h o m e

h i n d u    s c r i p t u r e s

c o n t e n t s

No other living tradition can claim scriptures as numerous or as ancient as Hinduism; none of them can boast of an unbroken tradition as faithfully preserved as the Hindu tradition. Hindu literature is the most ancient and extensive religious writings in the world. Hindu religion is not derived from a single book. It has many sacred writings which serve as a source of doctrine. The most important texts include the Vedas, Upanishads, the Puranas,  the Epics - Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. 

Hinduism is very much a religion of revelation. Hindus are the most thoughtful people, and their literature is characterized by constant concern with humanity's spiritual destiny. In response to this concern they have created elaborate philosophical concepts and wrote great epic poems, narrative literature and fiction. These vast epics, and the four 'books' of the Vedas, were originally transmitted by a phenomenal human chain of memory, and only written down centuries after their actual compilation. This oral tradition still exists in India today. The early phase of the Vedic tradition in India is dated between 10,000 - 7,000 BCE. 

According to Professor Klaus K. Klostermaier: "Since ancient times India has been famous for its wisdom and its thought. The ancient Persians, Greek and Romans were eager to learn from its sages and philosophers. When, in the eighteenth century, the first translations of some Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita became available to the West, European philosophers rhapsodized about the profundity and beauty of these writings. Here they encountered a fusion of philosophy and religion, a deep wisdom and a concern with the ultimate, that had no parallel in either contemporary Western philosophy or Western religion. Indian philosophy is highly sophisticated and very technical and surpasses in both in volume and subtlety."

Sir William Jones was always impressed by the vastness of Indian literature. He wrote: "Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature, the notion of infinity presents itself." Hinduism has always laid great stress on Pramanas (the means and instruments of correct knowledge). Hindu philosophers have discussed at great lengths the science of Noetics. Max Muller says: "In thus giving the Noetics the first place, the thinkers of India seem to have again superior to most of the philosophers of the West."

Introduction
Vedas
Upanishads
Bhagavad Gita
All Matter is Nothing but energy
Brahman: The All- Pervading Reality
Itihasa: The Great Epics
1. Ramayana
2. Mahabharata
Conclusion

Introduction

The Vedas are not puerile babblings of rustic troubadours, but sedate out-pourings of exceptional minds in quest of God. Early Rig Vedic hymns were composed between 6,000-1500 BCE. Like indestructible gems they have come down during many thousands of years in spotless perfection. From the Vedas they evolved the Upanishads, whose copious enquiries into the nature of man, the Universe, and God, strike us with speechless wonder. They evolved the most perfect language in the world, Sanskrit, with a scientific alphabet and perfected vocabulary, and a grammar which is itself a great work of art.  Their intellectuals vying with each other, propounded six systems of philosophy explaining man, universe, and God, before which Aristotle's and Plato's theories look like juvenile endeavors, which fell flat on their own country-men. They discovered the Earth's dual motions, and studied the courses of constellations and stars, and founded the twin sciences of astronomy and astrology. They probed the human frame, and perfected a system of medicine for the welfare of the body, evolved the science of Yoga for the health of the mind, and the Tantra Shastra to develop the psychic and esoteric forces latent in man's being. They brought out Dharma Sastras to guide man's conduct in society, Grihya Sutras to guide the conduct of house-holders, and a unique science, Meemamsa, prescribing sacrificial lore for the attainment of individual and national prosperity. They codified the laws of sanitation, town-planning, architecture, sculpture and enunciated the principles of music, dancing, and the art of love. They laid down principles of state-craft, and of the art of war, with human and animal strategy, with physical weapons, or shastras, and enchanted weapons or astras.

The English knowing world began to read of the greatness of Indian civilization in the 18th century. Scholars, one after another, caught glimpses of its luster, and becoming curious, slowly unveiled the enveloping shroud and gaze with ever growing wonder at is astonishing extent. Russian, German, Italian, Swedish, French, and American intellectuals also turned their telescopes on the Indian sky during the period, and expressed their appraisal in no uncertain terms. 

But the bulk of the English educated public of India are still unaware of its rich past. 

(source: Sanskrit Civilization - G. R. Josyer International Academy of Sanskrit Research. p. 3-4)

The Sanskrit word for philosophy is darsan or 'seeing', which implies that Hinduism is not based merely on intellectual speculation but is grounded upon direct and immediate perception. This, in fact, distinguishes Indian philosophy from much of Western philosophical thought. The oldest and most important scriptures of Hinduism are the Vedas, which contain inspired utterances of seers and sages, who had achieved a direct perception of the divine being. The Vedas are considered to be eternal, because they are not merely superb poetic composition but represent the divine truth itself as perceived through the elevated consciousness of great seers. 

In general, Hindu scriptures may be classified into two divisions: Sruti scriptures and Smriti scriptures. 

Sruti in Sanskrit means "that which is heard." Thus the Vedas are the eternal truths that the Vedic seers, called rishis, are said to have heard during their deep meditations. The Vedas are not considered the works of the human mind, but an expression of what has been realized through intuitive perception by Vedic rishis, who had powers to see beyond the physical phenomena. As such, Vedas are considered of divine origin. The Vedic truths were originally transmitted by the rishis to their disciples over thousands of years. At a later date, these were compiled by Sage Vyasa for the benefit of future generations. India's teachings are not speculative. They are based on divine revelations. Indeed, the revelations are so cosmic that they approach more closely the findings of physics and astronomy than the pious pronouncements of preachers. The rishis made claims so cosmic that even modern physics seems only to be catching up with them and realizing, after every scientific breakthrough, that the ancients were there long before them. Sruti include the Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva) and the Bhagavad Gita. The Vedas are the primary scriptures of Hinduism. Each of the four Vedas consists of four parts: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. 

Smriti means "that which is remembered." Smriti scriptures are derived from the Vedas and are considered to be of human origin and not of divine origin. They were written to explain and elaborate the Vedas, making them understandable and more meaningful to the general population. All authoritative writings outside the Vedas are collectively referred to as Smriti. Smriti inlcude the Dharma Shastras, Nibhandas, Puranas, The Epics, Agamas or Tantras, Darshanas and Vedangas (Upa Vedas). According to Alain Danielou distingused Orientalist, " The Puranas provide genealogies, which go back to the sixth millennium B.C. E.  and are probably largely authentic. The stories and descriptions of the various regions of the earth and the various civilizations living on the "seven continents" provide priceless documentation on the world's oldest civilization."

The Smriti are considered the secondary scriptures of Hinduism. These scriptures are classified in the following diagram:

Classification of Major Scriptures

Note: Each of the four Vedas consists of four parts: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranykas, and Upanishads.

The Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Epics (The Mahabharata).

(source: The Hindu Mind - By Bansi Pandit).

