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The Real Impact of the Silk Road | Extra Long Historical Documentary
Get.factual
Nov 17, 2024

The Silk Road stands as one of humanity’s most transformative endeavors, connecting East and West across Eurasia for thousands of years. This documentary series examines its profound impact on history, shaping empires, spreading ideas, and revolutionizing civilizations. Today's extra long history documentary explores how the Silk Road influenced conflicts, from cavalry tactics to the invention of gunpowder. It then reveals how the route became a conduit for both life and disease, reshaping societies. Finally, it uncovers the pivotal role of Silk Road trade in driving the Age of Revolutions and shaping the modern world.



Transcript

[dramatic music] male narrator: Eurasia. The world's largest land mass.
Some 10,000 kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans.
A formidable distance, even in today's world.
And yet over that vast distance, human beings have pursued
one of history's greatest enterprises. The Silk Road.
A tremendously profitable trade route and so much more.
For thousands of years, exotic goods, new technologies,
conquering armies... [shouting] And brilliant ideas
traveled along the Silk Road.
[shouting] Silk Road trade helped to build empires
and to break them. It fanned the fires of revolution...
[booming] Drove great explorations,
and forged powerful bonds between faraway peoples.
- The Silk Road made human beings realize that there
are other people out there, and it opened the eyes of the east and the west.
narrator: This is the story of how Silk Road trade made so much more than money.
It's the epic tale of how the Silk Road helped create a world;
a world that created us.
2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire seemed unstoppable.
Rome had conquered much of Europe and was sending its legions beyond
the eastern Mediterranean to the Middle East-- gateway to the riches of Asia.
But a journey to the east could become a road of blood.
In 53 B.C.E. near the Mesopotamian town of Carrhae, the Parthians--
and empire blending Persian and Greek cultures-- confronted a Roman army.
The outcome of the battle seemed beyond doubt.
Some 40,000 Romans faced only 10,000 Parthians.
And Rome's Legions were Europe's finest foot soldiers. [chanting]
There was just one problem. The Parthian army didn't fight on foot.
- The Parthians, they were cavalry. They were horse archers. Versatile. Rode like the wind.
What the Romans did was what the Romans always did. They took a fixed position.
They were ordered into a hollow square defending all sides.
But that was nothing to the Parthian horse archers because they could just ride around them, and they did. They galloped around and around and around
and around, shooting as they went. [shouting]
Thousands and thousands of arrows loosed into those Romans.
[shouting] What the Romans eventually did was they were ordered
to go into testudo. That's that Roman formation where they lock their shields together
and put the next layer of shields to make a roof. Testudo is Latin for tortoise.
But the Parthians had the answer to this tortoise. They had a hammer to break open its shell.
narrator: The Parthian hammer was a cataphract-- a Greek word meaning clothed in full armor.
Horse and rider wore heavy coats of mail.
The cataphract was the ancient world equivalent of a battle tank.
At Carrhae, charging cataphracts broke open the testudo...
[shouting] Exposing the Romans inside to more arrow attacks.
Some 30,000 Romans were killed or captured.
Parthian losses were minor. It was one of Rome's worst military defeats.
But it may have been something else as well.
A Roman historian wrote that the Parthians dazzled the Romans with banners made of a beautiful fabric--silk.
That may only be a legend. But around the time of Carrhae,
Romans began coveting Chinese silk, and China began selling silk to Rome
in exchange for fine Roman glassware and gold...
Inspiring the name we give Eurasian trade today--
the Silk Road.
But long before Romans and Parthians fought at Carrhae, trade between the peoples of Eurasia were shaping lives, making new things possible,
and changing the world.
At Carrhae, the Parthians won with a style of warfare that had evolved centuries earlier
and thousands of kilometers away.
On the steppes of Central Asia...
An ocean of land... Where victory in battle, and life itself,
depended on moving very far, very fast.
Thousands of years before the battle of Carrhae, a transportation revolution took place
on these vast plains.
- There's good evidence for, uh, the existence of domesticated horses in what is today Kazakhstan
and southern Russia by 3500 B.C.
And we actually think that probably horses were domesticated and began to be ridden 500 or maybe
1,000 years before that, maybe as early as 4500 B.C. [horses whinnying]
narrator: The domestication of the horse was the first step towards cavalry warfare.
But the second step would be a long time coming.
- The first use of horses in warfare was with chariot warfare, and we have that well established--
Tutankhamun's chariot, uh, which many people have seen in museum exhibits.
And we know that people were using chariots in warfare starting in the Near East in about 16000, 17000 B.C.
Horses were not used as organized cavalry until after about 900 B.C., almost 1,000 years
after chariot warfare began. And it's always seemed odd to me that cavalry began
after chariotry. Chariotry is very difficult to manage.
You have to train horses to work together. They have to pull this clumsy vehicle
that has two people in it-- a driver and a warrior. Training the units to work together,
very difficult thing to do, whereas jumping on the back of a horse is an easy thing.
So why did cavalry come after chariotry?
