Comment by pulkitsh1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pulkitsh1234 | Hacker News Reader

Well written, I am on my personal journey to discover what being a Hindu means. I am appalled by the fact that the true knowledge and the diversity of different schools and line of thoughts has been dissolved and sublimated into a crude understanding of what Hinduism means.

I have thought about it a lot, and I think the main reason is that there is no single doctrine / school that everyone agreed upon in the past. I see this is as the pinnacle of free-thinking. The seeming consensus among people who follow Abrahamic religions has provided the functionality to conserve itself in some tangible form.

Whereas the meaning of Hinduism is just lost, because there is no religion single religion as such. Nothing comes close to the deep thought and inspection that philosophers (sages/rishis whatever you want to name them) of the ancient India. All their "work" has been hidden under layers of what people assume is just religious "stuff".

Carl Jung, Nikola Tesla and innumerable people have invested time in discovering their true essence.

The concept of "religion", "spirituality", "god" carry a lot weight, especially in the modern world. I myself (being a Hindu), assumed that all that was present in Vedic texts was just references to god, different kinds of gods, different rituals etc. And as a modern day human, I just assumed that these are just things of the past and now we are evolved enough to ignore these concepts and move towards the future.

And I was proved entirely wrong when I started reading The Upanishads, which are part of the Vedic literature. The concepts are so abstract that different schools/sub-religions spawned just on the basis of different interpretations. Roughly dualistic and non-dualistic interpretations.

I can go on and on about my discovery. In fact I am writing about this here: https://pulkitsharma07.github.io/2020/06/25/source-0/

I am really happy to see this post on HN, hoping this doesn't get flagged.

> And I was proved entirely wrong when I started reading The Upanishads, which are part of the Vedic literature.

Their being classified a part of the "Vedic" literature is not borne out by linguistic analysis, even though tradition claims it to be.

They post-date the actual Vedas themselves by centuries. The language used in most of them does not contain nearly as much irregularity as the Vedic language nor its pitch accent system - it's on its way to being a refined liturgical language, not a common man's language as the Vedic language was.

And the subject matter contained in them reflect that of the elites of a far more settled and stratified society (vs the more nomadic tribal culture of the Vedas). They are no more representative of Hinduism than their contemporary folk traditions, just as St. Augustine is no more representative of Catholicism than folk Catholicism where blessings are sought for mundane topics like health and prosperity.

No doubt, both groups of literature are incredible, but to lump them into one is incorrect, even if that is the tradition.

Can you provide some sources for your information ? From what I have read they are considered to be that part of the Vedas.

Here's an article that gets into the differences between the Vedic hymns and the later material that grew around them (in section 2):

https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/vedol

In particular:

”Over time a body of dependent and scholastic material grew up around the poems, known loosely as 'the Veda'. Perhaps around 1000 BC (all dating in prehistoric India is only approximate), editors gathered the ancient poems together and arranged them, together with some more modern material, into ten books according to rules that were largely artificial"

In terms of subject matter, I would cite the texts themselves. The bulk of the original Vedas (meaning the Samhitas proper), though exquisite in language, poetry and description, are remarkably concrete and earthly compared to the subject matter of the Upanishads, which instead are concerned with esoteric subjects like dualism and non-dualism, and the relationship of that to individual identity and a universal consciousness. The Vedic Samhita's subject matter predominantly concerns propitiation of deified forces of nature to aid with everyday survival concerns, like food, kinship practices, and inter-tribal conflicts.

The Upanishads clearly represent the reflections of an elite of a far more "advanced" stage of society than the Samhitas.

Indeed. Many Upanishads are, in spirit, opposed to the old Vedas, and some are outright critical of the ritualism that forms the core of the Vedas.

No, they are not. Upanishads are the later chapters of the Vedas. There are four vedas and ten principal upanishads.

Hindu philosophy aims to be accessible and useful to everyone. In that, Upanishads offer a way for people who are unable to follow Vedic standards.

