Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
other historical peoples, Vedism posited the existence of something
more ultimate than the one God: whatever must have created Him.
That
is presumably the absolute and basic reality. Or is it? This
mystery of the connection between inaction and action is something
the Vedas discuss endlessly in each individual's life, and as a universal
principle.
This is mysticism that is simultaneously metalogic and the kind
of thing those bardic sages living some twenty-five thousand years
ago thought about a great deal, according to Hindu tradition. While
the hymns of the
Rig Veda
are not the oldest
written
religious texts,
they are, I believe, the oldest literary compositions. Indeed, they are
the very first compositions mankind produced, dating back at least
twenty thousand years. They are also the most sophisticated, most
profoundly beautiful, and most complete presentations of what
Aldous Huxley termed the 'perennial philosophy' that is at the core
of all religions. Many Hindu schools expound the Vedas as the
original presentation of this universal truth. This makes the Vedas
or 'instruments of knowledge' a sort of user's manual for the
universe, almost direct from the manufacturer.
Most orthodox historians and anthropologists strongly dispute
such a view. They confuse writing with civilisation, and deny
meaningful history to any peoples who did not leave a written record.
A rich culture does not necessarily depend on writing, as the Celtic
civilisation proves.
Orthodox academics usually ascribe the composition of the major
Vedic hymns to around 1500
BC
, although most will admit they
were written down over a period that extended until at least the fifth
century
AD
- two thousand years later. An oral tradition that long
and that strong does not seem to make scholars consider the
possibility of an oral tradition far preceding the first written records
of the oral tradition's existence. The arbitrary 1500
BC
happens to
be the date when Vedic verses were probably first recorded by a
culture that used writing.
In most of modern academia, of course, there is not supposed to
be any 'ancient wisdom'.
I first went to Benares, the holiest place on earth for Hindus, in
1978, to study Sanskrit and Vedanta at the Sanskrit University there.
