What the Vedas are

The word 'Veda' comes from the Sanskrit 'vid', which means 'knowledge' (the same root as vidyā).

There are four Vedas: the Ṛig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sāma Veda and the Atharva Veda. (An easy way to remember them in order: 'Ri-Ya Sings Always': Ri for Ṛig, Ya for Yajur, S for Sāma, A for Atharva.) They are the oldest texts of India, and among the oldest in the world.

The Vedas are made of thousands of hymns, prayers in the form of poems and songs, which were recited aloud, not written down. The hymns were composed in the Sapta Sindhava region, the land of the seven rivers you met in Chapter 5.

It is hard to say exactly when the Ṛig Veda, the oldest, was composed; experts suggest dates from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE. So for between 100 and 200 generations these texts were learnt by heart through strict training and passed on by word of mouth, with hardly any changes! A generation is roughly 25 years (the gap between you and your parents), so that is somewhere between about 2,500 and 5,000 years of remembering.

Because of this careful passing-on over thousands of years, in 2008 UNESCO recognised Vedic chanting as 'a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity'. (Intangible means something you cannot touch. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which encourages dialogue between people and nations through education, science and culture.)

The Vedic hymns were composed by rishis (male seers or sages) and rishikas (female seers) in an early form of Sanskrit. They were addressed to many deities (gods and goddesses), such as Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Mitra, Sarasvatī and Uṣhas. Together with the seers, these deities upheld ṛitam, truth and order in human life and in the cosmos (the universe seen as an ordered, harmonious whole).

The early rishis and rishikas saw all those gods and goddesses as one, not as separate beings. A famous hymn says: 'ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti', meaning 'the Existent (the supreme reality) is one, but sages give it many names.' Many names, one reality: that idea runs through the whole chapter.

In this way of seeing the world, some values mattered especially, starting with Truth, which was often another name for God. The last verses of the Ṛig Veda also call for unity among people: 'Come together, speak together; common be your mind, may your thoughts agree ... United be your purpose, united your heart ... may your thoughts be united, so all may agree!'