The Vedas

Hinduism considers the Vedas—compositions of hymns, sacrificial formulas, and other sayings pertaining to the gods—as sacred scriptures, “not of human origin.”

The gods themselves composed them, the Hindu traditions say, in the age that preceded the present one.

But, as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses, passed from generation to generation orally, were lost and confused.

In the end, a sage wrote down the remaining verses, dividing them into 4 books and trusting 4 of his principal disciples to preserve one Veda each.

In the 19th century, scholars began to decipher and understand forgotten languages and trace the connections between them. They realized:

• that the Vedas were written in a very ancient Indo-European language
  • This was the predecessor of the Indian root-tongue Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and other European languages.
• the uncanny similarity between the Vedic tales of the gods and the Greek ones.

The Vedas said that the gods were all members of one large, but not necessarily peaceful, family.

Amid the tales of ascents to the heavens and descents to Earth, aerial battles, wondrous weapons, friendships and rivalries, marriages and infidelities, there appears to have existed a basic concern for genealogical record keeping—who fathered whom, and who was the firstborn of whom.

The gods on Earth originated in the heavens; and the principal deities, even on Earth, continued to represent celestial bodies.

In primeval times, the Rishis (“primeval flowing ones”) “flowed” celestially, possessed of irresistible powers.

Of them, 7 the Great Progenitors.

The gods Rahu (“demon”) and Ketu (“disconnected”) were once a single celestial body that

One of them sought to join the gods without permission. But the God of Storms hurled his flaming weapon at him, cutting him into two parts:

1. Rahu, the “Dragon’s Head”

He unceasingly traverses the heavens in search of vengeance

2. Ketu, the “Dragon’s Tail”

The progenitor of the Solar Dynasty was Mar-Ishi.

• He gave birth to KashYapa (“he who is the throne”).

The Vedas describe him as having been quite prolific. But the dynastic succession was continued only through his 10 children by Prit-Hivi* (“heavenly mother”).

As dynastic head, Kash-Yapa was also chief of the devas (“shining ones”) and bore the title Dyaus-Pitar (“shining father”).

Together with his consort and 10 children, the divine family made up the 12 Adityas, gods who were each assigned a sign of the zodiac and a celestial body.

Kash-Yapa’s celestial body was “the shining star”,

Prit-Hivi represented Earth. Then there were the gods whose celestial counterparts included the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

In time, the leadership of the pantheon of 12 passed to Varuna, the God of the Heavenly Expanse. He was omnipresent and all-seeing; one of the hymns to him reads almost like a Biblical psalm:

His reign also came sooner or later to an end. Indra, the god who slew the celestial “Dragon,” claimed the throne by slaying his father.

He was the new Lord of the Skies and God of Storms. Lightning and thunder were his weapons, and his epithet was Lord of Hosts. He had, however, to share dominion with his two brothers.

One was Vivashvat, who was the progenitor of Manu, the first Man. The other was Agni (“igniter”), who brought fire down to Earth from the heavens, so that Mankind could use it industrially.

The similarities between the Vedic and Greek pantheons are obvious. The tales concerning the principal deities, as well as the verses dealing with a multitude of other lesser deities-sons, wives, daughters, mistresses—are clearly duplicates (or originals?) of the Greek tales.

• Dyaus came to mean Zeus
• Dyaus—Pitar, Jupiter
• Varuna- Uranus; and so on.

In both instances, the Circle of the Great Gods always stood at twelve, no matter what changes took place in the divine succession.

How could such similarity arise in two areas so far apart, geographically and in time?

Scholars believe that sometime in the second millennium B.C. a people speaking an Indo-European language, and centered in northern Iran or the Caucasus area, embarked on great migrations. One group went southeast, to India.

The Hindus called them Aryans (“noble men”). They brought with them the Vedas as oral tales, circa 1,500 B.C. Another wave of this Indo-European migration went westward, to Europe. Some circled the Black Sea and arrived in Europe via the steppes of Russia.

But the main route by which these people and their traditions and religion reached Greece was the shortest one: Asia Minor.

Some of the most ancient Greek cities, in fact, lie not on the Greek mainland but at the western tip of Asia Minor.

But who were these Indo-Europeans who chose Anatolia as their abode? Little in Western knowledge shed light on the subject.

Once again, the only readily available—and reliable—source proved to be the Old Testament. There the scholars found several references to the “Hittites” as the people inhabiting the mountains of Anatolia.

Unlike the enmity reflected in the Old Testament toward the Canaanites and other neighbors whose customs were considered an “abomination,” the Hittites were regarded as friends and allies to Israel.

Bathsheba, whom King David coveted, was the wife ‘of Uriah the Hittite, an officer in King David’s army. King Solomon, who forged alliances by marrying the daughters of foreign kings, took as wives the daughters both of an Egyptian pharaoh and of a Hittite king.

At another time, an invading Syrian army fled upon hearing a rumor that “the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians.”

These brief allusions to the Hittites reveal the high esteem in which their military abilities were held by other peoples of the ancient Near East.

With the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs—and, later on, of the Mesopotamian inscriptions—scholars have come across numerous references to a “Land of Hatti” as a large and powerful kingdom in Anatolia. Could such an important power have left no trace?