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As from a fire kindled with wet faggot diverse kinds of smoke issue, even so, my dear, the Rg-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda, Atharvahgirasa, history, mythology, arts, Upanishads, verses, aphorisms, elucidations and explanations are (like) the breath of this infinite Reality. They are like the breath of this (Supreme Self).[brihadaranyaka upanishad 2.4.10]

So as the verse says, "the breath of this infinite Reality" means all four vedas, upanishad, history, mythology, are from the breath of God.
They must have come after the God.

Eternal : without beginning or end

So the question comes if the Vedas have beginning they be must have an end; so how can the Vedas be eternal.

I think this supports Nyaya and Samkhya's interpretation, of non eternal vedas.

Rickross
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Dark Knight
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  • https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/q/43961/11726 - Vedic sentences are not eternal, that would be absurd because they have perspective bias: they mention historical events, locations only in India, talking about Indian things, conversations between two people, etc. – Ikshvaku Mar 24 '21 at 18:41
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    At the end of a kalpa they are withdrawn into God as is everything, and at the start of the next kalpa they are brought forth again. They are in an unmanifested state when withdrawn into God - Brahman - and manifested again with the next kalpa. See Brahma Sutras 1.3.28-30. and Gita 8.17-18. – Swami Vishwananda Mar 25 '21 at 05:10
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    Sir, Please see jaimini sutra bhasya. There is a long discussion on why vedas are authorless and eternal refuting various arguments of nyaya and samkhya philosophies. – GIRIBLR Mar 25 '21 at 11:37
  • @GIRIBLR sir can you quoted verse. From it. BTW it is not about a school of thought but it is about the controdiction between eternality of vedas and upanishades verse – Dark Knight Mar 25 '21 at 16:02

1 Answers1

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Is the eternality of the Vedas controdict brihadaranyaka upanishad 2.4.10?

It's contradicted by many things:

  1. Mention of historical events, like the battle of ten kings. The Vedas are temporal, meaning they were written in an ancient setting before modern technology, so they mention very "primitive" things like making fire with sticks, chariots, etc. So this shows their temporality.

  2. Conversations between people. "Shvetaketu said this", "Yajnavalkya said that", etc. Since you have people authoring statements in conversations, the Vedic statements are not authorless.

  3. Mention of only Indian geography (rivers like Yamuna, Ganga, Saraswati, etc), and desires of Rishis from their perspective. Vedas are conveyed from the perspective of the Rishis, and they talk about their desires, fantasies with women, struggles, spiritual aspirations, their location, etc. You would expect an eternal text to not be so localized to north Indian geography.

  4. The Rishis themselves say that they have composed the mantras.

Then what is the validity of the Vedas? The Vedas are valid because they were authored by the omniscient Brahman through the medium of the Rishis based on their spiritual experiences. This is admitted by the Rishis themselves in the Vedas:

He (Brahman) chooses the makers of mantras.

Note that this is not my personal interpretation. Other astika schools like Gautama's nyaya, Yaska's nirukta, etc. believe that the Vedas were authored by Brahman or rishis. Vedanta is the most popular and dominant astika school of Hinduism today, and it believes in eternality of Vedic sentences. That is why people automatically think that all Hindus believe the Vedas are unauthored, because Hinduism = Vedanta.

