The Vedas and the Vedic age
Poet-priests compose the hymns of the Rigveda and the other Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, passed down orally for millennia.
- The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India — Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), Oxford University Press (2014)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Tradition of Vedic chanting (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity) — UNESCO (2008)
The Rigveda, a collection of 1,028 hymns in ten books, is the oldest Hindu text and one of the oldest religious texts still in use anywhere. Most scholars date its composition to roughly 1500–1200 BCE, in the land of the “seven rivers”, the Punjab. It was followed by three more Vedas, the Sama, Yajur and Atharva, and by long prose texts explaining the rituals.
- The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India — Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), Oxford University Press (2014)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The hymns praise gods such as Indra, the thunder-wielding warrior, Agni, the fire, and Soma, a sacred drink, and accompany fire sacrifices (yajna) performed by priests for prosperity, cattle, sons and victory. Late hymns turn philosophical, asking how creation began. One, the Purusha Sukta, describes society’s four classes emerging from the body of a cosmic man, the earliest mention of the four varnas.
- The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India — Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), Oxford University Press (2014)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
For well over two thousand years the Vedas were transmitted by memory, using elaborate techniques of recitation that preserved every syllable and accent. UNESCO recognises Vedic chanting as part of the intangible heritage of humanity. Traditionally the right to learn them was restricted to upper-caste males, a restriction many modern Hindus have rejected.
- Tradition of Vedic chanting (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity) — UNESCO (2008)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The Vedas are eternal and not composed by any human (apaurusheya). Ancient seers (rishis) "heard" them in meditation and handed them down unchanged.
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- A Survey of Hinduism (3rd edition) — Klaus K. Klostermaier, State University of New York Press (2007)
Vedic Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family, close to old Iranian. Speakers of its ancestor language migrated into the north-west of the subcontinent in the second millennium BCE and mixed with existing populations; ancient DNA studies published in 2019 support an inflow of steppe-related ancestry at about that time. This was a gradual migration, not the violent "Aryan invasion" of older colonial-era theories.
- The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia — Vagheesh M. Narasimhan et al., Science 365 (6457) (2019)
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From — Tony Joseph, Juggernaut (2018)
- The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India — Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), Oxford University Press (2014)
Some Indian writers, often linked to Hindu nationalism, argue that the Vedic people were indigenous, that the Vedas are much older, and that Indo-European languages spread out of India. Most specialists reject this, but it remains popular.
- The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate — Edwin Bryant, Oxford University Press (2001)
Why it matters today
The Vedas are Hinduism's highest scriptural authority, still chanted at weddings, funerals and temple rites, and the fire ritual at the heart of a Hindu wedding goes back to them. Where the Vedic people came from is one of the most politically charged questions in Indian history.