What are the Vedas?
Let's Talk Religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEqATHUJQHc

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:00 If we look through different lists of the biggest religions in the world, Hinduism is often at somewhere at the top of that list. It is often ranked as
0:09 the maybe third or fourth largest religion in the world with an enormous following of over 1 billion people. In this series of videos, I want to explore
0:19 the vast religion of Hinduism as well as other religions with origins in the Indian subcontinent which are often known as the Dharmic religions. But I
0:31 will have a bit of a different approach to this. I will not be asking questions like what is Hinduism as that would be plagued with a lot of problems. What we
0:40 call Hinduism is such a vast and broad term that it's questionable if it can even be called a religion at all. It should really properly be seen as an
0:50 umbrella term for a vast amount of different religious traditions from India which can sometimes be drastically different from each other. Now much of
0:59 this can of course be said about other religions too. Christianity is also an umbrella term of sorts for a vast amount of different traditions as is Islam. But
1:10 when it comes to Hinduism, this is true to an unusual degree. Some even want to say that Hinduism is actually many different religions altogether that is
1:19 only artificially sort of unified into a single whole. And while this may be a question of semantics, I generally don't like to go
1:27 this far. Sure, Hinduism is a very slippery term that denotes many different sometimes very loosely connected religious traditions in India.
1:37 But they all have certain characteristics or core features that unify them and which also separates them from other religions in the region like
1:46 Buddhism or Janism. And the primary unifying characteristic of this vast category called Hinduism. What ties it all together, you could say, is its
1:57 basis in and relationship to the scriptures known as the vadas. [Laughter] [Applause]
2:07 So in this series I will not be asking questions like what is Hinduism as I said but instead I will be focusing on specific subjects particular subjects
2:17 that will serve as representations of this vast religion. So that includes the different scriptures, different great theologians and philosophers as well as
2:27 how Hinduism functions as a living religion both historically and today. And what better place to start than with the foundational and most important
2:38 sacred scriptures in Hinduism, the Vedas. Now, Hinduism is sometimes called the oldest still existing religion in the world. And this is somewhat of an
2:48 oversimplification since many of the core features that we recognize as Hinduism appears quite late in history and a few centuries into the common era.
2:57 Um but at the same time some of the foundations of what we call Hinduism date back very far back in history. Indeed the earliest Va scriptures are
3:07 some of the oldest surviving religious literature in all of history. While they weren't written down until much later it is said that the earliest parts of the
3:17 vadas were written sometime around 1500 B.CE. The vadas are considered revealed scripture called shruti in Sanskrit. In other words, they were not written by
3:28 human hands, but revealed directly by the gods to the ancient sages who then memorized them. These sages and quote unquote authors of the vados are called
3:39 rishies. And the revelations that these rishies received are all in the language called Sanskrit, which is a language that belongs to the larger Indo-Iranian
3:48 and Indo-Uropean language group. The origins of this culture and its textual tradition is somewhat shrouded in mystery and there are many different
3:57 theories. Generally, it is thought that the Vadic culture as it has become known immigrated into this Indian subcontinent during the second millennium B.CE from
4:08 west from the west and is part of the ethnic group known as the Arians. It was thus not native to India but came from further west and shares cultural
4:18 and religious origins with the people of what is today Iran and with the greater Persian region. Although this can be quite a controversial subject for some
4:26 and as I said much of this is quite uncertain still. What is clear is that the earliest Va text appeared in a religious context in northern India
4:36 accompanied with certain ritual traditions that involved ritual sacrifice. Now the vadas can be quite complicated in their structure and and
4:44 different parts but generally they are divided into four categories. The rigveda the sama the yayurveda and the aarveda. The earliest of these is the
4:56 rigveda composed as early as around 1500 B.CE. The others were written during the following centuries being composed somewhere between 1,200 to 800 B.CE. The
5:07 vadas were originally oral traditions and were not written down until later. Uh so if we take the oldest for example the rig vda the hymns and mantras that
5:16 it contains were orally transmitted between masters and students with minute detail both the words and sounds but also specific melodies and
5:27 pronunciations. This tradition even continues to this day so that when you listen to priests reciting the vadas today, you are
5:35 listening to the exact way that they would have sounded thousands of years ago. To quote Michael Witell, it's quote something like a tape recording of circa
5:45 1500 to 500 B.CE. The main part of these four vdic collections are consists of hymns to the gods and mantras to be recited while performing the ritual
5:57 sacrifice. The vadic culture and religion that had emerged at this time was a highly ritualized religion in which a class of priests called the
6:07 brahinss would perform various rights. One of the central rituals and one that is mentioned a lot in the vadas is the s ritual. Now, Soma was a drink that was
6:19 consumed. And so, naturally, a lot of speculation has gone into figuring out what this drink actually was and or consisted of. We don't actually know for
6:28 sure. Naturally, of course, many people have speculated that it may have contained certain psychedelic compounds and that maybe the rishies who composed
6:38 the vadas did so under the influence of this soma drink. Another very important ritual at this time was the shroud which involved a ritual fire. In this ritual,
6:49 the priests would offer different objects like food and drink to the gods by throwing them into the fire while reciting certain mantras and prayers.