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Arthur Anthony Macdonell (1854-1930) in his History of Sanskrit Literature tells us that 'the importance of Indian literature as a whole consists of its originality. When the Greeks towards the end of the fourth century B.C. came to the north-west, the Indians had already worked out a national culture of their own, unaffected by foreign influence. 

Sir William Jones was always impressed by the vastness of Indian literature. He wrote: "Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature, the notion of infinity presents itself."  

(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p. 21).

To the Hindu, Shruti is what cannot be thought up by the limited human intellect, but is of God. It is what is forever valid, never changes, is not dependent on the limited capacity for understanding of any one historical person. The Hindu for this reason is proud not to need a historical founder. The founder and foundation of the Vedas and the Upanishads is the Brahman itself, is what is indestructible and timeless.

(source: Vedanta: Heart of Hinduism- By Hans Torwesten p. 23).

The Vedas and the Upanishads are to India what the Crown and Scepter are to an anointed king. They are India's proudest and most ancient possessions. They are the world's oldest intellectual legacies. They are the only composition in the universe invested with Divine origin, and almost Divine sanctity. They are said to emanate from God, and are held to be the means for attaining God. Their beginnings are not known. They have been heirlooms of the Hindus from generation to generation from time immemorial. 

When Europeans first came to know of them, they roused amazement. Guigault of France exclaimed: "The Rig Veda is the most sublime conception of the great highway of humanity." 

(source: Sanskrit Vistas - By J. R. Josyner p. 1).

Professor F. Max Muller says: "The Vedic literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the education of the human race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else."

(source: India: What can it teach us - By F. Max Muller p. 89). 

Refer to Internet Sacred Texts on Hinduism and Stotra Rathnas.

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Vedas

The Vedas (Book of Knowledge) are the greatest legacy of India, a prodigious body of verse, philosophy and hymns that is among the world's oldest written sacred scriptures. 

The Vedas are the discoveries of the laws of nature, the world and the being living in it and the Ultimate Truth. They are called apauruseya grantha (authorless works) as they are not books composed by men at a particular period of time. Ancient sages received these eternal Truths as revelations in meditation.

The Four Vedas are the primary texts of the spiritual and religious records of the ancient culture and teachings of India. The four Vedas are the Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas. The religion of the Rig Veda is well known. It is pre-eminently the worship of Nature in its most imposing and sublime aspect. The sky which bends over all, the beautiful and blushing dawn which like a busy housewife wakes men from slumber and sends them to their work, the gorgeous tropical sun which vivifies the earth, the air which pervades the world, the fire that cheers and enlightens us, and the violent storms which in India usher in those copious rains which fill the land with plenty, these were the gods whom the early HIndus loved to extol and to worship. Such is the nature-worship of the Rig Veda, such were the gods and goddesses whom our forefathers worshipped more than four thousand years ago on the banks of the Saraswati. The conception of the nature-gods and the single-hearted fervency with which they were adored, argue the simplicity and vigor of a manly race, as well as the culture and thoughtfulness of a people who had already made a considerable progress in civilization. 

In the first years of his stay at Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India. He made a deep study of the Vedas and, struck by the light it threw on his own experiences, rediscovered its lost meaning. In his book India's Rebirth ISBN: 81-85137-27-7 - p. 94:

He wrote: "I seek a light that shall be new, yet old, the oldest indeed of all lights...I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy but Veda - the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, but about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world, the truth which is beyond opinion, the knowledge which all thought strives after - yasmin vijnate sarvam vigna - tam (which being known, all is known); I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism..." "I believe the Veda to be the foundation head of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism, - but a veil has to be drawn aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I believe it to be knowable and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the world to depend on its discovery and on its application, not, to the renunciation of life, but to life in the world and among men. I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval Indian or modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers."

"The mind of ancient India did not err when it traced back all its philosophy, religion and essential things of its culture to the seer-poets of the Vedas, for all the future spirituality of her people is contained there in seed or in first expression."

(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra p. 59).

Vedic Rishis - the Ancient Pathmakers

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority

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The Rishis were the revered pioneers of the Hindu religion, and pre-eminent among them are Vishvamitra and Vasistha. The great Rishis of the Vedic age composed the hymns, fought their wars, and ploughed their fields; but they were neither Brahmins, nor Kshatriyas nor Vaisyas. The hymns of the Rig Veda speak of the Punjab alone - India beyond the Punjab is unknown to the Rig Veda. The banks of the distant Ganga and Jumna are rarely alluded to; the scenes of war and social ceremonies are the banks of the Saraswati and her tributaries. This was the Hindu world when the hymns were composed. 

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Swami Vivekanada (1863-1902) was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and a world spokesperson for Vedanta. India's first spiritual and cultural ambassador to the West, came to represent the religions of India at the World Parliament of Religions, held at Chicago has said:

"The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous, that a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons at different times. Just as the law of gravitation acted before its discovery by humanity, and would continue to act if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings. Now the Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science has proved to us that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. 

They were written, nobody knows at what date, it may be 8,000 years ago, in spite of all modern scholars may say; it may be 9,000 years ago. Not one of these religious speculations is of modern date, but they are as fresh today as they were when they were written..."

..this ancient monotheistic idea did not satisfy the Hindu mind; it did no do far enough....the first question that we find now arising, assuming proportions, is the question about the universe. "Whence did it come?" "How did it come?" "How does it exist?"  Various hymns are to be found on this question, struggling forward to assume form, and nowhere do we find it so poetically, so wonderfully expressed as in the following hymn:

"Then there was neither aught nor naught,
nor air, nor sky, nor anything. What covered all?
Where rested all? Then death was not nor deathlessness,
nor change to night and day."

Now first arose desire, the primal seed of mind.
Sages, searching in their heart by wisdom, found the bond
Between existence and non-existence."

It is a very peculiar expression; the poet ends by saying that "perhaps He even does not know."

(source: Hinduism  - By Swami Vivekananda p. 2 -35).

The metaphysical agony, which alone makes man great, bursts forth in the famous words of the Rig Veda. These words of spiritual yearning, metaphysical unease and intellectual skepticism set the tone of India's cultural growth. The seers of the Rg Veda believe, in a truth, a law which governs our existence, which sustains the different levels of our being, an infinite reality, ekam sat, or which all the different deities are but forms. 

(source: East and West in Religion - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 21-22).

Agni, god of fire, shown riding a goat, in a miniature painting from an 18th century watercolor

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The Vedas are the most ancient scriptures in the library of consciously evolving humanity. The Vedas are the direct experience and revelations of the rishis of the hoary past. The Vedas are meant for the lovers of eternal Time. The oldest Indian literary documents are the four Vedas; the word means sacred knowledge or lore. These texts include hymns, liturgical instructions, and explanatory theological and philosophical courses. These vast and complex works reflect a long development in philosophical and religious thought. The Vedas are regarded as the foundation of the Indian Culture and the Rishis of Vedas have been revered throughout the ages in India as having heard the truth and revealed it and thus given perennial wisdom to guide the development of the future. 

