Book Of Vedas In English
All of four Vedas with authentic commentaries according to vedic tradition of the nirukta and nighantu grammar of vedic sanskrit are available here in Hindi and English both languages. I am giving totally free links to the full authentic commentaries on Vedas that uploaded on the google drive.
The Four Vedas In Pdf
RigVeda – ऋग्वेद – Download here and and What is Rigveda?. The Rigveda (means Knowledge of praise) is an old Indian gathering of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is one of the four accepted consecrated writings of Hinduism known as the Vedas. The content is an accumulation of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses, sorted out into ten books (Mandalas). A decent arrangement of the dialect is as yet dark, and numerous songs as a result are muddled. The psalms are committed to Rigvedic divinities.
For every god arrangement, the songs advance from longer to shorter ones; and the quantity of psalms per book increments. In the eight books that were made the most punctual, the psalms dominatingly talk about cosmology and acclaim gods. Books 1 and 10, which were included last, manage philosophical or theoretical inquiries regarding the beginning of the universe and the idea of god, the uprightness of philanthropy in the public arena and other magical issues in its hymns.
This is the English translation of Hinduism's holy book, The Vedas. This app contains all 10 books, and all chapters for every book. All content for the book is offline, and no internet connection is needed to browse the books and chapters. Results 1 - 12 of 318 - American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West. 1-12 of 318 results for Books: Religion & Spirituality: Hinduism: Sacred Writings: Vedas. The Vedas: The Samhitas of the Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva [single volume.
Rigveda is one of the most established surviving writings in any Indo-European dialect. Philological and etymological confirmation demonstrates that the Rigveda was made in the northwestern district of the Indian subcontinent, doubtlessly between c. 1500 and 1200 BC-however a more extensive guess of c.
1700– 1100 BC has additionally been given. The underlying codification of the Rigveda occurred amid the early Kuru kingdom (c. 1200– 900 BCE). A portion of its verses keep on being recounted amid Hindu soul changing experiences festivities, for example, weddings and supplications, making it presumably the world’s most seasoned religious content in proceeded with utilize.
Download:, and YajurVeda – यजुर्वेद – Download here, and What is YajurVeda?. The Yajurveda (knowledge of composition mantra) is the Veda of exposition mantras. An old Vedic Sanskrit content, it is an arrangement of custom offering recipes that were said by a cleric while an individual performed custom activities, for example, those before the yajna fire. Yajurveda is one of the four Vedas, and one of the sacred texts of Hinduism. The correct century of Yajurveda’s sythesis is obscure, and evaluated by researchers. The Yajurveda is comprehensively assembled into two – the “black” (Krishna) Yajurveda and the “white” (Shukla) Yajurveda. The expression “dark” infers “the un-masterminded, hazy, diverse accumulation” of verses in Yajurveda, as opposed to the “white” which suggests the “all around orchestrated, clear” Yajurveda.
The dark Yajurveda has made due in four recensions, while two recensions of white Yajurveda have made due into the advanced circumstances. The soonest and most antiquated layer of Yajurveda samhita incorporates around 1,875 verses, that are particular yet obtain and expand upon the establishment of verses in Rigveda.The center layer incorporates the Satapatha Brahmana, one of the biggest Brahmana messages in the Vedic gathering.
The most youthful layer of Yajurveda content incorporates the biggest gathering of essential Upanishads, compelling to different schools of Hindu logic. These incorporate the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Isha Upanishad, the Taittiriya Upanishad, the Katha Upanishad, the Shvetashvatara Upanishad and the Maitri Upanishad. Download:, and SamaVeda – सामवेद – Download here, and What is SamaVeda?. The Samaveda (knowledge of song) is the Veda of melodies and chants. It is an ancient Vedic Sanskrit language text, and part of the scriptures of Hinduism. One of the four Vedas, it is a liturgical text which consists of 1,549 verses. Except 75 verses rest have been taken from the Rigveda.
