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The Age of the Rig Veda

R.S. Sharma

in Indias Ancient Past

Published in print: 2007 Published Online:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780195687859 eISBN: 9780199080366 acprof:oso/9780195687859.003.0012
Item type: chapter

The Indo-Iranians came from two areas of Central Asia. The Aryans in
India are known from the Rig Veda. This text is the earliest text of the
Indo-European languages. The Indo-Aryans were engaged in fighting
with the pre-Aryans and amongst themselves. The Rig Vedic people
had a superior knowledge of agriculture and they were a predominantly
pastoral people. The administrative machinery of the Aryans in the
Rig Vedic period functioned with the tribal chief. The Rig Veda does
not mention any officer for administration of justice. The practice of
levirate and widow remarriage was also shown. It then displays some
consciousness of the physical appearance of people in north-western
India. The significant divinities addressed in the Rig Veda include Indra,
Agni, Varuna, Soma, Maruts and Sarasvati. They have many deities who
represent the different forces of nature in one form or another but are
also assigned human activities.

Sacred Knowledge and Indian Origins

Ariel Glucklich

in The Footsteps of Vishnu: A Historical Introduction to Hinduism

Published in print: 2007 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press
2008
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780195314052 eISBN: 9780199871766 acprof:oso/9780195314052.003.0003
Item type: chapter

This chapter discusses Hindu origins. The IndoAryan controversy is

examined: Did Hindu scriptures emerge as an indigenous product or
did they arrive with migrating foreigners? The chapter discusses the
religious thought of the Rig Veda with a special focus on the sacrifice and
its intellectual foundations.
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Together Apart: Changing Ethical Implications of Hindu

Cosmologies 1
Wendy Doniger
in On Hinduism
Published in print: 2014 Published Online: April Publisher: Oxford University Press
2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199360079 eISBN: 9780199377923 acprof:oso/9780199360079.003.0014
Item type: chapter

This chapter focuses on the ethics of cosmology in Hinduism. More

specifically, it examines how the imagined shapes of the cosmos shifted
and changed to accommodate an ethics of equilibrium and an ethics of
egalitarianism in the visible, everyday world. It first considers what the
Rig Veda says about cosmogeny and the origin of life and the universe. It
then looks at the development of cosmogony in the Jaiminiya Brahmana.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Puranas to illustrate some
of the ways in which ethical order interacts with cosmogony and changes
it.

From India to the Planet Mars: Gustav Holst

Nalini Ghuman

in Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination,1897-1947

Published in print: 2014 Published Online:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
August 2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199314898 eISBN: 9780199372959 acprof:oso/9780199314898.003.0004
Item type: chapter

Drawing on new archival sources and in the contexts of Holsts Indian

studies, the music of his contemporaries Bantock and Scott, the
burgeoning presence of Indian music in Britain, and the founding of the
India Society in 1910, this chapter demonstrates how Holsts unusual
modes have roots in the Karnatic mlakartas he sought from MacCarthy;
his virtuosic harp emulation of the tambura/tnpra transformed the
static ostinato of conventional orientalism; the Vedic chanting he
translated shaped his flexible textual rhythm; and how a thrilling Vedanta
narrative of sacrifice shapes a seminal hymn. Ultimately, this chapter
recontextualizes The Planets through Holsts earlier Indian works,
Hymns from the Rig Veda (1907?12) and Svitri (1908). It argues that
misperception of his styles Indian constituent was central to his musics
posthumous dismissal. Reintegrating his music into an Indian context
enables us to rethink British musical modernism and understand the
effects of colonialism on English culture.

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Identity of Aryan Culture

R.S. Sharma

in Indias Ancient Past

Published in print: 2007 Published Online:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780195687859 eISBN: 9780199080366 acprof:oso/9780195687859.003.0011
Item type: chapter

The principal traits of Aryan culture are started by Vedic, Iranian, and
Greek literary texts and cognate terms found in the proto-Indo-European
languages. The texts that help to reconstruct the material and other
aspects of Aryan culture comprise the Rig Veda, Zend-Avesta, and Iliad
and Odyssey. These texts present agriculture and pastoralism as the
principal sources of livelihood. The horse plays a crucial role in the life of
the early Indo-Europeans. War chariot with spoked wheels also appear.
The pit-dwelling may have developed in cold conditions. The use of birchwood appears to be an Aryan feature along with underground houses.
The fire altar is mentioned in the Rig Veda, and fire worship is very
important in Avesta. Animal sacrifice was an important Aryan ritual. The
cult of soma was confined to only the Iranian and Vedic peoples. The
migration of the Indo-Aryans is finally described.