The Vedas stand in all their might and majesty as the very source and bedrock of Hindu civilization. The Vedas are the inspired utterances of a whole galaxy of realized souls, of spiritual geniuses, of people not merely 

One of the most dominant ideas of Indian culture has been that of Dharma, and this has been a consequence of the Vedic discovery of the r'ta or the Right. The right of law of this automatic harmony is the r'ta. 

The Vedas are the brilliant product of intuitive insight. The original seers who "saw" them were and will ever remain anonymous, for this was not the age of unbridled individualism. Here you have the quintessence of classical Indian philosophy. Thinking with your heart and loving with your mind. The Vedas were the brilliant product of intuitive insight, not of the logical intellect. Known only orally at first, transmitted by word of mouth from master to discipline, later written down. The original seers - 'rishis' who 'saw' them were and will ever remain anonymous, for this was not an age of unbridled individualism. 

The chief sacred scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, register the intuitions of the perfected souls. They are not so much dogmatic dicta as transcripts from life. They record the spiritual experiences of souls strongly endowed with the sense for reality. They are held to be authoritative on the ground that they express the experiences of the experts in the field of religion. The Vedas bring together different ways in which the religious-minded of that age experienced reality and describe the general principles of religious knowledge and growth. The experiences themselves are of a varied character, so their records are many-sided (visvatomukham) or 'suggestive of many interpretations' (anekarthatam).

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 5-6).

Sir William Jones called the Vedas as the fountain of Indian literature: "From the Vedas are immediately deduced the practical arts of Surgery and Medicine, Music and Dancing, Archery, which comprises the whole art of war, and Architecture, under which the system of mechanical arts is included."

(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p. 21).

Dr. Nicol Macnicol says, the beginning of 'the brave adventures made so long ago and recorded here, of those who seek to discover the significance of our world and man's life within it...India here set out on a quest which she has never ceased to follow."

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru p. 79). Refer to Internet Sacred Texts on Hinduism and Stotra Rathnas.

When the Yajur Veda was presented to Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1774) France's greatest writers and philosophers, he expressed his belief that:

  "the Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East."

The Vedas are said to be anadi (beginningless) and apaurasheya (not thought and taught by men). The Rig Veda says: The Hindu doctrine is that the mentioning of the sage and the metre and the deity in respect to a Vedic hymn (mantra) does not mean that the sage composed the mantra as a piece of literary composition. The sage merely had it revealed to him in his vision as the result of his purity and meditation.

Professor Max Muller in his book, India: What It can Teach Us says: "In the history of the world, the Vedas fill a gap which no literary work in any other language could fill. I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his intellectual development, a study of the Vedic literature is indeed indispensable."

Some Vedic hymns paint the exquisite glories of the natural world: the preternatural beauty of predawn light, its rosy fingers holding the iridescent steel-blue sky; some celebrate the welcome cool of evening, the scented breezes of a calm and refreshing night, its basalt dome studded with shimmering pearls and diamonds. Beauty permeates them, a reflection of Truth. The Vedas go much further in outlining the nature of reality than any other religious texts still in use.  Other hymns concentrate on different aspects of nature's wonder, very specific in their knowledge of the great cycles that sustain life. Vedic writings detail a scientific knowledge of the rain cycle that startles with its accuracy. 

(source: Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys into India - By Paul Williams Robert - p. 312).

' We meditate upon the supreme effulgence of the Divine creative Sun,
that he may give impulse to our intelligence.'

 - Rig Veda III. 62.10 

The Vedic songs represent the most amazing celebration of life that has ever been created. The joy and wonder in life which was felt by those early and vigorous peoples who sang the Vedas. 

The Vedas testify to a strong urge in Man towards unity, a longing to arrive at a conception that is both totally Divine and human. This dynamic process has not yet ceased. No merely naturalistic explanation of the worship of the God as natural powers will do justice to texts or to the sophistication of Vedic culture. 

The Lord of the paths shows the way to growth to all creatures, each according to its nature. A Vedic man prays to: 

'The One who is the life spark of the water,
of wood, of things both moving and inert,
who has his dwelling even within the stone,
Immortal God, he cares for all mankind,
'He who sees all beings at a glance,
both separate and united,
may he be our protector.'

(source: The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari (An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man) - By Raimundo Panikkar p. 53-123).

The Vedas emphasize that the internal suksmasarira, the finer or subtle body of man, the equivalent of "soul" in modern thought, is of transcendental importance; and that suksma-sarira is of the nature of infinite existence and infinite consciousness. In this luminous philosophy, material substance is wholly insignificant. Compare the observations of Einstein: "We may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense...There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality."

(source: India's priceless Heritage - By Nani Palkiwala p. 6-7).

An 18th century manuscript of the Rigveda ("Wisdom of the Verses"), the earliest and most auspicious of the four Vedas.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

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1. Rig Veda 

"This homage is to the ancient-born Seers, to the ancient makers of the Path."  - Rig Veda X. 14-15.

"Let us bring our minds to rest in
The Glory of the Divine Sun!
May He inspire our reflections!"

  - Rig Veda II. 62. 10).

"You shine, all living things emerge. You disappear, they go to rest. Recognizing our innocence, O golden-haired Sun, arise; let each day be better than the last."    Rig Veda (X, 37, 9).

The Rig Veda is the Veda par excellence, the real Veda that traces the earliest growth of religious ideas in India. These hymns were composed between 6,000-1500 BCE. It is in poetical form, has one thousand twenty eight poems or hymns called Samhita. It is so much full of thought that at this early period in history no poet in any other nation could have conceived them.  The sublimity, the nobility, the natural justice, the equality, the love and welfare of all humanity as a whole is the theme of the Rig Veda. The Vedic God has no partisan attitude of the jealous vindictive God, who is ever ready to please and help his own people by hurling disease, death and destruction on their enemies in return for sacrifices.

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: "Rig Veda is the earliest book that humanity possesses. Yet behind the Rig Veda itself lay ages of civilized existence and thought during which had grown all other civilizations..." 

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995. p. 43).

The Vedas are the quintessence of classical Hindu  philosophy. Thinking with your heart; loving with your mind. All yoga and meditation aim to attain this goal. Anything else is delusion, or worse. And when the heart sees, it sees the unknowable, nameless, formless, limitless, supreme God. He is called the nonexistent because he is eternal, beyond existence. God manifest is the fabric of creation itself. They are one. The heart that learns to think realizes this truth and merges into the eternal oneness. As William Blake put it, “ If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.” 

