The Dhaarmik Traditions - Indic Studies Foundation

four varnas. These are the regular duties including the rituals and services to the
family, community, ancestors and God that every one is expected to perform. .
7. Who composed the Hindu scriptures and when were they composed
There were many composers of the Veda. It was not unusual for the brother of the
King to become the Rishi Chronicler of that reign and compose the relevant Mandala
of the Veda. We will compile the names of these composers and make these available
in Tabular form.
It is difficult to ascribe an individual to each and every one of the texts, but if there
is any one individual that had a major part in writing the later texts it must have been
VedaVyaasa or Krishna Dvaipayana. Veda Vyasa (or Baadaarayana) which was also
one of his names composed the Mahabharata and the Brahma Sutras. Veda Vyasa
was born of the union of a fisherwoman and the sage Parasara. There is as yet no
consensus on an accepted date for the composition of the scriptures. If one accepts
the end of Kaliyuga as a marker for the Great Bharata War, then the logical date for
the chronicling of the Mahabharata war is around 3139 BCE. The Vedas predate the
Epics by about 2 millennia.
8. What was the language in which the vast Vedic scriptures (Sruti
and Smriti ) were composed
The language in which they were written was Sanskrit. More specifically the Vedas
and many of the earlier texts were written in Vedic Sanskrit before it was codified
by Panini. At that time the scripts were not fully developed and the transmission of
knowledge was primarily oral. The transition to a likhita Parampara (scriptural
tradition) from a srauta Parampara was of course not instantaneous but took
several centuries. It took several more centuries for a standardized script to evolve
from the proto scripts (Brahmi and Kharosthi)
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