How can we know that the Vedas have a divine origin?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What is the origin of these scriptures? How do we know that the scriptures are the word of God? Or how do we know that they are not just manufactured by some people in the past? So, let’s begin first with principles and then come to specifics. Now, if we look at the world around us, we see that our primary necessities are provided for.
We need air for breathing. And air exists. We need water for drinking.
Water exists. We need food for eating. Food exists.
So, our primary necessities for living are provided for. And a thoughtful person can, from this, infer the blessing provided. There is a God who has provided these things.
We will explore more the scientific soundness and seriousness of this design argument in our afternoon session when we talk about faith in science. But right now, we will take this as a stigmatical point for us. Okay, if we accept that there is a God who has provided our fundamental necessities for living, then it is an equally logical inference that the same God who has provided us the things for living will also provide us the knowledge for living.
Knowledge is also a necessity for living. It will not be a necessity in the sense that we may say that it’s not that if I don’t know the purpose of life, I will die. Yes, we may die if we don’t get food or water or air.
But actually, a fundamental category confusion occurs when we equate the necessities for living with the purpose for living. There is a difference between a necessity for living and a purpose for living. Money, for example, is a necessity for living.
But when people make the necessity into a purpose, when money becomes the driving purpose, money becomes the only purpose of people’s life, then their life becomes squeezed into a unidirectional pursuit for something which doesn’t bring any lasting satisfaction. So, there are necessities which are important. Not having necessities causes misery.
But having necessities in and of itself does not bring happiness to life. If I am starving, I am miserable. Yes, there are starving people who are suffering.
But there are so many well-fed people. Are all of them happy? No. So, fulfilling a necessity is important.
But fulfilling a necessity does not fulfil the purpose of life. The knowledge of the purpose of life is another category of knowledge. It’s actually a higher, more important.
Now, animals don’t have the intelligence to enquire about the purpose of life. They can enquire only about how to fulfil the necessities of life. Where do I get food to eat? Where can I defend myself from predators? Where can I get meat? These sort of things.
We humans, we also have these drives. And we also fulfil those drives. But we all want something more.
Why? Because we all want a purpose for life. So, purpose is also a necessity for many. In fact, it’s a higher level necessity as compared to the other common necessities.
So, we can logically say that God will also provide this necessity, which is actually the purpose of life, knowledge. So, in principle, if there is an intelligent God, and if you look at the complexity, the intricacy, the delicacy, the artistry of nature around us, you can surely see how the person who has created it is a very intelligent person. And that person will not just live his whole life like that.
He surely gives some knowledge of how we are living with ourselves. Imagine there is a computer manufacturing giant. It makes a particular kind of computer, which is different from the normal computers.
Say, now, most people say, use Windows. There is somebody using a Mac computer. And I say, how different? How do you use it? If somebody makes a completely different computer, and doesn’t give any manual work, you say, what can you do? Intelligence is this.
There is so much intelligence in making the machine. Could you spend a little bit of intelligence in providing manual work? Otherwise, how would you use it? So, from the point of pure logic, if you just accept the point that there is an intelligent God who has provided for our basic necessities for living, then that intelligent God can also provide our necessity of knowledge. So, that is the fundamental principle for understanding the validity of the universal principle of scripture as a divine source of knowledge.
Now, going from this principle, let’s go to the next example. Now, how can we know that scripture is actually the word of God? So, now, when we want to verify something, generally, we have to have some alternative source of knowing. Isn’t it? Say, a teacher is going to assess the paper of a student.
The student has written 3 plus 3 is 7. Now, the teacher has to have some alternative source of knowledge that is more reliable than what the student has given. Only then the student can assess. Teacher can assess the student.
Isn’t it? So, now, if we are going to assess whether scripture is the word of God, on what basis are we going to assess? Do we have an alternative source of knowledge based on which we can compare scripture? So, now, most of you have gone through various issues that we have Pratiksha, Hanuman and Shabad. So, now, when we talk about Pratiksha, Hanuman, we know our direct perception is limited. And further, the influence that we draw from it is also effective.
So, therefore, these in and of itself, we cannot use to directly evaluate or falsify scripture. Manas of Pratiksha, Hanuman are false. I am just saying that they are not entirely reliable forms of knowledge.
So, therefore, we have to look whether scripture itself gives us some methodology for verifying its authenticity. Now, again, let’s, right now, we are discussing at the level of logic. Now, I am not taking the argument that scripture is the self-evident word of God and we should be questioning it.
So, we are simply going through logic and we will talk about scripture specifically more later. Now, from the point of view of logic, how do I know whether a particular book is a manual for a particular product? Now, one way is that I have to go and ask the manufacturer. First of all, I have to find out, are you really the manufacturer? And then, are you the writer of this manual? Is this the manual for this book? So, now, we can’t do that for God.
