Encyclopedia
The
Rigveda is a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns counted as the holiest of the four religious texts of
Hindus, known as the Vedas. It is also the oldest known collection of ideas of mankind. Geographical and ethnological passages in the Rigveda provide evidence that the Rigveda was composed c. 3000 BCE during the Vedic period in the
Punjab , making it one of the oldest texts of any
Indo-European language and one of the world's oldest
religious texts. It was preserved over centuries by oral tradition alone and was probably not put in writing until
Late Antiquity or even the
early Middle Ages.
Text
The Rigveda consists
of 1,028 hymns composed in Vedic Sanskrit, many of which are intended for various
sacrifical rituals. This long collection of short hymns is mostly devoted to the praise of the gods. It is organized into 10 books, known as
Mandalas. Each mandala is comprised of hymns, called
sukta, which are further comprised of individual verses called
, plural
. The Mandalas are by no means of equal length or age: The "family books", mandalas 2-7, are considered the oldest part and comprise the shortest books, arranged by length, accounting for 38% of the text. RV 8 and RV 9, likely comprising hymns of mixed age, account for 15% and 9%, respectively. RV 1 and RV 10, finally, are both the latest and the longest books, accounting for 37% of the text.
The older passages of the Rigveda refer to three Vedic Gods and record the Vedic Aryans' epic struggle with the original inhabitants, referred to as "Dasyas" and "Simyus". Vedic hyms impose taboos on Vedic tribes from venturing southward to the land of the dasyas and there are disparaging references to "Krishna-yoni-dasyas". Later gangetic literature consisting of the Puranas also depicts a war between the Vedic god Indra and the local god Krishna.
Preservation
The
Rigveda is preserved by two major
shakhas ,
and
. Considering its great age, the text is spectacularly well preserved and uncorrupted, the two recensions being practically identical, so that scholarly editions can mostly do without a critical apparatus. Associated to
is the Aitareya-Brahmana. The
includes the Khilani and has the Kausitaki-Brahmana associated to it.
This compilation or redaction included the arrangement in books as well as orthoepic changes, such as regularization of sandhi . It took place centuries after the composition of the earliest hymns, about co-eval to the redaction of the other Vedas.
From the time of its redaction, the text has been handed down in two versions: The
Samhitapatha has all Sanskrit rules of sandhi applied and is the text used for recitation. The Padapatha has each word isolated in its pausa form and is used for memorization. The Padapatha is, as it were, a commentary to the
Samhitapatha, but the two seem to be about co-eval. The original text as reconstructed on metrical grounds lies somewhere between the two, but closer to the Samhitapatha.
Organization
The most common numbering scheme is by book, hymn and verse . E. g. the first
pada is
- 1.1.1a "Agni I laud, the high priest"
and the final
pada is
- 10.191.4d "for your being in good company"
Hermann Grassmann has though numbered the hymns 1 through to 1028, putting the
valakhilya at the end. The entire 1028 hymns of the
Rigveda, in the 1877 edition of Aufrecht, contain a total of 10,552 verses, or 39,831 padas. The Shatapatha Brahmana gives the number of syllables to be 432,000, while the metrical text of van Nooten and Holland has a total of 395,563 syllables ; counting the number of syllables is not straightforward because of issues with sandhi. Most verses are jagati , trishtubh , viraj or
gayatri or anushtubh .
Contents
- See also: Rigvedic deities
The chief gods of the
Rigveda are Agni, the sacrificial fire, Indra, a heroic god who is praised for having slain his enemy
Vrtra, and Soma, the sacred potion, or the plant it is made from. Other prominent gods are Mitra , Varuna and
Ushas and the Ashvins. Also invoked are Savitar,
Vishnu, Rudra, Pushan,
Brihaspati,
Brahmanaspati, Dyaus Pita , Prithivi ,
Surya , Vayu , Apas ,
Parjanya , Vac , the Maruts, the Adityas, the Rbhus, the Vishvadevas , many
rivers , as well as various further minor gods, persons, concepts, phenomena and items. It also contains fragmentary references to possible historical events, notably the struggle between the early Vedic people and their enemies, the
Dasa.
