The Rigveda, composed probably sometime during the second millennium BCE, is India’s oldest religious text. It consists of more than a thousand hymns in praise of various gods. Composed in ancient Sanskrit, it is also the oldest extant collection of poetry in any Indo-European language. It shares cultural and linguistic motifs with old Iranian texts composed in the ancient Iranian language, Avestan. This raises questions about a possible, shared Indo-Iranian past and a common ‘proto-language’ from which both Sanskrit and Avestan arose.
The Rigveda contains within it the seeds of the belief-system that later came to be known as Hinduism. Though the gods it praises are not the gods worshipped by Hindus today, it is still regarded as the most sacred of all Hindu texts, and its hymns are chanted in ritual worship across India even today.
The Rigveda has also shaped, influenced and informed the literature of India for the last four thousand years. Its hymns are sophisticated literary compositions that celebrate the beauty and power of words. They cover a wide range of subjects from deeply philosophical reflections on the nature of the divine to vivid descriptions of the natural world and more immediate concerns such as the protection of property from thieves at night. Some of the hymns are obscure and difficult to understand, some almost effervescent in their joyous praise of the gods, and some gentle and deeply moving. The elegant and highly stylized poetic style of Classical India known as kavya has its beginnings in “the equally intricate poetry of the Rigveda.” Kavya finds its fullest expression in the form known as mahakavya (‘great poem’), in the strophic lyric, and in Sanskrit theatre.
With the advent of the Europeans into India, the Rigveda and associated texts began to be studied as “documents of human history”1. However, the Rigveda was never intended by its authors to be any kind of historical record. It does not tell us about the great events of the period. Names of great rishis and clan leaders are mentioned, but swiftly, without the detail that would make it history. The information it contains is sparse and, more importantly, yet to be confirmed by archeology. Nevertheless, the songs do evoke a sense of place and time and give us more than a glimpse of the people and culture that produced them.
This monumental work thus stands at the triple confluence of religion, literature, and history.
The hymns of the Rigveda, as is well known, were composed orally — by priests for use during the performance of yajnas, elaborate fire sacrifices to propitiate the gods. The hymns were also transmitted orally — from father to son, from teacher to student — for several thousands of years, without the change of a single word. Sometime around 1000 BCE, these hymns, already ancient, were collected and arranged into ten books. The collection was then given the name by which we know it today. At this point, the hymns were still held and transmitted purely orally. It was not till the first century CE, some two and a half thousand years after its composition, that the Rigveda was finally written down. Significantly, even then, its transmission remained primarily oral — this remains the preferred method even today.
Over time, three other collections of hymns grew from and around the Rigveda —these collections are the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda. They take a large proportion of their material directly from the Rigveda. Together, these four Vedas form the core of the body of texts known as the Vedic texts. The Rigveda, as the oldest of the four Vedas, remains the most important.
The hymns of the Rigveda were composed in an ancient form of Sanskrit, which is similar to, but not the same as the fixed, scholarly language we call Sanskrit today. The Sanskrit of the Rigveda was a free-flowing, natural language that was probably the spoken tongue of the people who composed the hymns. Like all natural languages, it grew and changed over the centuries. But the language of the hymns, which had been fixed at the time of composition, did not — and so, over time, the hymns became more and more difficult to understand. As their precise meanings began to be lost, commentaries to explain the hymns and associated rituals began to be composed. The earliest of these can be dated to the first millennium BCE. But despite these commentaries, the obscurity of meaning remains. We cannot understand the hymns perfectly, we can only ‘interpret’ them, an exercise which is sometimes reduced to guesswork!
And so, despite the fact that the Rigveda has come down to us intact through the millenia, what we know about the Rigveda is limited. It is being studied in India and abroad by linguists, historians, archaeologists, geologists and even astronomers for clues about the past and the civilisation that composed it. Every question that seems to be answered gives rise to several more.
Even after decades of study, we are still asking basic questions:
When precisely was the Rigveda composed?
Who composed it?
Why were the hymns transmitted orally? How have they retained their original form? How are we sure that they have done so?
Was the Sanskrit of the Rigveda first spoken in India, or did it come from elsewhere? What is its relationship to the other ancient languages, particularly to Avestan? Was there a common Indo-Iranian homeland, a common proto-language, a shared civilisation?
What other texts make up the Vedic corpus?
The myths and beliefs associated with the Rigveda, for instance about the elevated position of women in Rigvedic society, or scientific and mathematical truths contained in the text — are these true?
In subsequent newsletters and posts, we will take a look at these questions, myths and more. We may not always have answers, or we may throw up even more questions as we proceed. But whether we reach a destination or not, the journey promises to be exciting.
This Rigveda manuscript is held by the British Library. The information attached to it says that the manuscript was created between 1495 and 1713. It is written on coarse paper by various scribes, and is a Padapatha version of the Rigveda representing a word-by-word recitation of the hymns. The accentuation marks in red are used to signal three main accents: udatta, acute; anudatta, unmarked low, and svarita, grave accent.
Do you have questions about the Rigveda? Or a fact to share? Add your comments and join the discussion.
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Rajesh Kochhar, The Vedic People: Their History and Geography (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009), p.4.
Can you also cover the deities mentioned in the Rigvedic hymns? There is always a debate between Brahmins of Saivite Rudra Sampradaya and Vaisnavite Sampradaya about who is Supreme according to the Vedas. There is Agni, Surya, Vayu, Indra, Varuna, Rudra, and Narayana. What do the Vedas establish about these Deities? Would be interested in a scholarly response.
Well, that was a great start! You have referred to it as an "Introduction", but it was way more than that. For a start, while it set out a short synopsis of the Rigveda, it also provided a nice framework for what is to come. It certainly has peaked my interest greatly. So many questions popped into my head, as I was reading the piece, which is marvellous. I note that many of them are in your list at the end. I look forward to the next newsletter.