How can we know that the original Vedic scriptures have not been changed over many generations?

From: Vivek Kulkarni

Q1. Do the original texts of Vedic Scriptures (Vedas, Bhagvadgita, Bhagvatam etc) exist today? If yes, then where?

 Q2.Vedic Scriptures (Vedas, Bhagvadgita, Bhagvatam etc) were handed over from one generation to the next by aural reception. Human beings have tendency to commit mistakes as well as to cheat. What if someone might have altered / added into / deleted from contents of these texts purposefully or by mistake? How can we verify that the scriptures which we see today are exactly the same as original?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Question from Vivek Kulkarni Prabhu.
Do the original texts of Vedic scriptures, Vedas, Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavatam exist today? If yes, then where? The Vedic scriptures were handed over from one generation to the next by all reception. Human beings have tendency to commit mistakes as well as to cheat. What if someone might have altered, added into, deleted from contents of these texts purposefully or by mistake? How can we verify that the scriptures which we see today are exactly the same as original? Good question.
Answer If by the original Vedic scriptures we are referring to manuscripts, then it is practically not possible given the hot climate of India for manuscripts to exist for even centuries or to speak of millennia. India has a tropical atmosphere and no matter what be the noting method used, palm leaves or whatever, it is not possible for those to survive. So, that’s why if the word text refers to manuscripts, manuscripts means those books that are originally handwritten by the author and subsequently transformed into books, if the manuscripts are not available now, in general that applies to any scripture of any part of the world, if no manuscripts are available anywhere of the ancient books which originated in the written form thousands of years ago, now how can we be sure that the Vedic scriptures are available as they are in their original format? From a literal point of view, it is difficult to be sure and that’s why there was originally the oral transmission and that was the oral tradition that was there before Kali Yuga started and then at the start of Kali Yuga 5000 years ago Vyasadev put all the Vedic scriptures into written format and even after he put them into written format still the oral tradition continued quite extensively because the number of people who were ready to hear spiritual knowledge was far greater than the number of people who were ready to read spiritual knowledge and so therefore the oral tradition continued extensively and certainly human beings have the four defects and so the possibility is there that there can be changes and that’s why those who were scribes the scribes are those people who would note down the written formats of the books and then pass them down in the old formats old, if you can call them, not original manuscripts but transitional manuscripts when the old versions of the books would get worn out, the old palm leaves or whatever would get worn out before that, they would be transferred by the scribes to other formats that means another palm leaf they would write it on so during such times certain differences might come up which are called as pathantaras pathantara means patha is one written rendition of the book, antara is different, so this is a standard known hazard and that’s why in the tradition for example Madhvacharya wanted to comment on the Mahabharata he looked at various various pathas various renditions of the book that he was commenting on and then he would see whether there are any significant differences so that’s what scholars of various traditions would in general do and this is common knowledge now if you look at the Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam we see that the Bhagavad Gita was commented on by Shankaracharya almost in the 7th-8th century 1400-1500 years almost now and the Bhagavad Gita verses that he has commented on are practically the same as the Bhagavad Gita that we have today similarly Sridhar Swami commented on the Bhagavad Gita in the 11th and 12th century and the verses that he has commented on are the same that we have in the Bhagavatam today so essentially what this indicates is that there has been a substantial amount of consistency so those books which are rare and not so widely used, there might come out to be variations within that but if a book is very widely known and respected and many people are having copies of that book and many scholars are studying it and are commenting on it, then the very widespread availability of the book increases the difficulty for any unscrupulous person to try to change it in any self-interested way therefore if we want to know the fidelity one way is to look at the verses the Acharyas have commented on, great Acharyas and then we look at the book that we have today and the verses are the same so if you want to look from a historical perspective there is a substantial amount of consistency that is quite remarkable for a book to be preserved even for 1000-1500 years speaks a lot about the fidelity of the tradition however there might be some small pathantaras that might come here and an O might become an A and that can also be compared with other manuscripts and that can be corrected however more important than understanding whether the literal word of the scripture has been stored or not is to recognize whether the living meaning of the scripture has been stored or not the text is not just a scriptural text are not just dead bodies of letters that need to be preserved verbatim, yes they also should be preserved as much as possible more important is preserving the dead body of letters these are not dead body of letters they are actually living truths and those truths are lived not just in the book but in the lives of those who are molding their lives according to the book so if we look at the lives of those who are practicing today and see whether those practices match with the practices of the original students or recipients of the message then that is another way we can understand the continued fidelity means faithfulness of that particular book for example if say a medicine X is manufactured in a company and after it is manufactured it is given to a particular patient and that particular patient is suffering from disease Y and