I think the real reason that, um, cavalry waited is that, uh, you needed to have really three innovations.
The earliest evidence for the recurved bow is in Shang Dynasty, China, probably dated between
1300 and 1100 B.C. narrator: Shang emperors communicated with their
ancestors by heating animal bones or turtle shells until they cracked and then interpreting the patterns
made by the cracks. One of these so-called oracle bones is carved
with the Chinese character for bow--the earliest known image of a recurved bow.
And in the tomb of Lady Fuhao-- and imperial consort and renowned military commander--
archaeologists found more evidence. - It's a thumb cover for drawing bow string
and there's another piece that went in the middle of a recurved bow, a hand grip. The bows themselves are not preserved,
so it's a difficult thing to identify the origins of the recurved bow.
The different components of it probably came from different places geographically.
narrator: Just how far the recurved bow traveled across Eurasia was revealed in 2005 at Yanghai
in China's Xinjiang region. Wooden bows rarely survive burial in the ground,
but Xinjiang's cold, dry climate preserved one in a 3,000-year-old tomb.
Other grave goods and the human remains found in the Yanghai tombs confirmed that the bow was made
by the Scythians--a highly sophisticated culture that originated in southern Russia and migrated
on horseback across the length and breadth of Eurasia.
The true birthplace of the recurved composite bow remains an archaeological mystery.
But there is no doubt that 3,000 years ago anyone who fought on horseback
would have found it revolutionary. - A bow is as strong as it is long.
It derives its strength from its length. And the recurved bow packs the same length into this very
short bow that can be swung over the horse's rear and over the horse's neck.
And it was much, much easier to use on horseback. And the recurved bows are technologically
quite difficult to make. It took a long time to develop the craft of bow making
to that point. - The recurve are all these sinewy bends--
reflex and deflex, that gives it in-built spring. But that can only be created with composite materials.
What we mean by that is it's made of a number of materials. The heart of it is wood, usually beech.
And then you have horn-- horn from a water buffalo, and then sinew-- the tendons of an animal.
That, when you bash it, you can tease apart and get these very fine fibers--
fibers with tremendous tensile strength. That has elasticity and spring,
and it stops the bow bursting apart. These are all materials that enhance the power, the spring,
of the bow. narrator: But only if bow makers could solve a very big problem.
How to keep such a powerful bow made from so many different materials from breaking up
when its own power was pulling it apart.
Somewhere in Eurasia, sometime long ago, some unknown genius discovered the answer.
- This is the swim bladder of a sturgeon-- fish from the Black Sea. And if you start to break these up then put it in hot water,
and you get this wonderful, viscous glue. This simple idea of making a glue out of a swim bladder
of a fish was a technological breakthrough of immense consequences.
It is what enabled the composite bow to exist. And in turn the composite bow was a military revolution
of far-reaching consequences.
narrator: The composite recurved bow gave birth to a new kind of warrior--
the horse archer. - The horse archer was able to shoot from the saddle in part because of the new technology
of the composite bow. They were short, compact bows, and that meant that you can shoot them from horseback.
You see I can cross to the other side of the horse. I can turn and shoot behind. It's much more suitable for shooting on horseback.
[dramatic music] narrator: Everyone who fought with Eurasian nomads,
whether as enemy or friend, wanted a recurved composite bow.
By the early first millennium B.C.E., it was in use from east Asia to eastern Europe.
A recurved bow gave a horse archer unprecedented killing power.
But it didn't make him a cavalryman. Before horse archers could fight as an effective
military force, they needed a large supply of identical arrows.
And that didn't exist.
- Arrowheads were a variety of different sizes and weights. Some were made of bone.
Some were made out of flint. Some were made out of bronze. All of them would be individually made
and you had to adjust your shot for the weight of different arrows. Also a unit of soldiers who were firing at the same time
would be firing arrows of slightly different weights and they might go different distances.
[dramatic music]
- One of the technological innovations was the invention of the socketed, uh, arrowhead.
They were made of bronze, usually, and, uh, they were made in a mould and cast in a mould,
so that an infinite number of socketed arrowheads of the same weight could be made from the same mould.
Making socketed projectile points was actually a big deal.
You have to have a mould with a core where the socket is going to be that you can pour molten metal around
so that it's the same thickness all the way around.
narrator: Making arrowheads of the same size and weight was another Central Asian technological revolution.
For the first time, mounted warriors could unleash coordinated arrow attacks on their enemies.
- With arrowheads of the same weight, every time you drew the bow to shoot,
you knew that you were firing an arrow that was exactly the same weight as the last arrow that you fired, uh,
so you could determine the range and the distance well. And also all of the archers that were firing
were firing arrowheads at the same weight at the same time. So the distance for all of them would be the same.
narrator: Archaeologists believe that sometime in the second millennium B.C.E., socketed bronze arrowheads began spreading east
while the composite recurved bow spread west. [dramatic music] Sometime around 900 B.C.E., socketed arrowheads
and recurved bows met in the Tarim Basin area of Central Asia,
brought together by traders, warriors, and migrating nomads.
