The Vedas (Sanskrit '''', "knowledge") are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.

The class of "Vedic texts" is aggregated around the four canonical ''''s or Vedas proper (''''), of which three ('''') are related to the performance of yajna (sacrifice) in historical (Iron Age) Vedic religion: # The Rigveda, containing hymns to be recited by the ; # The Yajurveda, containing formulas to be recited by the adhvaryu or officiating priest; # The Samaveda, containing formulas to be sung by the . The fourth is the Atharvaveda, a collection of spells and incantations, apotropaic charms and speculative hymns.

According to Hindu tradition, the Vedas are '''' "not of human agency", are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called '''' ("what is heard"). The four ''''s are metrical (with the exception of prose commentary interspersed in the Black Yajurveda). The term '''' literally means "composition, compilation". The individual verses contained in these compilations are known as ''''. Some selected Vedic mantras are still recited at prayers, religious functions and other auspicious occasions in contemporary Hinduism.

The various Indian philosophies and sects have taken differing positions on the Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy which cite the Vedas as their scriptural authority are classified as "orthodox" (āstika). Other traditions, notably Buddhism and Jainism, which did not regard the Vedas as authorities are referred to by traditional Hindu texts as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" (nāstika) schools. In addition to Buddhism and Jainism, Sikhism and Brahmoism, many non-Brahmin Hindus in South India do not accept the authority of the Vedas. Certain South Indian Brahmin communities such as Iyengars consider the Tamil Divya Prabandham or writing of the Alvar saints as equivalent to the Vedas. In most Iyengar temples in South India the Divya Prabandham is recited daily along with Vedic Hymns.

Etymology and Usage

The Sanskrit word '''' "knowledge, wisdom" is derived from the root ''vid-'' "to know". This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto-Indo-European root '''', meaning "see" or "know".

As a noun, the word appears only in a single instance in the Rigveda, in RV 8.19.5, translated by Griffith as "ritual lore": :'''' :"The mortal who hath ministered to Agni with oblation, fuel, ritual lore, and reverence, skilled in sacrifice."

The noun is from Proto-Indo-European '''', cognate to Greek "aspect", "form" . Not to be confused is the homonymous 1st and 3rd person singular perfect tense '''', cognate to Greek ''(w)oida'' "I know". Root cognates are Greek ''ἰδέα'', English ''wit'', etc., Latin ''video'' "I see", etc.

In English, the term ''Veda'' is often used loosely to refer to the ''Samhitas'' (collection of ''mantras'', or chants) of the four canonical Vedas (''Rigveda'', ''Yajurveda'', ''Samaveda'' and ''Atharvaveda'').

The Sanskrit term '''' as a common noun means "knowledge", but can also be used to refer to fields of study unrelated to liturgy or ritual, e.g. in '''' "medical science", '''' "science of agriculture" or '''' "science of snakes" (already found in the early Upanishads); '''' means "with evil knowledge, ignorant".

Chronology

The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas date to roughly 1500–1000 BCE, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000-500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts, with the establishment of the various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise of the Mahajanapadas (archaeologically, Northern Black Polished Ware). Michael Witzel gives a time span of c. 1500 BCE to c. 500-400 BCE. Witzel makes special reference to the Near Eastern Mitanni material of the 14th c. BCE the only epigraphic record of Indo-Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period. He gives 150 BCE (Patañjali) as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature, and 1200 BCE (the early Iron Age) as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda.

Transmission of texts in the Vedic period was by oral tradition alone, preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques. A literary tradition set in only in post-Vedic times, after the rise of Buddhism in the Maurya period, perhaps earliest in the Kanva recension of the Yajurveda about the 1st century BCE; however oral tradition predominated until c. 1000 CE.

Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material (birch bark or palm leaves), surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years. The Benares Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript of the mid-14th century; however, there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal belonging to the Vajasaneyi tradition that are dated from the 11th century onwards.

Categories of Vedic texts

The term "Vedic texts" is used in two distinct meanings: #Texts composed in Vedic Sanskrit during the Vedic period (Iron Age India) #Any text considered as "connected to the Vedas" or a "corollary of the Vedas"

Vedic Sanskrit corpus

The corpus of Vedic Sanskrit texts includes:

The Samhita (Sanskrit '''', "collection"), are collections of metric texts ("mantras"). There are four "Vedic" Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda, most of which are available in several recensions (''''). In some contexts, the term ''Veda'' is used to refer to these Samhitas. This is the oldest layer of Vedic texts, apart from the Rigvedic hymns, which were probably essentially complete by 1200 BC, dating to ca. the 12th to 10th centuries BC. The complete corpus of Vedic mantras as collected in Bloomfield's ''Vedic Concordance'' (1907) consists of some 89,000 padas (metric feet), of which 72,000 occur in the four Samhitas.

The Brahmanas are prose texts that discuss, in technical fashion, the solemn sacrificial rituals as well as comment on their meaning and many connected themes. Each of the Brahmanas is associated with one of the Samhitas or its recensions. The Brahmanas may either form separate texts or can be partly integrated into the text of the Samhitas. They may also include the Aranyakas and Upanishads.

