The Vedas and Upanishads for Children Read online

  Phew. All done. And if you thought that was a long list of gods and goddesses, think about the number of Hindu gods there are now! How come? Well, the Arya made it a habit to keep adding all the local gods and goddesses to the large bunch they already had. Luckily, that divine bunch was accommodating enough, scooting over cheerfully to make place for all the new ones that arrived.

  The thing to remember, however, is that while the Arya worshipped all these different deities, they believed that all of them were only manifestations of one Supreme Being, the formless, nameless one they called Ishvara. In the Upanishads, which were composed 1,000 years after the Vedas, this Supreme Being came to be called Brahman.

  One destination, many possible routes – Hinduism sounds like a Google map, wot?

  PASHUPATI’S PEOPLE

  A short intro to the original champions of ‘Jahan Soch, Wahan Shauchalay’

  Some 5,000 years ago, i.e., 1,500 years before our Veda-chanting Arya made their appearance on the Indian stage and around the same time that the world’s first cities were coming up on the banks of the river Nile in Egypt, and the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), a very advanced civilization – we refer to it today as the Harappan Civilization – was flourishing on the banks of our own Sindhu (Indus) and Saraswati rivers.

  The people of this civilization were best known for their brilliant urban planning. Over a vast area stretching from Shortugai on Afghanistan’s Russian border to Daimabad in Maharashtra and from Sutkagen Dor on the Makran coast near Iran to Alamgirpur near Delhi, they built great cities with straight roads, granaries, working sewerage systems, and houses with built-in bathrooms and flushes! They traded with Mesopotamia and Egypt both via land and sea routes, grew crops like barley and wheat, and left behind pottery, beads, terracotta toys, jewellery, beautifully cast figurines in bronze and mysterious seals for us to find and puzzle over thousands of years later. They even left behind a script, which we haven’t been able to decipher yet. In fact, we don’t even know what their land was called – we think it was called Meluhha because the Mesopotamians left records of trading with a country called Meluhha in the east.

  The statue of the ‘priest king’ from Mohenjo-Daro

  No weapons or royal regalia have been found at Harappan sites yet, which leads us to guess that they were not aggressive conquerors led by kings but a peaceful agricultural society most likely ruled by priests (experts have deduced this based on the bust of a bearded man in a robe and a diadem found during early excavations – they believe this man was a person of authority, most likely a priest).

  The ‘Pashupati’ seal

  And when we talk priests, can the gods be far behind? Again, we have no idea of Harappan gods, but there is one fascinating seal we have found that has had everyone excited for the longest time. The seal is only about an inch square, and damaged to boot, but if you squint hard at it, you can see that it shows a seated male figure. Experts believe that figure could represent a Harappan god who, with the addition of a few tweaks and changes, is still being worshipped as a major Hindu god today!

  They came to that conclusion through the kind of deductive process we all follow when faced with a puzzle – we overlap the knowledge we have with what is before us, and make some inspired guesses. The process must have gone somewhat like this:

  • Observation: The figure on the Harappan seal is sitting cross-legged.

  Deduction: Ah! That looks like the lotus pose in yoga, the ‘padmasana’, so maybe this is a yoga teacher of some kind, or even, dare I say it, a god of yoga?

  • Observation: He has three faces, one facing forward and two in profile.

  Deduction: Ah! Many Hindu gods are shown with more than one head, so this guy is definitely looking more like a god now.

  • Observation: He is wearing some kind of headgear, with two beautifully curving horns.

  Deduction: Ah! Many Hindu gods are associated with animals – the horns could mean this god is associated with a bull.

  • Observation: The horns enclose what looks like a fountain or a plant.

  Deduction: Hang on a minute! When the fountain and the horns are taken together, they look like a... trident! Many Hindu gods are associated with their own special weapon. Omg, I think I know which Hindu god this is!

  • Observation: Around him are carved several animals – a tiger, an elephant, a rhino, a buffalo and a deer.

  Deduction: Ah! This could mean that this figure was revered as the ‘Lord of All Creatures’. Omg, omg, another name of the Hindu god I was thinking of before is Pashupati, which means ‘Lord of All Creatures’. I know who this is, it has to be him – this is an ancient, ancient version of… you guessed it – Shiva!

