ABSTRACT
The four Vedas—Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Sāmaveda, Atharvaveda—are the canonical religious and cultural texts of the light-skinned Aryans (Indo-European-speaking people from the Iranian plateau) who arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the northwest around 1800 b.c. These four canonical collections comprise the earliest Hindu sacred writings. The oldest Vedic text, the Ṛgveda (veda ‘knowledge’) is a compilation of 1,028 metrical hymns encompassing 10,462 verses in praise of the early Hindu gods. It was first compiled in what is now Pakistan, though many of the events described in it occurred farther west, in such places as Bactria, in northeast Afghanistan (Parpola 1988). The Yajurveda is a collection of sacrificial formulas and prayers in two formats—with and without prose commentary. The Sāmaveda is a collection of verses, most of them also occurring in the Ṛgveda, and hundreds of chants utilizing these verses as textual sources. The Atharvaveda is essentially a book of magical formulas and spells (Renou 1971).
