ABSTRACT
The Vedas are a body of literature of the ancient South Asian Indo-European peoples. The corpus itself was written over a long stretch of time: 1500 bce to 500 bce. It has conventionally been divided into four Vedas (rig, Yajur, Saman, and Arthavan) and each Veda (literally, 'knowledge') is often divided into four portions: Formulas (Mantras), Ritual Manuals (Brahmanas), Forest Books (Aranyaka), and Dialogues (Upanisads). The mantra portions of the rig, Yajur, and Saman consist of hymns to and accounts of the various Nature deities, many of which are to be employed in sacrifices, while the Arthavan is a collection of spells and cures. One problem in attempting to answer the question of what the Vedas have to say about evil is that the question assumes there is some finite or clear thesis about evil present in the literature.
