अनंतवैवेदा: - Infinite are Vedas

Veda’s are the oldest scriptures of Hindu religious text. Written in Sanskrit, they were composed years ago by many Rishis after intense meditation. It was Rishi Vyasa, who collected all this knowledge and edited it. Rishi Vyasa was born on this day and therefore the purnima falling in the month of Aasadh is also called Guru purnima or Vyas purnima.

In order to ensure that this knowledge is passed on from one generation to another he started the Gurukuls. Thus the responsibility of protecting and following the knowledge traditions in life was handed over from father to son or from Guru to Shishya. This Parampara or tradition  is celebrated during Gurupurnima. All the elders are revered and remembered on Gurupurnima day. This celebration is also for strengthening the resolve to continue the tradition by taking the responsibility i.e. Dayitva to give adequate time and energy for work being undertaken by each one of us. 

If Veda Vyasa had not devised this method of protecting the knowledge traditions of India i.e, the Vedas, then like many other countries in the middle east or Europe, we too would have lost all our knowledge and along with it our identity. Bharat would not have been Bharat.

It is said – Ananta Vai Veda – अनंतवैवेदा: - Infinite are Vedas.

Because of incessant invasions we have lost many branches of Vedas, and yet how much is still protected by our land. It is all because of the efforts made by Guru Ved Vyasa. Vedvyasa was the son of Rishi Parashar and Satyavati. The story goes that one day Prashar was going for a yagya. He was getting late. Satyavati helped him cross the river by rowing the boat. She was blessed with a boon that she would get a son, who would be well versed in different scriptures if she recited certain mantra. Out of sheer curiosity, she recited the mantra, and Vyasa was born. He was an extraordinarily brilliant child. Today we owe much of our knowledge of Veda to him.

Vivekananda’s thoughts on Vedas                                

                  

According to Vivekananda, Veda means the sum total of eternal truths.

Truth is of two kinds: (1) that which is cognizable by the five ordinary senses of man and by reasoning’s based thereon; (2) that which is cognizable by the subtle, super sensuous power of yoga. Knowledge acquired by the first means is called science; and knowledge acquired by the second is called the Vedas. Our own realization is beyond the Vedas, because even they depend upon that. The highest Vedas is the philosophy of the Beyond.

The Sanskrit in which the Vedas were written is not the same Sanskrit in which books were written about a thousand years later than the Vedas - the books that you read in your translations of poets and other classical writers of India. The Sanskrit of the Vedas was very simple, archaic in its composition, and possibly it was a spoken language.

The Vedas are divided into four parts. One is called the Rig Veda, another Yajur Veda, another Sama Veda, and the fourth, Atharva Veda. Each one of these, again, was divided into many branches. For instance, the Sama Veda had one thousand branches, of which only about five or six remain; the rest are all lost. The Rig Veda had 108, of which only one remains; and the rest are all lost.

This vast mass of literature - the Vedas - we find in three groups. The first group is the Samhitas, a collection of hymns. The second group is called the Brahmanas, or the [group dealing with different kinds of] sacrifice. The word brahmana [by usage] means [what is achieved by means of] the sacrifice. And the other group is called the Upanishads (sittings, lectures, philosophic books). Again, the first two parts together - the hymns and the rituals - are called the Karma Kanda, the work portion; and the second, or philosophic portion (the Upanishads), is called the Jnana Kanda, the knowledge portion. This is the same word as your English word knowledge and the Greek word gnos - just as you have the word in agnostic, and so on. The origin of ancient Sanskrit is 5,000 BC; the Upanishads [are at least] two thousand years before that. Nobody knows exactly how old they are.

Different parts of Vedas were preserved by different families. With invasions and plundering of our country by foreigners, a vast amount of damage was done.  Ninety-nine percent of the Vedas are missing; they were in the keeping of certain families, with whose extinction the books were lost. The cardinal features of the Hindu religion are founded on the meditative and speculative philosophy and on the ethical teachings contained in the various books of the Vedas.

This word Hindu was the name that the ancient Persians used to apply to the river Sindhu. Whenever in Sanskrit there is an s in ancient Persian it changes into an h, so that sindhu became hindu; and you are all aware how the Greeks found it hard to pronounce h and dropped it altogether, so that we became known as Indians.

The last part of the Vedas is called the Vedanta, meaning the end of the Vedas. It deals with the theories contained in them, and more especially with the philosophy with which we are concerned. It is written in Sanskrit, and, you must remember, was written thousands of years ago.

Swami Vivekananda, felt that the use of word Hindu had lost its significance in the present times. He called all those who followed the Vedas and considered it as their scriptures as Vaidika or Vedantists. Elaborate speeches and lectures of Vivekananda are available widely and freely on the net. Read them for a greater understanding of our scriptures.