Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of Bharatham-5.1. : Swami Krishnananda.

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OPINION : Wednesday, December 30, 2020. 11:25 AM. 2318.
 Chapter- 5. Introduction to the Epics - 1.


In our last sessions we discussed the foundations of Indian culture and the inner contents and classifications of the Vedas. Next, we moved further on to a consideration of special emphasis laid in the course of history on the different sections of the Vedas, with some group or community laying emphasis on the Samhitas, others on the Brahmanas, and others on the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.


The orthodox Vedic pundits who are available to us even today in small numbers in India study the Veda Samhitas by rote, by heart, and they make it a profession. Study of the Veda Samhitas means the capacity to recite the Samhitas. The emphasis is laid on the Brahmanas in the form of the Mimamsa doctrine of ritualism, karma kanda as it is known in Sanskrit, and the externalised form of the application of the Veda mantras. The mantras of the Vedas were originally intended as prayers to the gods, conceived in the beginning as a group superintending over all the powers of nature, later on clubbed together into different categories of ruling powers, and culminating in the end with a monotheistic concept of the one God and the Absolute. This aspect of the Veda mantras was taken up for meditational purposes in the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.


The ethical and the moral side, the sociological side, became the study of the Smritis, eighteen in number, of which the Manusmriti, Yajnavalkya Smriti and Parashara Smriti are the most important. What is it that the Smritis tell us? I am repeating to you what I said the other day. The aims of existence conceived as material needs, emotional needs, ethical needs and moral needs centred round the final aim of life, which is moksha, liberation of the spirit, which achievement was attempted through an internal educational process of actual living in the world through the stages of brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa. All this we have already observed in some detail.


Thus, the aim of life, which is the liberation of the spirit, is the conditioning factor of ethical and moral living in the world – righteousness and justice. Even the permission to have material comforts and emotional satisfactions in our life is determined by the law of universal salvation of the soul. It is very difficult to imagine how every aspect of life has been interpreted in India in terms of the highest aim that is the principal occupation of all mankind. This widespread, well thought-out, precise pattern of living laid down for us by our ancients through the Smritis is forgotten these days. We do not seem to be living for the sake of the ultimate liberation of the spirit. The very idea of it has been brushed aside from our brains on account of intense pressure laid on us by economic factors, physical needs, political conditions, and community values. We live in communities, we have national barriers, we have political limitations of various kinds, and our needs are principally today wrongly conceived as economic and material. We have come down far from the ancient ideal, looking to the effect and the fruit only, which we want to reap and enjoy, without knowing how the fruit will come unless there is a tree which is planted well.

To be continued ...

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