Indian Hindu Vedas consists of the - Rig veda, Yajur veda, Sama veda and Atharvana veda. ‘Va idam Vedam’ – Veda means to know. What to know? As human beings, we need to know two things. 1. ‘iham’ – how to live when we are in the physical body. This relates to keeping our body and mind strong, spreading peace and love to our neighbors, strengthening the society by producing good children, working for others’ welfare, etc. 2. ‘param’ – how to live after leaving the physical body. This relates to working for spiritual growth so that the soul attains powers to reach higher worlds, getting help from gods, doing good to other souls etc. These two objectives are fulfilled by the knowledge embedded in Vedas. So Vedas are embodiment of knowledge.
‘Vedah apourusheyah’ - Vedas are not created by humans. They are created by Brahman (Supreme Being). Hence t
he origin of Vedas cannot be traced. Since they exist before Kritha yuga, we can easily say that they are known to human beings at least 40,00,000 years from now, and are the most ancient on the earth. In the last 10,000 years, they have been written using human language.
Vedas were revealed by supreme soul in the form of subtle waves to Rishis (seers) when they were in deep penance in search of knowledge. So Vedas were heard by seers and hence they are called ‘sruti’ (heard). Seers were so kind that they wanted to share this knowledge for the benefit of mankind. So they started teaching Vedas in the form of sentences (sound) to their disciples. The disciples started teaching them to their disciples. Thus Vedas had taken the form of sound and the language used was ‘Geervaana’ which is the ancient form of now existing Sanskrit language. Geervaana is called ‘language of gods’. The language form of Vedas is called ‘smrithi’ (remembered).
‘Anantha vai Vedaah’ – Vedas are infinite. The knowledge in Vedas has neither beginning nor ending. It is like a torch illuminating the path of human race from time to time. The entire knowledge in Vedas was codified and divided by Sage Veda Vyasa into 4 types, called Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharvana Veda.
Some unscrupulous foreigners as well as ignorant Indians campaign that the Vedas were written by Aryans, a separate race of people who descended from somewhere into North India and spread that knowledge to remaining parts of India. This idea was totally baseless and was targeted to spread that Vedas were not possessions of Indians. The truth is Aryans were essentially Indians (Hindus) and they were the first race to set the human civilization on the banks of river Saraswathi which was existing during Ramayana times around 25,00,000 years from now. River Saraswathi was mentioned in Vedas more than 50 times whereas river Ganges was mentioned only once. Aryans (Hindus) pioneered the development of science, engineering, metallurgy, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, architecture, medicine, politics etc and they built an excellent civilization out of their Vedic knowledge. This was later called ‘Hindu (Sindhu) Valley civilization’.