This merging with the Eternal, this inner transformation, this direct experience of Truth – these are the goals of which the Vedic sages speak. They explain the nature of the universe, of life, while admitting that Creation itself is the one unknowable mystery. To the Vedic sages, creation indicated that point before which there was no Creator, the line between indefinable nothingness and something delineated by attributes and function, at least. Like the moment before the Big Bang Theory. These concepts preoccupy high wisdom, the Truth far removed from mere religion. Recent research and scholarship make it increasingly possible to believe that the Vedic era was the lost civilization whose legacy the Egyptians and the Indians inherited. There must have been one. There are too many similarities between hieroglyphic texts and Vedic ones, these in turn echoed in a somewhat diluted form and a confused fashion by the authors of Babylonian texts and the Old Testament.  

(source: Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys into India - By Paul Williams Robert - p. 312).

Indian poetic thought at this stage appears as free, candid and honest about the nature of God as that of any modern thinker who would express the doubts and sorrows of his heart without any inhibition. Even in the very early hymns of the Rig Veda, we encounter passages of a rather philosophical nature. These are no longer concerned with singing the praises of the numerous nature deities and reaching some kind of heaven, but with knowledge of a higer reality. There is also a refusal to be bound into any dogma about the supernatural though their ecstatic expressions do acknowledge Him as the Highest Being, the Most High Seer, as can be seen from this beautiful Hymn of creation in the Vedas called the Nasidiya Sukta. The most remarkable and sublime hymn in which the first germ of philosophic speculation with regard to the wonderful mystery of the origin of the world are found:

"Nor aught nor naught existed; you bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above;
What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed?
Was it the waters' fathomless abyss?
There was no light of night, no light of day,
The only One breathed breathless in itself,
Other than it there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound, an ocean without light;....

Yet the Vedas go further, being philosophy, or really spiritual sciences, rather than myth.  One can almost detect a touch of irony in the last question of this hymn which ends this verse. 

Who truly knows, who can honestly say where.
This universe cam from  
And where it will vanish to at the End?  
Those godlike wise men who claim they know were born long
After the birth of Creation.  
Who then could know where our universe really came from?  
And whoever knows or does not know where Creation came from,  
Only one gazing at its vastness from the very roof of the final Heaven
"Only such a one could possibly know, 
But does even He know? "    
                                       - Rig Veda - 129.6. 7

The philosophical and mystical depth of this hymn is unsurpassed. 

Paul William Robert has written: "The Bible begins with the Creation. Before the Creation, however, there was the Creator, but does even He know what was there before He existed ? Long before such philosophical questions occurred to other historical peoples, Vedism posited the existence of something more ultimate than the one God. Whatever must have created Him. That is presuming the absolute and basic reality. Or is it?

This is mysticism that is simultaneously metalogic and the kind of thing those bardic sages living some twenty-five thousand years ago thought about a great deal, according to Hindu tradition. The Vedas are the very first compositions mankind produced dating back at least twenty thousand years. Most orthodox historians and anthropologists strongly dispute such a view. They confuse writing with civilization and deny meaningful history to any people who did not leave a written record. A rich culture does not necessarily depend on writing, as the Celtic civilization proves.  The hymns are the most sophisticated, most profoundly beautiful, and most complete presentations of what Aldous Huxley termed the “perennial philosophy” that is at the core of all religions. In modern academia, of course, there is not supposed to be any “ancient wisdom”.  

The Vedas go much further in outlining the nature of reality than any other religious texts still in use. Some Vedic hymns paint the exquisite glories of the natural world: the preternatural beauty of predawn light, its rosy fingers holding the iridescent steel-blue sky; some celebrate the welcome cool of evening the scented breeze of a calm and refreshing night, its basalt dome studded with shimmering pearls and diamonds. Beauty permeates them, a reflection of Truth. The Vedas hold within them enough information to rebuild human civilization from scratch, if necessary. I think someone did believe that might be necessary one day.  

(source: Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys into India - By Paul Williams Robert  p.299 -325).  

The Gayatri Mantra (chant), which forms the core of Hindu faith, is actually addressed to Surya, Sun God:

" Om bhūr bhuvah svah tat savitur varēnyam bhargō dēvasya dhīmahi dhiyō yō nah pracōdayāt"

O splendid and Effulgent Sun,
we offer this prayer to thee.
Enlighten this craving mind.
Be our protector.
May the radiance of the divine ruler guide our destiny.
Wise men salute your magnificence with oblations and words of praise."

Lord Rama was also taught, by sage Agastaya, the Adityahridayam, a prayer addressed to the sun god.

"The Sun is the foremost physical manifestation of divine creative power. In the glorious morning the faithful bend towards the giver of life in one single gesture of adoration. " 

His chariot drawn by prancing horse, Surya, the Sun god rides the sky to a chorus of worshippers.

O splendid and Effulgent sun, May your radiance enlighten this craving mind.

For more refer to chapters on Sacred Angkor and Suvarnabhumi

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Battlestar Galactica - The Sky One version of the title sequence for season one featured a Hindu mantra, the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rig Veda. In the U.S. , the music was an original instrumental piece by composer Bear McCreary called "Two Funerals" originally written for the episode "Act of Contrition". As of season two, the main title sequences in all territories where the show airs now use the Sky One title sequence, the Gayatri Mantra version written by miniseries composer Richard Gibbs.

Usha, the dawn, is often invoked, and is the subject of some of the most beautiful hymns that are to be found in the lyrical poetry of any ancient nation. 

Beautous daughter of the sky!
Hold they ruddy light on high,
Grant us wealth and grant us day,
Bring us food and morning's ray.
White-robed goddess of the morning sky,
Bring us light, let night's deep shadows fly.

"We gaze upon her as she comes
The shining daughter of the sky
The mighty darkness she uncovers,
And light she makes, the pleasant one that we see."

This light, most radiant of lights, has come; this gracious one who illumines all things is born. As night is removed by the rising sun, so is this the birthplace of the dawn....We behold her, daughter of the sky, youthful, robed in white, driving forth the darkness. Princess of limitless treasure, shine down upon us throughout the day." - Rig Veda I. 113.

Usha! (Dawn) Hail, Beautous daughter of the sky!

(image source: The Splendour That Was 'Ind'  - By K T Shah).

Refer to The Vedanta Kesari

***

Of the hymns to other deities, the hymns to those to Usha, the Dawn, are especially beautiful. Some of the loveliest nature poetry of this period is dedicated to her, depicted as a young maiden who comes to mankind in the special characteristics of the dawn. Dawn bring a feeling of hope and refreshment, of entering into the activity of the universe. 

