Rg Veda

The oldest and most important of the
four Vedas, which are themselves the
most ancient and authoritative Hindu
religious texts. The Rg Veda is a group of
1,028 hymns collected in ten books.
Judging by their content, the hymns
were clearly composed over a long period
of time, but the actual dates are the subject of sharp disagreement. Traditional
Hindus assert that the Vedas were not
composed either by God or by human
beings but, rather, simply heard by
ancient sages through their advanced
powers of perception, and then transmitted orally from generation to generation. Because of their origin, the Vedas
thus belong to the class of religious texts
known as shruti (“heard”). Scholarly
consensus maintains that the Vedas
were begun in the earlier part of the
second millennium B.C.E., perhaps
1800–1500 B.C.E., and were finished
somewhere around the end of the
second millennium B.C.E., perhaps
1200–900. All these dates are highly
speculative, since the hymns themselves
have no internal evidence to allow precise dating, which has instead been
based primarily on a comparative study
of changes in the language of certain
Vedas. Some of the hymns, for example,
are thought to have been created relatively later than others, both because
their language is less archaic and closer
to classical Sanskrit and because the
locations mentioned in them reflect a
broader geographical area.
Most of the hymns in the Rg Veda are
addressed to a particular deity. The primary deities are Indra, Agni, and Soma,
although Varuna is prominent in the
earliest hymns. It is generally accepted
that the hymns were chanted at sacrifices as a way to invoke these deities.
Evidence from the hymns themselves
describes these sacrifices as large public
rites, usually involving the slaughter of
animals, which were burned on a sacrificial fire, and the preparation and consumption of the mysterious beverage
soma. In this context, the Vedic hymns
reflect a body of sacred learning known
to only a small group of religious specialists. Accordingly, these hymns were
never meant for universal public dissemination, since all except twice-born
men were forbidden to hear them.
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Rg Veda
The Rg Veda’s tenth and final book
differs sharply from the preceding ones.
Its language is closer to classical
Sanskrit, and its content is far more
speculative than that of the earlier
books, hinting at a major conceptual
shift. This book features the famous
Creation Hymn (10.129), in which the
poet speculates on how the world came
to be, only to conclude that the answer
may be unknown even to the creator.
Another notable hymn in this book is
the Purusha Sukta (10.90), which
describes both the earth and human
society as the product of a primeval sacrifice. The former hymn foreshadows
the religious and cosmological speculation found in the texts known as the
Upanishads. The latter, which contains
the first known articulation of the four
major social groups (varnas), along with
their symbolic functions, is distinguished as foreshadowing the later
dharma literature.