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THE
VEDAS (c.1200 BCE onwards) |
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*P.I.E.*
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With the Vedas, the *Indo-European
languages* make themselves at home in South Asia, as part of the *South
Asian language scene*; a zoomable look at *Vedic
India*
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The earliest layers of the Vedas
seem to
locate themselves in the northern Punjab, near the Khyber Pass, after
which the geographical
references spread eastward along the Gangetic plain |
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A tribute to some of the
less-commonly-portrayed
Vedic deities |
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Indra, the single most important
Vedic god,
survives in a limited way here and there, mostly on the fringes |
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Agni, the other most important
Vedic deity,
is here seen crowned with flames, in an image from the medieval South
Indian
temple complex of Madurai |
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Mitra, though ignored today, not
only had
an Indo-Iranian following (with a cult in ancient Persia), but also
became
very popular as a Roman soldiers' god |
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Goddesses are not prominent in the
Vedas;
the famous Gayatri mantra has been personified into "Shri Gayatri-ji,"
but she remains quite obscure |
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Sarasvati, a minor Vedic river
goddess,
has now become the goddess of learning and knowledge |
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Surya or Vivasvan (the Shining
One), the
Sun God, has had a livelier career than most Vedic deities-- he has
even
been turned into a feminine sunflower |
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These three modern Madhubani
paintings of
Varuna, Agni, and Yama are carefully labeled (since the viewers might
not
recognize the deities otherwise), and represent a new, self-consciously
"textualized" trend |
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The Vedic gods were also commonly
used in
much-later mythology to symbolically transfer powers to newer deities,
and thus legitimate them |
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On the whole, in modern Hindu
bhakti, or
devotionalism, the Vedic gods are reduced to the status of minor
godlings
who perform limited tasks under the supervision of the post-Vedic major
deities |
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Nowadays, the Vedic deities'
ancient stories
tend to be told, if they are told at all, in "Amar Chitra Katha"
comics:
here Indra and his consort Shachi both have two-armed and entirely
human
(super-hero and super-model) bodies. |
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Swami Dayanand Sarasvati founded
the "Arya
Samaj" in Bombay in 1875 as a specifically neo-Vedic organization |
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Some of the most remarkable claims
about
the Vedas are made nowadays by modern Indians trained in technical
fields
(engineering, in this case), but not in Vedic Sanskrit |
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The Indus Valley "Priest King"
here reappears
as a Vedic patriarch. According to some of the wilder modern claims,
the
ancient Aryans-- incredibly ancient, sometimes going back to 10,000 BCE
or even further-- originated in India, and spread their civilization
outward
to all other peoples. |
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