, who was in constant conflict with Indra; Rudra, the howling, furious god, who ruled the tempest and the storm; Yama, the god of the dead and judge of departed spirits, also received his meed of reverence; last, though apparently not least in the estimation of the Aryan worshippers, was Soma, the personification of the fermented juice of the plant so named. This exhilarating liquid was alike acceptable to the gods and their worshippers, and many hymns are addressed to it as a deity.

To each hymn of the Rig-veda there is prefixed the name of the Rishi to whom it was revealed, as Vasishtha, Viswamitra, Bharadwaja, and many others; and these sages are frequently spoken of as authors of the hymns bearing their names. It is quite unknown when the hymns were first committed to writing. They were transmitted orally from generation to generation, and continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana, ‘the arranger.’ The oral teaching of the Vedas produced what are called the Sakhas or ‘schools’ of the Vedas. Different learned men, or bodies of men, became famous for their particular versions of the text, and taught these versions to their respective pupils. These different versions constitute the Sakhas; they present; as might be expected, many verbal variations, but no very material discrepancies.

“The poetry of the Rig-veda,” says Professor Cowell, “is remarkably deficient in that simplicity and natural pathos or sublimity which we naturally look for in the songs of an early period of civilisation. The language and style of most of the hymns is singularly artificial…. Occasionally we meet with fine outbursts of poetry, especially in the hymns addressed to the dawn, but these are never long sustained; and as a rule we find few grand similes or metaphors.” A similar opinion is expressed by Professor Williams, who finds them “to abound more in puerile ideas than in striking thoughts and lofty conceptions.”

The Yajur or second Veda is composed almost exclusively of hymns taken from the Rig, but it contains some prose passages which are new. Many of the hymns show considerable deviations from the original text of the Rig. These differences may perhaps be attributable either to an original difference of the traditional text or to modifications required by the ritualistic uses of the Yajur. The Yajur-veda is the priests' office-book, arranged in a liturgical form for the performance of sacrifices. As the manual of the priesthood, it became the great subject of study, and it has a great number of different Sakhas or schools. It has two Sanhitas, one called the Taittiriya Sanhita, the other Vajasaneyi Sanhita, commonly known as the Black and White Yajur. Of these, the former is the more ancient, and seems to have been known in the third century B.C. These Sanhitas contain upon the whole the same matter, but the arrangement is different. The White Yajur is the more orderly and systematic, and it contains some texts which are not in the Black.

The Sanhita of the Taittiriya or Black Yajur is arranged in 7 Kandas or books, 44 Prasnas or chapters, 651 Anuvakas or sections, and 2198 Kandikas or pieces, “fifty words as a rule forming a Kandika.” The Sanhita of the Vajasaneyi or White Yajur is in 40 Adhyayas or chapters, 303 Anuvakas, and 1975 Kandikas.

How the separation into two Sanhitas arose has not been ascertained. It probably originated in a schism led by the sage Yajnawalkya; but if it did not, it produced one, and the adherents of the two divisions were hostile to each other and quarrelled like men of different creeds. In later days a legend was invented to account for the division, which is thus given by, the Vishnu and vayu puranas: The Yajur-veda, in twenty-seven branches (Sakhas), was taught by Vaisampayana to his disciple Yajnawalkya. Vaisampayana had the misfortune to kill his sister's child by an accidental kick, and he then called upon his disciples to perform the appropriate expiatory penance. Yajnawalkya refused to join the “miserable inefficient Brahmans,” and a quarrel ensued. The teacher called upon the disciple to give up all that he had learnt from him; and the disciple, with the same quick temper, vomited forth the Yajur texts which he had acquired, and they fell upon the ground stained with blood. The other pupils were turned into partridges (Tittiri), and they picked up the disgorged texts; hence the part of the Veda which was thus acquired was called Taittiriya and Black. Yajnawalkya sorrowfully departed, and by the performance of severe penances induced the Sun to impart to him those Yajur texts which his master had not possessed. The Sun then assumed the form of a horse (Vajin), and communicated to him the desired texts. The priests of this portion of the Veda were called Vajins, while the Sanhita itself was called Vajasaneyi, and also White (or bright), because it was revealed by the sun. The statement that Yajnawalkya received this Veda from the sun is, however, earlier than the puranas, for it is mentioned by the grammarian Katyayana. A more reasonable and intelligible explanation is, that Vajasaneyi is a patronymic of Yajnawalkya, the offspring of Vajasani, and that Taittiriya is derived from Tittiri, the name of a pupil of Yaska's. Weber, the man best acquainted with this Veda, says, “However absurd this legend (of the puranas) may be, a certain amount of sense lurks beneath its surface. The Black Yajur is, in fact, a motley undigested jumble of different pieces; and I am myself more inclined to derive the name Taittiriya from the variegated partridge (Tittiri) than from the Rishi Tittiri.” Goldstucker's view is, that the “motley character of the Black Yajur-veda arises from the circumstance that the distinction between the Mantra and Brahmana portions is not so clearly established in it as in the other Vedas, hymns and matter properly belonging to the Brahmanas being there intermixed. This defect is remedied in the White Yajur-veda, and it points, therefore, to a period when the material of the old Yajur was brought into a system consonant with prevalent theories, literary and ritualistic.”

The Sama-veda Sanhita is wholly metrical It contains 1549 verses, only seventy-eight of which have not been traced to the Rig-veda. The readings of the text in this Veda frequently differ, like those of the Yajur, from the text as found in the Rig, and Weber considers that the verses “occurring in the Sama Sanhita generally stamp themselves as older and more original by the greater antiquity of their grammatical forms.” But this opinion is disputed. The verses of the Sama have been selected and arranged for the purpose of being chaunted at the sacrifices or offerings of the Soma. Many of the invocations are addressed to Soma, some to Agni, and some to Indra. The Mantra or metrical part of the Sama is poor in literary and historical interest, but its Brahmanas and the other literature belonging to it are full and important.

