Vedic Religion

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Ashish Chandra wrote:

> The import of what I am saying is that there *must* definitely have been a
> process that a person had undergone before he became fit to *receive* the
> mantra.

Once again I repeat, there is no "fitness" involved.  Certain people saw
the mantras, thats all our tradition says.  We can speculate as much as we
want but to what end?

> I am not saying that the Mantras were the conclusion of a research
> but that the state that enabled one to *see* the Mantras was the result of
> that research/experimentation.

Again this is just speculation.  We can only guess whether it was some
kind of yogic practice, the hallucigenic effects of the Soma plant as some
have suggested, or something else entirely.  The important thing is the
mantras are there.  Who said them and why is not very relevant to the
matter at hand.  (And btw. when I talk of mantras I refer to the entire
Vedic corpus.  The idea that "The Vedas" refers to just the Samhita
portion and that the Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads are later
additions to "The Vedas" is a Western notion no astika tradition
recognizes.)

> So the statement that Rishis just somehow saw
> the Mantras does not hold out. Otherwise, its quite possible that many of
> the current Siddh Purushas as well as realized souls should have been able
> to *see* the Mantras.
>

In fact the followers of Dayanand and other groups on the lunatic
fringe make exactly this argument to make an end run around tradition.

Well. one statement made in the shastras is that the entire Vedas are
revealed at the beginning of the satyayuga.  So that would invalidate the
claims of any wouldbe modern-day Rshi.

> As far as the statement "everything is made of air, fire, water, earth and
> ether" is concerned, where has this fact not held out ?
>

Umm, you're not serious are you?  How about salt?  That's made up of
sodium and chlorine.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>