I was wondering if somebody could give me Hindu texts in a nutshell. What are the different Hindu texts considered important to the Hindu? I hear a lot of words: Upanishads, Vedas, Bhagavad Vita, Mahabharata, etc. but I don’t really understand their relationship to one another. Could somebody here please give me a simple rundown of these books and their relative importance to the Hindu? Thanks!
I think I can get these straight:
The Vedas are the oldest and most sacred of the texts. They are said to have been first written down about 1500bce. There are four Vedas - Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Arthava veda. the vedas are mainly books of hymns and ritual speech, for the teaching of priests.They contain a great deal of philosophy embedded in the hymns, as well.
Early Hinduism had the Brahmanas, which were ritual instructions that fleshed out the Vedas (think the OT books of ritual and hymnody). The brahmanas have mainly passed out of fashion.
The Upanishads were comments on the vedas written early - after 500bce. They express a less ritualised, more philosophical approach to religion.
The Mahabharata is the ‘national epic’ of the Indian Hindus (think the tales of troy and odyseus, romulus and remus, etc, in the west). It is a sprawling tale of heroes and gods, which is sometimes performed as a days-long theatrical in India. It contains a good deal of what is called ‘hindu mythology’.
The Bhagavad Gita (Holy Song) is a section of the Mahabharata. Just as the Bible contains sections of peotry and song, and special tales, the Gita is a special tale inside the Mahabharata. The Gita tells of a moment when the Hero Arjuna is going into battle and Krishna, the incarnation of the god Vishnu, is his charioteer. the Song focuses on a moment in which Arjuna questions his heroic destiny, the trials of war, etc, and krishna speaks wisdom to him. Some Hindu sects make a special big deal of Krishna, and that has helped push the Gita into a special place in some folks’ minds. It is not the ‘Bible’ of hinduism.
The Puranas are collections of tales and lore from arund the Hindu world - another major source of ‘mythology’, in the sense of stories of the deeds of the gods.
Hindus never try to collect all these into one ‘Bible’, and different Hindu religions emphasize them in different ways. There is a ‘canon’ of sorts. Material which is considered to have been spoken by the Gods and written down by wise seers and sages (prophets, if you like) are referred to as ‘sruti’, meaning 'heard. The vedas are all considered sruti, as are the upanishads. Some consider the mahabharata sruti, even calling it a ‘fifth veda’.
Hinduism is not a single religion - it is a family of religions that share a common heritage. Scripture in hinduism can always expand - new wise writings are produced all the time - but the designation of being ‘heard’ from the divine is likely to remain limited to the ancient books.
Hope that helps.
Ian
but here is an overview of Hinduism with links to mainline Hindu sites.
From a Hindu perspective, Christians can be seen as Abrahamics of the Christic sampradaya; Jews, of the Mosaic sampradaya; and Muslims of the Rasulic sampradaya.
