Understanding our Vedas - Part 1

You were told we have only 4 vedas, correct? But that’s not exactly true & here’s the tea.

First, we should know that the word veda comes from “vid” which means “to know” & hundreds of rishis in our ancient times had compiled this knowledge about the world across hundreds oral or spoken verses.

Then this guy named Ved Vyasa decided to organize all of it on paper between 1500 - 500 BCE into 4 super-books called Rig, Yajur, Sama & Atharv, which are a curations of 100s of books & info.

Each of the vedas is divided into 4 parts:

The Samhitas or mantras, hymns & verses praising God (which were taught to students in the Bhramacharya stage of life since their memory is sharp so its easy to memorize things).

The Bhramanas or practical ritual instructions (taught to married folks in the Grihastha phase since they have to carry out their duties as Bhramans).

The Aranyakas or meditative & reflective texts on how to see & reach God, taught to folks who were retiring into the forests in the Vanaprastha or hermit stage of life.

And the ending chapters are the Upanishads or highly philosophical texts answering the meaning of God, soul & our existence - taught to old people ready to renounce the material world in the Sanyasa stage of life.

Vyasa knew all this knowledge was too complex so he’s also credited to curating the more modern Puranas, too, from various rishis, which are the original storybooks of our culture made to simplify God through stories.

Interestingly, Vyasa also wrote the Mahabharata, within which the Srimad Bhagavad Gita sits, and he compiled the Bhrama Sutras which are summaries of the Upanishads - all 3 of these combined are what we call Vedanta.