- After about 700 B.C., you begin to see really thousands and thousands of arrowheads
and dozens of arrowheads in a single quiver in a grave. It's like they're being mass produced.
narrator: Bronze socketed arrowheads turned central Asia into an arsenal, but cavalries still couldn't exist
until warriors could become soldiers.
- It was really the age of heroic warfare-- individuals going out and doing great deeds
by themselves and attracting glory for their own name, and this is the kind of warfare that's described
in the "Iliad" the "Odyssey," uh, or in the "Rigveda," a religious text
that's at the deep roots of modern Hinduism. What had to change was a psychological change
in the nature of the warrior. You had to change from individuals to units
working under the command of a commanding general, who would attack and retreat upon command.
The psychological change from the heroic warrior to the soldier, uh, probably is a feature of urban warfare--
the armies that were associated with the great cities of Mesopotamia and Iran.
That psychology had to spread northward up into the steppes
and be accepted by warriors in--in the steppes, uh, in the same area where the recurved bows
and the socketed arrowheads were crossing. narrator: While recurved bows were spreading west
and socketed arrowheads were spreading east, the concept of military discipline was spreading north.
Sometime around 900 B.C.E., all three combined in the heart of central Asia.
- When those three things came together, cavalry became a really deadly form
of military force. narrator: A force that would severely test
the ancient world's most powerful armies.
2,000 years ago, as the Romans pushed east to expand their empire,
China was pushing west. And like the Romans, the Chinese encountered
a formidable enemy on horseback.
The Xiongnu were nomads from the Central Asian steppes. Armed with recurved bows and socketed arrows,
they fought under commanders as a disciplined military force.
[shouting] They raided Chinese villages
and plundered the growing trade between east and west, and no one could stop them.
- The Xiongnu was the migraine of the ancient world for the Chinese.
They simply just kept coming, and they would not stop.
The Xiongnu wanted the finest material goods produced by the Chinese.
[horse whinnying] [shouting] That is why they raided.
- Imagine you're a villager in China and these men come from nowhere. They come from over the hill without warning
tearing into your village. They shoot the headman. They shoot your husband. They chase the women out.
There is no hiding place, and there's a flurry of dust and arrows. They're in and they're out and they take the stuff
and they go. [shouting] narrator: China sent its military might
against the Xiongnu. The famed Terracotta Warriors reveal the size and power
of Chinese armies. But the Chinese fought on foot and from chariots.
Not effective against hit-and-run cavalry. A Chinese courtier wrote that the Xiongnu moved like
a flock of birds over the land, impossible to control.
- Once mounted warfare really became deadly and effective, it became a real problem.
If you're a farmer, the nomads know where you're going to be all the time. Your house is in the same place 12 months of the year,
and when your crops become ripe, you have to harvest, and the nomads know when that season is.
Whereas when you're trying to strike them back, it's impossible to know where they're going to be
or when they're going to be there. You have to search to find them.
narrator: To beat the Xiongnu, the Chinese needed soldiers who could fight like them.
They needed cavalry.
- There are manuals of warfare that were written to instruct Chinese warriors on how to counter the tactics
and the methods of the Xiongnu. Those manuals introduced the idea of cavalry
to the Chinese military. The Chinese military had not really used cavalry
before about probably 350 B.C. - Chinese military at first with some resistance
from the old aristocratic families said, "Well, my father fought on a chariot "and his father fought on a chariot
"and I'm gonna fight on a chariot in my long robes like my ancestors."
narrator: But it wasn't long before Chinese warriors traded their traditional long, flowing robes
for shorter tunics that didn't get in the way of fighting on horseback.
- Eventually the practicalities forced them to get rid
of their robes, to put on riding trousers, to learn to shoot the bow on horseback,
and they, too, became a mighty horse archer force.
narrator: Chinese cavalry became experts at shooting the recurved composite bow
and a lethal Chinese weapon, the crossbow.
While its cavalry trained, China agreed to Xiongnu demands for payments of money and silk
until the year 133 B.C.E., when Emperor Han Wudi refused to pay...
And sent his army to attack the Xiongnu.
[shouting]
[horse whinnying]
Chinese cavalry defeated the nomads.
And China seized new territories in the steppes...
Pacifying trade routes and opening new horizons.
- On one hand we have this perpetual conflict in-- in Chinese culture would be the Xiongnu
and the Han Chinese that created incessant warfare.
On the other hand, it is this conflict that demolished physical boundaries.
Even territory boundaries were constantly being pushed farther, pushed back between the two forces.
This was a stimulus for exchanges, for political changes,
for new ideas, for artistic traditions.
narrator: It was also a new era for the Silk Road. A fortune in Roman gold traveled east in exchange
for Chinese silks.
And the Central Asian kingdom of Kushan made its own fortune selling another luxury to China--
jade. Silk Road caravans passed through this border station
on China's western frontier. So many of them carried Kushan jade
that this station became known as the Jade Gate.
Chinese aristocrats coveted jade for its beauty and something more.
They believed that jade would keep them alive forever.