Ikshvaku
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – TheLittleNaruto Mar 25 '21 at 06:06
  • Vedas as accepted by vedantic religion are authorless since god have no father and mother but still he is called devaki nanda' kausalya thanaya and all similarly the sheets who intuitively gets this mantra in their deep meditation are called mantra drshta – Prasanna R Mar 25 '21 at 08:55
  • Even brahman is not author vedas – Prasanna R Mar 25 '21 at 08:56
  • @PrasannaR so vedas are authored by whom. – Dark Knight Mar 25 '21 at 16:04
  • This premise of Authorless Vedas not even by God himself is difficult to swallow for outsiders. This is the only premise that all 3 vedantic school agree, advaita, dvaita and visistaadvaita.. Its like putting an age to God or otherwise limit to God.. if one puts age of God. if God was created than he is no more God right.. All the outsiders even in indian nyaya school or other school wont accept this..@DarkKnight – Prasanna R Mar 26 '21 at 08:03
  • According to the above interperatation it was created brahman.. that is why i opposed because when none of the vedantic school accept the above why this answer say different.. one had to cautious to believe statements given as answer that would take one into wrong path easliy – Prasanna R Mar 26 '21 at 08:06
  • @PrasannaR "when none of the vedantic school" - vedanta may not believe it, but the other astika schools like nyaya, vaisheshika, nairuktas, etc. believe that the vedas were authored by brahman or rishis. "According to the above interperatation it was created brahman" - this is not ONLY my interpretation, other vaidikas in history have also arrived at this interpretation. "one had to cautious to believe statements given as answer that would take one into wrong path easliy" - WHAT!? What "wrong path" could one possibly take by believing that the vedas are authored by brahman? Nyaya path? – Ikshvaku Mar 26 '21 at 11:49
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    Then please add your point or views are from the specific school perspective not from srivaishnav perspective because I thought this seems to be contradictory to your acharya also – Prasanna R Mar 26 '21 at 12:00
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    historical linguistics proves beyond any doubt that Vedas and all Hindu scripture were composed by humans whose language changed over time - as happens with all languages. It might still have been inspired by God - but universally observed historical language changes are clearly visible in the scripture @ikshvaku – S K Mar 26 '21 at 13:02
  • @PrasannaR Answer is now updated with relevant info. – Ikshvaku Mar 26 '21 at 15:07
  • @SK I agree, although I think sanskrit is a divinely revealed language (which was later standardized by Panini); revealed by brahman for composition of vedas, because the sanskrit swaras and vyanjanas imbue sattvic energy. Compare this with the semitic languages which sound ugly, and are hence tamasic, just like their religions. – Ikshvaku Mar 26 '21 at 15:09
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    Tamil, Urdu,French to name jut three languages are infinitely sweeter than Sanskrit @ikshvaku – S K Mar 26 '21 at 15:40
  • @SK LOL @ French, you like throat noises? – Ikshvaku Mar 26 '21 at 15:55
  • @SK Though I'd say the romance languages (not french) like latin and spanish are sweeter sounding. It's because they're all Indo-european languages like sanskrit. – Ikshvaku Mar 26 '21 at 15:56
  • even pre-panini sanskrit is man made. there are Avestan verses that are mirror images of vedic verses with sound changes. before you jump to "avestan is derived from Sanskrit" linguistics makes that impossible @ikshvaku – S K Mar 26 '21 at 16:12
  • @SK Which language derived from which language can only be known from the historical narrative, records, etc. not linguistics. I think linguistics is based on historical facts anyway. – Ikshvaku Mar 27 '21 at 12:47
  • you are doing poor justice to centuries of comparative historical linguistics. only people with an agenda can deny sanskrit is low on the indo-european cladistic tree @ikshvaku – S K Mar 27 '21 at 12:56
  • @SK They formulated it based on their own presuppositions (evolution is true, puranas are false, etc). – Ikshvaku Mar 27 '21 at 12:57
  • Puranas, true or false, contain very little of value for comparative linguistics. Only the earliest scriptures are used. A lot is based on phonetics - k changes to j or ch due to natural relaxation of articulatory effort- the reverse almost never happens. some present day Vedic reciters insert a j where it doesn't exist - they are human and their mouth and tongue works like those of humans and phonetic reasons can be found why they insert a j where it doesn't exist.. @ikshvaku – S K Mar 27 '21 at 13:05
  • @SK "k changes to j or ch due to natural relaxation" - that's what I'm saying, how languages change (and have changed) can only be known through historical documentation. Look at English for example, there is 1000 years of written documentation of english and we can see how it has changed. From that, we can possibly make some rules about language change. Plus, the rules aren't absolute, because they can be changed arbitrarily or influenced by another language. – Ikshvaku Mar 27 '21 at 13:19
  • This is all 'what about"ism. Sanskrit is a very young (liguistically) language in the IE language Tree. no evidence whatsoever that Gods have anything to do with the way Sanskrit is @ikshwaku – S K Mar 27 '21 at 13:29
  • @SK Sanskrit is very young in the IE tree? Its one of the oldest IE languages. The rig veda is the oldest known text in any IE language, and PIE language is the closest to Vedic sanskrit. Vedic sanskrit is heavily used to construct PIE. – Ikshvaku Mar 27 '21 at 14:35
  • "oldest attested" doesn't mean linguistically oldest. the retroflexes and palatals of Sanskrit are young. sanskrit collapsed 5 short vowels a e i o u to three a i u. 50 pct of vowels are short a - even Rig Veda likened brahmin pupils saying their lessons to the croaking of frogs.

    Old Indian: aṣtā́, -ā́u `eight' may have been attested centuries earlier but is linguistically younger than Latin: octō. In other words Sanskrit speakers were saying Octo and slowly relaxed their speech to asta. @ikshvaku

     – S K Mar 27 '21 at 14:52
  • There was tremendous romance with Sanskrit in the early days - most Europeans thought it was more or less PIE. But it was just German romanticism to be able to claim German is not derived from Hebrew. Currently Sanskrit is still a player but just one contributor to reconstruct PIE.@ikshvaku – S K Mar 27 '21 at 14:57