An alternative is not opposition. It’s available choice. Upanishads are not against the Vedas. They just form the latter portions of Vedas.

Eg: consider chicken eaters. Veganism is an alternative dietary choice. Veganism existed before it was considered an ‘opposition’ to consuming meat. They are all part of ‘food’ and ‘eating’. Some vegans decided that it’s position against meat eating, but that’s not it’s origin. It’s a choice And a latter interpretation that it’s opposed to meat eating. But it doesn’t mean that veganism emerged due to an opposition to meat eating to compete with it.

> Upanishads are the later chapters of the Vedas.

They are not a single coherent work of literature. They likely have dozens of authors and were composed over the span of over 1500 years. You can only describe them as "chapters" in the sense of "chapters of history", but not like "chapters" of a novel or series.

In that sense they are like the Torah and the New Testament of the Bible, which are also not books in the modern sense.

Right then. But that doesn’t have anything to do with what I said.

And no, they are not ‘like the Torah’ or New Testament.

> But that doesn’t have anything to do with what I said.

My comment was narrowly addressing the use of the term "chapters" as used in literature being applied to the texts under discussion.

I made no comment about the spiritual functional claims you made about Hinduism.

> And no, they are not ‘like the Torah’ or New Testament

Yes they are like the Torah in the New Testament in that they are texts that developed over thousands of years predominantly in the ancient period, and only later were canonized. This is a relatively uncontroversial comparison between the historical development of ancient religious texts.

I made no claim about the similarity of their content, if that's what you are taking issue with.

Again. What is the relevance?

You said:

> Upanishads are the later chapters of the Vedas.

They are not later chapters of the Vedas. They are entirely distinct works of literature.

This is laughably wrong. Upanishads are part of the Vedas in context and as part of a larger contextual work..then expounded separately by several authors...no one knows who or how many people wrote the Vedas.

There is literally no proof either way. Just like no one can prove the authorship of vedas or Upanishads, there is no way to prove that they are ‘entirely distinct works of literature’.

Upanishads are not fungible and are married to specific related Veda. What you say doesn’t even make basic sense.

For example: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is related to Yajur Veda and so it’s distinctly expounding upon Shukla YajurVeda. It makes no sense with Rig or Atharva or Sama Veda. So it is part of Yajur Veda.

The Vedas were orally transmitted as the language of the Brahmins and then written down much much later.

You can’t date or confer authorship on Vedas or Upanishads, but the commentaries and exposition are codified wrt the four vedas and each Upanishads is assigned to one of the four.

There is literally no basis for you to assert that ‘they are distinct works of literature’.

However: Without Vedas, Upanishads are not stand alone works. Vedas, otoh are relevant and understood without the Upanishads.

Are you claiming that ‘linguistic analysis’ by non Indians/Hindus at the university of Texas supersedes knowledge that was orally transmitted for aeons before linguistics as a term was even coined?

Plenty of Indians/Hindus conduct the same sort of linguistic analysis, beginning with a guy called Panini who lived around 800 BC. In any case, the nuance and depth of the arguments in the University of Texas article far supercedes the a priori (and apparently religiously nationalist) statements you are making here.

Historical linguistics is an evidence-based field of study that many Indian scholars also actively participate in, wherein they also analyze non Indian languages.

Where did you find ‘religiously nationalist’ statements?

I don’t understand why this has to become rude and hostile now. I don’t believe I have anything more to say to you.

This argument is circular: it is only Western indology that defines “Vedic” as referring to “the actual Vedas” by which it means only the saṃhitā portion of the texts. The traditional Indian understanding of “Veda” is indeed that it includes both mantra (saṃhitā) and brāhṃaṇa — the latter including āraṇyaka and upaniṣad. Yes it's true that sometimes when (say) “Ṛgveda” is mentioned, in that context it may refer only to the ṛk saṃhitā, etc — but the narrow meaning is only contextual; in general one talks of which brāhmaṇa-s / āraṇyaka-s / upaniṣad-s belong to which Veda, etc.