The Aranyakas, "wilderness texts" or "forest treaties", were composed by people who meditated in the woods as recluses and are the third part of the Vedas. The texts contain discussions and interpretations of dangerous rituals (to be studied outside the settlement) and various sorts of additional materials. It is frequently read in secondary literature.

Some of the older Mukhya Upanishads (, Chandogya, ).

Certain Sūtra literature, i.e. the Shrautasutras and the Grhyasutras.

The Shrauta Sutras, regarded as belonging to the smriti, are late Vedic in language and content, thus forming part of the Vedic Sanskrit corpus. The composition of the Shrauta and Grhya Sutras (ca. 6th century BC) marks the end of the Vedic period , and at the same time the beginning of the flourishing of the "circum-Vedic" scholarship of Vedanga, introducing the early flowering of classical Sanskrit literature in the Mauryan and Gupta periods.

While production of Brahmanas and Aranyakas ceases with the end of the Vedic period, there is a large number of Upanishads composed after the end of the Vedic period. While most of the ten Mukhya Upanishads can be considered to date to the Vedic or Mahajanapada period, most of the 108 Upanishads of the full Muktika canon date to the Common Era.

The Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads often interpret the polytheistic and ritualistic Samhitas in philosophical and metaphorical ways to explore abstract concepts such as the Absolute (Brahman), and the soul or the self (Atman), introducing Vedanta philosophy, one of the major trends of later Hinduism.

The Vedic Sanskrit corpus is the scope of ''A Vedic Word Concordance'' ('''') prepared from 1930 under Vishva Bandhu, and published in five volumes in 1935-1965. Its scope extends to about 400 texts, including the entire Vedic Sanskrit corpus besides some "sub-Vedic" texts. :Volume I: Samhitas :Volume II: Brahmanas and Aranyakas :Volume III: Upanishads :Volume IV: Vedangas A revised edition, extending to about 1800 pages, was published in 1973-1976.

Shruti literature

The texts considered "Vedic" in the sense of "corollaries of the Vedas" is less clearly defined, and may include numerous post-Vedic texts such as Upanishads or Sutra literature. These texts are by many Hindu sects considered to be ''shruti'' (Sanskrit: ''''; "the heard"), divinely revealed like the Vedas themselves. Texts not considered to be ''shruti'' are known as ''smriti'' (Sanskrit: ''''; "the remembered"), of human origin. This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Müller and, while it is subject to some debate, it is still widely used. As Axel Michaels explains:

These classifications are often not tenable for linguistic and formal reasons: There is not only ''one'' collection at any one time, but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools; Upanişads ... are sometimes not to be distinguished from ...; contain older strata of language attributed to the ; there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools. Nevertheless, it is advisable to stick to the division adopted by Max Müller because it follows the Indian tradition, conveys the historical sequence fairly accurately, and underlies the current editions, translations, and monographs on Vedic literature."

The Upanishads are largely philosophical works in dialog form. They discuss questions of nature philosophy and the fate of the soul, and contain some mystic and spiritual interpretations of the Vedas. For long, they have been regarded as their putative end and essence, and are thus known as Vedānta ("the end of the Vedas"). Taken together, they are the basis of the Vedanta school.

Vedic schools or recensions

Study of the extensive body of Vedic texts has been organized into a number of different schools or branches (Sanskrit '''', literally "branch" or "limb") each of which specialized in learning certain texts. Multiple recensions are known for each of the Vedas, and each Vedic text may have a number of schools associated with it. Elaborate methods for preserving the text were based on memorizing by heart instead of writing. Specific techniques for parsing and reciting the texts were used to assist in the memorization process. (''See also: Vedic chant'')

Prodigous energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity. For example, memorization of the sacred ''Vedas'' included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the '''' (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated again in the original order.

That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the '''', as a redacted into single text during the ''Brahmana'' period, without any variant readings.

The Four Vedas

The canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold ('''') viz., #Rigveda (RV) #Yajurveda (YV, with the main division TS vs. VS) #Sama-Veda (SV) #Atharva-Veda (AV) Of these, the first three were the principal original division, also called "''''", that is, "the triple sacred science" of reciting hymns (RV), performing sacrifices (YV), and chanting (SV). This triplicity is so introduced in the Brahmanas (ShB, ABr and others), but the Rigveda is the older work of the three from which the other two borrow, next to their own independent Yajus, sorcery and speculative mantras.

Thus, the Mantras are properly of three forms: 1. ''Ric'', which are verses of praise in metre, and intended for loud recitation; 2. ''Yajus'', which are in prose, and intended for recitation in lower voice at sacrifices; 3. ''Sāman'', which are in metre, and intended for singing at the Soma ceremonies.

The Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda are independent collections of mantras and hymns intended as manuals for the Adhvaryu, Udgatr and Brahman priests respectively.