The ruling elite commissioned jade burial suits to preserve their bodies in the grave.
- They believed that upon death all the orifices should be plugged in to preserve the spirit
inside the person. And this notion of jade as a material with protective
power in the afterlife is further enhanced by the fact that they built an armor made of thousands
of pieces of jade. And of course if you're the emperor,
your--your jade armor would be made from the finest jade
from the western regions. narrator: During the Roman empire, Silk Road trade flourished
as Chinese, Persian, and Kushan armies kept the trade routes open across Eurasia.
[dramatic music]
China had leveled the battlefield with nomad raiders from the steppes.
But Central Asian horse archers were about to carve their names on history.
In the 4th century C.E., Europe was invaded by a Central Asian people whose name still evokes
barbaric cruelty. [shouting]
The Huns, who fought their way west, all the way to Rome.
European peoples like the Goths and Visigoths-- the so-called barbarians-- fled before their onslaught,
and sought refuge in Roman territory. When the Huns withdrew from the Roman world,
those barbarian refugees stayed. [shouting]
And the rest is history.
narrator: The western Roman empire was plunged into chaos
as barbarian tribes, dissatisfied with their lot, rebelled against Roman authority,
and weak Roman emperors failed to crush them.
As Rome declined, migrating horse archers called the Avars carved their own country
out of eastern Europe... Bringing with them another Asian military innovation.
The stirrup.
This Chinese statue from the fourth century C.E. is the earliest known depiction of stirrups.
Some 300 years later, an Avar horseman was riding with these stirrups across Hungary.
By the eighth century C.E., the stirrup had spread from one end of Eurasia to the other
and mounted warfare was entering a new era.
- The importance of the stirrup relates to what kinds of weapons can you use from horseback,
and it made it possible to use certain kinds of weapons from horseback that you couldn't use without stirrups.
Those weapons are the long sabre. You have to lean over and absorb shock
if you're going to use a long sabre in battle. And the stirrups allow the rider to absorb
the shock of contact with a stationary target. The other big weapon that was possible with stirrups
was a seated lance held under the arm. You could stab somebody with the lance and then remove it
riding past them without stirrups. But if you seated it under your arm and used
the lance as a shock weapon, it would knock you off the back of the horse if you didn't have stirrups.
So stirrups made it possible to use long swords and lances as shock weapons against stationary targets
and keep your seat, and of course that made it possible to have really heavy mounted warriors.
- Now the rider becomes a unit with the horse. He's so anchored with his stirrups,
anchored with this, and then with his long lance he becomes a single projectile unit.
[dramatic music] Man, horse, saddle, lance, all locked together
for the impact charge. This was the age of the medieval knight.
[horse whinnying]
narrator: A medieval knight's power came from combining the Asian stirrup and the ancient shock tactics
of the Persian cataphract with a European invention-- articulated plate armor.
[horse whinnying] Strong enough to protect the wearer from sword
and lance thrusts while light enough to allow him to move freely on horseback and on foot.
Heavy cavalry had never been a more potent weapon of war.
- Medieval mounted warfare could be warfare that generated a lot of force on the rider,
high impact warfare. In that case, the mounted warrior is being used
really as a shock weapon to strike the enemy.
narrator: But even Europe's formidable mounted knights would be outfought by Central Asian cavalry
that burst out of the steppes and changed the world.
- The largest conquest empire that the Earth has ever seen
was created by pastoral nomads from Central Asia.
narrator: In the 13th century, the Mongols conquered as far west as Poland and as far east
as the Sea of Japan.
Mongol armies combined the devastating shock tactics of horse archers with a highly sophisticated
military organization.
narrator: The Mongols have gone down in history as bloodthirsty killers, but they were also sophisticated,
open-minded, often generous conquerors.
They pacified the Silk Road.
Trade between west and east flourished under this Mongol-enforced peace-- the Pax Mongolica.
- Before the age of Pax Mongolica, banditry was a very serious problem for traders,
for caravans, along the Silk Road. The reputation of Genghis Khan and his descendents
created peace and safe passage along the Silk Road because bandits were so afraid
of the Mongol soldiers. - The Pax Mongolica,
the--the, uh, control of, uh,
trade and exchange that was made possible under the Mongols connected China with Europe
and with the Near East in a really close way for the first time in world history,
and that had a profound effect on the development of European civilization.
narrator: Protected by the Pax Mongolica, and anxious for good relations with the Mongol empire,
Europeans began traveling east as never before.
Merchants, missionaries, and diplomats flowed east along the trade routes,
bringing back popular Asian goods like cloth and spices
and tales of the wealth and wonders of the east. Some true, some fabulous, but all fascinating.
From Europe to China, Silk Road trade spread new knowledge of far-away lands.
- The Silk Road made human beings realize that
there are other people out there, and it opened the eyes of the east and the west.
narrator: The Italian cities of Venice and Genoa reaped huge rewards.