God is not accessible for God. So, if I just had a device and I had a manual, what would I do? There are two things. One is, does what God, the manual, says, does it help me to make sense of the device? The manual says, okay, this is the God button and this is the button for Tom, the big Tom in the windows.
This is the button for this, for that. This is the button for this. It helps me make better sense.
And then, not only it helps me make better sense, but it works. I can actually make use of the device. And if I am already using the device, I can make more productive and effective use of the device if I have a manual.
So, similarly, at an analytical level, we can look at scripture and see, when I study scripture, does it help me to make better sense of the world around us? Just as when we are a computer, which is a technological device, the whole universe is like a cosmological device. And scripture is like a manual for this cosmological device. So, does it help me to make better sense of the world? And we will find that if we study scripture, from those who are really fond of scripture, शराधों जड़े भद्वान ही जड़े, परामाहो भी जड़े, जिन्दाः तो देश चित्रान ही जड़े, it does help us to make better sense of the world.
And further, if we apply the scriptures in our life, they do help us to become better human beings. More happy, more self-controlled, more active in our lives. So, this basic criteria, we can see, does it help me to make sense and does it help me to work better in the world.
Now, regarding the Vedic scriptures themselves, they are in two categories, Shruti and Smriti. Shruti is what is heard and Smriti is what is remembered. Now, there are three things, you have to understand the correlation carefully.
There is the concept, there is the word and there is the object. So, for example, now, this is a garland. Now, garlands can be of many different kinds.
So, whenever you hear the word garland, some concept comes in the mind. There can be a flower garland, there can be a jewel garland, there can be a money garland, there can be different kinds of garlands. So, there is a concept, there is a term and there is an object.
So, object is the physical thing, the term is the verbal tool for that thing and the concept is the mental equivalent of that. So, now, the words that we speak, the terms that we use, they are temporal, they are material sounds, but the scripture, Veda, scripture is a sound that is eternal. So, even when they create, it’s a manual which is provided by God and the Vedic philosophy is that creation in one sense is cyclic, these are created and they are destroyed.
But the principle of matter and material world is always there, matter always exists. So, for this material world, in principle, there always has to be scripture for itself. So, Veda, the sound of the Shruti is eternal.
So, till now what I talked about earlier was the concept of scripture as a guidance provided by God as a necessity for human beings. Now, I am talking about the sound of scripture. The sound of scripture, especially Shruti, is eternal.
Rig Veda, for example, when European scholars came to India and Europeans came to India as a part of colonisation of India, they found that the Rig Veda which was there and Narayanskar was a famous commentator on Rig Veda, he said, how can Shruti exist? And since there are other commentators, their commentaries were there, the Rig Veda had not changed one word. It was exactly the same thing. And how was it? Because there were four methods of memorising the Rig Veda.
First, which is memorise the full Veda sequentially, you know, from front to back. Another was memorise it back to front. Third was memorise just the first words of each verse of the Rig Veda.
And fourth was memorise important words. It’s a whole elaborate science. And it was memorised in a very systematic way and it was preserved.
So this is the sound mechanism. This is the example I’m giving of that. But the sound is eternal.
The sound of the Rig Veda, sound of the Shruti is eternal. I’m using Rig Veda as an example here. And that eternal sound is communicated periodically by the Supreme Lord to Brahma at the start of creation.
Now the sound exists in an unmanifested form. When there is no creation. When the universe is created, at that time Brahma is the first creator.
And Lord Vishnu or Krishna gives that sound to Brahma. And from Brahma he gives it to Narada. Narada gives it to Vyasa.
And then Vyasa gives it. There are specific for each of the Vedas and for each of the six systems of philosophy that emerge from the Vedas. There are special Vishis.
There is Bhaidra Vishi, there is Jayanidhi Vishi. There are various Vishis. And it’s not that these Vishis are the originators of any of the Vedas.
They are the primary teachers. They are the primary commentators. They are the primary exponents.
But there is actually no origin for Shruti. Shruti is eternal and it is periodically when creation takes place it is given to Brahma and through him it is transmitted. So now coming to the third.
So we talked about concept. We talked about the sound or the term. And now we are talking about the object.
The object, the Vedas. They were put into written form five thousand years ago. Now Vyasa did this because he found that in Kali Yuga people had less memories.
And because of that they were not able to recollect and preserve. And if they had to comprehend it would take them much more effort to comprehend and it would be much easier for them to comprehend if they had things written down. Therefore he put things down in writing.
Now if you want to look for the original manuscripts India is a hot land. And things are not preserved. So those scholars now this is the traditional scriptural understanding of the origin of the scriptures.