The Atharvaveda is the fourth Veda. Its status has occasionally been ambiguous, probably due to its use in sorcery and healing. However, it contains very old materials in early Vedic language. Manusmrti, which often speaks of the three Vedas, calling them ''trayam-brahma-sanātanam'', "the triple eternal Veda". The Atharvaveda like the Rigveda, is a collection of original incantations, and other materials borrowing relatively little from the Rigveda. It has no direct relation to the solemn Śrauta sacrifices, except for the fact that the mostly silent Brahmán priest observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made. Its recitation also produces long life, cures diseases, or effects the ruin of enemies.

Each of the four Vedas consists of the metrical Mantra or Samhita and the prose Brahmana part, giving discussions and directions for the detail of the ceremonies at which the Mantras were to be used and explanations of the legends connected with the Mantras and rituals. Both these portions are termed shruti (which tradition says to have been heard but not composed or written down by men). Each of the four Vedas seems to have passed to numerous Shakhas or schools, giving rise to various recensions of the text. They each have an Index or Anukramani, the principal work of this kind being the general Index or ''''.

Rigveda

The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text. It is a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten books (Sanskrit: ''mandalas''). The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities.

The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a period of several centuries, commonly dated to the period of roughly the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the Indian subcontinent.

There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities between the Rigveda and the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the Andronovo culture; the earliest horse-drawn chariots were found at Andronovo sites in the Sintashta-Petrovka cultural area near the Ural Mountains and date to ca. 2000 BCE.

Yajurveda

The Yajurveda Samhita consists of archaic prose mantras and also in part of verses borrowed and adapted from the Rigveda. Its purpose was practical, in that each mantra must accompany an action in sacrifice but, unlike the Samaveda, it was compiled to apply to all sacrificial rites, not merely the Somayajna. There are two major groups of recensions of this Veda, known as the "Black" (Krishna) and "White" (Shukla) Yajurveda (Krishna and Shukla Yajurveda respectively). While White Yajurveda separates the Samhita from its Brahmana (the Shatapatha Brahmana), the e Black Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary. Of the Black Yajurveda four major recensions survive (Maitrayani, Katha, Kapisthala-Katha, Taittiriya).

Samaveda

The Samaveda Samhita (from '''', the term for a melody applied to metrical hymn or song of praise) consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost entirely (except for 78 stanzas) from the Rigveda. Like the Rigvedic stanzas in the Yajurveda, the Samans have been changed and adapted for use in singing. Some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated more than once. Including repetitions, there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith. Two major recensions remain today, the Kauthuma/Ranayaniya and the Jaiminiya. Its purpose was liturgical, as the repertoire of the '''' or "singer" priests who took part in the sacrifice.

Atharvaveda

The Artharvaveda Samhita is the text 'belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets. It has 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in common with the Rigveda. Most of the verses are metrical, but some sections are in prose. It was compiled around 900 BCE, although some of its material may go back to the time of the Rigveda, and some parts of the Atharva-Veda are older than the Rig-Veda though not in linguistic form.

The Atharvaveda is preserved in two recensions, the Paippalāda and Śaunaka. According to Apte it had nine schools (''shakhas''). The Paippalada text, which exists in a Kashmir and an Orissa version, is longer than the Saunaka one; it is only partially printed in its two versions and remains largely untranslated.

Unlike the other three Vedas, the Atharvanaveda has less connection with sacrifice. Its first part consists chiefly of spells and incantations, concerned with protection against demons and disaster, spells for the healing of diseases, for long life and for various desires or aims in life.

The second part of the text contains speculative and philosophical hymns.

The Atharvaveda is a comparatively late extension of the "Three Vedas" connected to priestly sacrifice to a canon of "Four Vedas". This may be connected to an extension of the sacrificial rite from involving three types of priest to the inclusion of the Brahman overseeing the ritual.

The Atharvaveda is concerned with the material world or world of man and in this respect differs from the other three vedas. Atharvaveda also sanctions the use of force, in particular circumstances and similarly this point is a departure from the three other vedas.

Brahmanas

The mystical notions surrounding the concept of the one "Veda" that would flower in Vedantic philosophy have their roots already in Brahmana literature, for example in the Shatapatha Brahmana. The Vedas are identified with Brahman, the universal principle (ŚBM 10.1.1.8, 10.2.4.6). Vāc "speech" is called the "mother of the Vedas" (ŚBM 6.5.3.4, 10.5.5.1). The knowledge of the Vedas is endless, compared to them, human knowledge is like mere handfuls of dirt (TB 3.10.11.3-5). The universe itself was originally encapsulated in the three Vedas (ŚBM 10.4.2.22 has Prajapati reflecting that "truly, all beings are in the triple Veda").

Vedanta

While contemporary traditions continued to maintain Vedic ritualism (Śrauta, Mimamsa), Vedanta renounced all ritualism and radically re-interpreted the notion of "Veda" in purely philosophical terms. The association of the three Vedas with the ''bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ'' mantra is found in the Aitareya Aranyaka: "''Bhūḥ'' is the Rigveda, ''bhuvaḥ'' is the Yajurveda, ''svaḥ'' is the Samaveda" (1.3.2). The Upanishads reduce the "essence of the Vedas" further, to the syllable Aum (). Thus, the Katha Upanishad has: :"The goal, which all Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which humans desire when they live a life of continence, I will tell you briefly it is ''Aum''" (1.2.15)

In post-Vedic literature

Vedanga

Six technical subjects related to the Vedas are traditionally known as '''' "limbs of the Veda". V. S. Apte defines this group of works as:

"N. of a certain class of works regarded as auxiliary to the Vedas and designed to aid in the correct pronunciation and interpretation of the text and the right employment of the ''Mantras'' in ceremonials."