Their merchants traveled safely throughout Eurasia and founded trading posts on the Black Sea to receive
and pass on Silk Road goods. Their Silk Road profits funded
magnificent art and architecture. But their competition frequently plunged them
into war with one another. In one of these wars, Genoa captured
a prosperous Venetian merchant named Marco Polo. Imprisoned by the Genoese, Polo dictated the story
of his Silk Road journey to China to a fellow prisoner. - [speaking Italian]
narrator: Today, experts debate whether Marco Polo really visited China or was simply retelling stories
he had heard from fellow Silk Road travelers. - [speaking Italian]
But there's no debate that "The Travels of Marco Polo" was one of the most influential books
in all of human history. It tantalized Europe with tales of China's
immense wealth and advanced civilization.
- [speaking Italian] narrator: And years before Marco Polo was telling
those tales in a Genoese prison... - [speaking Italian] narrator: A Chinese invention was making its way
across Eurasia to the west.
Something created centuries earlier when an experiment ended very badly.
Ancient Chinese alchemists prepared potions of lead or mercury for their aristocratic patrons
who believed that drinking these metals would help them live forever.
Instead, those concoctions killed them or made them insane.
Another deadly combination was sulfur heated with an organic nitrate found in soil throughout China,
known today as saltpeter.
When alchemists experimented with this formula, it burst into flame, injuring the alchemists...
[explosion] And burning down their laboratory.
From that disaster was born a chemical mixture like none other.
It may have failed as an elixir of immortality, but it would prove to be a potent agent of death.
This Chinese Buddhist scroll dating from around 950 C.E. depicts demons surrounding a seated Buddha.
One demon holds what the Chinese called a huo quiang, or fire lance.
It's the earliest known image of a weapon powered by that deadly mixture of saltpeter and sulfur...
Known to history as gunpowder.
[shouting] In the early 13th century, the Mongols attacked
China's Jin Dynasty. The Jin Dynasty's army fought back with exploding gunpowder bombs.
But as the Mongols conquered more and more of China, Han Chinese artillerymen joined their armies
and marched west, bringing their gunpowder weapons with them.
The Mongols attacked Russian and Polish cities with exploding fire bombs. [explosions]
And Europeans found out the hard way what gunpowder could do.
By the end of the 13th century, the formula for gunpowder was known as far west
as England, and Europeans were inventing their own versions of the new weapons.
It wasn't long before this Chinese invention changed European history.
On 26th August, 1346 near the village of Crecy in northern France, the armies of France
and England prepared to fight.
Mounted on their war steeds, encased in their armor, the flower of French nobility formed their battle line...
[horse whinnying]
While the English deployed a very different force.
Thousands of expert archers.
The French sent their higher Genoese crossbowmen to attack the English before French knights annihilated them.
But the English king, Edward III, had spent years training his longbow men.
And all that training was about to pay off.
[grunting, shouting] - Nothing like this had been seen
on a western battlefield up to this time. The first time that a volley of arrows was unleashed
by the archers at Crecy would have represented something completely new to many of those
in the French army watching it. A cloud of arrows descending towards them.
It would have been frightening, and of course the effects almost immediate.
narrator: Showered by English arrows, the Genoese turned and ran,
and according to Medieval accounts of the battle, they were also panicked by another English weapon.
[explosion]
- Giovanni Villani, writing very soon after the battle, says in his chronicle that so loud and intimidating
was the noise created by the guns that they thought God was thundering. [explosions]
- The English guns cast iron balls by means of fire. They made a noise like thunder and caused much loss
in men and horses.
[shouting] - Noise like that would have been unprecedented
to the soldiers on the battlefield. Nothing in their lives could have prepared them for a--
a bang of that size and accompanied by smoke and acrid sulfur smell,
which would hang in the air. The impact of which, of course, they couldn't see until men around them dropped.
Not even professional soldiers like the Genoese would have experienced anything like this before in their lives.
That would have been terrifying, and it's no wonder that they scattered and ran.
- They turned and fled into the face of the oncoming French cavalry charge.
The French cavalry were now coming onto the battlefield and they were appalled at these people they'd hired
running away. And they cursed them and they rode into them,
and as many Genoese fell to French hooves as they did to English arrows and gunshots.
And the French Knights, all 12,000 of them, double the size of the English army, they came charging down onto the English.
[horses whinnying] And they, too, fell to the English arrows
and the English gunshot, and they came again and again and again.
15, 16 times, they came. And their horses were ripped to shreds and the men
were thrown from their horses. And those that weren't thrown, they had the opportunity that the dagger men rushed in
and they brought these knights down.
This was a moment in history where the world changed. It spelled the beginning of the end for the Medieval knight.
narrator: The Battle of Crecy has gone down in history as one of the earliest uses of gunpowder weapons
on a European battlefield.
[explosion] Some 500 years after it burned down
a Chinese alchemist's workshop, gunpowder had become destiny's weapon of choice.
After Crecy, it was only a matter of time until the fates of peoples and nations
were decided by the gun. [gunfire]
Within two centuries, Europeans would use their powerful gunpowder weapons to dominate the world.
Creating empires that would evolve into today's global trading culture...
Which binds people together by commerce instead of the gun.