Three recensions of the Samaveda have survived, and variant manuscripts of the Veda have been found in various parts of India.While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, c. 1200 or 1000 BCE, but roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda. While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, 1200 or 1000 BCE, but roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda. Embedded inside the Samaveda is the widely studied Chandogyan Upanishad and Kena Upanishad, considered as primary Upanishads and as influential on the six schools of Hindu philosophy, particularly the Vedanta school. The classical Indian music and dance tradition considers the chants and melodies in Samaveda as one of its roots. Download:, and AtharvaVeda – अथर्ववेद – Download here, and What is AtharvaVeda?. The Atharva Veda is the “knowledge storehouse of atharvaṇas, the procedures for everyday life”.
The text is the fourth Veda, but has been a late addition to the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism. The Atharvaveda is composed in Vedic Sanskrit, and it is a collection of 730 hymns with about 6,000 mantras divided into 20 books. About a sixth of the Atharvaveda text adapts verses from the Rigveda, and except for Books 15 and 16, the text is in poem form deploying a diversity of Vedic matters. Two different recensions of the text – the Paippalada and the S aunakiya – have survived into modern times. Reliable manuscripts of the Paippalada edition were believed to have been lost, but a well-preserved version was discovered among a collection of palm leaf manuscripts in Odisha in 1957. The Atharvaveda is sometimes called the “Veda of magical formulas”, an epithet declared to be incorrect by other scholars.
In contrast to the ‘hieratic religion’ of the other three Vedas, the Atharvaveda is said to represent a ‘popular religion’, incorporating not only formulas for magic, but also the daily rituals for initiation into learning ( upanayana), marriage and funerals. Royal rituals and the duties of the court priests are also included in the Atharvaveda. The Atharvaveda was likely compiled as a Veda contemporaneously with Samaveda and Yajurveda, or about 1200 BC – 1000 BC.Along with the Samhita layer of text, the Atharvaveda includes a Brahmana text, and a final layer of the text that covers philosophical speculations. The latter layer of Atharvaveda text includes three primary Upanishads, influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy. These include the Mundaka Upanishad, the Mandukya Upanishad and the Prashna Upanishad.
Download:, and Introduction to the Commentry on the 4 Vedas Download- Books on Vedas Download – Note:. I advice you to first read very important book named ‘Introduction to the Commentary on the 4 Vedas’. This book is the master key to Vedas, I request you to first read this book before start reading the Vedas, beacause it is introduction to them, and we should have basic knowledge about the Vedas before reading them.
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We will add you a partner as vedshastradata for a nonprofit. Terms & Conditions for Donation:- Acceptance of any contribution, gift or grant is at the discretion of the Ved Shastra Data.
The Ved Shastra Data will not accept any gift unless it can be used or expended consistently with the purpose and mission of the Ved Shastra Data. No irrevocable gift, whether outright or life-income in character, will be accepted if under any reasonable set of circumstances the gift would jeopardize the donor’s financial security. The Ved Shastra Data will refrain from providing advice about the tax or other treatment of gifts and will encourage donors to seek guidance from their own professional advisers to assist them in the process of making their donation. The Ved Shastra Data will accept donations of cash or publicly traded securities.
Gifts of in-kind services will be accepted at the discretion of the Ved Shastra Data. Certain other gifts, real property, personal property, in-kind gifts, non-liquid securities, and contributions whose sources are not transparent or whose use is restricted in some manner, must be reviewed prior to acceptance due to the special obligations raised or liabilities they may pose for Ved Shastra Data. The Ved Shastra Data will provide acknowledgments to donors meeting tax requirements for property received by the charity as a gift. However, except for gifts of cash and publicly traded securities, no value shall be ascribed to any receipt or other form of substantiation of a gift received by Ved Shastra Data. The Ved Shastra Data will respect the intent of the donor relating to gifts for restricted purposes and those relating to the desire to remain anonymous. With respect to anonymous gifts, the Ved Shastra Data will restrict information about the donor to only those staff members with a need to know. The Ved Shastra Data will not compensate, whether through commissions, finders' fees, or other means, any third party for directing a gift or a donor to the Ved Shastra Data.