he gets cured by taking that medicine and then he tells others about the medicine and he passes on whatever medicine he has to the next person and the next person and like that after going through a hundred person it comes to us now when it comes to us if we want to do a literal physical check whether the medicine has been preserved through all these hundred people it is next to impossible to find it out we have to go and cross check with every person and check whether that person is speaking the truth or not even if the person says yes I have passed on as it is and that would be extremely difficult if not impossible an alternative way of knowing whether the medicine has been kept properly or not is to take the medicine and see what is the effect so if the original recipient of the medicine was cured by that medicine and he has passed on that medicine and today we take the medicine and we get cured then that is one another way to understand that actually the medicine has been preserved so if we look at the original student of the Bhagavad Gita its original recipient if we compare here Bhagavad Gita to the medicine then Bhagavad Gita is a medicine because it is not just a book, it is a book that is offering a message that acts as spiritual medicine that brings about an inner transformation and redirects our love from its present diseased condition of being attracted to matter to its pure healthy condition of being attracted to Krishna so if we look at the original student of the Bhagavad Gita its original recipient Arjuna what was the effect of hearing the Bhagavad Gita on Arjuna so Arjuna firstly gave up all other conceptions of what is the absolute truth and accepted Krishna as the supreme absolute truth Param Brahma Param Nama Pavitram Paramam Bhavan after he hears the Chaitra Shloka Bhagavad Gita in 10.12.13 Krishna describes to Arjuna Arjuna describes to Krishna I accept you as the absolute truth and then not only does he accept Krishna as the absolute truth that was the effect on his conception, now what was the effect on his action, what did he do he did Krishna you are the lord I am your servant, I will do what you want me to do and then what about his conception of everything else he said everything else is subordinate to Krishna Arjuna gave up all other conceptions and accepted Krishna as the absolute truth so we see this happening to the original student of the Bhagavad Gita and if we see the same effect on people today Aushila Prabhupada went and preached the Bhagavad Gita all over the world and what was the effect the people who were atheists, agnostics they were brought up in Abrahamic religions and had their own conceptions of God, they had vague ideas of God and they gave up all their conceptions they accepted Krishna as the supreme personality of God and then not just one or two but hundreds and even thousands of people from all over the world have accepted Krishna as God and that was the change in their conception and what was the change in their action we see that today they are practicing devotional service, giving up all other conceptions of what they should do, what their culture had taught them to do they were involved in meat eating, gambling and toxic and illicit sex as routine activities in their life but they gave all that up and started devoting themselves to Krishna in a determined and extremely serious way following not just the four Ayodhya principles but 16 rounds orienting their life around Krishna so the same transformation that happened in the original student of the Bhagavad Gita is happening in its students today and this transformation is not just in one or two persons but in hundreds of persons and now if we look in between if we look in between, let’s look at some of the Acharyas, Shila Bhaktivinoda Thakur was not born in a Vaishnava family he was actually born in a Shakta family and as he grew up he was an intelligent, sceptical person, he studied Unitarian Christianity he was almost on the verge of being very attracted by Jesus then he almost again joined Brahmo Samaj started by Ram Mohan Roy at that time and then he studied many western philosophies and after all that he was introduced to Gaudiya Vaishnavism, he studied Bhagavad Gita the commentaries of Aracharyas he studied the various other books related with the Bhagavad Gita’s teachings and then he gave up all other conceptions and he accepted Krishna as the supreme personality of Godhead and he devoted himself utterly to serving Krishna and he became not just a practitioner but a teacher of the same tradition which he was not born in but he joined because he was intellectually persuaded by its profound coherence and appeal so in this way we will see that actually down the parampara also we will see that the lives of all the people who are in the parampara are oriented around the same essential truths so that means we look at the original students we look at the current students we look at the intermediate students of the Bhagavad Gita or rather if you want to use the word recipients of the tradition message and we see all of them have the same consistent transformation and that is how we understand that the message has been preserved so certainly as much as is possible the Acharyas and the other custodians of the tradition have done as much as possible to preserve the books in their original integrity manuscript preservation is not possible because of the atmosphere of India but still they would have scribes trained to reproduce the books as carefully as possible and they would themselves compare the various versions of a book to ensure that they had the proper understanding coherently while looking at the whole context and further we have the commentaries on certain books and if you look at the commentaries and the verses which are commented on they are still the same so the most common books which are there which are widely circulated it’s very difficult almost impossible to bring about any changes in them because they will be detected because those copies are available in so many places but even after this if one has some doubts then certainly one can ultimately look at the transformational effect that has been there and the same transformation that happened in the original recipient of the message has happened in today’s recipient and the same has happened in the lives of its intermediate recipients and this is how we can understand that the message is available today to us thank you