Translating Vedas into various Indian languages 07/06/2019 – Posted in: Press Information Bureau
Translating Vedas into various Indian languages
(Vice President’s Secretariat)
WHAT
The Vice President of India, called for translating Vedas into various Indian languages in a simplified manner for the common man to understand their importance.
The Vice President described Vedas as a veritable treasure house of knowledge and said they reflect India’s age-old traditions and culture.
There was a need to protect, preserve and propagate the scientific knowledge contained in the Vedas on various aspects of life and bring them within the reach of the common man.
He also said that Vedas were not mere religious texts but contain knowledge of various disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, chemistry and metallurgy.
FOUR VEDAS
- Rigveda
The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text. It is a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten books. The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities.
- Yajurveda
The Yajurveda Samhita consists of prose mantras. It is a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire.
The earliest and most ancient layer of Yajurveda samhita includes about 1,875 verses, that are distinct yet borrow and build upon the foundation of verses in Rigveda.
- Samaveda
The Samaveda Samhita consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost entirely (except for 75 mantras) from the Rigveda. The Samaveda samhita has two major parts. The first part includes four melody collections and the second part three verse “books”. A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the arcika books. Just as in the Rigveda, the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with hymns to Agni and Indra but shift to the abstract.
- Atharvaveda
The Atharvaveda Samhita is the text ‘belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets. It has about 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in common with the Rigveda. Most of the verses are metrical, but some sections are in prose.
The Atharvaveda was not considered as a Veda in the Vedic era, and was accepted as a Veda in late 1st millennium BCE. It was compiled last, probably around 900 BCE, although some of its material may go back to the time of the Rigveda, or earlier.
CATEGORIES OF VEDIC TEXTS
The term “Vedic texts” is used in two distinct meanings:
- Texts composed in Vedic Sanskrit during the Vedic period (Iron Age India)
- Any text considered as “connected to the Vedas” or a “corollary of the Vedas”
Source: PIB
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