But before Europe could embark on its empire-building adventure, its medieval social order would be shattered
by a catastrophic event. One that would forge a new Europe
in a crucible of horror.
While guns thundered at Crecy, something else was spreading along the Eurasian trade routes.
Something that would kill tens of millions of Europeans.
An apocalyptic destruction of human life that would lay the foundations of the modern world.
(Tense music) (Horses neighing)
NARRATOR: At the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the English won an historic victory over France.
Helped by a Chinese invention that had travelled to Europe.
(Hollering) NARRATOR: Gunpowder.
(Yelling) (Dramatic music)
(Horses neighing)
NARRATOR: And in the same year of 1346, some 2,000 kilometres east of Crécy,
another battle was taking place on the shores of the Black Sea.
(Hollering) NARRATOR: A Mongol army had been laying siege
to the Crimean port city of Caffa, a Silk Road trading post belonging to the Italian city of Genoa.
NARRATOR: The Mongols were masters of siege warfare.
But Caffa was still holding out after more than two years.
Suddenly, the Mongol army was decimated. Not by Caffa's defenders, but by an unknown disease.
The Mongols quickly ended their siege. But before they left Caffa,
they loaded their siege engines with the corpses of their dead and flung them over the city's walls,
believing that the stench of death would kill the defenders.
Medieval chronicles say that Caffa's defenders did die by the thousands,
but not from the smell of death. (Tense music)
NARRATOR: One year later, in 1347, the same disease that had killed the Mongols at Caffa
was killing people in Constantinople. (Computer beeping) NARRATOR: By 1348,
it was killing people across Western Europe.
By 1350, it was killing people as far away as Greenland.
(Soft music) NARRATOR: And terrified Europeans had given it a name.
NARRATOR: The Black Death. In just under a decade, from 1347 to 1356,
the Black Death killed at least 25 million Europeans. One third of Europe's population.
Today, most scholars believe that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague.
that was transmitted to humans by infected fleas living on rats.
And we believe that it spread across Eurasia by hitching a ride with armies, ships, and caravans
along trade routes that were already ancient by the time of the Black Death.
Micro-organic travellers of all kinds have moved across Eurasia for thousands of years.
A bio-migration that has had as big an impact on history as the more famous exchanges
of new technologies and luxury goods. And as a recent discovery shows,
tiny living things moving along the Silk Road brought life as well as death.
MARTIN: We were putting together some new methods of looking for early agriculture, and for that we needed to do a--a survey
of all the finds of early crops in Europe. When you looked at a map of all of Europe,
then you could see there were these Chinese crops in small numbers very early on in Europe.
NARRATOR: "Very early on" was around 2,000 BCE,
when a Chinese grain called broomcorn millet appears in the Eastern European archaeological record.
MARTIN: The actual crop itself will--will decay or be eaten, but, uh, rather fortunately, if it's cooked
and over-burnt, it turns to carbon. That will stay in the archaeological record
for a long time. (Dramatic music) NARRATOR: In the Chinese province of inner Mongolia,
archaeologists are studying the origins of broomcorn millet, one of the world's oldest domestic crops.
NARRATOR: But it isn't clear just how and why broomcorn millet travelled thousands of kilometres across Eurasia,
through some of the world's harshest environments, all the way to Europe.
Millet's long journey may have begun simply because it travelled so well.
Millets are essentially cereals, but they're very small. And because they have very small brains,
they're hardy and they're tough, and they can grow quite fast. Broomcorn millet, at a push,
can get from seed to seed in 45 days. You can plant a seed in the ground
and 45 days later, in the right conditions, you may have plants. That's incredibly fast.
So if you're moving around parts of Asia, where, on the one hand, there's a long winter,
a short growing season, and you can't particularly rely on rainfall, then something that gets a move on
in terms of its growth cycle is--is very valuable. (Horse chuffing)
MARTIN: There are accounts of communities that are on horseback for quite a lot of the time
and herding animals and so forth, but for that short-- short season of the year
that millet grows in, uh, they can actually sow the millet on horseback, trample it in with the horse's feet,
and then either leave a few teenagers there to scare the birds off for a couple of months, come back two months later, and harvest the crops.
(Dramatic music) NARRATOR: Millet was a highly mobile grain,
but there wasn't any evidence of how it might have travelled from its home in northern China.
NARRATOR: Until archaeologists found signs of millet cultivation around 2500 BCE in the foothills
of the Tian Shan Mountains in central Asia. (Tense music)
MARTIN: At that point we asked ourselves, "Well--well, what is it about these foothills?" You know, "Why the foothills?"
Clearly, it's about water. If one travels across the centre of Asia,
one realizes why water is a key. And wherever you are in Asia, it can be very dry, of course.
But if one goes uphill to those foothills, then one has somewhere where there will be streams
running off the mountains and water.
NARRATOR: Archaeologists found that around 1,000 BCE, millet farmers left the Tian Shan foothills
and their reliable water supply and began moving into much harsher environments.