This is how it Works? A donation of our 25$ will give you a nonprofit of our Vedshastradata site. That's total value is 199$.
They are not giving access to any site but we are providing you a fully free of cost and always available for your answer. As a sponser we will give you plenety of shoutout via social as future post. Also to make project very fun. You will see some post and stories of it on my blog. We will add you a partner as vedshastradata for a nonprofit.
The Age of the 4 Vedas Each of the Vedas were composed at different dates, and in fact different verses within the same Veda are themselves composed in different centuries. With the Rig Veda, we can say that the last of hymns were composed at the latest by 1500BC, which sits as the terminus ante quem.
However, the earliest of Rig Vedic hymns were composed much before this date. Probable timelines for this range from 3000BC to 6000BC. The German scholar Max Mueller, who was biased by the timeline set by the Bible, chose the date of 3000BC.
Certainly there are many astronomical observation within the Rig Veda that point to a time t least 7-8 millennia before the present. Whether these refer to events that were current for the composers, or whether they were applying complex astronomical calculations. The last of the Vedas was in its final form at the very latest by 900BC, because by this date the Upanishads began to be gleaned and set apart from the Vedas.
Again, it must be noted that the Vedas were essentially oral traditions, passed on from generation to generation by recitation and memorization. It is remarkable that human beings were able to memorize such huge volumes of text, maintaining the sanctity and perfection of inflexion and pronunciation involved in correct Sanskrit pronunciation. Whether they used any mnemonic devices or were trained from an early age is not known. But there are many methods available even today in the yogic processes that help enhance one’s memory and attention capabilities. By the Mauryan Period around 300BC, the essential Vedanta involving the Vedas and Upanishads were put down in writing.
Legends say that the first impetus to transfer the Vedas from oral to written came at the end of long 12-year drought, which cause a huge loss of life and thus also of knowledge. It is said that the rishis and sages of the land decided that if the Vedas were to be preserved, they should be placed in writing. It is known who intiated the porcess for the first three Vedas. All we know is that various sages from Vasishtha, to Agastya, from Marichi to Atri, and from Angiras to Vishwamitra, have hymns attributed to them in the Rig Veda.
Of the Atharva Veda, it is said that Veda Vyasa (of Mahabharat fame) and Maha Atharvan, collected and put this wisdon into writing. The Structure of the Vedic Books The Vedas are four in number – the Rig Veda is the earliest, then the Sama Veda which is next, the Yajur Veda which is third in age, and the Atharva Veda. They are called “Shruti” thee final authority of the Aryas. They were the revelations to the Rishis in Samadhi of Brahman or Atman which is universal. Thus, their principles are impersonal, ever-present, and ever-lasting, and they can be realized by any person who can go into the samadhi state. The Absolute Truth of these revelations were further supported and testified by the Vedanta Sutras of the sage Vyasa and the Bhagavad Gita of Shri Krishna.
So these three sets constitute the standard works of the Vedanta. Each Veda has three divisions: 1. Collections of hymns (Suktas) used at sacrifices and offerings. Brahmanas: precepts for sacrifice, praise, stories and traditions; They treat of the relation between the Suktas and ceremonies. They explain the sacrifices with the help of legends and stories 3. Upanishads: Philosophical treatises embodying Brahma Vidya. The six Darshanas or Great Systems of philosophy arc based on them.
There are more than 200 Upanishads of which 12 are called Major and the rest Minor. The following are the Major Upanishads: Aitereya Kaushitaki, Taittiriya, Katha, Shvetasvatara, Brihadaranyaka, Isha, Kena, Chandogya, Mandukya, Mundaka and Prashna.