The Aryas worshipped Nature. They were fascinated by their natural surroundings. Gods representing the forces of nature are mentioned in the hymns of Rig Veda. Rta was the term used to mean the natural law of the cosmic order and morality. It was the regulator of the whole Universe. Dyaus, sky, Prithvi, earth,  Varuna, the sky god and protector of Rta and Indra, Savitri, Mitra and Pushan represented different powers of the Sun such as heat, light and nourishment. Vishnu was the symbol of swift movement while Rudra amd Maruts were the gods of storm and winds. Shiva was the later name given to Rudra. Vayu and Vata were other gods of winds while Parjanya was the god of rain. There were gods on earth also. Agni was an important deity. Soma was regarded as essential for sacrifice. Saraswati as river goddess on earth. But the most loved goddess was Usha (Dawn) belonging to both earth and heaven. Some of the most beautiful hymns are addressed to Ushas. 

(source: Ancient Indian History and Culture - By Chidambara Kulkarni Orient Longman Ltd. 1974. p.43-44).

2. Yajur Veda

The Yajur Veda, containing 3,988 verses, is a compilation of mantras and methods for use by priests in performing Vedic rituals and sacrifice. 

3. Sama Veda

The Sama Veda,  a collection of 1,540 verses, was wet to music by the Vedic period for chanting during rituals. The use of music in the r

4. Atharva Veda

The Atharva Veda, a unique collection of 5,977 verses was used to satisfy the daily needs of the people. This included verses deemed necessary for success in agriculture, trade, progeny, health, and general welfare. Other verses are designed to assist in procuring medicine and fighting one's enemy. The Sanskrit word Ayurved means medicine. The Ayurvedic system of medicine, based upon the use of herbs for the treatment of disease, has its roots in the Atharva Veda. 

Format of the Vedas - Each Vedas is divided into four main sections: (a) Samhitas or mantras (b) Brahmanas, (c) Aranyakas or "forest books" (d) Upanishads. 

***

Guigualt says: "The Rig Veda is the most sublime conception of the great highways of humanity." 

On July 14, 1882 Mons Leon Delbios said in a paper read on the Vedas when Victor Hugo was in the chair, says: "There is a no monument of Greece or Rome more previous than the Rig Veda." When Voltaire was presented with a copy of the Yajurveda he said, "It was the most precious gift for which the West has been for ever indebted to the East." 

(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R. Patel p. 76-77).

F. Max Muller wrote: "In the history of the world, the Veda fills a gap which no literary work in any other language can fill." 

(source: India: What can it teach us? - By Max Muller p. 121). 

Dr. Jean LeMee born in France in 1931, and studied Sanskrit at Columbia University has written:

"Precious stones or durable materials - gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite - have been used by ancient people in an attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient Vedic Aryans. They turned to what may seem the most volatile and insubstantial material of all - the spoken word ...The pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a great wave through the living substance of mind. .."

"The Rig Veda is a glorious song of praise to the Gods, the cosmic powers at work in Nature and in Man. Its hymns record the struggles, the battles, and victories, the wonder, the fears, the hopes, and the wisdom of the Ancient Path Makers. 

Glory be to Them!" 

(source: Hymns from the Rig Veda - By Jean LeMee  - Illustrator Ingbert Gruttner ISBN: 0394493540 and ASIN 0224011812).

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American Philosopher, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist and writer: 

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky."

"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climes and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night."  He also admitted that, "The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and subtlety of Vedic culture." Thoreau's reading of literature on India and the Vedas was extensive: he took them seriously. 

(source: The Secret Teachings of the Vedas. The Eastern Answers to the Mysteries of Life -  By Stephen Knapp volume one. pg- 22) 

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British mathematician, logician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and who, in collaboration with Bertrand Russell,  authored the landmark three-volume Principia Mathematica,  (1910, 1912, 1913). He reported to have remarked: 

"Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived." 

(source: Huston Smith: Essays on World Religion. edited by M. Darrrol Bryant. Paragon House 1992 p. 135).

Modern man is a diminished man. Despite the superficial excitements of our high-tech world, life for most has become a flat, stale, and joyless thing. It is joyless because we have forgotten what life is supposed to be. 

Dr. Karan Singh observes:

"The Vedas stand in all their might and majesty as the very source and bedrock of Hindu civilization. The Vedas are the inspired utterances of a whole galaxy of realized souls, of spiritual geniuses, of people not merely well versed intellectually but with spiritual enlightenment. "

(source: Essays on Hinduism - By Karan Singh p. 50. For more on nature refer to chapter on Nature Worship).

Prof. Bloomfield  Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology has remarked:

"The Vedas represent the pinnacle of the oldest literature of India. It is the ancient most written document of Indo-European language. This may be termed the principle source of religious thought."

Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya (1861 – 1946) was a great Indian nationalist and a true propounder of Hindu culture and often called as the Teacher of the Nation, has said:

"The Vedas are the oldest scriptures in the world. The Vedas accept the existence of God. They say that the creator of this animate and inanimate world is God. The sun, moon, heavens and earth have been created by God only."

(source: The Essence of the Vedas - By Dr. Mahendra Mittal  p. 12).

A P J (Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul) Kalam ( 1931 -  )  Noted Scientist and President of India. India who reads the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran. He said, India should seek to become like the perfect nation defined in Thirukkural, the ancient Tamil discourse. He described the Veda as, 

"They are the oldest classics and the most precious treasures of India. The soul of Bharatiya sanskriti dwells in the Vedas. The entire world admits the importance of the Vedas."

(source: Vedas, soul of India - By Dina Nath Mishra - dailypioneer.com). Refer to Internet Sacred Texts on Hinduism and Stotra Rathnas. Refer to Battlestar Galactica - wikipedia.org.

Refer to Rig Veda among 38 new heritage items in UNESCO culture list - Thirty manuscripts of the ancient Hindu text Rig Veda dating from 1800 to 1500 BC are among 38 new items that have been added to the United Nations heritage list to help preserve them for posterity.

To download Hindu Scriptures - refer to Hindu Temple of Greater Cincinnati.  Refer to The Vedanta Kesari

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Upanishads  

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer, wrote about the Upanishads:  

"From every sentence (of the Upanishads) deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit...."In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people.” 

He regarded them: 

" It has been the solace of my life -- it will be the solace of my death."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) an author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister who lectured on theology at Harvard University wrote:

"They haunt me. In them I have found eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken peace."

A. E. George Russell (1867 -1935) the Irish poet, essayist, painter, Nationalist leader, mystic wrote:

"The Upanishads contain such godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors must have looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives, full of feverish strife for and with shadows, ere they could have written with such certainty of things which the soul feels to be sure."  

Paul Deussen (1845-1919) a direct disciple of Arthur Schopenhauer, preferred to be called in Sanskrit, Deva-Sena was a scholar of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, has observed:

"Whatever may be the discoveries of the scientific mind, none can dispute the eternal truths propounded by the Upanishads."

" the Upanishads have tackled every fundamental problem of life. They have given us an intimate account of reality." "On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy,

Huston Smith (1919 -   ) born in China to Methodist missionaries, a philosopher, most eloquent writer, world-famous religion scholar who practices Hatha Yoga.