MARTIN: We can, see, uh, if you like, the confidence of farmers spreading out from where the water
is really safe to areas where you have to know more about the water and the landscape and the geography,
both into the steppe to the north and to the desert to the south.
NARRATOR: Millet's local migrations may have linked it with the world. Migrating millet farmers in search of water
may have settled near trade routes.
And long-distance travellers would have chosen routes near reliable sources of food and water.
MARTIN: I think very much those traders are definitely working through networks
that are already centuries old. It's at least a millennium
before you see something crystallizing that you can start calling the Silk Road.
NARRATOR: Another discovery has revealed that this ancient grain migration wasn't only from east to west.
NARRATOR: Trading millet and wheat between China and Europe may have done much more than feed people.
(Soft music) NARRATOR: It may also have enabled profound social change.
MARTIN: Seeds germinate at one time of year and are harvested another time of year,
and that's kind of hardwired into their biology. And so farming is a one-season activity,
and there are things going on at other times of year. And during the second millennium BC,
a number of societies are doing something which is quite radically different, and that is putting more than one season in a single year.
Crops like millet are really useful for that, in that if you are a western farmer,
with wheat and barley fields reaching maturity during the summer and you think, "Right, with the same plot of land,
"I want to increase production. "And so I want another crop after I've harvested the first crop."
You can't do a long season, large-grain crop like wheat and barley again,
so something that's short and sharp like millet you can tag on to the end of it and catch another season before the winter's set in.
(Soft music) Interestingly, when you get to China, it's the converse.
You have this short season crop already there, and by rearranging your life, you can bring a long season crop
such as wheat and barley in at that stage. So the implications are, with the same plot of land,
you could basically get two harvests rather than one. So two sets of calories rather than one.
It may release some of the community to not farm at all and occupy roles within cities,
or as craftspeople, or leaders. (Dramatic music) MARTIN: If we look at the second millennium BC,
what we certainly see is at the same time as multi-cropping is there,
then there are a lot of the community-- are not farmers, but instead metalworkers,
or kings, or priests, or something else. And so what we see evidence of is multi-cropping allows
a non-farming, uh, sector within the community.
MARTIN: So what we have is a small, not very impressive-looking seed, but because of the way it grows and because of its biology,
it has a massive impact in changing the productivity of the heartlands of western farming.
So those western farmlands could, in the same area, produce two crops rather than one,
and that enabled a whole series of things that we associate with the word "civilization."
(Soft music)

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Part 2 of 2

NARRATOR: Finding Chinese millet in Europe
and European wheat and barley in China suggests that long before the Silk Road,
East and West were introducing one another to new foods, and that the movement of crops may have helped create
the earliest east-west trade routes.
And in the deserts of far western China, archaeologists have discovered another way
living organisms could travel the Silk Road. This is Xuanquanzhi Relay Station,
an archaeological site near the town of Dunhuang, a major stopping point on the Silk Road.
2,000 years ago during the Han dynasty, Xuanquanzhi was a very busy and very cosmopolitan place.
PIERS: It would be used for merchants, and it would also be used for government business. People could travel long distances
knowing that there was somewhere they could stay and be refreshed and recover, change their horses, and then move on to the next relay station.
The wonderful thing about the Xuanquanzhi trading post was that it's in a part of the country
that is not built up now, and the environment, very, very dry and often very cold in the winter,
means that things are preserved there very well. So a lot of the things with-- inside that trading post
have--have survived instead of decomposing.
NARRATOR: Excavators were especially excited to find something that perhaps only an archaeologist could love.
The 2,000-year-old equivalent of toilet paper. PIERS: In China, they wrote back in-- in the Han dynasty times
how they would have a stick with cloth wrapped on the end for people to wipe themselves with, and there were quite a few of these sticks
thrown into the latrine, as if people discarded them in there when they'd finished. These sticks have been found at some other excavations in China as well,
but what's great about this particular relay station is we still have the cloth wrapped on the end, and we still have the human faeces on.
(Tense music) PIERS: So we scraped off the dried faeces from the cloth
and took them to the lab. We found four different species of parasite in those who used this latrine.
Two of the species are spread by faeces contaminating your food or your hands or your drink.
It's roundworm and whipworm. Another species was a kind of tapeworm that they probably acquired
by eating raw or undercooked pork. And then, we found the really exciting find,
which was the Chinese liver fluke. PIERS: This is a small flatworm
that lives in eastern and southern China and in Korea. It can only survive in marshy, wet places.
But here, we found it 1 1/2 thousand kilometres away from anywhere that has it in modern times.
So it wasn't what we expected to find. It was brilliant that we could find it on the Silk Road.
The liver fluke requires a lifecycle where it passes through freshwater snails, and through small fish, and then, bigger fish.
And if you cook the fish, then you don't get the liver fluke. But if you eat the fish raw, then it hatches out
in your stomach, migrates through your body, crawls into the liver, and then develops there.
There was no way that people in the area of this relay station could have caught it in that particular area because it was far too dry.
There were no lakes. There were no freshwater snails and fish for them to infect.
