A Concise History of Science in India c5.s2: The Vedic Literature

A Concise History of Science in India c5.s2

Language: English

c5.s2.t1 The Ṛgveda — 19 parts
c5.s2.t2 The Atharvaveda — 28 parts

The Vedic Literature

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The Vedic literature is the oldest Indian and also the most outstanding specimen of the earliest Indo-European literary effort. Unlike the canonical literature of other great religions, which often represents a complete collection worked out in some definite time, the *Vedas* are considered to be revealed (*śruti*) knowledge *par excellence* handed down from generation to generation by a unique method of oral transmission. The whole literature has been conveniently divided, according to content and chronology in a general way, into three distinct classes, e.g. the *Saṃhitās*, the *Brāhmaṇas*, and the *Āraṇyakas-Upaniṣads*. Despite this classification, there is a great deal of unity and intermixture of materials among the three divisions. Chronologically, although the *Saṃhitās* are older than the *Brāhmaṇas* and the *Brāhmaṇas* than the *Āraṇyakas-Upaniṣads*, some of the *Brāhmaṇas* are older than, or contemporaneous with, some of the *Saṃhitās*, and likewise with the *Brāhmaṇas vis-à-vis* the *Āraṇyakas-Upaniṣads*.

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*The Four Saṃhitās*

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The *Saṃhitās* are lyrical collections of hymns, prayers, invocations, sacrificial and magical formulas, of which a great variety must have existed at one time, depending on the numerous families of the Vedic bards. We now possess only four such great collections, e.g. (i) the *Ṛgveda*, the book of strophes (*ṛcas*) or hymns and prayers (*mantras*) to be recited during sacrifices and rituals, (ii) the *Sāmaveda*, the book of melodies (*sāmans*) in accordance with which the *ṛcas* are to be sung, (iii) the *Yajurveda*, the book of sacrificial formulas (*yajūṃṣi*) available again under two distinct groups, the Black and the White, and (iv) the *Atharvaveda*, the book of magical formulas.

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a *ARASI*, 1919–20 (1920); *see also* Lal (B. B. Dr.), pp. 19-22.

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b Roy and Varshney, pp. 366–68, 392.

The Ṛgveda

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The *Ṛgveda* is the most ancient and important collection comprising 1,028 hymns and 10,462 *ṛcas* distributed over 10 *maṇḍalas* or books. From the researches of Bergaigne, Oldenberg, Bloomfield and others, it is now well known that these *maṇḍalas* and the hymns constituting them were formulated in different periods—how different or ancient it is impossible to say with any definiteness. The books II to VII, for example, contain the oldest hymns, and books I and X, containing an assortment of hymns on diverse subjects, including the oft-quoted cosmogonic hymns, represent the latest collections. Book IX dealing with the glorification of the *soma* drink and carrying forward the *soma*-cult of the Indo-Iranian period must be given high antiquity. The portrayal, in the oldest hymn-books, of a simple patriarchal life in small communities on the banks of the Indus, with a warm love and adoration of nature and, in the latest books, of an organized Brahminical hierarchy already propagating the virtues of a society based on caste, penetrating farther east, clearly indicates the great difference of time between the primitive origin of the hymns and their redaction into the *Ṛk-Saṃhitā* we are familiar with.

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As to sciences, their origins, although couched in mythological forms, are traceable in the *Ṛgveda*. References to the threefold division of the heaven, the sun and the moon, their motions through stellar constellations, solar eclipse, division of time in days, months, year, intercalation, etc., clearly herald the beginning of astronomy and calendrical science. Interest in medicine is reflected in the fact that several of the Vedic gods occasionally play the role of physicians providing remedies. The foremost among them are the twin brothers Aśvins, sometimes also called Nāsatyas, who had the powers of healing the blind, the thin and the feeble and men with broken bones.a Another Vedic god who has something to do with healing is Varuṇa, the lord and guardian of *ṛta*, the Vedic equivalent of the Indo-Aryan word *āsa* (old Persian, *arta*), which has been variously interpreted as meaning 'a regular order in general', 'moral rectitude', 'a true law of the universe' and so on.b This *ṛta* which is responsible for the orderly functioning of universal laws such as the fixity of the stars, the movements of celestial bodies, etc., also controls matters terrestrial and spiritual, including the orderly or disorderly functioning of bodies of human beings on the earth. The beginnings of a plant science have been traced in stray references to external and internal structures of plants, some physiological processes involved in manuring, plant classification and evolution. Regarding agriculture, trade and industry, Winternitz mentions that barley used to be cultivated, cattle-rearing formed the main source of income, horse was highly prized and harnessed before the chariot in war and peace, and wood-workers, cabinet and chariot makers, metal workers, shipbuilders and so on formed the main backbone for what passed for industries in Vedic times.a No less important are the philosophical hymns enquiring about the origin of things and of a creator who is variously named as Prajāpati, Bṛhaspati, Viśvakarman, and ‘the One’.

