Decoding the Vedic System of Knowledge

Summary

The Vedas are among the oldest collections of text in India. Even today, they are taught orally from instructor to student. The teacher painstakingly corrects the pronunciation and intonation of the Vedic texts. Technology has seen virtual classrooms where females also learn and recite the Vedas the way they were changed.

Of the three later Vedas, the Samaveda is much the most intricately connected with the Rigveda. Historically, it is of vast importance, for it contains lost technology and scientific matter, all its verses except seventy-five being taken directly from the Rigveda. Its contents are derived chiefly from the eighth and especially the ninth, the Soma book. The Samaveda resembles the Yajurveda in having been compiled only for ritual application, for the verses of which it consists are all meant to be chanted at the ceremonies of the offerings. Removed from their context in the Rigveda, they are strung together without internal connection, their significance depending solely on their relation to particular rites. In form, these stanzas appear in the text of the Sama-Veda as if they were to be spoken or recited, differing from those of the Rigveda only in the way of marking the accent.