Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Greed, unkindness, hunger and thirst
Live side by side there with generosity,
compassion, contentment, decency, and faith.
Sorrow and joy, jealous hatred and love,
terrifying darkness, and dazzling brilliance,
All are the warp and woof, the threads making up
that fabric named a human soul.
The presence of these great opposites is
what makes a soul complete.
Caged within the mortal frame of flesh,
this soul is called Brahman.
-
Atharva Veda
(11.8.30-32)
It is generally claimed that the Aryan invaders brought the Vedic
religion to India when they swarmed into the upper Indus basin
some 3,500 years ago. The nomadic Aryans lived around the area
that is now north-western Iran before their migration, and aspects
of later Vedism resemble the religion of this region before the so-
called reforms of Zoroaster, reforms that ultimately created a
dualistic universe from the unity expounded in the
Rig Veda
. There
is no stable principle of evil in Vedic philosophy. There is no infernal
realm for sinners. Its nondualism is really beyond monotheism -
which creates a fundamental duality of God and man. Evil is not
envisaged as a quality opposed to good. It is the absence of good, just
as darkness is the absence of light, not its opposite quality.
Because of these historical facts, some academics talk of an 'Indo-
Iranian' religion. But the Sanskrit of the Vedic verses also suggests
a hypothetical Indo-European religion and language. Vedic Sanskrit
may actually be that Indo-European language. The great
nineteenth-century Sanskrit scholar Max Müller observed
countless startling similarities between Sanskrit and languages like
Greek, Latin, the Germanic, and the Slavic, many whole words
being identical. If all languages shared a common source at an
infinitely more remote period, this would be only natural.
If, however, we accept that the Vedas and language itself did not