Now there is an empirical approach which is used by historians and other empirical researchers to try to trace back when were the Vedas actually written. And they come up with their own idiosyncratic chronology. They say, oh Rig Veda is the old text and the Quran is the most recent.
Now they have their own theory which has its flaws which academicians themselves have made. But rather than going into the specifics of the voice of their theories let’s focus on the principle. The principle here is how do we know empirically when was the Rig Veda first written.
We’ll have to look back at manuscripts. And it’s well known that Indian manuscripts don’t last long. And actually it’s not a problem in India.
Even if you go to Europe they have this, in the Middle East they have these scriptures, the Bible or whatever. The Old Testament is much older than Jesus. So then they also know very well that manuscripts don’t last.
If we are just looking for manuscripts obviously we are not going to go very far. Then what another way we can look? We can look at other literature that were written and see whether they contain references to the Vedas or not. So they contain references to the Vedas and say, okay, the Vedas was their text.
But then that is very empirical. How many of the ancient literature do we have right now? It’s very empirical. Unreliably speculative, sketches out of narrative data.
And assuming still suppose we found out accurately when it was the first manuscript written. But what are we finding when we find a manuscript? It’s like, suppose somebody has stolen a thief has stolen money from a bank. And now we don’t know who the thief is.
And all that he does with the thief took the money in a black bag. And then he searched, who’s on the black bag, who’s on the black bag, who’s on the black bag. He trains backward, backward, backward, backward, backward.
And then he says, from Kolkata you go to Mumbai, Mumbai you go to Chennai, from Chennai you go to Delhi, from Delhi you go to Karachi, from Karachi you go to Puvai, from Puvai you go to Dubai, you go to Abu Dhabi. And finally you find the bag there and she has the money there. So, finding the bag doesn’t tell us anything about the money.
Is it? So similarly, even if we come to know when was the first manuscript written. The origin of the manuscript is not the origin of the knowledge. Because the knowledge has been transmitted in a oral tradition for a long time.
And the reality, the vibrancy of the oral tradition is testified to even by empirical historians. Because, even when we say 17th, 18th century, at that time, literacy was not very widespread. But knowledge of the scriptures was very widespread.
Why? Because this is an oral tradition. In fact, in the past, before Guttendorff made the printing press and books started becoming widespread, books, whether in India or in the West, were actually read only. And books were read only by elite class of people.
And knowledge was largely given through the oral tradition. So, even if we go and find the origin of the text, we will not arrive necessarily at any marker about the origin of the knowledge. So, that’s why this whole method of empirically, speculatively, trying to find out what is the origin of scripture, it will only give us lightning, no lightning.
Some little lightning you will get, some class will say, oh, this was a manuscript here, this was a manuscript here, this was a manuscript here. But we are not getting any systematic lightning, no illumination, we actually know. So, therefore, we refer to traditional understanding.
And the traditional understanding is actually the transformative understanding. The empirical understanding, there are many scholars who study the scriptures, and at the end of the day, what is the result? Most of them don’t even believe in God. Most of them continue with their unfortunate diademics.
And most of them, the scriptures will transform their lives. So, the traditional way of understanding India is not only much more coherent in terms of helping us make sense of scripture, but also much more potent in terms of transforming our lives. The great saints who have elaborated the scripture, they have lived pure, principled, selfless lives.
And they have benefited so many people during their lives. And, in most times, it works. So, I’ll repeat quickly, what is the origin of Vedic scriptures from the traditional point of view.
So, we’ll see the three levels. There is the concept, there is the sound, and then there is the object. So, the concept of scripture is that it’s a manual and it’s eternal.
And it gets manifested whenever there’s a creation and there are people who need that knowledge. Then, as a sound, it is co-eternal. It comes through Brahma et al.
and for a long time passing over all the traditions. And with the decline of the influential faculty at the start of Kali Yuga, it is put in a text format at the start of Kali Yuga, which the tradition tells us around 5000 years ago. And that is how the knowledge becomes available to us.
So, now, all that I talk about right now applies to Smriti. There’s another category of knowledge called as Smriti. Smriti, as the word means, is recollection.
So, the Vedic knowledge is a knowledge to be built. And it’s not just a knowledge. It’s not that there are, in one sense, these are rough terms I’m using.
These are very serious philosophical concepts. There is formulaic knowledge and there is semantic knowledge. Formulaic knowledge means E is equal to MC squared.
You have the mathematical equations. Now, even if people don’t know what the equations mean, you just use the equation to get the result. But semantic knowledge means you have to actually understand the meaning.
Then only we understand what it is. So, like that, there is the Smriti, their potency is in preserving the literal sound. Just the recitation of the Vrinduveta itself is very beautiful.