6:59 This fire throwing, this fire sacrifice or fire offering was the main ritual in all of the early vadic religion and was central to the worldview and the order
7:09 of the universe for the Vadic people generally. The ritual sacrifice and the offerings functioned as a kind of exchange. The gods were given gifts and
7:19 in return human beings received blessings of different sorts. And this exchange between the human and divine world is what kept the universe, society
7:29 and nature in its proper order. So all of these vadas are deeply interconnected with the ritual practices of the Brahman religion. They are the contents of and
7:42 you could say guide books for how to perform these vadic rights. And the hymns that these vdas contain give us some loose idea of what the theology of
7:51 the time looked like. There are certain gods that are especially prominent like Agny, the god of fire and Indra among many others. But the specifics of how
8:00 these gods functions is a difficult question to answer. There are clearly many different gods mentioned in the vadas which indicates a polytheistic
8:10 religion. But we also find statements like the following in the Rigveda. Quote, "God is one. Men call him by various names." which seems to indicate
8:19 a theology where there is one god in reality and the other gods mentioned are only different names or aspects of this god and this does seem to predict
8:28 certain later developments in Hinduism. Some deities in the hymn seem to be personifications of things like natural phenomena but not all of them are. Some
8:39 of the gods probably were bad old kings or human beings that were deified after death which was a very common practice for ancient polytheistic religions. But
8:49 we're going to make things even more complicated. So these four vdas the rigveda the sama the yajuveda and the aurveda are also divided into different
9:00 sections. So number one is the samitas which this is the part that we discussed so far. This is the oldest and main part of the vdas, the hymns and mantras to
9:10 the gods. This is what we've been talking about. Sometimes when we talk about the vadas in a more narrow sense, it is simply only referring to the
9:17 samitas. So this is really the the central the main part of the vdic corpus. But usually when we say the vdas, we're talking about a larger
9:27 collection of texts than simply the samitas. And this includes these other categories which includes number two the brahmanas which are commentaries that
9:36 try to explain and contextualize the deeper meanings of the vic rituals. There is the aranyakas which discuss the ritual sacrifice and its deeper meanings
9:46 as well. And lastly there are the upanishads which is quite different from the rest. The opanishads are philosophical texts
9:54 that discuss various aspects of life and death. the soul, meditation and much much else. So to make things extra clear, each of the four vadas has all of
10:07 these four sections or layers to them. The last part of the vadas, the opanishads are especially fascinating in this context and would come to play a
10:17 very significant and important role in the later development of what we recognize as Hinduism today. Whereas the other parts of the vadas are usually
10:26 only really interested in uh the the rituals the vdic rituals and their meaning the upanishads are highly speculative philosophical and they
10:37 introduce many new concepts and and ideas that are not present or doesn't seem to be present at least in the other parts of the vadas. The upanishads are
10:46 also sometimes referred to as vanta which literally means the end of the vadus because it is literally the end of the vadus. Both in in the sense of being
10:56 the last part of the vadus that was written but also functions as the last section of the vadus written sometime in the middle of the first millennium BCE.
11:06 The upanishads continue the you say speculation and tradition of the Brahmana texts by trying to find the deeper meanings of the vadic rituals.