Of these Mandukya, Katha, Mundaka, Kena and Prashna, and Maitri of the minor are highly philosophical. They represent the Vedas as shown below: Krishna Yajur Veda has Taittiriya, Katha and Shvetasvatara. Shukla Yajur Veda has Brihadaranyaka and Isha.
Sama Veda has Kena and Chandogya. Atharvaveda has Mandukya, Mundaka and Prashna. The Muktitopanishad has the list of 108 Upanishads. Thus, it will be noticed that samhita or the books of hymns do not alone form the Veda. Many persons on reading the hymns do not find the exposition of the Vedanta philosophy in them and are greatly surprised.
The Vedas are summed up in the Gayatri Mantra. The Gayatri in the Pranava and Pranava or Udgitha are the expressions of Brahman. Rig Veda Samhita — It is a collection of mantras which are mostly prayers to and invocation of the Devas. It treats also of the existence of One Absolute Brahman and of the laudatory verses (Richas) to be read aloud at the time of the sacrifice by a Hota or a priest. Yajur Veda Samhita — It consists of the invocations and prayers offered in sacrifices in the preparation of the materials, the altar, the bricks, the stakes etc. So it is the knowledge of the sacrifices required for the conductor.
Sama Veda Samhita — It gives the knowledge of songs. Its hymns are chanted by the Udgata at the time of sacrifices. Atharva Veda Samhita — It treats of the knowledge of Brahman which bestows Moksha. Brahmanas — They contain the rules for the employment of mantras at various sacrifices. They are eight in number according to Vajaseneyinvas below:— Itihisa (story) “Bhrigu, the son of Varun approached his father” and so on Prana (cosmogony): they treat of primary and secondary creations (Sarga and Pratisarga) “That from winch all these creatures are born.” Vidya Or Upasana: Contemplations upon world luminaries, knowledge, progeny, soul etc. Upanishad — Instruction in secret Wisdom.
Esoteric Samhita. Shloka – Verses for quotations Sutra (aphorism) such as “The knower of Brahman approaches the Supreme. Anuvyakhyan ( short gloss ) — In this the words of a Sutra are succinctly explained, ex: “ Reality, Knowledge and Eternity is Brahman.” Vyakhyan — It is the clear and exhaustive exposition of the point of Anuvyakhyan. The six Angas and Darshanas of the Vedas are described in Mundaka as follows:— 1. Shiksha (method of study)—it treats of phonetics.
Kalpah (method of ritual)—to this belong the Shrauta Sutras, explanatory of the ritual sacrifices in three fires, 3. Shulba Sutras, geometrical measurements for laying out the sacrificial area. Grihya Sutras, relating to domestic life. Dharma Sutras, treating of customs and lairs.
The Six Darshanas form in their entirety one great scheme of philosophic truth. They are arranged in pairs: Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Sankhya; Yoga, Mimansa Vedanta. The objective of all is the same: Salvation of men from bondage and consequent union with the Supreme. This is referred to as moksha or mukti. The Vedas Place in Hindu Philosophy Ancient Hindu Philosophy divides itself, broadly speaking, into three periods:—(1) the Vedic, (2) the Upanishadic and (3) the post-vedic —which may be also called (1) the cosmological, (2) the metaphysical and (3) the systematic —representing three stages in the gradual intellectual evolution of the Hindu Scriptures.
1 The Vedic Period. By the Vedic, we mean the period of the samhitas and the Brahmanas, especially of the Rig Veda Samhita. The philosophy of the Veda is rather a loose term, in-as-much as there is no philosophy proper in the Veda.
