Global Organization for Divinity, USA

Oftentimes, when conversing with individuals of differing faiths, one question inevitably arises: what is the holy book in your faith/religion? In Christianity, the Holy Bible is given as the answer. In Islamic faith, the Quran is given as the answer. In Hinduism, we often provide the Vedas as the answer. So, who wrote the Vedas? The answer is deep and intricate and reflects the profound depth and beauty of our religion. Although the Vedas have been transcribed today, the notion that the Vedas were ‘written’ originally is misguided. So here, a new set of questions arise: what are the Vedas and how did they originate?

Put simply, in our view, the Vedas are the eternal principles of this universe and beyond – they have always existed because they are considered to be the very ‘intelligence’ of God, the very ‘breath’ of God. The Vedas are eternal and have always existed, but could only be perceived by those who had completely silenced their minds. Many of our ancient rishis followed this way of life, engaging in penance and purificatory acts (known as samskaras) for their mind, body, and speech, with the sole purpose of controlling their senses and silencing their mind. In that silence of the mind, they were able to slip into the divine state of samadhi, where they were able to tune into and absorb the intuitive knowledge of the Vedas. They then brought the divine sound of the Vedas into a physical sound form in the Vedic language known as Chandas. In their state of samadhi, each rishi was able to perceive a different portion of the Vedas in that universal Vedic language of Chandas and taught the portion they had seen to their disciples. Once the disciples attained samadhi, they verified their Guru’s findings and perceived an additional portion of the Vedic principle they had been taught, passing both the findings of their Guru and their own findings to their disciples. Slowly, through this process, these eternal principles were fully discovered, forming the source of authority for our religion. Since the Vedas were originally in the form of sound, they were also preserved as such, by being taught orally and aurally from Guru to disciple down the ages.

With the imminent onset of the Kali Yuga where the mental faculty of people would be significantly lower, and in order to continue to preserve the Vedas which were hitherto in an extremely mixed form, there came the necessity to categorize the content of the Vedas, for easy consumption. Nearly 5200 years ago, Sri Vedavyasa, an incarnation of Bhagavan Himself, foresaw the decline of human intelligence and memory and thus decided to section and organize the Vedas. He sectioned the Vedas into four homogeneous parts: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvanaveda. Rigveda consisted of all the mantras that extol the Devas; Yajurveda contained all the procedures and explanations for rituals along with some mantras; Samaveda held all the musical aspects of praising the Devas; Atharvaveda served as the support function for the other three Vedas. Due to the distinct purposes of these four parts, their structure and language also varied. After Vedavyasa Bhagavan had sectioned the Vedas into these four parts, he foresaw the beginning of Kali Yuga and the lack of spirituality that would commence; therefore, he entered into samadhi with another prayer: He wanted the essence of the Vedas in one form. In that state of samadhi, he divined Srimad Bhagavatam from the divine source, Bhagavan Sri Krishna Himself, and transcribed it in the Sanskrit language.

Hence althought the Vedas are our ultimate holy scriptural authority, from the Vedas have also originated several scriptures – Smritis, Itihasas, Puranas, etc. which indicate that in fact we don’t just have a ‘holy book’ but an entire ‘holy library’! The process by which our rishis discovered the Vedas through their divine experiences and the universal Vedic language of Chandas, followed by Vedavyasa Bhagavan organizing the Vedas into four parts and compiling the essence of the Vedas into our beloved Srimad Bhagavatam, reveals the beauty of how our religion’s source of authority originated and ultimately reached us today.