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Where are the original versions of the Vedas? Are our oldest scriptures lost in the history of time? Some say that they were lost due to the religious war which happened in the earlier days and some say that due to the emergence of other religions they were stolen part by part and were lost completely.

And other thing is that who wrote these scriptures?

I know that they are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti ("what is heard"), distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what is remembered")

I have gotten a few answers like this one.

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  • The 4 Vedas are NOT lost. They were sold by the one who was translating the Vedas from Sanskrit to English. He was employed by Patna University, in Bihar, where copies of these 4 Vedas are still available. –  Oct 18 '14 at 20:19
  • I may be wrong but I had heard that the original manuscripts whatever saved are in Pune. So I googled and found this link which I am sharing here: http://www.bori.ac.in/manuscript_department.html I hope you get the answer to your question –  Mar 21 '15 at 10:44
  • It is true that Vedas were transmitted through memory and hearing, but they were written down during Adi Shankaracharya's time. This version is the "untampered" one and is either with Germany (taken away by Hitler's army), the Britishers or the U.S.A. Most of the "translated" version has lies inserted and many things omitted. – Henry Jun 26 '16 at 21:16
  • Some Brahmanas were lost but Samhita (the core part of Veda) is not lost – Pandya Aug 13 '16 at 05:01

1 Answers1

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If you want to know the origin of the Vedas, they are Shruti, which means "that which is heard" (what Christians would call "revelation"). Hindus believe that from time immemorial, sages known as Dhrishtas (literally "seers") have, during a state of Tapasya (deep meditation), heard sacred verses directly from the gods. In the Dwapara Yuga (the age before the one we're currently living in), these verses were compiled by a sage named Krishna Dwaipayana Veda Vyasa (or Vyasa for short) into a set of four books we call the Vedas. (Technically Vyasa only compiled the first three books - Rig, Yajur, and Sama - while the Atharvana Veda is attributed to the sages Angiras and Atharvan.) As the words of the Vedas are believed to be divine in origin, they are held to be the foremost authority of the Hindu religion. As Rama says in the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana, the Vedas "have the foundation in Truth [and] one should thoroughly surrender to truth."

I should add that each of the four Vedas is divided into four portions: Samhitas, the core part of the Vedas which consist of hymns to various gods; Brahmanas, which provide instructions on the proper conducting of important rituals; Aranyakas, which provide a guide to rituals meant for forest-dwellers and hermits; and Upanishads, which consist of conversations between teachers and students which clarify the philosophical message of the Vedas. In any case, when someone says "I read the Rig Veda" without qualification, they usually mean the Samhita of the Rig Veda, because the Samhita is the core part of the Veda which came directly from the gods.

(Note: the above is excerpted from my answer here.)

As to your assertion that the Sanskrit version of the Vedas has been lost, that is simply not true. Here are the original Sanskrit versions of the Rig Veda Samhita, the Krishna version of the Yajur Veda Samhita, the Shukla Version of the Yajur Veda Samhita, the Sama Veda Samhita, and the Atharvana Veda Samhita. (And if you want to read English translations, see the links in the bottom of my answer here.)