The first philosophy of a people is its religion. And the Rig Vedic religion is quite transparent, though developed, chiefly consisting of the personification of natural forces and natural phenomena. Aside from the fact that Vedic Sanskrit is quite different from the later Sanskrit of Panini and Patanjali, the most striking features of the Vedic religion are:— Firstly—It is practical and utilitarian in nature, in that the hymns, though highly poetic and inspired in character, are most of them at the same time incidental to the sacrifice. Give and take is the simple law which is applicable to the dealings between men and gods; and 4 reciprocity, frank unconditional reciprocity becomes an accepted motive.’. Secondly—As a consequence, it is essentially a religion of priests, a hieratic religion. Thirdly—It is a religion of the upper classes who are well-to-do, presupposing an established household of considerable extent, a wealthy and liberal householder, elaborate and expensive materials, and many priests.
Fourthly—It is essentially optimistic. It is not immortality or heaven, but a long life for a full hundred years, prosperity, warlike offspring, in short all the blessings of this life, that the worshipper or the householder asks for. It is a spirit of healthy joy in the life we live that dominates; while such pessimistic ideas as that life is uncertain and unsubstantial, that death is nature while life is only an accident, are conspicuous by their absence. Fifthly—It is characterised by what may be described as Arrested Personification. The Vedic poets while personifying the power of nature into gods, never allow this nature worship to be stiffened into mere admiration, fear and adulation of personal f^ods, and never become forgetful of the origin from which sprang the gods. Sixthly—It shows a tendency to raise the particular god to whom the worshipper is addressing prayers for the time being, to the most exalted position, so that all other gods are subordinated to him for the moment,-a form of religion which has been called Kathenotheism. The Content of the 4 Vedas Notwithstanding the religious character of the Vedic thought in general, there are frequently found references to ideas more abstract and philosophical, which may be regarded as the germs of the later Upanishad-thoughts.
The Vedas In English
As in the Vedic religion the mythological element prevailed, and the moral element, the personified natural forces being considered as the power that creates, maintains and controls what man feels in himself as constituting the moral law, opposed to the egoistic tendencies natural to man, though present, was not sufficiently assertive and the way was gradually paved for doubt and contempt of gods. Besides, the mere technique of the sacrificial ritual, in the course of time, must have ceased to satisfy the minds both of the patron and the priest, so that more philosophic food was required, and questions and answers regarding the origin of the world and similar topics must have been discussed, giving rise to what are called Brahmodyas. So also the old mythological gods in strong flesh tints must have begun to disconcert them and faith must have been gradually lost; so that abstract and symbolic embodiments of the divine idea then took the place of the gods of nature.
And just as the Rishis thought that the several natural phenomena had some divine forces behind them which were personified into so many gods, in the same way they advanced one step further and came to think that all three were aspects of one and the same all- pervading divine force which manifested itself in the different phenomena. Thus the thought gradually progressed from many gods to one being and from the simple give-and-take religion to abstruse speculations regarding the beginning and origin of all things.
164-46 declares, “They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Agni, or the heavenly bird Garutmat (Later Garuda). The sages call the one being in many ways, they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” This whole hymn (I. 164) consisting of 52 verses, is nothing but a collection of riddles to which no answers are given. “The subjects of these riddles are cosmic, that is, pertaining to the nature-phenomena of the Universe;” mythological, that is, referring to the accepted legends about gods; psychological, that is, pertaining to the human organs and sensations; or finally crude and tentative philosophy or theosophy.
Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, air, clouds, and rain; the course of the sun, the year, the seasons, months, days and nights; human voice, self-consciousness, life and death, the origin of the first creature, and the originator of the universe:— such are the abrupt and bold themes,” says Bloomfield in his translation and commentary on the Vedas – “Religion of the Veda”. Thus already in certain hymns of the Rig Veda, there emerges the thought with which philosophy begins — the conception of the unity of the world — which later rose up to Monism, perceiving through the veil of the manifold, the unity which underlies it. In this connection may be particularly noticed the hymn X. 121, where the Hiranyagarbha is described as existing in the beginning of the creation, the sole lord of beings, supporting heaven and earth; X. 90 where the whole world is conceived as one being, the Virat-purusha who having pervaded it from all sides, still remained over and above it; X.