  And that was how the figure on the broken seal got his name – Pashupati! Of course we will never know for sure (or at least until we decipher the Harappan script, and maybe not even then) whether that figure really represents a Harappan god, and if that god was really a predecessor of the Shiva we are familiar with today.

  In fact, so far, we don’t even know what happened to our great city-building ancestors and why they disappeared so mysteriously around 3,800 years ago. One popular theory is that a great drought forced the Harappans to move east and south on the subcontinent, but it doesn’t explain why they did not build up a grander civilization somewhere else, and how their advanced knowledge of urban design and planning died out entirely.

  Hmm. Maybe there is a totally different explanation. Maybe the Harappans were beamed up en masse into passing alien spaceships. Maybe, with the blessings of Pashupati, they colonized an entirely new planet. Maybe, when they pass overhead in the dark of a winter night, they shake their heads sadly at how we are destroying ours. Maybe.

  The jury is still out on this one. What is your theory?

  ४

  A-ONE, A-TWO, A-ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!

  The symbiotic tale of four Vedas and a yagna

  Now that we are somewhat familiar with the history of the Vedas, we can get to the important matter of what the Arya used them for.

  As you know by now, the religion of the Arya primarily centred around the ritual sacrifice they called yagna. But what was the yagna ‘concept’ really about?

  Well, a yagna was actually a mega-feast hosted by humans for the gods! Most of the hymns of the Vedas were essentially invitations to these VIPs, laced with praise and blandishments, and loaded with descriptions of all the delicious food on offer, to tempt the gods into RSVP-ing with an enthusiastic ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world!’ Of course, the inviting had to be done just right, and the food prepared and served just so, or the gods would either not arrive or stomp out in a huff in the middle of the yagna, which would not do at all – a lot of devotion and effort and money would go down the drain then, the yajamana would make a zero return on investment in terms of boons received, and worse, incur a round of divine punishments to boot.

  Why did the Arya throw such ginormous parties for their gods? Was it only because they feared their wrath? Not really. A yagna was performed for many reasons, chief among them being to show gratitude to the gods for always being there – as sunlight, rain, wind, fertile earth, rushing rivers and overall protectors – and to return that favour in some small measure, so that the sacred cycle of give-and-take between gods and humans was kept in motion. Yagnas were also the Arya way of nourishing their gods with food, drink and adoration, to ensure that they regained the strength and lustre they had lost combating river-blocking dragons, cow-concealing demons and other enemies of humankind – for if the gods were not nourished, who would stand in the way of the forces of destruction that constantly threatened the world? Equally importantly, yagnas were performed by the rich and powerful not just for their own benefit but for the noble cause of ‘loka kalyan’ – the welfare of the world – because the Arya believed, as we still do, that it was unselfish acts like these that helped tot up brownie points in their karma accounts for their next life.

  And tha
t’s why it was so important to have the right priests in place, chanting the right hymns from the appropriate Vedas, and doing all the right things as far as the yagna prep, event flow and offerings went, to ensure a perfect yagna for the yajamana.

  How did the hymns of the four Vedas fit into this picture? Did one priest know all of them by heart or did it take a whole battalion of them to pull off a successful yagna? Let’s take a little detour to examine the Vedas in a little more detail, shall we?

  HOW WERE THE VEDAS BUILT? LAYER BY LAYER!

  Each of the four Vedas, i.e., the Rig, the Yajur, the Sama and the Atharva, is organized into four sections – the Samhita, the Brahmana (say braah-mana), the Aranyaka (say aa-ranyaka) and the Upanishad.

  THE SAMHITA

  The Samhita part of each Veda is the oldest layer, and the simplest to explain. The Samhita, which simply means ‘collection’, is that part of the Vedas that is called ‘liturgy’ in English. Liturgy is the actual set of hymns that are chanted during the rituals of public worship in any religion (in Sanskrit*, the Vedic hymns are called mantras).