- Mandala 1 comprises 191 hymns. Hymn 1.1 is addressed to Agni, and his name is the first word of the Rigveda. The remaining hymns are mainly addressed to Agni and Indra. Hymns 1.154 to 1.156 are addressed to Vishnu.
- Mandala 2 comprises 43 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. It is chiefly attributed to the Rishi .
- Mandala 3 comprises 62 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. The verse 3.62.10 has great importance in Hinduism
...
as the
Gayatri Mantra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to
.
- Mandala 4 consists of 58 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to .
- Mandala 5 comprises 87 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra, the Visvadevas , the Maruts, the twin-deity Mitra-Varuna and the Asvins. Two hymns each are dedicated to Ushas and to Savitar. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the family.
- Mandala 6 comprises 75 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra. Most hymns in this book are attributed to the family of Angirasas.
- Mandala 7 comprises 104 hymns, to Agni, Indra, the Visvadevas, the Maruts, Mitra-Varuna, the Asvins, Ushas, Indra-Varuna, Varuna, Vayu , two each to Sarasvati and Vishnu, and to others. Most hymns in this book are attributed to .
- Mandala 8 comprises 103 hymns to different gods. Hymns 8.49 to 8.59 are the apocryphal . Most hymns in this book are attributed to the family.
- Mandala 9 comprises 114 hymns, entirely devoted to Soma Pavamana, the plant of the sacred potion of the Vedic religion.
- Mandala 10 comprises 191 hymns, to Agni and other gods. It contains the Nadistuti sukta which is in praise of rivers and is important for the reconstruction of the geography of the Vedic civilization and the Purusha sukta which has significance in Hindu tradition. It also contains the Nasadiya sukta , probably the most celebrated hymns in the west, which deals with creation.
Rishis
Each hymn of the Rigveda is traditionally attributed to a specific rishi, and the "family books" are said to have been composed by one family of rishis each. The main families, listed by the number of verses ascribed to them are:
- Angirasas: 3619
- Kanvas: 1315
- Vasishthas: 1267
- Vaishvamitras: 983
- Atris: 885
- Bhrgus: 473
- Kashyapas: 415
- Grtsamadas: 401
- Agastyas: 316
- Bharatas: 170
Translations
The
Rigveda was translated into English by Ralph T.H. Griffith in 1896. Partial English translations by Maurice Bloomfield and William Dwight Whitney exist. Griffith's translation is good, considering its age, but it is no replacement for Geldner's 1951 translation , the only independent scholarly translation so far. The later translations by Elizarenkova depends heavily on Geldner, but Elizarenkova's translation is valuable in taking into account scholarly literature up to 1990.
Hindu tradition
According to Indian tradition, the Rigvedic hymns were collected by Paila under the guidance of
, who formed the Rigveda Samhita as we know it. According to the , the number of syllables in the
Rigveda is 432,000, equalling the number of muhurtas in forty years. This statement stresses the underlying philosophy of the Vedic books that there is a connection between the astronomical, the physiological, and the spiritual.
The authors of the literature described and interpreted the Rigvedic ritual. Yaska was an early commentator of the
Rigveda. In the
14th century, wrote an exhaustive commentary on it. Other
s that have been preserved up to present times are those by , and .
Dating and historical reconstruction
The
Rigveda is far more archaic than any other Indo-Aryan text. For this reason, it was in the center of attention of western scholarship from the times of
Max Müller. The
Rigveda records an early stage of Vedic religion, still closely tied to the pre-
Zoroastrian Persian religion. It is thought that Zoroastrianism and Vedic Hinduism evolved from an earlier common religious
Indo-Iranian culture.