These subjects are treated in Sūtra literature dating from the end of the Vedic period to Mauryan times, seeing the transition from late Vedic Sanskrit to Classical Sanskrit.

The six subjects of Vedanga are: Phonetics () Ritual () Grammar ()

Etymology (Nirukta)

Meter () Astronomy ()

Parisista

'''' "supplement, appendix" is the term applied to various ancillary works of Vedic literature, dealing mainly with details of ritual and elaborations of the texts logically and chronologically prior to them: the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Sutras. Naturally classified with the Veda to which each pertains, Parisista works exist for each of the four Vedas. However, only the literature associated with the Atharvaveda is extensive.

The is a very late text associated with the Rigveda canon. The is a short metrical text of two chapters, with 113 and 95 verses respectively. The , ascribed to , consist of 18 works enumerated self-referentially in the fifth of the series (the ) The Yajurveda has 3 parisistas The , which is also found as the second ''praśna'' of the ''', the and the . For the Atharvaveda, there are 79 works, collected as 72 distinctly named parisistas.

Puranas

A traditional view given in the Vishnu Purana (likely dating to the Gupta period) attributes the current arrangement of four Vedas to the mythical sage Vedavyasa. Puranic tradition also postulates a single original Veda that, in varying accounts, was divided into three or four parts. According to the Vishnu Purana (3.2.18, 3.3.4 etc.) the original Veda was divided into four parts, and further fragmented into numerous shakhas, by Lord Vishnu in the form of Vyasa, in the Dvapara Yuga; the Vayu Purana (section 60) recounts a similar division by Vyasa, at the urging of Brahma. The Bhagavata Purana (12.6.37) traces the origin of the primeval Veda to the syllable aum, and says that it was divided into four at the start of ''Dvapara Yuga'', because men had declined in age, virtue and understanding. In a differing account Bhagavata Purana (9.14.43) attributes the division of the primeval veda (''aum'') into three parts to the monarch Pururavas at the beginning of Treta Yuga. The Mahabharata (santiparva 13,088) also mentions the division of the Veda into three in ''Treta Yuga''.

Upaveda

The term upaveda ("applied knowledge") is used in traditional literature to designate the subjects of certain technical works. Lists of what subjects are included in this class differ among sources. The Charanavyuha mentions four Upavedas:

Medicine (), associated with the Rigveda

Archery (Dhanurveda), associated with the Yajurveda

Music and sacred dance (), associated with the Samaveda

Military science (Shastrashastra), associated with the Atharvaveda

But Sushruta and Bhavaprakasha mention Ayurveda as an upaveda of the Atharvaveda. Sthapatyaveda (architecture), Shilpa Shastras (arts and crafts) are mentioned as fourth upaveda according to later sources.

Buddhist and Jain views

Buddhism and Jainism do not reject the Vedas, but merely their absolute authority.

Buddhism

In the Buddhist Vinaya Pitaka of the ''Mahavagga'' (I.245) section the Buddha declared that the Veda in its true form was declared to the Vedic rishis "Atthako, Vâmako, Vâmadevo, Vessâmitto, Yamataggi, Angiraso, Bhâradvâjo, Vâsettho, Kassapo, and Bhagu" but that it was altered by a few Brahmins who introduced animal sacrifices. The Vinaya Pitaka's section ''Anguttara Nikaya: Panchaka Nipata'' says that it was on this alteration of the true Veda that the Buddha refused to pay respect to the Vedas of his time.

Also in the "Brahmana Dhammika Sutta" (II,7) of the ''Suttanipata'' section of Vinaya Pitaka there is a story of when the Buddha was in Jetavana village and there were a group of elderly Brahmin ascetics who sat down next to the Buddha and asked him, "''Do the present Brahmans follow the same rules, practise the same rites, as those in the more ancient times?''" The Buddha replied, "No." The elderly Brahmins asked the Buddha that if it were not inconvenient for him, that he would tell them of the Brahmana Dharma of the previous generation. The Buddha replied: "''There were formerly rishis, men who had subdued all passion by the keeping of the sila precepts and the leading of a pure life...Their riches and possessions consisted in the study of the Veda and their treasure was a life free from all evil...The Brahmans, for a time, continued to do right and received in alms rice, seats, clothes, and oil, though they did not ask for them. The animals that were given they did not kill; but they procured useful medicaments from the cows, regarding the as friends and relatives, whose products give strength, beauty and health.''" So in this passage also the Buddha describes when the Brahmins were studying the Veda but the animal sacrifice customs had not yet began.

The Buddha was declared to have been born as a Brahmin who was a knower of the Vedas and its philosophies in a number of his previous lives acording to Buddhist scriptures. Other Buddhas too were said to have been born as Brahmins that were trained in the Vedas.