  *All the Samhitas are in Vedic Sanskrit, which is an ancient form of the language that we know today as Sanskrit. It wasn’t until the 5th century BCE, when the great scholar Panini put down the rules of Sanskrit grammar, that Sanskrit became a ‘formal’ language that could be taught, written and spoken in exactly the same way by everyone. In the beginning, Sanskrit was written using a number of different scripts derived from the Brahmi script used in Emperor Ashoka’s time, but today its official script is Devanagari, the same ‘washing-line’ script we use to write Hindi.

  THE BRAHMANA

  Unfortunately, the Samhitas, like a lot of the archaic poetry you are forced to study in school and college today, were written in language that was often too obscure and difficult to understand. So an interpretation, which explained the significance and meaning of each mantra and ritual, apart from providing minute details on how each ritual was to be carried out, was later added on to each Veda. This layer is called the Brahmana. (Note: Different opinions as to the real meaning of the mantras ensured that there was often more than one Brahmana for a Samhita – we are not called the ‘Argumentative Indians’ for nothing!) Mercifully, the Brahmanas were written in straightforward prose.

  THE ARANYAKA

  As centuries went by, many deep thinkers among the later Arya found themselves questioning the mostly literal interpretations in the Brahmanas. They pondered questions like – ‘Sure the poet says ‘‘Surya’s chariot has one wheel and seven horses” here, but what did he or she really mean? Maybe the seven horses are actually the seven colours of the rainbow and the one wheel means they all combine to make one colour, the white of sunlight? Maybe the seven horses indicate the five senses, the mind and the intellect, and Surya is the one who controls all of them so that the one wheel of our awareness is not pulled in seven different directions at the same time?’

  See how this sort of thing can be fun? And how you can go on endlessly? The cool part is that when wise, well-meaning people sit down to do this, they can come up with the kind of creative interpretations that truly expand our understanding. They can urge us to read between the lines, to not accept things at face value, and seek the truth beyond what the eyes see and the ears hear.

  The rishis who meditated in the deep dark of the jungles, passing their experiences and learnings along to students in their forest academies, were among the wisest, most free-thinking and most imaginative people of the Vedic Age. Their questions (including the ones they asked themselves) and their fresh, new interpretations of the hymns of the Samhitas, form the third layer of the Vedas – the Aranyakas. (Why ‘Aranyakas’? Well, in Sanskrit, ‘aranya’ means forest, and these thinkers usually lived in the forests. Ergo.)

  THE UPANISHAD

  The Aranyakas seem to flow naturally into the last section of the Vedas – i.e., the Vedanta or the Upanishads – because the latter are also deep and philosophical thoughts on life, the universe and everything. But the Upanishads also stand by themselves, because, unlike the Aranyakas, they do not refer to the Vedic rituals or the Samhita at all. It’s quite possible, therefore, that the Upanishads were composed independently, quite separate from the Vedas (after all, they were composed a millennium later!) and were then tacked on to the Vedas as their fourth and final layer because the thoughts in them seemed to progress directly from the Aranyakas. [In fact, the oldest and largest of the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka, literally means ‘The Giant (or Expanded) Aranyaka’.]

  As you can see, the Samhitas are the ‘real’ Vedas – the other layers are only more and more advanced interpretations of them. Also, while the division between the Samhitas and the Brahmanas is quite clear, the lines between the other three sections are pretty fuzzy, with one merging merrily into the other*. There is also a clear division between the first two layers and the later two – the first two form the ‘doing’ or action part of the Veda – hymns to be sung, rituals to be performed – while the last two are the ‘thinking’ or wisdom part – questions to ponder over, lessons to live by.

  PS: Can you guess what the ‘action’ section and ‘thinking’ section are called in Sanskrit? Here’s a clue – the Sanskrit word for section is ‘kanda’ (say kaanda). Now think about what the Sanskrit words for action and wisdom are, and you will have your answer.

  (Ans: Karma Kanda and Jnana Kanda)

  Another bit of trivia before we go on - in the Bhagavad Gita, which carries the essence of all the wisdom of the Upanishads, Sanjaya, the narrator of the events of the war, tells the blind king Dhritarashtra that the side that will win the war will be the one that has action and wisdom (a metaphor for Arjuna and Krishna, respectively) on its side. This is true in life as well – there is no point in knowing what to do but not doing it, nor is there any point in doing things without knowing why. Because the Vedas contain both an action part and a wisdom part, they are, according to Hindus, the ‘complete’ texts.