"When I read the Upanishads, I found a profundity of world view that made my Christianity seem like third grade." 

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) was among India's most fervent nationalists and he paid tribute to the remarkable Isha Upanishad.

“If all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.”

"The Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all
The Lord is the supreme Reality
Rejoice in him through renunication.
Covet nothing. All belongs to the Lord."  - Isha Upanishad 1 -1 .

(For more refer to chapter on and Quotes).

***

India's soul-offering is the perennial light of the Upanishads. Upanishads are the divine revelations received by ancient seers. They represent the essence of the Vedas, the greatest truths ever known to mankind. The Upanishads are humanity's most profound philosophical inquiry and the first  perceptions of the unity of all, the oneness of man and God.  The Upanishads are also called the Vedanta. The literal meaning of Vedanta is 'the end of the Vedas.' They were composed around 700 BCE. The basic teaching of the Upanishads is that the essence of all beings - from a blade of grass to the perfect human being - and all things is the Divine Spirit, called Brahman. 

Free from theology and dogma, the Upanishads remain the primary source of inspiration and guidance for millions of Hindus and non-Hindus alike. They have influenced many Western thinkers, including von Gothe, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Upanishads are the concluding portions of the Vedas and the teachings based on them is called Vedanta. The Upanishads focus on philosophical questions such as the purpose of life, origin of the universe, concepts of time, space and matter, as well as concepts of atman, Brahman, maya, immortality, rebirth, karma, and the world. 

The Upanishads offer to the world at large the supreme achievement of the awakened and illumined Hindu life. The Vedas represent the cow. The Upanishads represent milk. We need the cow to give us milk, and we need milk to nourish us. 

According to our Indian tradition, there were once 1,180 Upanishads. Of the 108 Upanishads that have been preserved, the following thirteen are generally considered to be the principal Upanishads: The Isa, Katha, Kena, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandhukya, Chandogya, Brhadaranyaka, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Svetasvatara, Kaivalya and Maitri. 

The Upanishads are known as the Vedanta, both because chronologically they come at the end of the Vedas and also because philosophically they represent the noblest upshot, the highest watermark of the Vedic civilization and genius. One meaning of the word Upanishad is to sit nearby. In the Indian tradition, the guru would be seated under a tree, near a river or lake, and one or more disciples would cluster around him to learnt he wisdom. They are the dialogues between guru and sisya. 

The Upanishads are the remarkable compositions, which contain sublime and philosophical speculations concerning the Universal Soul, the All-pervading Breath. The Upanishads contain the quintessence of Brahmavidya and declare that Brahman is in its nature Satchitananda and is also the material cause (Upadana Karana) and the efficient cause (Nimitta Karana) of the universe. The Upanishads declare that Karmas give us only perishable fruits and that jnana (knowledge) alone can lead to immortality. 

We begin with the Doctrine of a Universal Soul, an all-pervading Breath which is the keystone of the philosophy and thought of the Upanishads. This idea is somewhat different from monotheism as it has been generally understood in later days. For monotheism generally recognizes a God and Creator as distinct from the created beings; but the monotheism of the Upanishads, which has been the monotheism of the Hindu religion ever since, recognizes God as the Universal Being: - all things else have emanated from him, are a part of Him, and will mingle in him, and have no separate existence. This is the lesson which Yajnavalkya imparted to his esteemed wife Maitreyi. This too is the great idea which is taught in the Upanishads in a hundred similies and stories and beautiful legends, which impart to the Upanishads their value in the literature of the world.

"All this is Brahman (the Universal Being). Let a man meditate on the visible world as beginning, ending, and breathing in the Brahman."

"He is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary seed or the kernel of a canary seed. He also is my self within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds."

Such is the sublime language in which the ancient Hindus expressed their sublime conception of the minute but all-pervading and Universal Being whom they called Brahman or God.

Who is not struck by this manly and fervent effort made by the Hindu nation, three thousand years ago, to know the unknown Maker, to comprehend the incomprehensible God. And the joy of him who has comprehended, however, feebly, the incomprehensible God, has been well described:

"He who beholds all beings in the Self, and Self in all beings, he never turns away from it."

(source: The Early Hindu Civilization - By Romesh Chunder Dutt p. 17-177).

Etymologically the word Upanishad suggests “sitting down near”: that is, at the feet of an illumined teacher in an intimate session of spiritual instruction, as aspirants still do in India today. The sages who gave them to us did not care to leave their names; the truths they set down were eternal, and the identity of those who arranged the words irrelevant. While the Vedas look outward in reverence and awe of the phenomenal world, the Upanishads look inward, finding the powers of nature only an expression of the more awe-inspiring powers of human consciousness. 

The Upanishads tell us that there is a Reality underlying life which rituals cannot reach, next to which the things we see and touch in everyday life are shadows. They teach that this Reality is the essence of every created thing, and the same Reality is our real Self so that each of us is one with the power that created and sustains the universe. The Upanishads are not philosophy but are darshanas, “something seen” and therefore to be realized.  

This fervent desire to know is the motivation behind all science, so we should not be surprised to find in Vedic India the beginnings of a potent scientific tradition. By the common era, it would be in full flower…But the roots of this scientific spirit are in the Vedas. The Vedic hymns are steeped in the conviction of rita, an order that pervades creation and is reflected in each part – a oneness to which all diversity can be referred. From this conviction follows a highly sophisticated notion: a law of nature must apply uniformly and universally. The forest civilization of the Upanishads took a turn unparalleled in the history of science. It focused on the medium of knowing: the mind. The Self is the Brahman – is the central discovery of the Upanishads. Its most famous formulation is one of the mahavakyas or “great formulae”: Tat tvam asi, “You are That”. 

(source: The Upanishads: Translated for the Modern Reader - By Eknath Easwaran p. 1 - 25).

The Chandogya Upanishad makes a bold statement, to some extent more daring and at the same time convincing:

Tat twam asi - That Thou art.

What does it mean? It means that you are none other than God. Who else is God, if not you?

***

In the words of the great German philosopher and writer, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860): 

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom."

"As flowing rivers disappear into the sea, losing their name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all." - Mundaka Upanishad iii 2.  

Upanishads are the zenith of Hinduism cultural development. The Upanishads are crammed with thoughts that wander through eternity. Their message is that there is far more to life than success, and far more to success than money; and there can be no higher destiny for man than to be engaged in endless seeking after endless truth. They give the most memorable answers to the three immemorial questions posed by T. S. Eliot:

"Where is the life we have lost in living"
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

***

The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (I.3.28) offers to humanity an unparalleled prayer:

"From the unreal lead me to the Real;
From darkness lead to Light,
From death lead me to Immortality."

