The Vedas and Other Sources

Reference has already been made to the Vedas, which, so far as the philosophical literature of India goes, contain the earliest expressions of Indian reflective thinking. Historical researches show that the earliest parts of the Vedas were not composed in India, but somewhere in the original home of the Aryan race, which is likely to have been in or near Arctic Siberia, as one Indian scholar, B. G. Tilak, ¹ pointed out. This view is not accepted by Western scholars, for whom the Aryan race is Caucasian. However, Max Müller regarded the Veda as the first book ever written by the Aryans. The Vedas contain the names of gods, which are related to those in Greek mythology. For instance, the name Dyaus, of a Vedic god, is from the same linguistic root as the name Zeus, of the Greek god. Max Müller's studies in comparative mythology ² show many such names common to the Vedic mythologies and to the Iranian and European mythologies. Although some of the deities having related names perform different functions in India, Iran, and Europe, they show that the Aryans belonged to the same race and for some reason left their original home and spread out in different directions. Some of them came down to India. And when they came, they brought with them their religious practices and traditions, which of course were not written down, since no books existed at that time, but were handed down orally from father to son and teacher to pupil.