Introduction
Of the four Vedas which constitute the carliest stage of Indian lit-erature, the Rigveda is by far the most ancient and important. The exact period when, its hymns were composed is a matter of conjecture. All that can be said is that the oldest of them cannot date from later than the thirteenth century B.C., because certain phases of literature subsequent to the Vedas are pre-supposed by Buddhism, which arose in the sixth century B.C. On the other hand, the most ancient part of the Avesta, which can hardly be older than 800 B.C., is linguistically very close to the Rigveda: it is therefore unreasonable to assume that the Indians separated from the Ira-nians more than 500 years earlier, or about 1300 В.С. When the Indo-Aryans entered the north-west of India, they brought with them a religion in which the gods were mostly per-sonified powers of nature. A few of these, such as Dyaus, "Heaven." and Usas, "Dawn," come down from Indo-European times; oth-ers, such as Mitra, Varuna, and Indra, from the Indo-Iranian age; while yet others were the creation of Aryans on Indian soil. They also brought with them the cult of fire and of Soma, as well as skill in composing religious poems in several metres. The purpose of these ancient hymns was to propitiate the gods by laudations that ac-companied offerings of melted butter poured on the sacrificial fire and of the juice of the Soma plant deposited in vessels on the sacrificial grass. The hymns which have been preserved in the Rigveda from the early period of the Indo-Aryan invasion, were almost exclusively composed by a hereditary priesthood. They were handed down in different families by memory, not by writing, which can hardly have been introduced into India before 700 B.C. These family groups of hymns were gradually brought together till, with successive additions, they assumed the earliest collected form of the Rigveda. Then followed, about 600 B.C., the constitu-tion of the Samhita text, which did not in any way alter the wording of the collected hymns, but only subjected the text to certain eu-phonic rules prevalent at that time, by which vowels are either con tracted or changed into semi-vowels, and the vowel a is often dropped, so that the metre is constanttly obscured. Soon after this work was completed, extraordinary precautions were taken to preserve from corruption or loss the sacred text thus fixed. The carliest expedient of this kind was the Pada or "word" text, in which all the words of the Samhita text are separated and given in their original form, unaffected by euphonic rules, and in which most com-pounds, as well as some derivatives and inflected forms, are analysed. This text, virtually the earliest commentary on the Rigveda, was followed by other and more complex methods of reciting the text, and by various Indexes, which enumerate the initial words of every hymn, stating the number of stanzas in each hymn, their deities and their metres, for the entire Rigveda. By these means the text of the Rigveda has been handed down for 2,500 years with a fidelity that is unparalleled in any other literature. The Rigveda had 1,017 hymns with a total of about 10,600 stanzas, which give an average of slightly over 10 stanzas to each hymn. If printed continuously like prose in Roman characters, the Samhita text would fill an octavo volume of 600 pages of 33 lines each. It has been calculated that the Rigveda is equal in bulk to the extant poems of Homer. The Rigveda is divided into ten books (mandala, "cycle") and hymns (sukta). This division is a historical one, which shows how the collection came into being. Of the ten books, six (ii-vii) are homogeneous in character, the hymns in each of them having been composed by poets of the same family. The method of arrangement in these "family books" is uniform, each of them being similarly divided into groups addressed to different gods. On the other hand, books i, viii and x were not each composed by a distinct family of seers, while the unity of the groups of which they consist depends on their being the work of different individual seers.
About The Book
This selection from the Rigveda oldest of the four Vedas has been meticulously translated by the author giving special attention to the metre of the verse. He has been able to bring out the essence of the verses in poetic form unlike many previous translations which have only managed to give us a simple rendition of the same in prose. With introductions to each group of verses and explanations as to the Deity that has been invoked he has succeeded to clarify any kind of misconceptions that may trouble the reader as to the context of each group of hymns. Whn we read through the verses we are able to comprehend the depth of thought behind the composition of these ritual verses. Who were the main deities? What was their relevance in the larger picture? What were the origins of the Deities mentioned? To what extent did these verses include other civilizations? These and many more questions are answered by this small volume.
Vedas (1192)
Upanishads (501)
Puranas (632)
Ramayana (747)
Mahabharata (363)
Dharmasastras (167)
Goddess (502)
Bhakti (243)
Saints (1510)
Gods (1294)
Shiva (377)
Journal (184)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (365)
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