Rig Veda

Context

Linguistic evidence suggests that the earliest books of the Rig Veda were composed around 1700 BCE, when the Aryans, as the people who composed the Vedas called themselves, were in the part of India now known as the Punjab, in the north. Books 1 and 10 were composed when the Aryans had moved farther east, around 1200 BCE, and were making the transition from a pastoral to an agricultural lifestyle, though they still had deep connections with cattle and horses, which figure predominantly in the hymns.

The Rig Veda is generally unconcerned with what happens after death, as the rituals it contains are used to gain wealth and power on earth. Vegetarianism had not yet become a part of Indian religion, and the rituals described in the Rig Veda call for the sacrifice of animals. The most elaborate was the horse sacrifice, used to sanctify a king’s dominion.

The world of the early Rig Veda predated the great empires of India. Instead of kings, loosely federated clans or tribes held political power. But by the time the first and tenth books were written, the Aryans had become more settled, and their chiefs began to resemble kings. The later portions of the Rig Veda describe a hierarchical class system with Brahmin priests on top, followed by kings and warriors, then merchants and craftsmen, and finally slaves. The top two classes were in a relationship that was both mutually antagonistic and mutually beneficial. Kings needed Brahmins to perform the rituals that legitimized their power in the eyes of the people, while Brahmins needed kings to protect them and support them financially. But the struggle between spiritual authority and worldly power often put kings and Brahmins at odds with each other.

The language of the Rig Veda is closely related to Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Hittite, English, and the other ancient and modern languages that make up the Indo-European family. The text’s mythology, in turn, bears a close resemblance to myths of the ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse civilizations. For example, Indra, who is both the thunderbolt-wielding storm deity and the king of the gods, is a Vedic counterpart to the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter, and the Norse Thor. Thus, there are elements in the Rig Veda that reflect a culture borrowed from and shared by peoples living thousands of miles apart.