| CauselessMercy.com "The Sanskrit word veda means knowledge, or to know, so in the broadest sense Vedas can signify any source of factual practical knowledge. More specifically, veda means Absolute Truth, or knowledge that is eternally true in all places, for all beings and in any condition of life. As a literary work, the Vedas are the sacred scriptures of the Vedic civilization, the oldest living spiritual tradition in the world Also included within the Vedic literature are the Sūtras (books of concise philosophical statements), the Vedāṅgas (auxiliary sciences connected with Vedic study), and the Upavedas (sciences not directly related to Vedic study). The Sūtras include the Śrauta-sūtra, the Gṛha-sūtra, the Kalpa-sūtra, the Dharma-sūtra, the Śulva-sūtra, and most important, the Vedānta-sūtra. The six Vedāṅgas are Śikṣa (phonetics), Chandas (meter), Vyākāraṇa (grammar), Nirukta (etymology), Jyotiśa (astronomy), and Kalpa (ritual). Among the Upavedas are Āyur-veda (holistic medicine), Gāṇḍharva-veda (music and dance), Dhanur-veda (warfare), and Sthāpatya-veda (architecture). The complete Vedic literature is thus tens of thousands of volumes—a huge library of transcendental literature, full of eternal Absolute Truth, written in very sophisticated Sanskrit poetry, completely consistent in style and content. A compendium far too vast and stylistically consistent to be written by any ordinary human being, they were compiled by the sage Vyāsadeva who is himself an empowered ... |
