VEDAS

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VEDAS
The Ancient Indian Literature
By Atul Kumar 07010606
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• The ancient literature
• The crowning glory of the
• Indian civilization.
• No other part of the world
• has produced such
• voluminous literature of
• knowledge and wisdom.

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• The Vedas
• are the most celebrated possessions of the
  Indian civilization.
•  reflect the growth and development of human
  thought
• picture of the transformation of a prakrit man
  into a sanskrit man.

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The meaning of the word  Veda
The word Veda originates from the Sanskrit root
Vid. The Sanskrit verb Vid means to know. The
word Veda literally means knowledge.
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The Vedic Literature

• Shruti literature
• the knowledge attained by the rishis while
  doing their Tapasaya or Sadhna or in their
  Supra-normal Consciousness, as Shri Aurobindo 
  said.

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The Vedic Literature (contd.)

• Smriti literarure
• Smriti literature is concerned with that
  what is remembered, knowledge acquired through
  the experience or the tradition
• For instance the Manu Smriti .

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The Vedic Literature (contd.)

• The vedic literature has been derived from Shruti
  literature.
• The Vedas are considerd divine and eternal.
• The Vedas  knowledge par excellence.

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Origin of Vedas

• The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts in
  the world dating from c. 1500-500BCE.
• Rigveda roughly around 1700-1100 BCE
• and the last veda
• Atharvaveda 900 BCE

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Origin of Vedas (contd.)

• However it is believed that Shri Ved Vyasa
  compiled all the works of rishis into four parts
  known to us as the Four Vedas.

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The Four Vedas

• The four Vedas are
• the Rig Veda
• the Yajur Veda
• the Sama Veda and
• the Atharva Veda.

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The Rig Veda

• The Rig Veda is the oldest of all
• the Vedas.
• composed of 10552 mantras.
• knower is known as Ritwik
• contains knowledge of science,
• matter of the universe like sun, moon, air
  etc.

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The Yajur Veda

• smallest of all the four Vedas.
• The knower of this Veda is known as Adhvaryu.
• gives knowledge of all the deeds and duties to
  be performed by men or women, students, leaders,
  king, agriculturist etc.

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The Sama Veda

• has 1875 mantras.
• The knower of this Veda is known as Udgata.
• gives knowledge how to worship God
• details of Yoga philosophy is included in this
  veda.

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The Atharva Veda

• special place in the field of philosophy and
  spiritualism.
• knower of this Veda is known as Brahma.
• has 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in
  common with the Rig-Veda.
• details of medical science and of medicine
  etc. it also contains Mantras used in marriage
  and death rituals, as well as those for kingship,

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Vedanta

• The word Vedanta is a compound word made up of
  two Sanskrit words Veda and  Anta.
• broadly covers the philosophy enunciated by the
  holy Scriptural Trinity
• the Upanishads,
• the Brahma-Sutra and
• the Bhagavad Gita.
• "The goal, which all Vedas declare, which all
  austerities aim at, and which humans desire when
  they live a life of continence, I will tell you
  briefly it is Aum" (1.2.15)

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Vedic Impacts

• 1.Literature
• 2. Science
• 3.Mathematics
• 4.Music
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  5.Practices and Religion

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• Literature
• Eliot
• The Waste Land ends with the reiteration of the
  Three Cardinal Virtues damyata (restraint), datta
   (charity) and dayadhvam (compassion) and
• ends with Shantih shantih shantih
• Prof. Philip R. Headings has remarked in his
  study of the poet, "No serious student of Eliot's
  poetry can afford to ignore his early and
  continued interest in the Bhagavad Gita."

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• Henry David Thoreau
• "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the
  stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the
  Bhagavad Gita."
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) his poem
  Hamatreya was inspired by a passage from the
  Vedas. He was concerned with the subject of
  illusion maya and wrote a poem on the same.
• Francois Voltaire stated "... everything has
  come down to us from the banks of the Ganges.
• Vishnu Sharmas Panchtantra

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Science

• Cosmology
• French astronomer Jean-Claude Bailly stated
  "the movements of the stars calculated 4,500
  years ago, does not differ by a minute from the
  tables of today.
• Metallurgical Science
• Cast in approximately the 3rd century B.C.,
  the six and a half ton pillar has sustained over
  two millennia.

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• Vedic sounds and mantras
• A Clinical Test of the Benefits of Mantra
  Chanting was performed on three groups of
  sixty-two subjects .
• They chanted the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra
  twenty-five minutes each day under strict
  clinical supervision.
• Mantra reduces Stress and depression and helps
  reduce bad habits addictions.
• These results formed a PhD Thesis at Florida
  State University

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• Yoga and Ayurveda

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Mathematics

• The decimal system , the introduction of zero and
  the concept of infinity.
• Voltaire, the famous French writer and
  philosopher) stated that "Pythagoras went to the
  Ganges to learn geometry."
• Abraham Seidenberg, author of the authoritative
  "History of Mathematics," credits the Sulba
  Sutras as inspiring all mathematics of the
  ancient world from Babylonia to Egypt to Greece.

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• The speed of light Rig veda(I-54)
• Yojananam sahastra dwe dwe shate dwe cha
  yojane aken nimishardhena krammana namostute.
• 3.010(8) m/s upto two decimal places.

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Music
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• Beatles
• Recorded the White Album after their time with
  an Indian mystic based on the anti-materialism
  and the vedic transcendental thoughts.

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Commonplace practices and Religion

• Culture
• Rituals and ceremonies
• Prayers
• lifestyle and thinking.

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Misinterpretation of the Vedas

• Caste system
• Irrationality
• Mysticism

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Conclusion

• Vedas
• the unexplored ocean of
• knowledge.

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Thank you
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Bibliography

• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas
• http//images.google.co.in/
• http//indianscriptures.50webs.com/