The Rigveda's core is accepted to date to the late
Bronze Age, making it the only example of Bronze Age literature with an unbroken tradition. Its composition is usually dated to roughly between 1700–1100 BC. Although this is hard to confirm as much of the Rig Veda was transmitted orally over its history. Archaeoastronomical evidence from the Rig Veda itself suggests an origin of at least a millenium before that. The text in the following centuries underwent pronunciation revisions and standardization . This redaction would have been completed in about the 7th century BC.
Writing appears in India in ca. the 5th century BC in the form of the
Brahmi script, but texts of the length of the Rigveda were likely not written down before the Early Middle Ages, in the Gupta or Siddham scripts, and while written manuscripts were used for teaching in medieval times, they played a minor role in the preservation of knowledge because of their ephemereal nature until the advent of the printing press in
British India. The hymns were thus preserved by oral tradition for up to a millennium from the time of their composition until the redaction of the Rigveda, and the entire Rigveda was preserved in
shakhas for another 2,500 years from the time of its redaction until the
editio princeps by Müller, a collective feat of memorization unparalleled in any other known society.
Puranic literature names Vidagdha as the author of the Pada-text. Other scholars argue that Sthavira Sak of the Aitareya Aranyaka is the padakara of the RV. After their composition, the texts were preserved and codified by a vast body of Vedic priesthood as the central philosophy of the Iron Age Vedic civilization.
The
Rigveda describes a mobile,
nomadic culture, with horse-drawn
chariots and metal weapons. According to some scholars the geography described is consistent with that of the
Punjab :
Rivers flow north to south, the mountains are relatively remote but still reachable . Nevertheless, the hymns were certainly composed over a long period, with the oldest elements possibly reaching back before the split of Proto-Indo-Iranian, or the early 4th millennium BC.
Thus there is some debate over whether the boasts of the destruction of stone forts by the Vedic Aryans and particularly by Indra refer to cities of the
Indus Valley civilization or whether they hark back to clashes between the early
Indo-Aryans with the
Indo-Iranians during the split of their culture in c. 3000 BCE, in what is now northern
Afghanistan and southern
Turkmenistan . In any case, while it is highly likely that the bulk of the
Rigveda was composed in the Punjab, even if based on earlier poetic traditions, there is no mention of either
tigers or
rice in the
Rigveda , suggesting that Vedic culture only penetrated into the plains of India after its completion. Similarly, it is assumed that there is no mention of
iron although the term ayas occurs in the Rig Veda. The Iron Age in northern India begins in the 12th century BC with the
Black and Red Ware culture. This is a widely accepted timeframe for the beginning codification of the
Rigveda , and the composition of the younger Vedas. This time probably coincides with the early Kuru kingdom, shifting the center of Vedic culture east from the Punjab into what is now
Uttar Pradesh.
Some of the names of gods and goddesses found in the
Rigveda are found amongst other belief systems based on
Proto-Indo-European religion as well: Dyaus-Pita is cognate with Greek
Zeus,
Latin Jupiter , and
Germanic Tyr; while Mitra is cognate with
Persian Mithra; also, Ushas with Greek
Eos and Latin Aurora; and, less certainly, Varuna with Greek
Uranos. Finally, Agni is cognate with Latin
ignis and Russian
ogon, both meaning "fire".
Some writers have traced
astronomical references in the
Rigveda dating it to as early as 4000 BC, a date well within the Indian Neolithic. Claims of such evidence remain controversial. but are a key factor in the development of the
Proto-Vedic Continuity theory.
Kazanas in a polemic against the "Aryan Invasion Theory" suggests a date as early as 3100 BC, based on an identification of the early Rigvedic Sarasvati River as the Ghaggar-Hakra and on glottochronological arguments. Being a polemic against mainstream scholarship, this is in diametral opposition to views in mainstream historical linguistics, and supports the controversial
Out of India theory, which assumes a date as late as 3000 BC for the age of late Proto-Indo-European itself.
