Vedas for the common man

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Vedas for the common man

By RN Vaidya

Hinduism or rather to say Sanatan Dharma has its roots in the Vedas

but strangely most of the Hindus do not know what the Vedas are and

what they preach or reveal. All religious activities of Hindus today

move around Ramayan, Gita, Bhagwat Puran, and other Puranas. The

fcultural doctrines followed are from the Manu Smriti. Thus the

scriptures that we have in large numbers are known as katha, kirtan,

patha, chalisa, etc.

 

The malady of the obscurity of Vedas lies in the old socio-religious

order of the Hindu society. Unfortunately, Vedas were supposed to

contain only spiritual matter, so sacrosanct that nobody other than

the priests could even touch them. In fact, they had come to be

treated as the exclusive property of some families of the priests.

Common man had to be content with what these priests declared to be

the vedic tenet. All sorts of codes of conduct and mythological

stories were passed on in the name of the vedas. Fear of terrible hell

to the departed soul created a whole set of new rituals. All these had

really no place in the Vedas. It is all a hoax perpetuated in their

name. It is therefore essential and for our good to know what the

Vedas really and actually say. For the survival of Hindusim it is

necessary for us to know and explain the reality of the Vedas in a

modern critical and logical world.

 

In ancient India even to hear Vedas by women, the people of lower

castes was a punishable offence. But times have changed and are

further changing very fast with super fast transport and communication

channels. The Vedas are no more an exclusive domain of a few high

priests. Since Vedas contain deep and vast knowledge in every sphere

of the universe, every one has a right to know them.

 

Adi Shankaracharya established four peeths in all the four corners of

India and allotted one Veda to each Peeth for imparting full and

comprehensive study of it. But since long nothing of that sort of work

is being carried out there. They are mere pilgrimage centers carrying

out traditional rituals and worship. With rigid control over Vedas by

a few high priests and elimination of Vedic academies at the four

peeths the Vedas had gone into obscurity. In fact, with the long spell

of slavery of India the history of India can be said be the history of

Hindu degradation and conversions.

 

The founder of Arya Samaj, Sawmi Dayanand Saraswati, has rendered

yeoman service in reviving and propagating the Vedas in true

prospective. But as Arya Samaj discarded idol worship it could not

catch up and click with Hindus at large. It just became and remained a

reformist movement. Today, the Hindus cannot even imagine their

religious identity without the idols of gods and goddesses and nobody

bothered there about the Sanatan Dharma of the Vedas.

 

Today we blindly believe in the rituals and traditions, which were

laid down long ago and fail to examine them rationally. Although the

Vedas contain principles which can be, and in fact are acceptable to

the modern scientific minds. Few of us know that modern principles of

physics and astronomy are there in the Vedas. For example, who knows

today that the number 108 is regarded as a sacred number probably

because the average distance in light years from Earth to the Sun is

108 light years, and all life comes from the sun. In the western

universities and at some places in India also more and more scholars

are now studying the Vedas and finding astonishing results and gaining

information on physical sciences. Therefore it is very necessary that

we cast aside the myths and traditions that have long clouded the

Vedic study and culture.

 

Vedas are the oldest literature of the World. Scholars the world over

have come around to the view that 'Rigveda' is at least 5000 years

old, although other scriptures and mythologies have brought so many

changes in the Vedic culture that today our traditions are very

different from the Vedic ideals. All these later scriptures have taken

shelter behind the authority of Vedas. These traditions created

distinctions in the Hindu society based on caste, gender and

profession, which have had very pernicious effect on our social order

and progress.

 

The Vedas "yearned" for a healthy long life of hundred years, but

later scriptures declared that life itself is a torture and the sooner

it ends the better. Rituals for release from the cycle of birth and

death gained prominence over worldly progress and social work. Study

of Vedas is therefore necessary to see how this new structure was

created, replacing the real Vedic order.

 

RN Vaidya, Manuj Features

http://www.centralchronicle.com/20060110/1001302.htm