The ''Mahasupina Jataka'' and ''Lohakumbhi Jataka'' declares that Brahmin Sariputra in a previous life was a Brahmin that prevented animal sacrifice by declaring that animal sacrifice was actually against the Vedas.

Jainism

A Jain sage intereprets the Vedic sacrifices as metaphorical: :"''Body is the altar, mind is the fire blazing with the ghee of knowledge and burning the sacrificial sticks of impurities produced from the tree of karma;...''"

Further, Jain Sage Jinabhadra in his ''Visesavasyakabhasya'' cites a numeber of passages from the Vedic Upanishads.

Jain are in conformity with the Vedas in reference to both the Vedas' and Jainism' acceptance of the 22 Tirthankaras: :Of Rishabha (1st Tirthankara Rishabha) is written: ::"''But Risabha went on, unperturbed by anything till he became sin-free like a conch that takes no black dot, without obstruction ... which is the epithet of the First World-teacher, may become the destroyer of enemies''" (Rig Veda X.166) :Of Aristanemi (Tirthankara Neminatha) is written: ::"''So asmakam Aristanemi svaha Arhan vibharsi sayakani dhanvarhanistam yajatam visvarupam arhannidam dayase''" (Astak 2, Varga 7, Rig Veda)

"Fifth" and other Vedas

Some post-Vedic texts, including the Mahabharata, the Natyasastra and certain Puranas, refer to themselves as the "fifth Veda". The earliest reference to such a "fifth Veda" is found in the Chandogya Upanishad. "Dravida Veda" is a term for canonical Tamil Bhakti texts.

Other texts such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedanta Sutras are considered ''shruti'' or "Vedic" by some Hindu denominations but not universally within Hinduism. The Bhakti movement, and Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular extended the term ''veda'' to include the Sanskrit Epics and Vaishnavite devotional texts such as the Pancaratra.

Western Indology

The study of Sanskrit in the West began in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to Vedic texts, specifically the Upanishads. The importance of Vedic Sanskrit for Indo-European studies was also recognized in the early 19th century. English translations of the Samhitas were published in the later 19th century, in the ''Sacred Books of the East'' series edited by Müller between 1879 and 1910. Ralph T. H. Griffith also presented English translations of the four Samhitas, published 1889 to 1899.

See also

Hindu Philosophy

Pandit

Shakha

Vedic chant

Notes

References

. . . .

Smith, Brian K., ''Canonical Authority and Social Classification: Veda and "Varṇa" in Ancient Indian Texts-'', History of Religions, The University of Chicago Press (1992), 103-125.

Literature

;Overviews J. Gonda, ''Vedic Literature: '', A History of Indian literature. Vol. 1, Veda and Upanishads (1975), ISBN 9783447016032.

J. A. Santucci, ''An Outline of Vedic Literature'' (1976).

S. Shrava, ''A Comprehensive History of Vedic Literature — Brahmana and Aranyaka Works'', Pranava Prakashan (1977).

;Concordances

M. Bloomfield, ''A Vedic Concordance'' (1907)

Vishva Bandhu, Bhim Dev, S. Bhaskaran Nair (eds.), '': A Vedic Word-Concordance'', Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute, Hoshiarpur, 1963–1965, revised edition 1973-1976.

;Conference proceedings

Griffiths, Arlo and Houben, Jan E. M. (eds.), ''The Vedas : texts, language & ritual: proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop, Leiden 2002'', Groningen Oriental Studies 20, Groningen : Forsten, (2004), ISBN 90-6980-149-3.

External links

GRETIL etexts

The Vedas at sacred-texts.com

Vedas: Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva

Vedas and Upanishads Complete set

Category:Hindu texts Category:Sanskrit texts Veda

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Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst, 21 September 187425 May 1934) was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite ''The Planets''.

His early works show the influence of Grieg, Wagner, Richard Strauss and fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams, and later, through Vaughan Williams, the music of Ravel. The combined influence of Ravel, Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes enabled Holst to free himself of the influence of Wagner and Strauss and to forge his own style. Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies.

Holst composed almost 200 works, including operas, ballets, choral hymns and songs. An enthusiastic educator, Holst became music master at St Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and director of music at Morley College in 1907, continuing in both posts until retirement.

He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart and father of the composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of him in 1938.

Early life

Holst was born on 21 September 1874, at 4 Pittville Terrace (named today Clarence Road). Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, EnglandThe house has been opened as a museum devoted to Holst's life and times since 1974, devoted partly to him and partly to illustrating local domestic life of the mid-19th century.

Holst's great-grandfather, Matthias von Holst, was of Scandinavian origin, and came to England in 1802 from Riga. Holst's mother, Clara von Holst, who died in 1882, was a singer who bore two sons, Gustav and Emil Gottfried (who later became Ernest Cossart, a film actor in Hollywood), Following his wife's death, Adolph von Holst eventually remarried,and had two further sons.

