The Vedas - The scripture of the Hindus

Raja Ram Mohan Roy

thg 2 1977 · Nag Prakashak

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The Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus constitute thousands of hymns or songs of lyrical character. These hymns are mainly addressed to the deities, Indra, Varuna, Ashvins, Vishnu, Rudra, and others who are invoked to receive oblations. The collection of hymns has a four-fold division viz. Rk, Yajus, Saman and Atharva. The Rgveda, the first and foremost of the Vedas is assigned to hotr who invokes the deities, the Yajurveda to Adhvaryu who directs, the Samaveda to Udgatr who sings songs of praise, the Atharva to Brahma who supervises the ritual. Thus the Vedas primarily center round the religious activities of the Indo-Aryans.

In this little work, all the researches on the ancient Vedic literature have been arranged in such an order as will enable everyone to have an idea of their contents without going through the voluminous works published on the subject. In analyzing the four Vedas a considerable help has been taken from Colebrook's splendid essay and works of other oriental scholars of the West, the foremost of which is "the Oriental Sanskrit Text" of Dr. Muir. In the interpretation of the various texts for ascertaining the religious faith of the Vedic Aryans, the views of the Indian scholars have been followed as much as possible. It is not at all possible to do justice to all the most important questions connected with the study of the Veda which is absolutely necessary to students of religion in such a little work as this. But it has, however, slightly touched upon the important questions and tried to put in a nut-shell the opinions of various scholars regarding them.