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Re: NEED INFO ABOUT HINDU GODS
Anshuman Pandey <apandey@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On 5 Jun 1995, Hari Krishna Susarla wrote:
>
> > That is not exactly correct. In actuality, there are many 'gods' or
> > 'devas' in the texts of the Hindus. But there is only one Supreme
God,
> > who is everywhere identified as either Vishnu, Krishna, or Narayana.
The
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> What happened to Brahma, Hiranyagarbha, Prajapati, etc.? Do the early
> Vedic texts mention the Supreme God as Vishnu? Vishnu was never
prominent
> in the early Vedas. It was only until the later Vedic period that
Vishnu
> began to gain in prominence.
>
"Vishnu was never prominent in the early Vedas" is a tad bit confusing
-- if Vishnu *was* "never prominent" in the "earlier" Vedas, is He at
least sometimes prominent in them *now*, or will He perhaps be so
later? Why would His prominence change? The next sentence is also a
little odd, since a beginning is semantically discrete, and cannot be
said to have happened over a time, as is indicated by "it was only
until ... that Vishnu began."
If Sri Susarla will permit the correction, I would like to clarify
that the Lord is *not* identified just as Vishnu, Krishna, or
Naaraayana everywhere in the Vedas; He is identified by those three
names and more.
It is also not the case that a multitude of gods is worshipped in the
Vedas. The Vedas do seem very inconsistent to the unskilled, but there
is no way on Earth that anyone can prove that any one of them is older
than any other; for that, it is necessary to show that they were
authored by specific people whose times are known, and this is
impossible. Many western historians, who do not understand anything of
the Vedas themselves, have carelessly tried to say that there are
older and newer Vedas -- however, they have not been able to give any
evidence as to when and by whom each one was written, or how and why
the whole of them would have the reputation of not being authored,
being the only texts in the world to have that quality. And of course,
most historians do not have any explanation for the non-Vedic Shrutis
-- where do they place, in the alleged sequence of chronology?
An author cannot be proved for any Veda by any source whatsoever. Not
by experience, because no one has seen a Veda being composed; not by
logic, because there is no rule of inference that if something is
known as an antecedent condition, then the Vedas have an author -- it
is possible to say "all texts are authored, and so are the Vedas," but
this is not valid, considering that we don't know yet that the Vedas
are authored, and our knowledge base is thus still incomplete; we must
say "all texts except the Vedas are authored, and so are the Vedas,"
which is not a valid inference, as can be shown as a simple exercise
in symbolic logic. No author is shown for the Vedas by scripture,
because no author of scripture can get past the previous two
objections -- we do not care for anyone's writings based on guesswork
or imagination.
The Vedas, and valid parts of Vedanta literature like the Puraanas and
the Bhagavad Gita, state that the whole of the Vedas are unauthored,
and that Vishnu is Himself the only deity ever primarily praised in
the Shrutis. If in some place Agni is praised, then it is because that
name applies more to Vishnu than to the lesser Agni; this is just as
aatmaa means jiiva in a lesser sense, but in the Shrutis is
interpreted to mean Vishnu, who is called so because He is the Aatmaa
of the aatmaa itself.
|| nityaa Vedaaha samastaascha shaashvataaha Vishnu-buddhigaaha ||
|| sarge sarge amunaivaita udgiiryante tathaiva cha ||
|| tat-kramenaiva tair-varnaihi tvaihi svaraireva na cha'nyathaa ||
|| ataha Shrutitvametaasaam Shruta eva ato'khilaihi ||
-- Brahmaanda Puraana
|| vaachaa Viruupa nityayaa ||
|| nityaya'nityayaa staumi Brahma-tatparamam padam ||
-- Rg Veda
|| Mukhyam cha sarva-Vedaanaam taatparyam Shripatehe param ||
|| utkarshe tu tad-anyatra taatparyam syaad avaantaram ||
-- Mahavaraaha Upanishad
|| Vedaischa sarvaihi Aham-eva vedyo ||
|| Vedaanta-krt Vedavit eva cha-Aham ||
-- Bhagavad Gita
But why should the Vedas be believed, even if they themselves say that
they are not authored texts? Simply because otherwise, there is no way
at all that anything can be said about them -- even the assertions
made that they were written near the river Saraswati, etc., are made
only when they are understood to be referring to a river now run dry,
and such -- then their meaning is accepted as true. If their meaning
is accepted as true in one instance, then it has to be in all --
unless, of course, a higher source of information is present against
which the Vedas may be weighed, and parts of them rejected by the
higher standard. What is such a higher source, then? It turns out
there is none, and that any partial rejection that is made is solely
for idiosyncratic reasons.
Regards,
Shrisha Rao
