Hinduism: What Really Happenned in India (PDF) - Oration

Hinduism: What Really Happened in India – M. M. Ninan
into Indo (Indian) and Euro (Iranian and their extension European)
Aryans. It was a tribal society, with a Tribal Culture emphasizing the
identity of the ethnic group, which of course is the essence of survival in
migrating communities
Vedic Culture was a tribal culture, of a people who called themselves a
superior people- Aryans - with a religion of many gods. Vedas gives 33
specific names of gods. Among the gods were Indra (God of Thunder
and War), Varuna (the Sun God), Mithra (the God of Sky and Stars),
Agni (the God of Fire), Soma (the juice of a mountain plant mixed with
milk and honey). From the praises given to Soma it must be concluded
that it was some sort of psychotropic plant, the juice of which was drunk
as part of the Vedic sacrifice and gave the warriors extraordinary
strength. The prophets of this era were called Rishi. These Rishis were
also poets and they were the ones who composed and transmitted the
Vedas. The purpose of the vedas was essentially religious, connected
with daily rituals. ‘Rik’ meant mantra, shloka or verse. The whole Rig
Veda Samhita is in the form of hymns, in praise of different gods. The
Priests who conducted these rituals wrote and transmitted these to their
family members. Thus the oral tradition continued. Its strength lies in
its liturgic repetition strengthening the memorization process. The
slokas were conveniently modified during the course of history as they
were handed down from generation to generation to fit the social and
political changes of the period. Such redactions were the monopoly of
the families to which each section of Rk belonged.
“The pious view is that the Vedas are eternal and uncreated and
exist essentially as sound. More conventional, but still pious, scholarship
may still exaggerate the antiquity of the Vedas, sometimes claiming they
go back to 10,000 BC or earlier. Now, however, it looks like even the
oldest parts of the Rg Veda do not antedate the arrival of the Arya in
India, although the gods and elements of the stories are older, since they
are attested with Iranian peoples and the Mitanni, with parallels in Greek
and Latin mythology.” (Kelly Ross) Since the Aryans knew no form of
writing, they were transmitted orally over centuries. Evidently, one
cannot guarantee the integrity of the transmission of any oral tradition
over such vast periods.
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