Flora and Fauna in the Rigveda
The
horse and
cattle play an important role in the Rigveda. There are also references to the
elephant ,
Camel , Buffalo ,
lion and to the
Gaur in the Rigveda. The
peafowl and the Chakravaka are birds mentioned in the Rigveda.
More recent Indian views
The Hindu perception of the
Rigveda has moved away from the original ritualistic content to a more symbolic or mystical interpretation. For example, instances of
animal sacrifice are not seen as literal slaughtering but as transcendental processes. The Rigvedic view is seen to consider the universe to be infinite in size, dividing knowledge into two categories:
lower and
higher . Swami Dayananda, who started the Arya Samaj and Sri
Aurobindo have emphasized a spiritual interpretation of the book.
The Sarasvati river, lauded in RV 7.95 as the greatest river flowing from the mountain to the sea is sometimes equated with the Ghaggar-Hakra river, which went dry perhaps before 2600 BC or certainly before 1900 BC. Others argue that the Sarasvati was originally the Helmand in
Afghanistan. These questions are tied to the debate about the
Indo-Aryan migration vs. the claim that Vedic culture together with Vedic Sanskrit originated in the
Indus Valley Civilisation , a topic of great significance in Hindu nationalism, addressed for example by Amal Kiran and Shrikant G. Talageri. Subhash Kak has claimed that there is an astronomical code in the organization of the hymns.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, also based on astronomical alignments in the Rigveda, in his "The Orion" claimed presence of the Rigvedic culture in India in the 4th millennium BC, and in his "Arctic Home in the Vedas" even argued that the Aryans originated near the North Pole and came south during the
Ice Age.
Notes
Editions
- Friedrich Max Müller, The Hymns of the Rigveda, with Sayana's commentary, London, 1849-75, 6 vols., 2nd ed. 4 vols., Oxford, 1890-92.
- Theodor Aufrecht, 2nd ed., Bonn, 1877.
- V. K. Rajawade et. al., Rgveda-samhita with the commentary of Sayanacarya, Pune, 1933-46, 5 vols. Reprint 1983.
- B. van Nooten und G. Holland, Rig Veda, a metrically restored text, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1994.
Translations
- Latin: F. Rosen, Rigvedae specimen, London, 1830
- French: A. Langlois, Paris 1948-51 ISBN 2-7200-1029-4
- English: Ralph T.H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rig Veda
- German: Karl Friedrich Geldner, Der Rig-Veda: Aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche übersetzt Harvard Oriental Studies, vols. 33, 34, 35 , reprint Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01226-7
- Russian: Tatyana Ya. Elizarenkova, Nauka, Moscow 1989-1999.
Bibliography
Commentary
- Sayana , ed. Müller 1849-75
- Sri Aurobindo: Hymns of the Mystic Fire , Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin ISBN 0-914955-22-5
Philology
- Thomas Oberlies, Die Religion des Rgveda, Wien 1998.
- Oldenberg, Hermann: Hymnen des Rigveda. 1. Teil: Metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Berlin 1888; Wiesbaden 1982.
- — Die Religion des Veda. Berlin 1894; Stuttgart 1917; Stuttgart 1927; Darmstadt 1977
- — Vedic Hymns, The sacred books of the East vo,l. 46 ed. Friedrich Max Müller, Oxford 1897
Historical
- Frawley David: The Rig Veda and the History of India, 2001., ISBN 81-7742-039-9
- N. Kazanas, Philosophy and Chronology, ed. G C Pande & D Krishna, special issue of Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research
- Lal, B.B. 2005. The Homeland of the Aryans. Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology, New Delhi, Aryan Books International.
- Talageri, Shrikant: , 2000. ISBN 81-7742-010-0
Archaeoastronomy
- Kak, Subhash: The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda, Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000, ISBN 81-215-0986-6.
- Tilak, Bal Gangadhar: The Orion, 1893.
External links
TextOther links-
- Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute
-