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a *ṚV.*, X. 39.3.5.

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b Filliozat (2), p. 76 (French version).

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*The Sāmaveda*

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The *Sāmaveda* is an anthology of the *Ṛgveda*. The *Saṃhitā* has come down to us in three recensions or schools, e.g. those of the Kauthumas, the Rānāyanīyas and the Jaiminīyas or Talavakāras. It is a collection of both songs and verses. The majority of the verses are borrowed from the *Ṛgveda*, although these are often marked by variations of a linguistic character or those due to exigencies of musical adaptations. A source book of great importance for the study of the most ancient history of Indian music, the *Sāmaveda* and its *Brāhmaṇas* and *Sūtras* are also full of interest from the viewpoint of calendrical astronomy because of their fuller treatment of *gavām ayana*, the *sattras* of various durations and other ceremonies built round the daily progress of the sun. As a derivative work, the *Saṃhitā* naturally enough offers no clue towards the determination of its date except that it is posterior to the *Ṛgveda*.

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*The Yajurveda*

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As a compendium of sacrificial formulas, the *Saṃhitā* of the *Yajurveda* came to be developed in a large number of schools of Adhvaryu priests and recensions. Although Patañjali, in the introduction to his *Mahābhāṣya*, mentions 100 schools of the *Veda* of the Adhvaryus, works of the following five schools have come down to us: (a) the *Kāṭhaka* or, more correctly, the *Carāyaṇīya-Kaṭha-Saṃhitā*, representing the main recension of the *Kaṭha* school; (b) the *Kapiṣṭhala-(Kaṭha)-Saṃhitā*, representing another recension of the same *Kaṭha* school, preserved only in fragments; (c) the *Maitrāyaṇī-Saṃhitā*, of the Maitrāyaṇīya school; (d) the *Taittirīya-Saṃhitā*, of the Taittirīya or, more particularly, the Āpastamba school; and (e) the *Vājasaneyi-Saṃhitā*, after the teacher Yājñavalkya Vājasaneya, in the recensions of Kanva and Madhyandina.

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Traditionally, the works of the first four schools are grouped under the *Black Yajurveda* and the last *Saṃhitā* belongs to the *White Yajurveda*, but both the groups, on the whole, deal with common materials. As to their relationship to the *Ṛgveda*, both the groups and their recensions abound in *mantras* borrowed from the *Ṛgveda*, with, however, many and profound variations. The chief difference between the *Black* and the *White Yajurveda* lies in the fact that, in the former, the *mantras* are followed by, and often intermingled with, theological discussions and explanations, in prose, called *Brāhmaṇas*, whereas, in the latter, the *mantras* are carefully separated from the *Brāhmaṇas* and the materials treated in a more systematic manner.

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a Winternitz, I, pt. 1, pp. 55–57.

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From the geographical data embedded in these texts, it appears that the *Kaṭha-Kapiṣṭhala* school flourished in Kashmir and the Panjab and the *Maitrāyaṇīya* school in Gujarat, the *Taittirīyas* had their largest number of adherents in South India from where Āpastamba and Baudhāyana came and the sphere of activity of the Vājasaneyins was confined largely in north-eastern and eastern parts of India.a Such a distribution of spheres of influence of the various Yajus schools was, however, by no means water-tight, for there exists clear evidence of the Kaṭha and the *Taittirīya* schools operating in the Madhyadeśa as well.

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The verses or *ṛcas* which occur in the various recensions of the *Yajurveda* are also found in the *Ṛgveda*, with the difference that the whole hymns of the latter are rarely incorporated in the former. As Winternitz has pointed out, the *Yajurveda* used only single verses, 'torn from their context, which just appeared suitable to some sacrificial ceremony or other...' There is hardly any ground for doubting that the various recensions of the *Yajurveda* are posterior to the *Ṛgveda* and that the *Saṃhitās* of the *Kāṭhaka*, *Kapiṣṭhala*, *Maitrāyaṇī* and *Taittirīya* schools are older than the *Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā*.

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The importance of the *Yajurveda* texts as possessing several passages of considerable astronomical significance need hardly be overestimated. While the *nakṣatras* are doubtless mentioned in the *Ṛgveda*, their whole series numbering 27 or 28 and headed by *Kṛttikās* turn up for the first time in the recensions of the *Yajurveda*. The *gavām ayana* and the *sattras* resembling those already given in, and probably taken over from, the *Sāmaveda* and its *Brāhmaṇas*, find lengthy treatment in these *Yajus* texts. Traces of mathematical knowledge are reflected here and there in the enumeration and naming of large numbers in multiples of ten, cases of addition, subtraction and multiplication, fractions first noticed in the *Ṛgveda* and further developed in the *Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā*, and progressive series.

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From the point of view of medicine, the *Yajurveda* texts also contain information of importance, though not much different from other *Saṃhitās*, except of course the *Atharvaveda* about whose importance in relation to medicine we shall say more in what follows. Rudra who is represented in the Vedic literature as one possessing great strength and power and as the cause of terror is described in the *Yajurveda* as the first divine physician—*prathamo daivyo bhiṣak*.b This idea is also found in the *Ṛgveda* where this terror-inspiring Rudra is also famed as the best of all physicians.c About the different diseases, the *White Yajurveda* mentions 100 types of *yakṣmā*, including the *rājayaksmā* and the legend of Soma, the moon being afflicted by the disease.d Of the anatomical nomenclature compiled by Filliozate from the various Vedic *Saṃhitās*, several are found in the *Yajurveda* and its *Brāhmaṇas*. The pathological relationship of bile (*pitta*) with *agni* is attested in both the *Atharvaveda* and the *Yajurveda*.a A large number of plant remedies are recommended for curing diseases in the various recensions of the *Yajurveda*. In this connection important references to plant structures, physiology and classification are also met with in this *Saṃhitā*.

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a Keith (2), p. xciii.

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b *Taitt. S.*, IV. 1.2; *Vāj. S.*, XVI. 5.

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c *ṚV.*, II. 33.4.

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d *YV.*, XII. 97; *Taitt. S.*, II. 3.5.2.

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e Filliozat (2), pp. 121–28 (French version).

The Atharvaveda

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The *Atharvaveda* comprises 731 hymns and about 6,000 verses grouped under 20 books of which the first eighteen form the *Atharvaveda* proper and the last two supplementary additions of comparatively recent date. Its borrowings from the *Ṛgveda* are considerable, as much as one-seventh deriving without variation from the *ṛcas* belonging to books X, I and VIII. But quite a large number of the verses are original and bear marks of great antiquity. At the time of its taking shape, the Vedic Indians had already penetrated to the south-east and settled down in the Gangetic plains, as evidenced by the mention of a tiger-skin as symbol of royal power.b Society also became differentiated into four castes with the Brāhmaṇas claiming the highest privileges.

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The oldest name of this fourth *Veda* was probably *Atharvāṅgirasaḥ*. The frequent separation of this compound word and the mention of the *Veda* by each name show ‘that the compound is not a congealed formula, but that the texts are conscious of the fact that each has a distinct individuality, a right to separate existence.’c Originally, both the words ‘*atharvan*’ and ‘*aṅgiras*’ meant fire-priest, the fire-cult playing an important role in the daily life of the Indian people in much the same way as it did in the case of the ancient Persians. The two terms further signified two different species of magic formulas; the *atharvan* referred to holy magic bringing about happiness and the *aṅgiras* to hostile sorcery or black magic.

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The Atharvan songs and spells concerning healing of diseases throw important light on the oldest system of Indian medical science. Through these charms and spells the symptoms of a large number of diseases are described with great clarity. Winternitz notices a remarkable similarity between the magic incantations of the Indians and those of old Germans in the fact that while the *Atharvaveda* mentions 55, 77, or 99 diseases, German incantations often refer to 77 or 99 diseases.d Another peculiarity of the *Atharvaveda* consists in its recognition of worms as the causes of many diseases. Descriptions given of these worms are also of considerable zoological interest. The *Atharvaveda* is also very rich in anatomical nomenclature as will be clear from a glance at Filliozat’s list mentioned previously.

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b Winternitz, I, pt. I, p. 108.

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Opinion is divided on the question of origin of the theory of *tridoṣa* or *tridhātu* in the *Atharvaveda*. But the physiological role of air or *prāṇa* as an organic and cosmic force is well attested in the *Saṃhitās*, including the *Atharvaveda*. This point is important from the point of view of the evolution of the pneumatic theory, its maturity in later Āyurvedic texts and the parallelism noticed in some Greek texts such as one treatise on this subject by Hippocrates and Plato's *Timaeus*.

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a *AV.*, XVIII. 3.5; *Vāj. S.*, XVII. 6; *Kāṭh. S.*, XVII. 17.

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c Bloomfield, p. xviii.

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d Winternitz, I, pt. I, p. 115.

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The *Atharvaveda* offers little assistance towards our understanding of the nature and extent of the Vedic astronomy. Nevertheless, it does contain stray passages of astronomical consequence, such as the solar eclipse, the mention of *rāhu* for the first time, intercalation with a thirteenth month and similar titbits. Its late nineteenth book reproduces the list of 28 *nakṣatras* including *Abhijit*.

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Finally, its cosmogonic and philosophical hymns belonging doubtless to the latest parts of this *Veda* are of no less importance to the history of Indian science. In 63 hymns addressed to goddess earth, a specimen of good ancient poetry, Mother Earth is described with all her physical geographical peculiarities as the supporter and preserver of life. Likewise, time (*kāla*) is recognized as the first cause of all existence. Time is ageless, begot the yonder heaven and the earth, then the waters, the *brahma*, the *tapas* and the regions of space and so on.

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*The Brāhmaṇas*

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The *Brāhmaṇas*, the second great division of the Vedic literature, have been styled by Winternitz as the ‘Science of Sacrifice’. Eggeling, in his introduction to the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, has traced the genesis of this class of literature to the gradual dispersal of the Brāhmaṇa communities from the Panjab to the eastern and southern parts of the country and to the necessity of dividing sacrificial duties among different classes of priests, namely the Hotār, the Udgātar, the Adhvaryu (the performer of the actual sacrificial acts) and the Brāhmaṇa or high priest.

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The beginnings of such theological elucidations may be seen in the *Saṁhitās* of the *Black Yajurveda* where the *mantras* as a rule are either followed by, or intermingled with, their dogmatic explanations to constitute the *Brāhmaṇa* portion which thus developed into a convenient textbook for the Adhvaryu priest. This might have stimulated concurrently the compilation of *Brāhmaṇa* texts for the Hotār and the Udgātar priests. The Vājasaneyins who came later obviously profited by the experience of the older schools and from the beginning separated the *Brāhmaṇa* from the carefully selected *mantras* and arranged the whole literature in a highly systematic manner. The principal *Brāhmaṇas* which thus came to be attached to the different *Saṁhitās* are enumerated below:

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If the *Brāhmaṇas*, in the course of their theological disputations, sought to throw a great deal of light on the earliest metaphysical and linguistic speculations and indulged in many mythological fabrications around the substance of the hymns and verses of their respective *saṃhitās*, they did not fail to do so with respect to matters scientific. In this way many astronomical, anatomical, pathological, physiological ideas and concepts, and information regarding plant and animal life assumed clearer perspective through Brāhmaṇic interpretations.

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*The Āraṇyakas-Upaniṣads*

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The third division of the Vedic literature comprises the *Āraṇyakas* (forest texts) and the *Upaniṣads* (secret doctrines), which arose out of the *Saṃhitās* and the *Brāhmaṇas* of the different Vedic schools. The *Aitareya-Āraṇyaka* which includes the *Aitareya Upaniṣad* is part of the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* and likewise the *Kauṣītaki Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad* represents the concluding portions of the *Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa*. The *Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa* ends in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad*, of which the first section is an *āraṇyaka*. The *Jaiminīya* and the *Kena Upaniṣads* belong to the Jaiminīya or Talavakāra schools of the *Sāmaveda*. The Upaniṣads of the *Black Yajurveda* schools include the *Taittirīya Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad*, a continuation of the *Brāhmaṇa* bearing the same name and the *Mahānārāyaṇa*, the *Kaṭha* or *Kāṭhaka*, the *Śvetāśvatara*, the *Maitrāyaṇī Upanisads*. The greatest and the most important of all Upaniṣads is the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka* which belongs to the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* of the *White Yajurveda*. The *Iṣā Upaniṣad* forming the last section of the *Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā* is short but valuable. The *Muṇḍaka* and the *Praśna Upaniṣads* are offshoots of the *Atharvaveda*.

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The six of the above-mentioned Upaniṣads, viz. the *Aitareya*, the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka*, the *Chāndogya*, the *Taittirīya*, the *Kauṣītaki* and the *Kena*, which, in language and style, resemble the *Brāhmaṇas*, represent the earliest stage of development of this type of literature whose antiquity cannot be far different from that of the *Brāhmaṇas*.a The *Kaṭha*, the *Śvetāśvatara*, the *Mahānārāyaṇa*, the *Iṣā*, the *Muṇḍaka* and the *Praśna* which also contain the Vedānta doctrine are in all probability pre-Buddhistic. The *Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad* in which the Vedic prose is no longer traceable is of a much later date and possibly post-Buddhistic.

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Besides the *Upaniṣads* mentioned above, some 200 texts bearing the title of this class and attributed to one or the other of the Vedic schools have come down to us. Most of them having no connection with the *Veda* are akin to the *Purāṇas* and the *Tantras* and belong to a much later date.a Of these several non-Vedic *Upaniṣads*, mention may be made of the *Subala Upaniṣad*, frequently referred to by Rāmānuja and the *Garbha Upaniṣad*; the former deals with metaphysics, cosmology, physiology and other matters, whereas the latter, as the title implies, is an embryological text having some importance in the history of medicine.

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a Winternitz, I, pt. I, p. 206.

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Written in the form of dialogues often reminding us of Plato, the *Upaniṣads* are primarily important as repositories of physical concepts concerning both the organic and the inorganic world. A sharp distinction is made between these two worlds—a distinction which, in the view of Deussen, dominates the Indian view of nature also.b Organic bodies such as gods, men, animals and plants are in essence the *ātman* itself and are regarded as wandering souls. Inorganic bodies called *mahābhūtāni*, although controlled by *Brahman*, are not wandering souls, but only the stage, the material substratum enabling the souls to play their part. Embedded in this concept of *mahābhūtāni* is the idea of five elements whose gradual evolution from water as the only primordial element into earth, water, fire, wind and ether as the five *mahābhūtāni* is traceable in the *Upaniṣads*.

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The *Upaniṣads* tacitly assume that, like the macrocosm, the microcosm represented by the human body is also constituted of the five elements. Some physiological concepts applicable to man, animals and plants as also some elementary principles of classification are met with. Astronomical conceptions are only slightly developed and do not go beyond what we find in the two other preceding divisions of the *Veda*. In the simple cosmography preached by the *Upaniṣads*, the earth is surrounded by water and has oceans, mountains and seven island continents. The heaven and the earth form two halves of the egg of the universe, a recurrent conception throughout the Vedic literature.

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*Chronology of the Vedic Literature*

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The chronology of the Vedic literature has always been, and is even now, a matter of great difficulty and controversy. Considering that the whole of the Vedic literature must be pre-Buddhist and the *Sūtra* works synchronous with the origin and spread of Buddhism, Max Müller suggested the period between 600 and 200 B.C. for the development of the *sūtras*, the period between 800 and 600 B.C. for the development of the prose style of the *Brāhmaṇas* and *Āraṇyakas*-*Upaniṣads* and the period 1000 to 800 B.C. for the compilation of the *Saṃhitās*, of which the poetry part or the *mantras* probably originated in the period between 1200 and 1000 B.C.c In his views, the oldest of the *Vedas*, the *Ṛgveda*, could not have been composed earlier than 1200 B.C. Leopold von Schroedera suggested a much earlier date, 1500 or even 2000 B.C., for the *Ṛgveda*, while Hermann Jacobib and B. G. Tilak,c on astronomical grounds, tried to date the beginning of the Vedic literature in the third millennium B.C. The period around 1400 or 1500 B.C. for the formulation of the earliest Ṛgvedic hymns has found a strong support from the clay tablets discovered in Boghazköi, the capital of the ancient Hittites who had as their deities some of the common Vedic gods such as Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and Nāsatyau.d From an analysis of different studies on the Vedic chronology Winternitz concluded, and this view is now generally followed, that 'we shall probably have to date the beginning of this development about 2000 or 2500 B.C. and the end of it between 750 and 500 B.C.'e

Cites (6)

Kṛṣṇayajurvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Śuklayajurvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Atharvavedasaṃhitā — Atharvan & Aṅgiras, Sanskrit
Kṛṣṇayajurvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Yajurveda — Sanskrit

A Concise History of Science in India c5.s2: The Vedic Literature

Contents

The Vedic Literature

The Ṛgveda

The Atharvaveda

Cites (6)