Holst was christened Gustavus Theodore von Holst, after his grandfather and his great-uncle Theodor, a painter. He was a frail child with neuritis in his arm which plagued him for the rest of his life. His early recollections were musical; he was taught to play the piano and violin, and began composing when he was about twelve. He also started to play the trombone when his father thought this might improve his son's asthma. He was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School for Boys. He began composition at school, writing piano pieces, organ voluntaries, songs, anthems and a Symphony in C minor (from 1892). He was also organist and choir master at Wyck Rissington in the Cotswolds.

He attended the Royal College of Music on a scholarship, where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and where in 1895 he met fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams, who became a lifelong friend. Vaughan Williams's own music was in general quite different from Holst’s, but he praised Holst's work abundantly and the two men developed a shared interest in exploring and maintaining the English vocal and choral tradition as found primarily in folk song, madrigals and church music. Holst and Vaughan Williams were able to criticise each other's compositions as they were being written. They never lost this degree of mutual trust.

While at the Royal College of Music, Holst fell in love with the music of Wagner, which he was able to hear at Covent Garden. He also came under the influence of William Morris, joining the Hammersmith Socialist Society and attending lectures by Morris and George Bernard Shaw (with whom he shared a passion for vegetarianism ). Holst remained a socialist all his life. He was also invited to conduct the Hammersmith Socialist Choir, teaching them Madrigals by Thomas Morley, choruses by Purcell, extracts from Wagner as well as works by Mozart and himself.

Career

First steps

Holst had hoped to build his career partly as a pianist, but stricken from adolescence with a nerve condition that increasingly affected the movement of his right hand, he eventually gave up the piano for the trombone. He was good enough to earn employment with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and the Scottish Orchestra (forerunner of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) although his salary was only just enough to live on..

He also played in a popular orchestra called the "White Viennese Band", conducted by Stanislas Wurm. The music was cheap and repetitive and not to Holst's liking, and he referred to this kind of work as "worming" (a pun on Wurm's name, which means "worm" in German) and regarded it as "criminal". His need to "worm" came to an end as his compositions became more successful, and his income was given stability by his teaching posts. With his finances secure, Holst married Emily Isobel Harrison, a fair-headed soprano, at Fulham Register Office on 22 June 1901, their union enduring until his death in 1934. Emily Isobel bore him a daughter, Imogen, on 12 April 1907; to be their only child.

The poetry of Walt Whitman also had a profound effect on Holst, as it did with many of his contemporaries, and he set Whitman's words in "Dirge for Two Veterans" and ''The Mystic Trumpeter'' (1904). He also set poetry by Thomas Hardy and Robert Bridges. Holst also wrote an orchestral ''Walt Whitman Overture'' in 1899, which was given a world premiere recording by the Munich Symphony Orchestra, as well as a recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

During these years Holst also became interested in Hindu mysticism and spirituality, and this interest led to the composition of several works set to translations of Sanskrit texts, including: ''Sita'' (1899–1906), a three-act opera based on an episode in the ''Ramayana''; ''Sāvitri'' (1908), a chamber opera based on a tale from the ''Mahabharata''; 4 groups of ''Hymns from the Rig Veda'' (1908–14); and two texts originally by Kalidasa: ''Two Eastern Pictures'' (1909–10) and ''The Cloud Messenger'' (1913). The texts of these last three works were translated by Holst himself. To make these translations from Sanskrit to English, Holst enrolled at University College London (UCL) to study the language as a 'non-matriculated' student. On 14 January 1909 he paid 5 guineas for Sanskrit classes during the spring and summer terms of that year. The UCL records also show that during this time he moved from 23 Grena Road in Richmond, to 10 The Terrace in Barnes. On 19 October 1909 he re-enrolled at UCL for the autumn term and paid 3 guineas "special fee" for his Sanskrit classes of "2 hours a week". The records end at this point, and so it seems he only spent one year as a student at UCL.

Teaching

In 1904 Holst took up his first teaching job as music master at James Allen's Girls' School in West Dulwich, South London.

In 1905, Holst was appointed Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, London. In 1907, Holst also became director of music at Morley College. These were the most important of his teaching posts, and he retained both until the end of his life.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, musical society as a whole (and Holst's friend Vaughan Williams in particular) became interested in old English folksongs, madrigal singers, and Tudor composers. Holst shared in his friend’s admiration for the simplicity and economy of these melodies, and their use in his compositions is one of his music’s most recognisable features.

Holst was an avid rambler. He walked extensively in Italy, France and England. He also travelled outside the bounds of Europe, heading to French-controlled Algeria in 1908 on doctor's orders as a treatment for asthma and the depression that crippled him after his submission failed to win the Ricordi Prize, a coveted award for composition. His travels in Arab and Berber lands, including an extensive cycling tour of the Algerian Sahara, inspired the suite ''Beni Mora'', written upon his return.

After the lukewarm reception of his choral work ''The Cloud Messenger'' in 1912, Holst was again off travelling, financing a trip to Spain with fellow composers Balfour Gardiner and brothers Clifford and Arnold Bax with funds from an anonymous donation. Despite being shy, Holst was fascinated by people and society, and had always believed that the best way to learn about a city was to get lost in it. In Girona, Catalonia, he often disappeared, only to be found hours later by his friends having abstract debates with local musicians. It was in Spain that Clifford Bax introduced Holst to astrology, a hobby that was to inspire the later ''Planets'' suite. He read astrological fortunes until his death, and called his interest in the stars his "pet vice".