Fire, Light, and Ingesting over Time

Laurie L. Patton

in Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice
Published in print: 2005 Published Online: May Publisher: University of California Press
2012
DOI: 10.1525/
ISBN: 9780520240872 eISBN: 9780520930889 california/9780520240872.003.0005
Item type: chapter

This chapter reviews the ways in which viniyogas have created different
kinds of associative worlds about eating in the Vedic literature. The
food imagery of the Rig Veda becomes used in the Upanisads as
representative of the emerging idea of a cycle of birth, death, and
rebirth. In both the rauta and Grhya worlds a new class of rites, called
pkayaja, or sacrifices of cooking, emerge as ways of thinking about
food. In the application of Rig Veda hymns 1.2 and 1.3, the communal
process of consumption involving the full participation of the deities
in the rauta world became a solitary eating. The next set of Rig
Vedic hymns (10.15) links fire, eating, and the Sun. The hymn to the
waters, Rig Veda 10.30, creates an elegant set of mutually referential
metonymies. Rig Veda 10.88 is a hymn that celebrates both Soma and
Agni. This hymn describes the Soma libation as undecaying and pleasant,
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offered to Agni, who touches the sky, and the gods supply Agni, the giver
of happiness, with food.

Like Mother, Like Son: Hanuman, Goddesses, and Women

Philip Lutgendorf

in Hanuman's Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey

Published in print: 2007 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press
2007
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780195309225 eISBN: 9780199785391 acprof:oso/9780195309225.003.0007
Item type: chapter

Whereas Hanuman is sometimes alleged to be primarily a men's deity,

this chapter takes a fresh look at his cult through the lens of gender
relations and of discourses about sexuality and its control. It re-examines
the controversial Vrishakapi (bull-monkey) hymn in the Rig Veda as
well as the emotional portrayal of Hanuman's encounter with Sita in
the Sundarakanda of the Ramayana of Valmiki. It then turns to several
modern temple cults in which an independent, virginal Mother Goddess
is accompanied by a simian bodyguard and familiar, whose close
relationship with her is celebrated in legends and folksongs. The final
section of the chapter examines lore that questions or problematizes
Hanuman's famed celibacy by making him (e.g., in the Rama stories of
Jainism) either a lusty adventurer or (in much modern Hindi-language
lore) the unwitting husband of a submarine wife and father to a mighty
son.

You can'T get here from there: The Logical Paradox of Hindu
Creation Myths 1
Wendy Doniger
in On Hinduism
Published in print: 2014 Published Online: April Publisher: Oxford University Press
2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199360079 eISBN: 9780199377923 acprof:oso/9780199360079.003.0013
Item type: chapter

In creation myths, the problem of the beginning of life out of non-life

is addressed at three levels: creation of the universe, of the human
race, or of the individual human being, the embryo. Hinduism, and the
Rig Veda in particular, offers no one, single theory of creation. Instead,
there is the paradox of mutual creation whereby Aditi and Daksha create
one another. By the dharma of the gods, two births can be mutually
productive of one another, yet the earth born from the crouching divinity
is also said to be born from the quarters of the sky that are born from
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her. This chapter examines the logical paradox of creation myths in

Hinduism. It considers the mythology of Hindu cosmogony and the
creation of the human race, or anthropogony, as well as the distinction
between gods and anti-gods.

Indra as the Stallion's Wife 1

Wendy Doniger
in On Hinduism
Published in print: 2014 Published Online: April Publisher: Oxford University Press
2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199360079 eISBN: 9780199377923 acprof:oso/9780199360079.003.0033
Item type: chapter

This chapter examines one of the puzzling myths in the Rig Veda:
the case of Indra as the wife (mena) of the seed-bearing stallion (or
bull-stallion, vrishanashva), which may be half horse and half bull. It
considers the contrasting opposition between incest and the process of
procreation in the myth of Indra as the bull-stallion, how the mare can
accommodate both the stallion and the donkey, and the relationship
between the mare and the seed of a series of male animals other than
stallions. It also looks at the myth of the chariot race.

Impermanence and Eternity in Hindu Epic, Art and Performance

1
Wendy Doniger
in On Hinduism
Published in print: 2014 Published Online: April Publisher: Oxford University Press
2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199360079 eISBN: 9780199377923 acprof:oso/9780199360079.003.0036
Item type: chapter

This chapter examines permanence, impermanence, and eternity in

Hindu epic, art and performance. It begins with an overview of Sanskrit
classics such as the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, as well as the
distinction between oral and written texts. It then considers the Hindus
awareness of the relationship between shruti (the Vedic canon), that
which is heard, and smriti (the later dharma traditions), that which is
remembered.

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