Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Vedic verses with only a handful of minor variations. These feats of
memorisation were common in the ancient world. To us, they prove
that the original intonations were preserved, passed down over the
long centuries in that highly precise oral tradition established when
language itself first began.
Only a tiny part of the Vedic corpus was ever written down. So
very sacred were the words considered that to write them down
would have destroyed their power and meant a violation of the sacred
trust. Only part of these writings has survived. Yet the texts that do
exist are copious, enormously long and bewilderingly varied in
content. Scarcely an aspect of life is not dealt with somewhere.
A person in the Vedic age is not considered an individual, but
rather a social organism, with responsibilities to both fellow beings
and the whole natural world. It is a vision of a coordinated life. A
man or woman lives, works, and dies for society. All things are
integral to the Creator who made them and moves within them.
Great importance is placed on dynamic activity, the striving to
improve society's lot, to enjoy a happy present and work for an even
happier future. Between inaction and action is choice, free will.
The Vedas seek to guide and influence this free will in order to
ensure good rather than harm from the gift, for the individual and
for society.
To us, such ideas seem Utopian. Traces of the Vedic age can be
found today deeply embedded in the Indian psyche: the admiration
for selflessness, for austerity, for piety - particularly in the nation's
leaders. Even the reverence for language can be detected, albeit in a
grossly debased form, in that incorrigible predilection for public
speaking found in even the humblest official. Few Westerners can
stand up before a crowd and speak without notes for an hour or
more with ease, even if the effect is frequently rambling, repetitive,
and excruciatingly boring. Yet this kind of oratory has its genesis in
the mnemonic devices taught in the
yagnashalas
, where recitation
and discourse seem to have been highly valued - as they were to the
ancient Greeks and the medieval grammarians.
Big
yagnas
are rare now, but Vedic rituals, with chanted hymns
and mantras, are still performed at those functions that once
symbolised man's integration into society, especially marriage. Now
