A READER IN COMPARATIVE INDO-EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY

VEDIC
Almost everything we know of the original Vedic religion has been transmitted orally from
around the middle of the 2nd century BC until the present day in the form of śrúti- or 'what
has been heard'. This oral tradition has been collected in the form of the Vedas (cf. Skr. véda-
'knowledge'), or four collections of hymns and ritual texts devoted to Vedic deities. These are
composed in an early form of Sanskrit, the learned language of India, which is commonly
referred to simply as Vedic, or Vedic Sanskrit. Since there are no manuscript from that period
(the oldest inscriptions in India are Buddhist incriptions of king Aśoka from the 3rd century
BC), the datation of the core of the Vedic texts is estimated on the basis of philological
arguments and the assumed rate of language change from the Vedic period until our earliest
historical documents in India (chiefly related to the life of Buddha in the 5th century BC).
The oldest parts of the Vedas could have been roughly contemporary with the «Mitanni
Contracts», documents preserved in Hittite archives, in which the ruler of the Kingdom of
Mitanni in Northern Mesopotamia swears by invoking Vedic deities Mitra, Indra, Varuna and
the Nasatyas. We know, then, that the ruling caste of the State of Mitanni in the 14th century
BC worshipped the same gods to whom hymns are devoted in the Vedic texts, and many of
them, as we shall see below, have exact counterparts in the Iranian religion (note, however,
that the names mentioned in the «Mitanni Contracts» are specifically Indo-Aryan, not Iranian
or Indo-Iranian).
The four collections of Vedic texts (also called saṃhitās, from PIE *som- 'together' and
*d h eh1- 'put, make') are Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda. The Rig Veda
is certainly the oldest of them; the Sama-Veda and the Yajur-Veda contain mostly material
taken over from the Rig-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda is a collection of magical chants and
rituals, and it is generally believed to be the latest of all four samhitas.
The Rig-Veda got its name from the Sanskrit word ṛc- 'praise, verse'. It is divided into ten
books, or máṇḍalas (from Skr. máṇḍala- 'circular, circle', of uncertain etymology). Each of
the books contains several dozens of hymns, or sūktas (from su-ukta- 'well recited, eulogy'),
the total number of suktas in the Rig-Veda being 1028, which is the amount of text
corresponding, roughly, to the «Iliad» and the «Odyssey» put together. The hymns are
believed to have been «heard» by the mythical «seers» or rishis (Skr. rši- < PIE *h2er-s-, cf.
Lith. aršùs 'violent', MHG rasen 'rage', Arm. heṙ 'rage'), and they were chanted by the Vedic
priests, the purohitas (Skr. puróhita-, from purá- 'in front of, before' and –hita- 'put, placed')
during religious rituals. The so-called «family books», attributed to various families of priests,
are generally believed to contain the oldest material in the Rig-Veda. These are the books 2-7.
The books 1 and 10 are, on the other hand, younger than the rest and contain traces of post-
Vedic philosophical speculations and religious views. The book 9 contains only hymns
dedicated to Soma, the divine intoxicating drink. The text of the Rig-Veda has been preserved
in several versions. It is usually reproduced either as padapatha, with words isolated by
pausas for better memorizing, or as the samhitapatha, in which words are generally joined by
sandhi for easier reciting. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Rig-Veda, written in
devanagari script, dates only from 1464.