What exactly are the Vedas?

Vedabumi, the land of knowledge—that is one of the names of India, and for a very good reason. If we turn the hidden pages of history, long before the Islamic invasions and European colonization, India has been one of the very few civilizations which has a very advanced education system of that times. I am not saying this; if we turn back the pages of history before 1080—that is before Mughal invasions and the European colonization began—travelers from Europe, Persia to China used to travel to India to obtain the knowledge as part of this Vedic culture. If you read the books written by Megasthenes, Al-Biruni, or Hiuen Tsang, you will get to know how advanced the Indian education system at that times was. The knowledge of ancient India is one of the most comprehensive and complex education systems in the world.

In this short piece, we try to compile how the ancient Indian education system looked like. The heritage of the ancient Indian education and value system as we know today has been largely preserved by the inscriptions on the temples, manuscripts, and verbally transmitted from a teacher to a student. These are the three main sources from which we have been preserving the Vedic education system till today. Now let’s see what they are. For ease of understanding, we have put it this way: there are six broad categories of Indian scriptures which hold the entire knowledge system. They are Shruti, Smriti, Puranam, Itihasa, Agamas, and Siddhantam, and they cover a diverse set of fields of education like mathematics, physics, biology, philosophy, astronomy, health sciences, linguistics, and many other branches of science and technology besides the theological concepts.

Starting with the first one, Shruti. Shruti is well known as the Vedas, and there are four of them: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. Rig means praise, a form of expressing the gratitude; it explains about the various hymns praising the elements of nature and cosmos. The second one is Yajurveda; Yajur means worship, and it explains about different procedures of worship of the nature and cosmos. The third one is Samaveda; Sama means song, and it gives a music-driven canonical format to the other Vedas for ease of recitation. The fourth one is Atharvaveda, which means stable mind; it sets the rules for a steady state daily life activities that need to be observed in a Vedic culture. All these four Vedas are not just like any other four ordinary books; you will not understand a word of it unless you are blessed with a guru who can explain to you what each of these mean, and they are highly interconnected with each other.

Further down, if we look into any of these four Vedas, it has four fundamental blocks—Aranyaka, Brahmana, Samhita, and Upanishad—supported by six external blocks: Shiksha, Vyakaran, Chandus, Nirukta, Jyotisha, and Kalpa. We’ll keep it very simple, not going into further details. The four internal blocks of Aranyaka, Brahmana, Samhita, and Upanishads describe the theosophical, philosophical, and physiological anatomy of the cosmos and the nature and the fundamentals of human existence. In simple words, it describes Brahman, which means the ultimate and the supreme power of the existence. The six external blocks—Shiksha, Vyakaran, Chandus, Nirukta, Jyotisha, and Kalpa—are called as Vedangas. These complement the knowledge framework of Vedas with different and intricate specializations each. As you see here, Shiksha is the study of phonetics, Vyakaran is the study of grammar, Chandus is the study of linguistic rhythm and prosody, Nirukta is the study of etymology, Jyotisha is the study of astronomy, and Kalpa is the study of rituals. All these are called as Vedangas, and that’s how the four Vedas are supported by the six Vedangas.

And that is not all. Each of the four Vedas have four Upavedas as an offspring: Ayurveda, the study of life sciences, ascribing to Rigveda; Gandharvaveda, the study of music, art, and dance, ascribing to Samaveda; Dhanurveda, the study of archery and warfare, ascribing to Yajurveda; and Arthashastra, the study of business administration and political sciences, ascribing to Atharvaveda. Now this is the complete picture of what we call today in simple words as Vedas, and one of our prime objectives of this channel, Project Shivoham, is to bring forward this entire knowledge system in a simple format that everybody can understand. We already did a couple of documentaries on Dhanurvedam, Ayurveda, and a lot more, and you can find them on our channel.

The next one is Smriti. Smriti is authored by the sages and saints who mastered Shruti, which is the Vedas, and brought in their experiences and revelations. It is much like a thesis that the sages wrote on different branches of studies like theology, philosophy, science, etc. It completely subserves or ascribes to Shruti, which is the final authority, and there are 18 such Smritis written by different rishis, such as Atri, Vishnu, Harita, Yajnavalkya, Usana, Angiras, Yama, Apastamba, Samavarta, Katyayana, Brihaspati, Parasara, Vyasa, Sanatkumara, Janaka, Daksha, Satatapa, and Vasistha.