Now, the Smriti focusses more on semantics, more on comprehension. So, that knowledge, the Smriti also, the essential knowledge which is passed on by Krishna to Brahma to Narada to Vyasa, like that. There are great sages who have heard that knowledge, contemplated that knowledge, assimilated that knowledge, and then they transmitted that knowledge according to time, place, circumstances.
So, the form of Smriti is not fixed. Smriti is according to time, place, circumstances. That means that, say, for example, Krishna is speaking to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.
When Krishna is speaking to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, you will see that in the fourth chapter, he tells Arjuna, imam vivasvate, yogam proktavanam avyayam, in the Bhagavad Gita, I have this knowledge to you as well, the Sun God. Now, when Krishna gave the knowledge to Sun God, at that time, he would not have recited these words, imam vivasvate, yogam proktavanam avyayam, isn’t it? Why? Because that is a context-specific knowledge. There is a core knowledge which is eternal.
But there is a framing in the writing that will change the context. Smriti, its form changes. Substance remains the same.
But the form changes according to time, place, circumstances. So, there are sages who see the audiences, they have accelerated the knowledge, and then they see how can this knowledge be presented in the most effective way to the audience. And then they present it accordingly.
So, now some scholars, some empirical scholars consider sometimes Smriti as of a lower level than Shruti. Because they say, Smriti is simply the recollection of the sages. Shruti is the original revelation.
However, it’s not like that. Yes, there is a principle that in, now there is a whole field of knowledge which is semiotics. I’m not going to technicalities again.
But the point is, how is scripture to be understood, that’s called as hermeneutics. Anybody will go, how is it to be understood? What are the methods of interpreting? What are the methods of assigning priorities? So, normally, there seems to be a contradiction between Shruti and Smriti. Shruti is considered to be a higher power.
But in terms of comprehension, Smriti is always more accessible. Because it is written according to time, place, circumstances. It’s spoken according to time, place, circumstances.
So now, in actually, in the scripture itself, the Vedas have said that, if somebody understands only the Shruti and not the Smriti, that person knows it completely. Because Smriti makes the knowledge contemporary for the audience. So that’s why you see, the Smritis are relatively simpler to understand.
The Smritis are to look at it as Dityasas and Puranas. So Dityasas are the Mahabharata Ramayana. And Puranas are the Indian Puranas.
Now, the Puranas and Dityasas, both are in one sense giving history. But they are not using the method of historiography which was developed by post-newtonian western scientific methods. See, post-newtonian western science focused on history primarily as an activity of documenting the occurrence of events in terms of precision of facts.
Okay, this battle happened this way, this many forces were on this side, this many forces were on this side. But prior to that, again not in India alone, in the west also, if you look at Homer, Virgil, all the ancient historians and their writings, you will see that their method was different. History is not just for recording.
History is for instructing. Yes, records are kept, but emphasis is not on precise keeping of records. Emphasis is on learning from history.
See, even if you have the most precise records of what happened in history, what would that amount to? It will just be a list of the names of dead successful people. You know, unsuccessful people name won’t come in history, but successful people name come in history but they also won’t be there. So, what is learned from that practise? So, the method in the Purana and Ithihara is a non-precise giving of facts.
I’m not saying by this that the facts are imprecise. The point I’m making is the focus is not giving precise facts. The focus is instructing.
Learning how to learn from facts. That is the focus of the So, Ithihara is focused on one particular period in history. For example, the Ramayana focusses on the life of God Rama.
The Mahabharata focusses on one specific segment in the history of the Bharata dynasty, that is the life of the Pandavas. The Puranas on the other hand are more of compilations of historical accounts. There are discussions between these areas and in those discussions different historical accounts are put together under some particular theme.
So, this is how Smriti is, they are more contemporary in terms of their accessibility and in Smriti there may be some variations in the sense that the Smritis sometimes focus primarily on giving instruction. So, therefore, some historians say actually Smritis are very recent in this Sanskrit and Smritis are ancient Sanskrit. So, therefore, Smritis are older and Smritis are recent.
But that is not the point that again we are talking about form and substance. But to give the example that in the same person can wear different dresses at different times. In a hot season a person will wear one kind of dress.
In a hot season Smriti is presented to a simpler audience for the common people. Smriti is a website for the Brahmins. It requires much more intervals to comprehend Smriti.
So, because it is in a different language. That Sanskrit is simple. That doesn’t mean that it is recent in terms of the origin of the knowledge.
It’s recent only in terms of the expression of the knowledge in contemporaneous. So therefore, Shruti and Smriti are both authentic and both are important for us to move forward in our understanding of scripture.