From Vedas to Upanishads

As American philosopher-historian Will Durant said, Hindus and Chinese “smile at our provincialism.” The Vedas are the religious texts which form the basis the religion of Hinduism (also known as Sanatan Dharma meaning “Eternal Order” or “Eternal Path”).

The term Veda means “knowledge” and it is a collection of all sorts of things. It’s like a full-circle encyclopedia which contained nearly all of the info Hinduism had to offer during those days(again, this statement is absolutely not true as it is written in almost every book of Hinduism that the Vedas had crores of chapters and many of them got wiped out in the mist of time).

Well there’s a very famous story(truth yet to be detected) that when Max Muller was combining the Vedas in the 1800s, he went across the 4 corners of India to hear them(remember- Vedas are remembered and preserved via oral tradition) only to realize that in every absolutely unrelated city in India, the Pandits sang in the same tone, same wordings as well as the same hand gestures! None of the Pandits would have probably seen each other ever but this story makes me believe strongly in the oral tradition.

Well, so these Vedas, contained the data on various deities- Indra, Kaal, Surya, Yama, Usha, Rudra etc. etc. How to worship them, how to pray to them, how do they affect our lives and the rituals. Along with this, it contained various philosophical discourses on life, reflection, identity crisis, who is God and why is the Big Guy so important. They also make the verses some sort of a musical which makes the sacrifice not just a ritual but a performance.

Now, well these were developed over time as the wandering Indians found and settled into cities. So, it at times sound like a group of men sitting below a huge shady tree on a dark-blue summer night gazing at the twinkling white stars and wondering about their existence. How did they come here? Is there any importance to living? What is death? And as these wanderers settled into cities, the rules, cultures, traditions, morals, principles, ethics, justice, values, relations and constitution developed. Now well, for any settled group of people, these things become pretty important. How important? Look at me and you and your surroundings.

Most of us haven’t even thought of existential questions, questioned existence of God, our beliefs, way of life etc. etc. That’s just what happens in the cities. You flow along with it. It has a very well defined stream which also tells you which milestones to achieve in life and if you are smart enough, you figure out how to do them. But if you move out towards a more natural place, places less filled with human-interventions, places where you appreciate nature for its crudeness, after a wee bit of stress relief, you automatically begin to see these existential questions.

That’s what (hopefully) happened during these times. Many of these settlers now dreamed of a more free space. They were not interested in making a family, securing a position in the society, earning and competing. They wanted to experience the unexperienced.

They questioned each and every thing around them- the deity, the rules, the belief, the relation and hence to reach the answer, they realized that it was definitely not to be found in the cities. Hence, with basic clothes, they left the cities towards the jungles(aranya) to compose the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.

Now, from a distance, the seers could see things more clearly and this clarity gave them a sense of tranquility. Now this tranquility was longed by many frustrated citizens who concluded a similar path for themselves.

This movement got so massive that even the city-religion, authority, social construct and the entire society got restructured to become a more peaceful and calm structure. The extensive and expensive Vedic sacrifices were cut down, freedom among the various castes increased as these movements gained momentum in the form of Jainism and Buddhism.