82 where the waters are spoken of as being the first substance or prime cause; X. 81, addressed to Viswakarman who combines in his person the characters of a primeval divine sacrificer and of a creator, in which the cosmological significance of the divine sacrifice finds particular expression, and question like ‘What was the place whereon he took his station? What was it that supported him? ( Verse 2 ),’ are boldly asked; X. 125 where Vak is represented as the companion and upholder of the gods and as the foundation of all religious activity and its attendant boons; and X.
129, which is quite typical in character and remains unsurpassed in its noble simplicity and in the loftiness of its philosopical vision, as it attempts to explain the presence of the world and its contents, beyond the point of mere individual experience or analysis through empirical knowledge, by putting forth a fundamental principle without personality. A cursory glance at these hymns will show that the general trend of thought is principally cosmological rather than metaphysical in the proper sense of the word, and hence we may call this period cosmological. One thing to be noticed in connection with this early philosophy of the Vedas, however, is the absence of pessimism and metempsychosis, which are the distinguishing traits of later Indian philosophy.
The Vedas and Upanishads (2) The Upanishadic Period — The second period of Indian Philosophy, that of the Upanishads, is quite distinct in character from the first, though it is but the natural result of it. If the thought during the first period was mainly religious and cosmological, with only a trace here and there of philosophy proper, the second period was mainly philosophical, though not in the narrow sense of the word, i. Having a cut and dry system of philosophy. The elaborate and mechanical system of worship that had grown up round the Vedic gods, and the speculations as regards the appropriateness of the rules and modes of worship and their efficacy for man’s good in this world and the next, which prevailed in the Brahmanas, no longer satisfied the religious spirit of the people. The overdoing of the sacrificial cult brought on its own downfall; and people’s thoughts were naturally drawn to subjects of a more spiritual character, such as problems about God, man and the world, and a variety of solutions was arrived at. Knowledge and not mere ceremonial is the way to happiness/ that is the keynote of the literature of this period.
The Upanishads, unsurpassed in their freedom and comprehensiveness and grandeur of thought, are simply marvellous, and nowhere else can we find such a simplicity and naivete of style combined with profundity and depth of idea, a circumstance which makes them untranslatable. On the question as to what the Upanishads teach (or in other words what is the nature of the philosophy of this period), there are so to speak, two views, though one of them is gradually becoming the more prevalent one. Many eminent scholars, along with the orthodox people especially about Maharashtra, hold that the Vedanta of Adi Shankara represents the true teaching of the Upanishads; and that the other so-called orthodox systems as well as the other schools of Vedanta, while they lay claim to be based on the Upanishads, are all so many developments by a kind of degeneration of the original doctrine (of the Upanishads). Brahman and Atman in Vedas Thus, according to these people, the main idea of at least the oldest of the Upanishads (i.e. For, the denial of the existence of the world as it appears to us, implied by the idealism of the old Upanishads, could not be maintained in the face of the reality of the world, which forced itself upon people’s minds.Thus the attempt to reconcile the two, i. The bold idealism and the reality of the world, led to Pantheism, according to which the world is real and yet the Atman is the only reality, for the world is Atman. Thus the equation that the world is equal to Atman led to the theory of causality, to cosmogonism, according to which, the Brahman itself entered into the creation as the individual soul.
This Pantheism has to be distinguished from Theism which is the characteristic feature of certain later Upanishads like the Svetasvatara. The absolute identity of Brahman and Atman, though perfectly true from the metaphysical standpoint, remains incomprehensible for the empirical view of things, which distinguishes a plurality of souls different from each other and from the Highest Spirit, the creative power of the Universe. This is theism. According to it there are three entities, a real world (achid), at man (chid) and Brahman of which the chid and achid form the body. But in the course of time the necessity of Brahman apart from Atman ceased to be felt and its creative power was attributed to Prakriti, non-intelligent but at the same time independent of any intelligent being, which led to the materialistic dualism of the Samkhya doctrine later on. An impartial consideration of the Upanishads taken as a whole will, however, show that this view about the teaching of the Upanishads is not tenable; nor is the order in the evolution of thought satisfactorily demonstrable.