More generally the Vedāṅgas are also considered part of the Veda, etc. When Pāṇini (whom you allude to in one of the replies here) distinguishes the older language, he uses terms like “chandasi” not "in the Vedas”. Even today when a certain practice or person is called “Vaidika” obviously it doesn't mean a certain time period, belonging to several centuries BCE.

Ultimately, to consider linguistic analysis relevant to the definition of “Vedic” and to say “to lump them into one is incorrect, even if that is the tradition” is simply saying “let's make up a definition of ‘Vedic’ different from the traditional definition, under which the traditional definition can be termed incorrect” — no traditional scholar thinks of “Vedic” as referring to “the Vedic language” as referring to the language of the saṃhitās.

Edit: I have a theory for how this state of affairs came about: Western interest in Sanskrit texts took off in a big way after William Jones's (much-quoted) pronouncement of the relation between Sanskrit and Persian and Greek and Latin. So the interest started with linguists and philologists, who were naturally more interested in the oldest texts / the texts whose language was closest to the rest of the Indo-European family, and that has become the frame by which these texts are still talked about (rather than say the framing used by traditional Vaidika paṇḍita-s). This is why we see someone confidently deciding that linguistic analysis can tell us something about what “Veda” means or should mean, rather than only telling us about the language of a certain subset of texts.

> I am appalled by the fact that the true knowledge and the diversity of different schools and line of thoughts has been dissolved and sublimated into a crude understanding of what Hinduism means.

Well, that's always a given when you look at a culture from outside. It takes time to uncover the details and the diversity.

> Well, that's always a given when you look at a culture from outside. It takes time to uncover the details and the diversity.

In this particular case, everyone is looking from "outside." Contemporary Hindus' own understandings of the religion are largely filtered through the modernist interpretations of reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries. They're somewhat divorced from the classical bardic and collegiate traditions that the various Hindu practices were originally developed through. It's not quite as divorced from the source as things like pagan reconstructionist movements trying to rebuild druidic practices, but it's not entirely an organic and internally driven process of evolution either. Western colonialism and the the disruptive Islamic conflicts that preceded it all have an impact.

The modernist reformers were mostly trying to condense Hinduism into a format that made sense to Abrahamic religions, so a lot of nuance got lost in the overall understanding of it. There are still plenty of local temples and village/caste traditions that are practiced they're not really systematized or written down for people to study and understand and they're usually ignored in discussions of the overarching concepts of what "Hinduism" is for that reason.

> the modernist interpretations of reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries

E.g. Brahmo Samaj, that sort of thing? What other reformers you have in mind?

I'm curious where would you put Aurobindo in this context. He's definitely "modernist", but he stuck to the Vedas quite a lot.

Even people like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda had a lot of Theosophist influences. And much of the English translated works from people like Radhakrishnan were notable for speaking to Western audiences too. Then there is the whole VHP take on things which is a purely modernist (nationalism) prism.

Ramakrishna is surprising to me. He literally grew up in a small village. Are you saying he was influenced later?

It's probably more accurate to ascribe it to his movement than Ramakrishna himself, but everyone would have been influenced by it. The "infrastructure" of philosophical discourse and spreading of ideas had largely atrophied away from neglect before the British even arrived in India. The big centers of learning, like Nalanda or Takshasila, had been burned out long ago.

The traveling orders of priests were greatly diminished and didn't hold the kind of intellectual or cultural sway among people in power that they used to. In Adi Shankaracharya's time they would travel around the country giving lectures and being feted by village heads and kings as they hosted big debates and symposiums. But once the background education system was gone, much of the continued development and education depended on the beneficence of sympathetic Muslim rulers.

Fascinating. That's aligned with a few intuitions I had.

The atmosphere of philosophical debate was definitely alive during the time of Shankara. At what point between then and now did it die out?

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