Veda14- What is important - sound or meaning?

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I always had lot of interest in the Vedas. But my focus has always been on the Upanishad part that deals with philosophic issues covered by the Vedas. Being a person whose main access to Vedas is through printed books or electronic media, I did not have much need to remember things. My computer could do that job for me 😉

 

But if you go back in time and see how things were in those days, they were used to only oral tradition. Everything was memorized. It is the same state even today for many traditional Indians who would rather depend on their memory than on any printed book or computer. Even to this day, the Vedas are traditionally taught in oral way – from the teacher to the student!

 

Once I happened to visit a rich person’s house in India. I was asked to wait outside for some time since some teacher had come to teach the Vedas to this rich man. This rich man could have learnt it by reading books which are widely available these days. But he preferred the time-tested way namely the oral tradition.

 

When the instruction finally came to an end, I had a casual chat with the teacher who had come to teach. I asked him what exactly he was teaching – just the way to chant the mantras or also their meaning? The teacher was a bit puzzled. He said that he himself knows nothing about the meaning of the Vedas, since according to him, the meaning is not at all important. What is important is how you chant the mantras!

 

That is the stand taken by most traditional Vedic scholars in India today. They spend decades just to rote learn the entire Vedas without caring to know the meaning of whatever they chant.

 

Generally, there are two schools of thought. One school believes that it is the sound produced when the Vedic mantras are chanted, is what brings about the results. They say that the produced sound has magical effect. The other school totally looks down on the chanting process and gives more importance to meaning of the mantras. They associate several symbolic meanings to the mantras and tell an altogether different story. The former are in majority.

 

But if you look back in time, both the way the mantras are chanted and their meaning were given equal importance. Meaning is important not just as an aide to memorizing but also to lay down the procedure for various rituals in which these mantras are used.

 

Accordingly, separate allied disciplines were developed over a period of time to address both these needs.

 

There are texts called ‘Shiksha’ that deal primarily with alphabets, the pronunciation rules, the formation of words, rules to combine various words into a single compound word, and metrical rules to compose a verse and so on. There are several ancient sages who worked on these topics and composed descriptive texts named after them.

 

Then we have texts dealing with grammar or the so called VyaakaraNa. There were many books dealing with this subject, but the one composed by Panini is the most well known and the most ancient that is available today.

 

There were also some kind of glossary of terms or NighanTu compiled by various sages. Among them, the one compiled by Yaska is the most ancient.

 

To top all these allied texts, there were elaborate commentaries or BhaShya on the Vedas, to explain their meaning in detail. The commentary by Yaska may be the oldest one. There were many. But the commentary by Sayanacarya, a few centuries ago, is the most popular and elaborate.

 

All these point to the importance given to understanding the meaning of the Vedic texts in addition to chanting them.

 

It is not all about chanting the texts and understanding their meaning in a standalone fashion. They definitely have an application. Where these Vedic mantras are used, and how, and so on are described in separate texts called Kalpa Sutras. These Kalpa Sutras are the bridge between the Mantras and the ritual steps described in the ritual parts of the Vedas.

 

So, it is naive to say that only the recitation is important and not the meaning. Both have their respective places as we discuss later on, when we take up an elaborate tour of a fire ritual.

 

Thousands of years of passage of time and the current world view and limitations of current generation of people have prevented one from focusing on both of them. On the other hand, people with narrow views have totally given a go by to the ritualistic nature of the Vedas and have tried to interpret them as symbolic processes which have mystic connotation. This view does not appear to be the right one as we go deeper into the Veda.

 

Now the most puzzling question is – what is the real purpose of all these chanting, performance of rituals, and the secrecy associated with them? We will discuss that in the next episode.

 

 

A series discussing the most ancient of the Indian scriptures, nay the world scriptures namely the Vedas. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2021