The Upanishads are nothing but free and bold attempts to find out the truth without the slightest idea of a system; and to say that any one particular doctrine is taught in the Upanishads is unjustifiable in the face of the fact that in one and the same section of an Upanishad, we find passages one following the other, which are quite opposed in their purport. Bold realism, pantheism, theism, materialism are all scattered about here and there, and the chronological order of the Upanishads has not been sufficiently established on independent grounds, so as to justify us in claiming that one particular view predominating in a certain number of Upanishads (granting that this is possible) represents the teaching of the Upanishads. Hinduism, Buddhism & Vedas And to say that idealism represents the real teaching of the Upanishads because it is contained in a certain Upanishad which is relatively old and that the Upanishad is relatively old because it contains a view of things with which philosophy should commence, is nothing but a logical see-saw. It may be true that if one insists on drawing a system from the Upanishads, replete as they are with contradictions and divergences, Shankara has succeeded the best, because his distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrines like a sword with two edges can easily reconcile all opposites such as unity and plurality, assertion of attributes and their negation, in connection with one and the same being; but this is one thing and to say that the Upanishads taught Shankara’s doctrine is quite another thing. As regards the relative order of doctrines in the march of philosophic thought, we may as well say that the first stage is represented by materialism, which is innate in us, which is peRishistently forced on us by our daily experience, and which very few can get rid of in practice, though there may be a few more who deny it in theory. Thus we start with plurality, and difference, ascend through difference and non-difference and qualified unity until at last we reach the highest top, i. Absolute unity.
Thus the other view regarding the teaching of the Upanishads according to which the Upanishads teach not one but many systems of doctrines regarding the nature of God, man and the world and the relations between them is more reasonable and is being more and more accepted. The germs of all the later systems, whether orthodox or heterodox, can be found in them, as is evident from the fact that all the religio-philosophic systems of later times can quote a certain number of passages from them in their support. But when the exponents of those systems try to show that theirs is the only system taught by the Upanishads and attempt to explain passages, even when directly opposed in tenor to their doctrine, in a manner so as to favour their doctrine, the artificiality and the unsatisfactory character of the attempt is at once evident. For the Upanishads represent a large floating mass of speculations of old seers, clothed in words and handed down orally—speculations depending on the mood of the thinker and the point of view from which he looked at things. Next we come to the post-vedic or systematic period, which saw the development of the so called six darshanas or orthodox systems, as well as of the heterodox systems such as offered by Gautama the Buddha, and Mahavira the founder of Jainism etc.
As said above, the germs of all these systems were already present in the Upanishads; and what these systems did was to take up particular parts of the Upanishads and deduce from them a cut-and-dry system, conniving at or explaining away in a far-fetched manner those parts which did not suit the particular system. This systematic period may be supposed to have begun with the collections of sutras which are regarded as the foundations of the several systems and the dates and authors of which have not yet been determined with precision and accuracy.
As for what distinguishes the orthodox from the heteredox or Nastika and Astika schools, it is generally believed to be the want of belief in God as the creator of the world; and in this sense the beginnings of Indian atheism can be traced back to the Vedic period even. In the Rig Veda, the God Indra is derided in JV. 119; and in II. 100-3, we read of people who absolutely denied his existence even in these early days. We have here the first traces of that naive atheism which is so far from indulging in any philosophic reflection that it simply refuses to believe what it cannot visualise, and which was later known as the Charvaka or Lokayata system. As distinguished from it, there is the philosophical atheism of the Buddhists and the Jains, according to whom there is no eternal, supreme God, creator and lord of all things, and the so-called gods are only more highly organised and happier beings than men — an atheism which can go hand in hand with a religious system and cannot prevent it from being one of the most influential religions in the world.