One of the lessons of the Upanishads is that you must regard "the universe as a thought in the mind of the Creator, thereby reducing all discussions of material creation to futility." The Upanishads teach that both space and time are endless or infinite. Modern science completely agrees. 

(source: India's Priceless Heritage - By Nani Palkhivala published by Bharati Vidya Bhavan 1980 p. 6-27).

The reality of the atomic physicist, like the reality of the Eastern mystic, transcends the narrow framework of opposite and contradictory concepts. The Upanishads say:

"It moves, it moves not,
It is far, and it is near,
It is within all this,
And it is outside of all this.

The words below of Oppenheimer seem to echo the words of the Upanishads regarding physical matter:

J. R. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Chairman of the Los Alamos Project, sadly confessed:

"If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; 
if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; 
if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no';
if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no.'

In his autobiography, Einstein expressed his sense of shock when he first came in contact with the reality of atomic physics:

"All my attempts to adopt the theoretical foundation of physics to this (new type of) knowledge failed completely. It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built."

The Rishis had repeatedly emphasized that the ultimate reality lies beyond the realms of the senses and the grey matter beneath our skulls. Hark again to the Upanishads:

"There the eye goes not
Speech goes not, nor the mind.
We know not, we understand not,
How would one teach it?"

(source: India's Priceless Heritage - By Nani Palkhivala published by Bharati Vidya Bhavan 1980. p.14-15).

Of all the productions of the Epic age, however, the Upanishads are the most striking. They represent the belief of the learned and the wise, and they embody the philosophy and spiritual knowledge of the age. The Upanishads elucidate the doctrine of the Universal Soul. In India the Upanishads are classed as works which impart True knowledge, while the Brahmanas regulate Observances. This distinction has endured in India in all times. 

The cardinal doctrine of the Upanishads are the doctrine of Transmigration of the Souls and of the Universal Soul. We have seen both these ideas in a hazy form in the hymns of the Rig Veda, in the Upanishads we find them more fully developed. All things change, all things cast off their old form and assume new shapes. The Soul within living beings thus changes its outward form, enters into new shapes, until it is merged with the Universal Soul called by the Vedic name of Brahma. This cardinal principle of the Upanishads is best explained in the language of the Upanishads:

"As a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, turns it into another newer and more beautiful shape, so does the Soul, after having thrown off this body, and dispelled all ignorance, make unto himself another newer and more beautiful shape....

"So much for the man who desires, But for the man who does not desire, who not desiring, free from desires, satisfied in his desires, desires the Soul only, his spirit does not depart elsewhere; being Brahma, he goes to Brahma." (Brihadaranyaka, iv. 4). 

This is true philosophical Hinduism as it was more than three thousand years ago, and as it is now. The doctrine is that all universe and all being proceed from Brahman, live in Him, are a part of Him, and end in Him. Each individual Soul has its beginning in the Universal Soul, and passes through a number of outward shapes or incarnations according to its doings in the world, and in the end merge in Him. The great idea of a true Unity comprehending all changing phenomena, is conceived and explained in the Hindu doctrine of Transmigration of Soul and of a Universal Soul.

(source: The Civilization of India - By Romesh C. Dutt p. 23 - 24). Refer to and Stotra Rathnas.  Refer to The Vedanta Kesari

Handwritten page of Sanskrit text from the Chandogya Upanishad. Chandogya is one of the oldest and best known for its equation of the atman (soul) within, with the Brahman (absolute spirit) without.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

To download Hindu Scriptures - refer to Hindu Temple of Greater Cincinnati.

Refer to The Vedanta Kesari

***

Dama, Dana and Daya (i.e DA, DA, DA).

In our daily life Indian culture has emphasized three cardinal virtues. There is a parable in the Brihadaranyka Upanishad 5.2 Prajapati, the ancestor of man, blessed his creation with a code of conduct consisting of three basic principles. viz. Dama, Dana and Daya i.e. restraint, charity and compassion. These are the basic qualities for which man is revered and respected in India. 

(source: Cultural Heritage of Ancient India - By Sachindra Kumar Maity p. 14).

"Like corn decays the mortal," said the Katha Upanishad, "like corn is he born again." It is one of the fundamental tenets of Hinduism that the soul, upon the death of one body, moves to another body or form carrying with it all the impressions or deeds that it has accumulated in its previous body. It is a simple cause and effect process between the matter and the spirit, the soul. All living beings are subject to this process of transmigration since they began life. 

Professor F. W. Thomas in The Legacy of India says: "What gives to the Upanishads their unique quality and unfailing human appeal is an earnest sincerity of tone, as of friends conferring upon matters of deep concern." 

And C. Rajagopalachari (1878-1972) was a scholar, a statesman, and a linguist.  A contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, he was also free India’s first Governor General, thus eloquently speaks of them:

"The spacious imagination, the majestic sweep of thought, and the almost reckless spirit of exploration with which, urged by the compelling thirst for truth, the Upanishad teachers and pupils dig into the "open secret" of the universe, make this most ancient of the world's holy books still the most modern and most satisfying."

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru Oxford University Press. 1995 p. 90).

The main teachings of the Upanishads are of a sublime character. Max Muller wrote: "How entirely does the Upanishads breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one who has become familiar with that incomparable book stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his soul! Vedanta is the most sublime of all philosophies and the most comforting of all religions."

Paul Deussen (1845-1919) preferred to be called in Sanskrit, Deva-Sena was a scholar of the Asiatic Society of Bengal says: 

"On the tree of Indian wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy." 

In his Philosophy of the Upanishads, Deussen claims for its fundamental thought "an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind." It is in "marvelous agreement with the philosophy founded by Kant, and adopted and perfected by his great successor, Schopenhauer," differing from it, where it does differ, only to excel. 

(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 298-299).

Victor Cousin (1792-1867) French Philosopher, says: "The history of Indian philosophy is the abridged history of the philosophy of the world."

(source: Hindu Culture and The Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K.S. Ramaswami Shastri - Annamalai University 1956 p.214-215).

Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) in comparing the ancient Greeks with the ancient Hindus, says: "Their (Hindus) general learning was more considerable; and in the knowledge of the being and nature of God, they were already in possession of a light which was but faintly perceived even by the loftiest intellects in the best days of Athens."

(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 299).

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The Bhagavad Gita

"I am the Self seated in the heart of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle and the very end of all beings".  

                                  -   Lord Krishna (Bhagawad Gita, sloka 20, Chapter 10).

***

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)  American Philosopher, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist and writer. He wrote:

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial." "One sentence of the Gita, is worth the State of Massachusetts many times over"  

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) an author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister who lectured on theology at Harvard University. He wrote: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us." 

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) A theoretical physicist and the Supervising Scientist for the Manhattan Project, the developer of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer acquired a deeper knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita in 1933 when, as a young professor of physics, he studied Sanskrit with Professor Arthur W Ryder (1877-1938) at Berkeley. 

