Samhitas – hymns, mantras to the Vedic deities; Brahmanas – manuals for rituals and conduct; Aranyakas – explore philosophy behind rituals; Upanishads

1. Vedas

2. Vedas
• “Veda” – Sankrit for “wisdom” or
“knowledge
• stem from oral tradition – rishis
• written down when ??? 2000 BCE?

3. Use of the term “Veda”
• “narrow sense” refers to the Samhitas and
specifically the books Rig, Sama, Yajur &
Atharva
• “wider sense” refers to all the different
genres: Samhitas, Brahmanas,
Aranyakas, & Upanishads

4. Genres within the Vedas
• Samhitas – hymns, mantras to the Vedic
deities
• Brahmanas – manuals for rituals and
conduct
• Aranyakas – explore philosophy behind
rituals
• Upanishads - philosophy

5. Vedic Deities
• On one level roughly comparable to
mythologies in Greece, Rome, etc.
• On a deeper level (as explained in
Aranyakas and elsewhere) are
representative of fundamental powers in
the universe and in the human being
• Examples: Varuna, Indra, Agni, Soma, etc.

6. Vedic Metaphysics
• Underlying monism (see Hymn of Origins)
• What of deities? Polytheism? Pantheism?
Henotheism? Panentheism?
• Rita – impersonal force or intelligence
governing nature
• Purusha – the cosmos or creation
personified

7. Hymn of Origins
2. In the beginning there was neither existence nor
non-existence;
Neither the world nor the sky beyond.
What stirred? Where? Who protected it?
Was there water, deep and unfathomable?
2. Then there was neither death nor immortality,
Nor any sign of night or day.
THAT ONE breathed, without breath, by its own
impulse;
Other than that, there was nothing at all.

8. 3. Then there was darkness, concealed in darkness,
All this was undifferentiated energy.
THAT ONE, which had been concealed by the void,
Through the power of heat-energy was manifested.
5. Who really knows? Who here can say?
When it was born and from whence it came – this creation?
The Gods are later than this world’s creation;
Therefore who knows from whence it came?
7. That out of which creation came,
Whether it held together or did not,
He who sees it in the highest heaven,
Only He knows – or perhaps even He does not know?

9. Upanishads
• “upanishad” – from Sanskrit “to sit near,”
as students sit at the feet of a teacher
• Move away from ritual and social duties to
“philosophy”
• Philosophy of the Upanishads known as
“Vedanta” (lit. “goal or end of the Vedas”)
• Not “philosophy” strictly but collections of
sayings, metaphors, stories, parables, etc.

10. Central Questions of the
Upanishads
• What is the true nature of reality?
• Who am I at the deepest level of
my existence?

11. Brahman
• From root meaning “to burst forth” or “to
grow”
• The Upanishads affirm that there is one
eternal and unchanging reality behind all
apparent things – Brahman
• “In the heart of all things, of whatever is in
the universe, dwells the Lord [brahman]”

12. Brahman (cont.)
• “Self-luminous is that Being, and formless.
He dwells within all and without all. He is
unborn pure, greater than the greatest,
without breath, without mind.”
• “ The Imperishable is the Real. As sparks
innumerable fly upward from a blazing fire,
so from the depths of the Imperishable
arise all things.”

13. Brahman (cont.)
• Because Brahman is ultimate, eternal,
without limitation, etc. it cannot be
adequately conceived of or described.
• “Invisible, incomprehensible, without
genealogy, colorless, without eye or ear,
without hands or feet, unending, pervading
all and omnipresent, that is the
unchanging One whom the wise regard as
the source of all beings.”