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Keshav Srinivasan
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    This was not the answer which I expected I wanted something like an Egyptian tablet, a real book or scripture which is original from its beginning, not altered not tampered with. Due to these reasons I asked such question, and as from this link it witten that it is "This is an experimental Sanskrit version of the Rig Veda" the first line. – Questioner Aug 07 '14 at 09:28
  • @Questioner You're right, the Rig Veda link I provided was an experimental rendering, so I replaced it with a better link. – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 07 '14 at 15:24
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    @Questioner As far as stone tablets and the like dating to the beginning of the composition of the Vedas, there's no such thing, because the Vedas are older than the advent of writing, and for most of their history they were passed down by oral tradition, not in manuscript form. The oral tradition process, by the way, was extremely rigorous, and arduous steps were taken to ensure that not a single syllable would be altered. – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 07 '14 at 15:36
  • @Questioner, refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_chant – Vineet Menon Aug 07 '14 at 15:47
  • @Questioner Sorry, my attempt to change the Rig Veda link made the link non-working, but I fixed it now. – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 08 '14 at 07:49
  • Its okie thank you all for the attempt to make an answer I found out that the Bhandarkar_Oriental_Institute in Pune has some of the manuscipts collected which is of the original form. – Questioner Aug 08 '14 at 08:36
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    @Questioner It's completely incorrect to say that the manuscripts at Pune constitute the "original" Vedas. The Vedas existed for thousands of years before those manuscripts. – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 08 '14 at 15:20
  • I never said that the manuscripts are veda's did I? I just told some of the original ones are found and stored in that institute. – Questioner Aug 09 '14 at 06:17
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    @Questioner And I'm telling you that it's wrong to call them "original". – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 09 '14 at 06:20
  • @KeshavSrinivasan my friend I am not here to argue but please check this link as it is the originals – Questioner Aug 09 '14 at 06:24
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    @Questioner I am well-acquainted with the manuscripts at Pune. It is completely incorrect to say that these are original. There is no such thing as "an original manuscript of the Vedas", because the Vedas did not originate in manuscript form. Any manuscripts that exist are just copies of texts that existed long before then in oral form, so there's no sense in which any manuscript can be called original. – Keshav Srinivasan Aug 09 '14 at 10:50
  • @KeshavSrinivasan: +1, but minor nitpick in an otherwise excellent answer: "heard sacred verses directly from the gods" shouldn't have "from the gods" — by tradition the shruti is apauruṣeya: eternal and uncreated by anyone not even god(s). – ShreevatsaR May 03 '15 at 16:56
  • @ShreevatsaR Well, this is a difference between the different Astika schools. The followers of Purva Mimamsa believed that apaurusheyatva meant that the Vedas were absolutely authorless, i.e. not even divinely authored. But the more theistic schools generally say that apaurusheya just means that it has no human authors. For instance, in Yamunacharya's Agama Pramanya he presents an argument that the Pancharatra texts are just as authoritative as the Vedas, because both are authored by the same being (namely Sriman Narayana). Jayanta Bhatta makes a similar argument in his play Agama Dambara. – Keshav Srinivasan May 04 '15 at 04:29
  • @ShreevatsaR By the way, you might be interested in my question here about a somewhat related point in Yamunacharya's Agama Pramanya: http://hinduism.stackexchange.com/q/6912/36 It deals with the Nyaya school. – Keshav Srinivasan May 05 '15 at 14:16
  • keshav doesn't understand the question itself. Agreeing to the fact that Vedas exist since time immemorial. What the question posed is " Where are the oldest written evidence of vedas kept in their original form. Not the copies or translation." –  Feb 11 '16 at 08:31
  • @Questioner, Vedas were oral when first composed, so no original in that sense, I guess. – Vineet Menon Feb 11 '16 at 10:10
  • @khushal What I'm saying is that there are no originals, only copies. – Keshav Srinivasan Feb 11 '16 at 12:38
  • It is true that Vedas were transmitted through memory and hearing, but they were written down during Adi Shankaracharya's time. This version is the "untampered" one and is either with Germany (taken away by Hitler's army), the Britishers or the U.S.A. Most of the "translated" version has lies inserted and many things omitted. – Henry Jun 26 '16 at 21:16
  • @Henry I've read that Niels Bohr used to read Vedas and appreciated them drawing many parallels in Quantum Mechanics and Vedas. Can you tell which version available on the internet/market is the purest? – MathGod Nov 04 '16 at 10:48
  • @KeshavSrinivasan While it is true that Vedas were transmitted orally, do you know whether the tradition still continues? If so, can those people help compose the Vedas in Sanskrit which may be purer than the translations available today? – MathGod Nov 04 '16 at 10:50