The Gita, he wrote was “very easy and quite marvelous”.  He called the Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” 

Lord Krishna playing the flute adorns a mural at Mattancherry Palace, Cochin, Kerala.

The notes of Krishna's flute drifting through the woods are the call of the Divine. 

(image source: National Geographic - January 2008).

***

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India observed: "The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization." He wrote in Essays on the Gita, "The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race." 

Lokmanya Tilak (1856-1920) freedom fighter, great Sanskrit scholar and astronomer and author of Geeta Rahasya says: "It gives peace to afflicted souls, it makes us masters of spiritual wisdom."

Warren Hastings (1754-1826), was the first governor general of British India wrote: "The Bhagavad Gita is the gain of humanity - a performance of great originality, of a sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled."

Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) Austrian-born scientist, editor, and founder of anthroposophy, wrote: "In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it." 

Arthur Anthony Macdonell (1854-1930) in his History of Sanskrit Literature remarks: "The beauty and the power of the language in which this doctrine - that the zealous performance of duty is a man's most important task, to whatever caste he may belong - is inculcated, is unsurpassed in any other work of Indian literature."

Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) says: "The Bhagawat Gita deserves high praise for the skill with which it is adapted to the general Epic, and the tenderness and elegance of the narrative by means of which it is introduced."

Mrs. Manning wrote: "Bhagwat Gita is one of the most remarkable compositions in the Sanskrit language."

Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a Belgian writer of poetry and a wide variety of essays. He won the 1911 Nobel Prize for literature. In his book The Great Secret calls The Bhagavad Gita "a magnificent flower of Hindu mysticism."

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) writer, philosopher, schoolteacher, visionary. On May 10, 17, and 19' 1846, he wrote in his journal: "I read more of the Bhagavad Gita and felt how surpassingly fine were the sentiments."

"Best of books - containing a wisdom blander and far more sane than that of the Hebrews, whether in the mind of Moses or of Him of Nazareth. Were I a preacher, I would venture sometimes to take from its texts the motto and moral of my discourse. It would be healthful and invigorating to breathe some of this mountain air into the lungs of Christendom."

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767- 1835) Prussian minister of education, a brilliant linguist and the founder of the science of general linguistics. He said:

"The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show." 

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) the English novelist and essayist wrote: "The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. The Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the spiritual thoughts ever to have been made."

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) writer, philosopher, schoolteacher, visionary. He wrote: 

"I read more of the Bhagavad Gita and felt how surpassingly fine were the sentiments. These, or selections from this book should be included in a Bible for Mankind. I think them superior to any of the other Oriental scriptures, the best of all reading for wise men."

"Best of books - containing a wisdom blander and far more sane than that of the Hebrews, whether in the mind of Moses or of Him of Nazareth. Were I a preacher, I would venture sometimes to take from its texts the motto and moral of my discourse. It would be healthful and invigorating to breathe some of this mountain air into the lungs of Christendom."

(For more refer to chapter on and Quotes and GlimpsesX).

Listen to The Bhagavad Gita podcast - By Michael Scherer - americanphonic.com.

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The Gita opens magnificently: the two armies arrayed, ready to do battle, on the ancestral field of Kuru; pennons flapping in the breeze and horses pawing the ground impatiently. As the conch shell signal the beginning of the battle, and as the armies are about to hurl themselves upon each other, Arjuna has doubts about the bloody deeds he is on the verge of perpetrating - the slaying of his kinsman, teachers, friends - and he voices his doubts to his charioteer, none other than the Lord Krsna himself. Krsna (Vishnu) then tells Arjuna why he must take part in the upcoming battle, why he has in reality, no alternative but to do so (his dharma, his duty as a Kshatriya), Krsna then preceeds to expound the unique philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, including the essence of practical morality.

(source: Traditional India - edited by O. L. Chavarria-Aguilar Prentice Hall Place of Publication 1964. chapter on Practical Morality - By Franklin Edgerton p. 69). 

Lord Krsna expounds the unique philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Gita is a diamond among scriptures.

The Bhagavad Gita has influenced great Americans from Thoreau to Oppenheimer. Its message of letting go of the fruits of one’s actions is just as relevant today as it was when it was first written more than two millennia ago.

Watch Lost / Submerged city of Dwaraka – The Learning Channel video

Watch Maha Vishnu Das of ISKCON - lecture on The Bhagavad Gita.  Refer to jalebimusic.com

To download Hindu Scriptures - refer to Hindu Temple of Greater Cincinnati. 

Listen to The Bhagavad Gita podcast - By Michael Scherer - americanphonic.com.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

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The Bhagavad Gita embodies a universal ideal of spiritual warriorship, teaching that freedom lies not in renunciation or retreat, but in disciplined action performed with self-knowledge and detachment. 

Before the final battle of Kurukshetra, Arjuna had doubts whether it is right to fight and kill men who are his relations and his old friends; above all is war justifiable? Lord Krishna, after failing to convince him that it is the duty of a warrior to fight in a righteous war, reveals himself to Arjuna and answers his questions on the nature of the universe, the way to God and the meaning of duty. This magnificent dialogue between man (Arjuna) and creator (Krishna) forms the Bhagvad Gita, in which the Hindu doctrine is fully explained.

(Note: Lord Krishna was born at midnight on Friday July 27, 3112 BCE. This date and time has been calculated by astronomers on the basis of the planetary positions on that day recorded by Sage Vyasa. Lord Krishna passed away on 3102 BC, start of Kail Yuga. The Bhagavad Gita was compiled around 500 BCE. 

(source: Hinduism TimeLine - By Madan M. Mathrani and The Hindu Mind - By Bansi Pandit). Refer to Internet Sacred Texts on Hinduism

A God of War?

The Gita does not solve the problem of war: rather it thrusts us right into the heart of the problem of war, any struggle, and shows us by means of one example how easily in actual life we can be drawn into tricky situations and conflicts of conscience the likes of which hardly arise for the ascetics in forests and caves. Lord Krishna, in the Gita is not addressing a sannyasin (a monk; one who has completely renounced worldly life), but a member of the warrior caste who still finds himself right in the midst of life. 

There are no cheap attempts at painting black and white in the Gita; no heroes in the service of the good cause and bad guys in the service of the devil and the ending a triumphant victory of good over evil. A certain dualistic pattern is evident in Krishna's pronouncements, the kind we find in almost all religions; the struggle of light against darkness, against asuric (demonic) forces. He says himself that he manifests himself a new in every age "whenever there is a decline of dharma....for the protection of the good...for the destruction of the wicked.." (IV. 6 -8). Good and bad are both aspects of the one divine reality. Good and evil are relative. The world is not neatly divided here in two halves. It is shown in all its ambiguity in its condition as maya, where all good contain a little evil and all darkness a little light. 

(source: