A Concise History of Science in India c5.s3.1

c5.s3.1

We now come to another important group of literature, the *Vedāṅgas*, which deal separately with six special branches of knowledge, viz. phonetics (*śikṣā*), ritual (*kalpa*), grammar (*vyākaraṇa*), etymology (*nirukta*), metrics (*chandaḥ*) and astronomy (*jyotiṣa*).f These branches of study arose within the Vedic schools themselves as a necessary condition for mastering the *Vedas*. Being works of human specialists, these are called *Vedāṅgas* or auxiliary sciences of the *Veda*.