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MYPHOLOGY

Samhits, brahmans and sutras

1) Samchita is the part of the vestibule that contains collections of hymns, prayers and sacrificial formulas of the Vedic religion, located in the families of singers to whom they are attributed and belonging to different times.

2) The Brahmans, as the renowned researcher Albrecht Weber says in The History of Indian Literature, have a purpose "to give sacrificial hymns and forms together with the presentation of sacrificial rites. These sections of the Indian Vedas contain the oldest statutes of the rites of the Vedic religion, the oldest explanations of the words of this ritual, the oldest of the stories preserved in the tradition, and the oldest philosophical speculations. All these parts of the Vedas," continues Albrecht Weber, "belong to the times of transition from Vedic customs and concepts to the Brahmanist way of thinking and life. They are the mediating degrees of this transition, and some of them are closer to the beginning of it, others to the end.

Indra, one of the main gods of the Indian Vedas
Indra, one of the main gods of the Indian Vedas

3) Sutras are the part of the Vedas where additions and explanations to the brahmans containing the dogma are set out; their purpose is to give a coherent overview of the mass of dogmatic details in the brahmans in order to make it easier to remember all this. They are particularly concerned with the ritual of Indian religious sacrifices, other liturgical rites and the rules to be observed in birthdays, weddings and other important occasions. In addition, the Sutras attempt to set forth Indian laws and the rules of versification.

Almost all those scientists and philosophical treatises of ancient India, which are called Papanishads (sessions, lectures), have a connection with the content of the Brahman; they belong to different times, some of them - quite early, others - very late; there are 225 of them. The Upanishads can be called philosophical commentaries to the Brahmans.

Rigveda

Vedas themselves are collections of works belonging to different times. The oldest part of the Vedas is undoubtedly a song by the Rigveda; it contains more than 1,000 hymns. Some of them belonged to the time when the ancestors of the Indians lived only in the Indies and its tributaries, and the Vedic religion, which was still in a childishly naive form, was reduced to a primitive worship of the forces of nature.

Rigveda's manuscript from the beginning of the 19th century
Rigveda's manuscript from the beginning of the 19th century

The distribution of the hymns of the Vedas according to chronological order is a work not quite completed by scientists. The Indian Vedas were collected after the conquest of the Ganges basin by the arias hardly before the 7th century B.C. Not all Vedic hymns have religious content; some of them belong to secular poetry, even in the area of jokes.

Samaweda

The Samaweda Hymn Collection is an anthology of Rigveda's anthems. It contains the poems to be sung during the sacrifice of the Soma. Here, as well as in the hymns of Yajurveda, it is in vain to search for links between the parts of the hymns. Each verse should be regarded as a special play, which receives its true meaning only through its connection with the course of the rite to which it belongs. The religious hymns and their passages are arranged in Samawed in order of worship; the distribution of the hymns was quite important. The excerpts were collected as they had survived the Indian service, and only as needed for the divine service. The question therefore arose as to whether these excerpts of the hymns or the whole hymns of the Rigveda preserved the oldest form of the Indian Vedas. Out of 1,549 verses of Samaveda only 78 were not found in Rigveda. It turned out that the religious verses in Samaved almost always take the form of more ancient verses than in Rigveda.

Yajurveda

Yajurveda differs from Samaweda in that it contains hymns for all the rites of Indian sacrifice and constitutes the common servant of these rites, while Samaweda is limited to the sacrifice of Soma. Yajurveda consists of half of the verses in the Rigveda, the other half of which are sacrificial formulas, passages of hymns that are not found in other Messages, and proclamations to the gods that are not poetic but prosaic.

The God of Varuna

Varuna, one of the main gods of the Vedas. An Indian miniature of the 17th century

Varuna, one of the main gods of the Vedas. An Indian miniature of the 17th century
Varuna, one of the main gods of the Vedas. An Indian miniature of the 17th century

Atharvaveda

Atharvaveda is the newest of the Indian Vedas. This Veda is not made up of incoherent passages, but of whole hymns, and they are arranged by subject matter. In this respect, it is similar to Samhita Rigveda, and can be called an addition to the Rigveda, which contains songs from the time when the "mantra" (calling to the gods) was no longer an expression of the ancient Indians' direct religious feelings, but rather a formula for a magical spell. Therefore, the main content of Atharvaveda is composed of songs that protect from the harmful effects of divine forces, from diseases and harmful animals, curses to enemies, appeals to herbs, doctors' diseases and help in various worldly affairs, conspiracies that protect on the way, giving happiness in the game, and so on. In the hymns of Atharvaveda, which she and Rigveda share with each other, the text is greatly altered by perversions and alterations. The language of the places that belong to Atharwaveda itself is approaching the smoothness of the Indian language of later times; but the grammatical