Shortly after his return in 1913, St Paul's Girls School opened a new music wing, and Holst composed the still popular ''St Paul's Suite'' for the occasion. In 1913, Stravinsky premiered ''The Rite of Spring'', sparking riots in Paris and caustic criticism in London. A year later, Holst first heard Schoenberg’s ''Five Pieces for Orchestra'', an "ultra-modern" set of five movements employing "extreme chromaticism" (the consistent use of all 12 musical notes). Although he had earlier lampooned the stranger aspects of modern music, the new music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg influenced his work on ''The Planets''.

Holst's compositions include works for wind band, and have become standards in the repertoire. His most famous are the First Suite in E-flat for Military Band of 1909 and the Second Suite in F for Military Band of 1911 (see also ''Hammersmith'', below). He also wrote the "Moorside Suite" for brass band in 1928, the first recognised 'classical' composer to treat the medium seriously.

Holst and wife Isobel bought a cottage in Thaxted, Essex and, surrounded by medieval buildings and ample rambling opportunities, he started work on the suite that became his best known work, the orchestral suite ''The Planets''. Holst himself adapted the theme from "Jupiter" as a hymn tune under the name of "Thaxted", specifically for the words "I Vow to Thee My Country". (According to the documentary by Tony Palmer ''In the Bleak Midwinter'', Holst hated this association because the text was the opposite of what he believed. This is a little surprising, though, since he had made the adaptation himself in 1921.) His daughter Imogen later recalled of "I Vow to Thee" that "At the time when he was asked to set these words to music, Holst was so over-worked and over-weary that he felt relieved to discover they 'fitted' the tune from Jupiter".

While living in Thaxted, Holst became friendly with Rev. Conrad Noel, the famous 'Red Vicar', who supported the Independent Labour Party and espoused many unpopular causes. Holst became an occasional organist and choir master at Thaxted Parish Church and began an annual music festival at Whitsuntide in 1916, at which students from Morley College and St Paul's School performed. His best-known partsong, 'This Have I Done For My True Love' , was dedicated to Noel and often performed with dancing during religious ceremonies at Thaxted. This was controversial, as the Church of England still retained much of the Puritan ethic in its services. (The singing of non-biblical texts had been allowed only as recently as 1820, and religious dancing harked back to pre-Reformation times.) As late as 1951 at the Leith Hill Festival, singers from the Anglican tradition objected to the words of Holst's partsong, which mention dance and religion together. Vaughan Williams, who was conducting, advised the objectors to vocalise and leave the words to those singers who did not share the inhibition. Controversy surrounded Holst's friendship with Noel, whose opinions grew progressively uncompromising, leading to his displaying the Red Flag and that of Sinn Fein in the church. Holst's view was that Noel's philosophy was a "gospel of comic hate", but he ceased to hold the music festival at Thaxted after three seasons, moving it to Dulwich.

Other tunes that also became attached to hymns were ''Cranham'' which is the usual tune to Christina Rossetti's poem ''In the Bleak Midwinter'' and ''Sheen'' which is attached to a versification of the recessional ''From glory to glory advancing'' from the Orthodox Christian Liturgy of Saint James.

World War I and after

left|thumb|175px|Holst drawn by William Rothenstein, 1920 At the onset of World War I, Holst tried to enlist but was rejected because of his bad eyes, bad lungs and bad digestion. He dropped the "von" from his name in 1916 in response to anti-German sentiment, making it official by deed poll in 1918. His new music, however, benefited from the growing demand for new English music. This was partly in response to an embargo on contemporary German music that saw very few performances of Richard Strauss and Max Reger throughout the war (although older generations of German composers remained as popular as ever, culminating in a run of ''Die Walküre'', conducted by Thomas Beecham, in 1918). Towards the end of the war he was offered a post within the YMCA’s educational work programme as musical director and he set off for Salonica (present day Thessaloniki, Greece) and Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1918. While he was teaching music to troops eager to escape the drudgery of army life, ''The Planets'' was being performed to audiences back home. Shortly after his return after the war’s end, Holst composed ''Ode to Death'', based upon a poem by Walt Whitman.

During the years 1920–1923, Holst's popularity grew through the success of ''The Planets'' and ''The Hymn of Jesus'' (1917) (based on the Apocryphal gospels), and the publication of a new opera, ''The Perfect Fool'' (a satire of a work by Wagner). Holst became something of "an anomaly, a famous English composer", and was busy with conducting, lecturing and teaching obligations. He hated publicity; he often refused to answer questions posed by the press and when asked for his autograph, handed out prepared cards that read, "I do not hand out my autograph". Always frail, after a collapse in 1923 he retired from all teaching (other than at St Paul's School, where he was still teaching at his death) to devote the remaining (eleven) years of his life to composition.

Later life

Holst's 'retirement' was immediately productive, with the ''First Choral Symphony'' to words by Keats (a ''Second Choral Symphony'' to words by George Meredith exists only in fragments). A short Shakespearian opera, ''At the Boar's Head'', followed quickly, although neither had the immediate popular appeal of ''A Moorside Suite'' for brass band of 1928.