11:16 But it probably also has origins outside of this ritual culture. Primarily in the northeastern part of India there had appeared what is known as the shramana
11:25 movement. There is some disagreement on whether this was a part of the Vadic religion that grew out of this already existing Vadic tradition or if it was an
11:36 independent movement altogether. In any case, the shamana movement was characterized by individuals living aesthetic lives trying to find
11:45 enlightenment or liberation through turning inward. So instead of the vdic focus on external ritual and the centrality of the sacrifice for
11:54 upholding the universe, the shamana aesthetics looked within themselves to find the answers. And indeed it seems like it was with the shamana movement
12:03 that some of the more characteristic aspects of the dharmic religions originated. ideas like karma and samsara that is ideas about reincarnation and
12:13 that our actions not just the ritual sacrifice but all our actions determine the nature of that reincarnation. There is also among these shamana
12:23 mystics there was the idea of moka or liberation. The idea that the goal of life should be to end this cycle of rebirths and to be liberated from them
12:33 altogether. And this does not seem to have been present as an idea in the earlier vadic religion. For those scholars who argue that the shamana
12:42 movement was something separated from the vadic religion originally, they argue that it was as a result of the meeting of the vadic ritualized
12:51 religion and the shamra movement that produced the upananishads. This kind of synthesis between these two religious traditions. The upanishads in fact seem
13:00 to take ideas and concepts and themes from the earlier vada scriptures and give them a new philosophical meaning inspired by the ideas of the shramana
13:10 movement. But others interpret them not as new meanings but simply as deeper meanings or understandings of the already existing vadic concepts. So
13:21 there's a bit of disagreement here as well. For example, the concept of Brahman which had previously signified the power of the ritual sacrifice and
13:29 its ability to uphold the world became a central theme in the uponads and was extended even further to mean the very foundation and ground of existence and
13:40 the universe. Everything comes from the Brahman. Everything returns to the Brahman and according to some interpretation, everything is the
13:47 Brahman. Another very important theme that appears in the uponads is the idea of the atman or the transcendent self which seems in some way to be connected
13:58 to part of or even identical with the Brahman. Now many different traditions and interpretations of these upanishads appeared over the coming centuries which
14:09 have together often come to be known as vidanta. Um so and and this can look very different. So for example the scholar Adi Shankara interpreted the
14:19 upanishads in a very in a nondual way which gave rise to the school known as Advita Vidanta whereas on the other hand the scholar Madvacharia interpreted them
14:30 in a dualistic way and gave rise to Dwighta vidanta which is quite different and we will indeed be exploring many of these thinkers and schools in future
14:40 videos. Indeed, these sages behind the upanishads can in some way represent a form or a certain strand of the shramana movement that adopted the earlier vadic
14:51 text as authoritative scriptures. Whereas other shamana movement indeed religions like Buddhism and Janism actually originated as shamana movements
15:02 and and but they can be seen as shamana aesthetics that did not accept the authority of the vadas. The vadas are not sacred scriptures to either the
15:13 Buddhists or the Janes. Uh so this is a difference between them. There were shaman aesthetics who did not accept the authority of the vadas which created
15:21 things like Buddhism and Janism. But the sages that did accept the authority of the vadas. It is they who seem to have produced the the upupanads and which
15:32 also then led to Hinduism. Thus through the meeting of the shamana movement and the core tradition of Brahmana vdic ritual religion and their consolidation
15:41 in the literature of the upanishads the vdic religion was fundamentally transformed. Ideas like samsara karma and moka became central concepts that
15:52 would remain cornerstones of all the traditions the religious traditions in India that followed. In other words, through this last part of the Vadas and
16:01 their influence, we are one step closer to something resembling Hinduism today. To put it simply, the Vadas are a massive collection of texts of many
16:10 different parts and different kinds of texts. And it would take further centuries of an enormous amount of different commentaries and and
16:18 interpretations and schools of thought before we reach something that resembles Hinduism. So let me know in the comments if there's any other specific topic
16:26 within this larger subject of Hinduism or the Dharmic religions that you would like me to to tackle or cover. Um this there's a lot to to go through here of
16:37 course and and and I have a lot of things that I want to talk about of course but I would love to hear your suggestions as well. As always I want to
16:45 thank my Patreon supporters uh who make this channel possible. It is really only through your support that I'm able to for example buy books to research these
16:57 videos and and for many other things. So it is really you guys who keep this channel going. Uh so thank you. Thank you so much. As always of course I would
17:06 like to also go through some of the recent arrival to our patron team. I would like to thank Muhammad Babiker, Yasir Khan, Yachuba Davis, Ethan Ross, W
17:17 Muhammad, and Perves Rashid. Thank you all so much for your support. I hope this introduction to the most sacred scriptures of Hinduism wasn't too
17:26 complicated. It is a difficult topic of course and a vast one and one that is shrouded in a lot of mystery. And yet, it is one that is very important to
17:35 understand. Hinduism which is after all one of the largest and most influential religions in the world. So I'll see you next time.
17:46 [Music]