The next one is Puranam. In very simple words, Puranam is nothing but a historical document. Often Puranam is mistaken as a mythology, but the fact of the matter is it’s a historical document that has a 10-dimensional feature. In them, the first one is Sarga, the history of creation of the cosmos; second is Visarga, the history of creation of the worlds; third is Vritti, the history of evolution of life; fourth is Raksha, the history of sustenance of life; fifth is Manvantara, the history of the time scale and how the time used to be measured in the past; sixth is Vamsa, and seventh is Vamsanucharita, both explaining about the history of the lineage and the history of the dynasties that ruled Bharat since times immemorial; eighth is Samstha, the history of the catastrophes and all the natural calamities that have occurred in the past; ninth is Hetu, the history of the prime causes of those catastrophes; and the last one is Apasraya, the history of the supreme being or the different incarnations of God. There are 18 such Puranas, all written by just one rishi, Sri Vyasa, which include Markandeya Purana, Matsya Purana, Bhagavata, Bhavishya, Brahmanda, Brahma, Brahma Vaivarta, Markandeya, Vamana, Varaha, Vayu, Agni, Narada, Padma, Garuda, Linga, Kuruma, and Skanda. The amount of knowledge in these Puranas is just incredible. For instance, Agni Puranam explains about different varieties of martial arts; we did a short documentary on Dhanurvedam extracting details from Agni Puranam and Dhanurveda Samhita that you can check out on our channel.

The next one in line is Itihasa. The word itself spells out “iti-ha-asa,” which means “this is how it happened.” Of all the scriptures, these are the ones which shaped up the ethos of India as we know today, and there are only two Itihasas: Sri Ramayanam and Mahabharata. These two scriptures are of the highest order, which defined, directed, and drove the human values in India since thousands of years, and Bhagavad Gita, which is the epitome of all the sacred scriptures, is an integral part of the grand epic of Mahabharata.

The next one is Agamas. Agamas are treaties on theology and epistemology, and also describe the architectural principles of temple construction. Basically, they are the rule books of how a temple needs to be constructed and the rituals in the temple need to be organized. All the magnificent grandeur of the Indian temples and the exquisite carvings that we have on them trace their source code to the Agamas. For instance, Shilpa Shastra, the branch of knowledge which deals with sculpting, is from Agamas, and there are 77 Shakti Agamas, 28 Shiva Agamas, and 108 Vishnu Agamas—so wide and so deep.

The last one we have is Siddhantam. Siddhantam means principles—a set of principles in different fields of science and technology. This is the most interesting part of the scriptures. For instance, in astronomy itself, we have 18 Siddhantas which talk about different details about planetary motions, geometrical principles, trigonometry, calculus, and a lot more. In this category, we have a huge set of scriptures that are in the fields of science and technology, to name a few: Sushruta Samhita by Rishi Sushruta on surgery and medicine, Aryabhatiya by Aryabhata on astrophysics and astronomy, Arthashastra by Chanakya on commerce and business administration, Pancha Siddhantika by Varahamihira on treaties of astronomy, and Rasendra Mangalam by Nagarjuna on the science of alchemy, and the list goes on and on.

That is a very brief history about the Vedas and the other scriptures of ancient Indian education system. For ease of understanding, we tried to condense a lot, but it is so wide, deep, and complex all at the same time. The backbone for this entire education system is Samskritham, and if we don’t have the competence of Samskritham, all this knowledge system is good for nothing. Let me give you one example, and you will understand it. Here is a slokam from Aryabhatiya written by Aryabhata—yes, the same man whom we celebrate because he invented zero. In this slokam, he gave two scenarios: the first scenario is two bodies moving in opposite directions, and the second scenario is two bodies moving in the same direction. He says that the time elapsed for A and B to pass through or otherwise is equal to the distance divided by the sum of their speeds, and in the other scenario, it is the distance divided by the difference of the speeds. In simple words, he gave the equation of speed equal to distance divided by time. This equation of speed equals distance divided by time is the foundation for kinematics, a branch of physics which is the heart and soul of everything that moves in this world. This equation is the foundation in the engineering of whether a car or a space shuttle.

This equation is a revolutionary discovery, but if we don’t know how to read Sanskrit, all this is good for nothing. According to documented history, Galileo Galilei in the year 1638 published a book called Two New Sciences, in which he first gave the formula of speed equals distance by time. Now, don’t start judging Galileo; all his work is original, and if you read his book, you will get to know he did not get inspired from Aryabhata. But the fact of the matter is something that was discovered by Aryabhata in 510 CE had to be rediscovered by Galileo in the year 1638. In these thousand years, the equation for speed equaling distance divided by time, which was written in Sanskrit, remained locked up in Aryabhatiya. Imagine what could have been the impact if this was known earlier to the whole world. All we know about Aryabhata is that he invented zero, but he has left us a wealth of information. Well, how many such equations and other scientific concepts are hidden in the Indian scriptures which are written in Sanskrit, waiting to be decoded?

I am not saying that all the great things in this world were invented or discovered by Indians, but all the great things that were done by Indians are not known to the world, and that’s why we started Project Shivoham to bring forward all these kinds of stories. By uncovering these lost layers of our heritage, we hope to inspire a renewed appreciation for an intellectual tradition that shaped human progress long before modern borders were drawn, reminding us that knowledge truly belongs to humanity as a whole. And as always, thanks for watching.