There were different sets of priests for each of the three Vedas. Those whose duty it was to recite the Rig-veda were called Hotris or Bahvrichas, and they were required to know the whole Veda. The priests of the Yajur, who muttered its formulas in a p6culiar manner at sacrifices, were called Adhwaryus, and the chaunters of the verses of the Saman were called Udgatris.

                The Atharva-veda, the fourth Veda, is of later origin than the others. This is acknowledged by the Brahmans, and is proved by the internal evidence of the book itself. It is supposed to date from about the same period as the tenth Mandala of the Rig-veda, and as Manu speaks of only “the three Vedas,” the Atharva could hardly have been acknowledged in his time. Professor Whitney thinks its contents may be later than even the tenth Mandala of the Rig, although these two “stand nearly connected in import and origin.” There are reasons for supposing it to have had its origin among the Saindhavas on the banks of the Indus. One-sixth of the whole work is not metrical, “and about one-sixth (of the hymns) is also found among the hymns of the Rig-veda, and mostly in the tenth book of the better; the rest is peculiar to the Atharva.” The number of the hymns is about 760, and of the verses about 6000. Professor Whitney, the editor of the Atharva, speaks of it thus: “As to the internal character of the Atharva hymns, it may be said of them, as of the tenth book of the Rig, that they are productions of another and a later period, and the expressions of a different spirit from that of the earlier hymns in the other Vedas. In the latter, the gods are approached with reverential awe indeed, but with love and confidence also; a worship is paid them that exalts the offerer of it; the demons embraced under the general name Rakshasa are objects of horror whom the gods ward off and destroy; the divinities of the Atharva are regarded rather with a kind of cringing fear, as powers whose wrath is to be deprecated and whose favour curried, for it knows a whole host of imps and hobgoblins, in ranks and classes, and addresses itself to them directly, offering them homage to induce them to abstain from doing harm. The Mantra prayer, which in the older Veda is the instrument of devotion, ill here rather the tool of superstition; it wrings from the unwilling hands of the gods the favours which of old their good-will to men induced them to grant, or by simple magical power obtains the fulfilment of the utterer's wishes. The most prominent characteristic feature of the Atharva is the multitude of incantations which it contains; these are pronounced either by the person who is himself to he benefited, or more often by the sorcerer for him, and are directed to the procuring of the greatest variety of desirable ends; most frequently perhaps long life or recovery from grievous sickness is the object sought; then a talisman, such as a necklace, is sometimes given, or in very numerous cases some plant endowed with marvellous virtues is to he the immediate external means of the cure; farther, the attainment of wealth or power is aimed at, the downfall of enemies, success in love or in play, the removal of petty pests, and so on, even down to the growth of hair on a bald pate. There are hymns, too, in which a single rite or ceremony is taken up and exalted, somewhat in the same strain as the Soma in the Pavamanya hymns of the Rig. Others of a speculative mystical character are not wanting; yet their number is not so great as might naturally he expected, considering the development which the Hindu religion received in the periods following after that of

the primitive Veda. It seems in the main that the Atharva is “popular rather than of priestly origin; that in making the transition from the Vedic to modern times, it forms an intermediate step rather to the gross idolatries and superstitions of the ignorant mass than to the sublimated Pantheism of the Brahmans.” Such is the general character of the fourth Veda, but Max Muller has translated a hymn in his Ancient Sanskrit literature, of which Professor Wilson said in the Edinburgh Review, “We know of no passage in Vedic literature which approaches its simple sublimity.” This hymn is addressed to Varuna, “the great one who rules over these worlds, and beholds all as if he were close by; who sees all that is within and beyond heaven and earth,” &c.

This Veda is also called the Brahman Veda, “because it claims to be the Veda for the chief sacrificial priest, the Brahman.” It has a Brahmana called Gopatha and many Upanishads. An entirely new recension of this Veda has lately been found in Kashmir. It is in the hands of Professor Roth, and ii believed to show many important variations.

The whole of the Rig-veda, with the commentary of Sayana, has been magnificently printed in six large quarto vols. under the editorship of Max Muller, at the expense of the Government of India. Editions of the text separately in the Sanhita and in the Pada forms have been published by him; also another edition with the Sanhita. and Pada texts on opposite pages. There is also a complete edition of the text in Roman characters by Aufrecht, and a portion of the text was published by Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica. Dr. Rosen published the first .Ashtaka of the text, with a Latin translation, in 1838. Four volumes of Wilson's incomplete translation have appeared. There is a French translation by Langlois, and Max Muller has printed a critical translation of twelve hymns to the Maruts. There are other translations of portions. Translations by Ludwig and by Grassmann have also lately appeared. The text, with an English and Marathi translation, is appearing in monthly parts at Bombay.

The Sanhita of the Black Yajur-veda has been published by Roer and Cowell in the Bibliotheca Indica. The White has been printed- by Weber, and another edition has been published in Calcutta.

Of the Sama Sanhita, the text and a translation have been published by Dr. Stevenson. Benfey has also published the text with a German translation and a glossary; and an edition with the commentary of Sayana is now coming out in the Bibliotheca Indica (vol i).

The text of the Atharva-veda Sanhita has been printed by Roth and Whitney, and a part of it also by Aufrecht. 

VEDA-MATRI ‘Mother of the Vedas.’ The Gayatri.