Holst took advantage of new technology to publicise his work through sound recordings and the BBC’s wireless broadcasts. He began to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra for the Columbia company in 1922, using the acoustic process; his recordings of the period include ''Beni Mora'' , the ''Marching Song'' and (remarkably) the complete ''Planets''. Although, as his daughter Imogen noted, he couldn't quite achieve the gradual fade-out of women's voices and orchestra he had written (owing to the limitations of early recording), it was a landmark recording of the work. Holst conducted it again, with the same orchestra and for the same company, in an electrical recording of 1926. All performances have been issued on LP and CD format.

In 1927 he was commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony. Instead, he wrote an orchestral piece based on Thomas Hardy's Wessex, a work that became ''Egdon Heath'' and which was first performed a month after Hardy’s death, in his memory. By this time, Holst was going out of fashion, and the piece was poorly reviewed (although this may have as much to do with the austere nature of the work). However, Holst is said to have considered the short, subdued but powerful tone poem his "best work" . The piece has been much better received in recent years, with several recordings available. Holst did complete a scherzo for the symphony before his death; this music has been recorded.

Towards the end of his life, Holst wrote ''Choral Fantasia'' (1930), and he was commissioned by the BBC to write a piece for military band; the resulting ''Hammersmith'' was a tribute to the place where he had spent most of his life, a musical expression of the London borough (of Hammersmith), which begins with an attempt to recreate the haunting sound of the River Thames sleepily flowing its way. He then made an orchestral version of this work for its first performance, sharing the programme with the London premiere of Walton's ''Belshazzar's Feast''. This unlucky coincidence may account for its subsequent obscurity as an orchestral work.

Interested as ever in new mediums, Holst wrote a score for the Associated Sound Film Industries picture 'The Bells' in which Holst believed he appeared as an extra in a crowd scene. However, he was mortified when he heard the quality of the 1931 soundtrack. The film was the victim of poor marketing and no copy can now be traced. He also wrote a 'jazz band piece' that his daughter later arranged for orchestra as ''Capriccio''. A late flowering of academic life came when Harvard University offered him a lectureship for the first six months of 1932.

Holst had a lifetime of poor health, which worsened due to a concussion during a backward fall from the conductor's podium in 1923, from which he never fully recovered. In his final four years, Holst grew ill with stomach problems. One of his last compositions, the ''Brook Green Suite'', named after the land on which St Paul’s Girls’ School was built, was performed for the first time a few months before his death. Holst died on 25 May 1934, of complications following stomach surgery, in London. His ashes were interred at Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex, with Bishop George Bell giving the memorial oration at the funeral.

Memorial

On Sunday 27 September 2009, after a weekend of concerts at Chichester Cathedral in memory of Holst, a new memorial was unveiled to the public. On it are inscribed Holst's dates, and an epitaph, taken from the text of ''The Hymn of Jesus'', reading "The heavenly spheres make music for us".

Radio and television biographies

In 2007, BBC Radio 4 produced a radio play by Martyn Wade called ''The Bringer of Peace'', which is an intimate biographical portrait of Holst. The play follows his early dismay at his lack of composing success, to the creation of ''The Planets'' suite, with the play's seven tiers following the structure of ''The Planets''. Adrian Scarborough played Holst, and the producer was David Hitchinson.

''Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter'', directed by Tony Palmer, was first transmitted on 24 April 2011. The documentary charted his life with special reference to his support for socialism and for working class ventures.

Media

Extracts from ''The Planets'' can be found in the main article for the suite.

Notes

References

''Britannica Concise'', "Gustav Holst", 2006, Concise.Britannica.com webpage: ConciseBritannica-GHolst.

''Encyclopædia Britannica Online'', "Gustav Holst", 2006, Britannica.com webpage: Britannica2006-GHolst.

Michael Short, ''Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Kenric Taylor, "Gustav Holst (1874–1934) | Compositions" (list of works), 2006, GustavHolst.info webpage: GHolstInfo-Compositions.

Further reading

Holst, Imogen, ''Gustav Holst: A Biography'', Oxford University Press, 1938.

Holst, Imogen, ''Gustav Holst and Thaxted'' (4-page pamphlet)

Randel, Michael, ''The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music'', Harvard University Press, 1996. Cf. p. 390.

External links

www.GustavHolst.info

* Ian Lace's Biography

* List of compositions

Gustav Holst: The Lost Films (Discovered 2009)

The Planets Suite Op. 32 Live recording by Peabody Concert Orchestra (2002)

Holst Birthplace Museum, Cheltenham

Gustav Holst at Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Compositions by Gustav Holst

Category:English people of Swedish descent Category:English composers Category:English classical trombonists Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Opera composers Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Old Patesians Category:People from Cheltenham Category:British people of Latvian descent Category:Music and musicians from Gloucestershire Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:English vegetarians Category:1874 births Category:1934 deaths Category:People from Barnes, London Category:Alumni of University College London Category:Ballet composers Category:Brass band composers Category:English socialists

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