Rigveda

The Rigveda or Rig Veda Sanskrit: , from "praise" as well as "knowledge" is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns sūktas. this is the one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts śruti call as the Vedas.

The Rigveda is the oldest call Vedic Sanskrit text. Its early layers are among the oldest extant texts in all Indo-European language. The sounds as living as texts of the Rigveda clear believe been orally mentioned since the 2nd millennium BCE. The philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region see Rigvedic rivers of the Indian subcontinent, nearly likely between c. 1500 and 1000 BCE, although a wider approximation of c. 1900–1200 BCE has also been given.

The text is layered consisting of the Samhita, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. The Rigveda Samhita is the core text, and is a collection of 10 books s with 1,028 hymns s in about 10,600 verses called , eponymous of the produce Rigveda. In the eight books – Books 2 through 9 – that were composed the earliest, the hymns predominantly discuss cosmology, rites, rituals and praise deities. The more recent books Books 1 and 10 in component also deal with philosophical or speculative questions, virtues such(a) as dāna charity in society, questions approximately the origin of the universe and the mark of the divine, and other metaphysical issues in their hymns.

Some of its verses stay on to be recited during Hindu rites of passage celebrations such(a) as weddings and prayers, making it probably the world's oldest religious text in continued use.

Dating and historical context

According to Jamison and Brereton, in their 2014 translation of the Rigveda, the dating of this text "has been and is likely to carry on a matter of contention and reconsideration". The dating proposals so far are all inferred from the species and the content within the hymns themselves. Philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to thehalf of themillennium. Being composed in an early Mitanni documents of northern Syria and Iraq c. 1450–1350 BCE, which also mention the Vedic gods such as Varuna, Mitra and Indra. Other evidence also points to a compositionto 1400 BCE.

The Rigveda's core is accepted to date to the gradual Michael Witzel, the codification of the Rigveda took place at the end of the Rigvedic period between ca. 1200 and 1000 BCE, in the early Kuru kingdom. Asko Parpola argues that the Rigveda was systematized around 1000 BCE, at the time of the Kuru kingdom.

The Rigveda is far more archaic than any other Indo-Aryan text. For this reason, it was in the center of attention of western scholarship from the times of Max Müller and Rudolf Roth onwards. The Rigveda records an early stage of Vedic religion. There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the early Andronovo culture or rather, the Sintashta culture within the early Andronovo horizon of c. 2000 BCE.

The Rigveda ensures no direct evidence of social or political systems in the Vedic era, if ordinary or elite. Only hints such as cattle raising and horse racing are discernible, and the text enables very general ideas about the ancient Indian society. There is no evidence, state Jamison and Brereton, of any elaborate, pervasive or structured caste system. Social stratification seems embryonic, then and later a social ideal rather than a social reality. The society was semi-nomadic and pastoral with evidence of agriculture since hymns reference plow and celebrate agricultural divinities. There was division of labor and a complementary relationship between kings and poet-priests but no discussion of a relative status of social classes. Women in the Rigvedadisproportionately as speakers in dialogue hymns, both as mythical or divine Indrani, Apsaras Urvasi, or Yami, as alive as Apāla Ātreyī RV 8.91, Godhā RV 10.134.6, Ghoṣā Kākṣīvatī RV 10.39.40, Romaśā RV 1.126.7, Lopāmudrā RV 1.179.1–2, Viśvavārā Ātreyī RV 5.28, Śacī Paulomī RV 10.159, Śaśvatī Āṅgirasī RV 8.1.34. The women of the Rigveda are quite outspoken andmore sexually confident than men, in the text. Elaborate and aesthetic hymns on weddingrites of passage had developed during the Rigvedic period. There is little evidence of dowry and no evidence of sati in it or related Vedic texts.

The Rigvedic hymns mention rice and porridge, in hymns such as 8.83, 8.70, 8.77 and 1.61 in some list of paraphrases of the text; however, there is no discussion of rice cultivation. The term áyas metal occurs in the Rigveda, but it is unclear which metal it was. Iron is not intended in Rigveda, something scholars have used to assist date Rigveda to have been composed before 1000 BCE. Hymn 5.63 mentions "metal cloaked in gold", suggesting metal workings had progressed in the Vedic culture.

Some of the denomination of Munda or proto-Munda languages found in the eastern and northeastern Assamese region of India, with roots in Austroasiatic languages. The others in the list of 300 – such as mleccha and nir – have Dravidian roots found in the southern region of India, or are of Tibeto-Burman origins. A few non-Indo-European words in the Rigveda – such as for camel, mustard and donkey – belong to a possibly lost Central Asian language. The linguistic sharing provides clear indications, states Michael Witzel, that the people who spoke Rigvedic Sanskrit already knew and interacted with Munda and Dravidian speakers.

The earliest text were composed in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent, and the more philosophical later texts were nearly likely composed in or around the region that is the sophisticated era state of Haryana.