Vedas for Beginners

The oldest scriptures of India, and the most important, are the Vedas. Orthodox Hindus, who include all schools of Indian thought past and present, recognize in them the origin of their faith and its highest written authority. For the vast majority of modern Hindus, therefore, amongst all their sacred writings, the Vedas supreme.

The term Vedas not only names a large body of texts composed in times indefinitely remote, and handed down by generation after generation to our own day, but in another sense stands for nothing less than Divine Truth itself. Regarded in this second aspect, the Vedas are infinite and eternal. They are that perfect knowledge which is God.

The Vedas are said to be apauruseya, which means divine in origin. In fact, in the words of Sayanàcàrya, the learned commentator on the Vedas, Yo vedebhvah adhilam jagat nirmame – God created the whole universe out of the knowledge of the Vedas. That is to say, Vedic knowledge existed even before the creation of mankind. The authority of the Vedas does not depend upon anything external. They themselves are authority, being the knowledge of God.

This book supplies the straightforward answers to questions that are not resolved by lofty Vedic textbooks or the complex commentaries. It condenses the information from a vide variety of sources and captures the basic tenets of the Vedic knowledge for the readers who are beginning their journey on the path of Indian spirituality and wisdom.