[Advaita-l] Scholarly Article on Why Vedas are Valid

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> May I ask how many gods that are being worshipped today have their basis in
> the vedas? Indra, Agni, Varuna are some of the major Gods of the vedas but
> how many temples of Indra, Agni, Varuna do we see today? There are other

indra, agni and varuNa are not supposed to be worshipped in temples anyway.
However, every time somebody gets married in front of a fire, using the veda
mantra-s, every time a child is named using a vaidika ritual, every time a
cremation is done, the major and minor gods of the veda are worshipped. 
 
> gods (I will not name them for obvious reasons) who are worshipped widely
> today, but do not find mention (or find a merely passing mention) in the
> vedas.
> 
> I am NOT suggesting that we should stop the worship of any God. I am merely
> saying that even the tradition Indian ritualistic people have changed a lot
> between the vedic age and the present age.
> 

That may be so, but on the flip side, do consider that even after Alexander and
his army came all the way into north-west India, no one, either on the Greek side
or on the Indian side, thought of the gods of the Greeks as being essentially the
same as the deva-s of the veda. For the Indians, the Greeks were yavaNa-s and
they were alien avaidika people, while for the Greeks, the Indians were distinctly
alien too. The world had to wait for about 2000 years after Alexander, for the
idea to emerge that the ancient Greeks had a lot in common with the vaidika
heritage of India. 

The point I'm making is that if ritualistic Indians have changed a lot from the age
of large rAjasUya-s and aSvamedha-s, that is something that has been intrinsic to
the religious and ritual reality of the said people, not something that was imposed
on them extrinsically.
 
Vidyasankar