  *OK, one important clarification here – it wasn’t the ‘composers’ of these four layers who decided which Aranyaka and Upanishad was part of which Veda, or even that the Aranyakas and Upanishads were layers of the Vedas at all. That was decided far more recently, once the texts – at least the ones that were remembered or whose manuscripts were found – were written down and collected, and scholars could study them as a whole. When an Upanishad was already part of the Brahmana or Aranyaka layer of a Veda, there was no debate; when it was a stand-alone Upanishad, however, decisions had to be taken on which Veda to attach it to. Scholars did not always agree on this, which is why there is no definitive list – an Upanishad may be associated with one Veda in one list, and with another in a different one.

  HYMN AND HERB, SPELL AND SONG

  Now, what are the Samhitas – the original, oldest parts of each of the four Vedas – about? (Longish textbookish detour alert!) While the Samhitas of the first three at least dabble in similar concerns – the gods, the yagna and a bit of philosophy – each is distinct and serves different purposes. The fourth Samhita, that of the Atharva Veda, is way off this grid, and is absorbed with everyday human concerns, which is perhaps why it is the most interesting of all.

  The Rig Veda Samhita is the oldest and longest of all the Samhitas. Its name comes from the Sanskrit ‘ric’, which means ‘praise’ or ‘light’, so ‘Rig Veda’ translates to ‘Hymns of Praise’ or ‘The Light of Knowledge’ or ‘The Knowledge of Exaltation’ – something like that. The Rig comprises ten books, or Mandalas, containing 10,600 verses as part of 1,028 hymns dedicated to all the important Arya deities. (We are speaking here of the version of the Samhita that has survived. There were almost certainly other versions, with more or fewer hymns, but they have all disappeared). Mandalas 2–9, which are the oldest, are mostly hymns to the gods and goddesses. Mandalas 1 and 10 were composed much later, and while Mandala 1 has similar concerns as the older ones, Mandala 10 talks about things like the creation story – how the univ
erse was born, how man was created, and so on – and the nature of God.

  A page from a handwritten copy (early 19th century) of the Rig Veda

  The Sama Veda Samhita is a subset of the Rig Veda Samhita, consisting of a selection of 1,875 of its verses (yup, no new material there). What makes this Samhita special, though, is that these 1,875 verses are set to music, which explains how this particular Veda gets its name – ‘saaman’ is Sanskrit for ‘song’. It also explains why the Sama Veda Samhita is meant to be heard, not read. When they began to be written down, the verses were musically ‘notated’ too – in other words, the ‘tune’ to which the verses must be sung was clearly marked (similar to how a musical score is written down in western sheet music), which means that when we ‘sing’ verses from the Sama Veda, we are singing them in exactly the same tune as they were sung 3,000 years ago! In fact, all Indian classical music and dance traditions consider the melodies in the Sama Veda to be part of their original roots. But Sama Veda hymns are neither quite sung like songs nor chanted like the Rig Vedic mantras. They fall somewhere in between the two – a melodious chanting, shall we say? The melodies are believed to have existed before the Sama Veda itself, with words from the Rig Vedic hymns being fitted into those melodies as best they could.*

  *Remember that bit from the 1965 film The Sound of Music where Maria teaches the von Trapp kids a melody – Sol Do La Fa Mi Do Re / Sol Do La Ti Do Re Do – and the youngest, Gretl, protests – ‘But they don’t mean anything!’? Remember how Maria answers, ‘So we put in words. One word for every note. Like this – When- you- know- the- notes- to- sing / You- can- sing- ’most- a-ny-thing!’? The Sama Veda ‘songs’ are believed to have been constructed in exactly the same way.

  Unlike the Samhitas of the Rig Veda and the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda Samhita is a mix of prose and verse. The verse part, while not identical to the Rig Veda verses, borrows liberally from them. The prose part, on the other hand, is original, and comprises the ‘formulae’ recited during a sacrifice as the offerings are being poured. In fact, the name of the Veda itself comes from the Sanskrit ‘yajus’, which means sacrifice. (Yajus is also the root word of... yup, yagna!)