NARRATOR: The finds at Xuanquanzhi have shown that humans could carry diseases long distances along the Silk Road.
(Soft music) NARRATOR: Another discovery has revealed
what could happen when they did.
In 2009, German scientists began investigating a puzzling discovery
in the Bavarian town of Aschheim.
NARRATOR: The Aschheim mass burial was an archaeological enigma, but there was one crucial clue.
The bodies had been buried during the 6th century CE.
(Computer beeping) (Tense music) NARRATOR: In the 6th century,
a terrifying illness called the Plague of Justinian ravaged the Eastern Roman Empire.
NARRATOR: It killed 30 to 50 million people in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Nearly half of all the people on Earth.
NARRATOR: The Justinian plague arrived in Constantinople on ships from Egypt,
but what the disease was and where it came from remained unknown.
The team investigating Aschheim's mass burial hoped its bones might reveal the answer.
NARRATOR: Studies like the Aschheim DNA project have concluded that 800 years before the Black Death,
plague travelled the Silk Road and that centuries later, the Black Death followed in its path.
(Tense music) NARRATOR: Most scholars now agree that the Black Death
originated in central Asia and that it first reached Europe
on Italian merchant ships returning from the East.
NARRATOR: The Black Death killed with incredible speed.
Victims had only a week to a few hours to live.
Entire towns and monasteries were wiped out, and no one knew what to do.
PIERS: It may have spread about five miles a day, which is a lot faster than a lot of modern bubonic plague outbreaks.
Whether it was because of the rate at which people fled from it that spread it faster than it might otherwise have been.
And it certainly was something that had a dramatic effect on people in Europe. They all wrote about it. They were all scared of it.
(Speaking foreign language) (Soft music)
PIERS: So they had some concept of contagion and the idea that the disease could be spread from one person to another, but they didn't know how.
They had no idea about bacteria or the spread of microorganisms at that stage,
so they hadn't worked out how a disease was spread. But they just realized that one person seemed to be able to spread it to the rest of their family,
so they realized something must be happening there. (Tense music)
NARRATOR: Baffled physicians consulted the works of ancient authorities like Hippocrates,
who lived four centuries before the birth of Jesus,
and Galen, who lived two centuries after Jesus' death.
(Tense music) NARRATOR: Hippocrates and Galen believed that illness was a result
of an imbalance among four so-called humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
PIERS: The theory was that if you had your four humours in balance-- your blood, your phlegm, your black bile,
and your yellow bile, then you'd be healthy. If they came out of balance or if you had corruption
of one of your humours, then that would make you unwell. So the treatments that doctors used
were largely based on their understanding of humoural theory. So at the beginning, they tried the normal treatments
of dietary modification and bloodletting and baths and so on, but they had no effect.
(Dramatic music) PIERS: They believed that bad vapours were coming up from the ground,
making people ill, affecting their humours. They believed that a strong southerly wind
was a bad thing that made a lot of people ill, That it was a combination of the alignments of the planets,
because they believed in astrology and its effect on your risk of disease.
They really didn't have a structured medical approach to how to deal with it. It took everyone off guard.
No one knew how to deal with it. The doctors were effectively powerless.
(Indistinct shouting)
NARRATOR: Some citizens attempted another cure.
Jews in Europe suffered fewer deaths from plague. That may have been because they were socially isolated
and practiced better hygiene than the general population.
But surviving the Black Death cost thousands of European Jews their lives.
All across plague-stricken Europe, the already age-old Christian prejudice against Jews
exploded into murderous hatred. PIERS: They believed that people with leprosy or Jewish people
may have actually exacerbated the plague by poisoning people.
So this is a sign of how panicked and how worried everybody was, that they were thinking of really quite bizarre kind of interpretations
as to why everybody was becoming sick. (Indistinct yelling)
NARRATOR: While mobs murdered Jews, physicians tried to stop the Black Death.
When traditional theories of disease failed, they resorted to studying the disease itself.
(Tense music)
NARRATOR: They were desperate to understand what was causing the Black Death,
how it spread, and how to treat it.
Slowly, they found answers.
PIERS: They tried various treatments, but no medicines had any effect. But that's why they moved over time
to trying to restrict the contact of people, burning the clothes of people that had died rather than giving them to other people.
And they realized that the clothes and spread of people was an important way they could stop the spread of disease.
So we have the introduction of concept of quarantine, where people weren't allowed to move from one area to another
if there was a plague outbreak and also that when sailors in ships arrived in a port,
they may have to stay in a quarantined area for a certain number of days until they were found to be clear of the disease, and then they could
move inland and actually go into town.
NARRATOR: Over time, this new trial and error approach would spawn a medical revolution.
Some 200 years after the Black Death, the brilliant physician Andreas Vesalius
published meticulous studies of the human body that exploded ancient and medieval theories
and gave birth to modern anatomy. Europe's battle against the Black Death
taught lessons that helped create modern medicine. And even centuries later,
the Black Death still has much to teach. So this is a skull of a man
who survived the Black Death and died in Cambridge in the later part of the 1300s.
We know he survived the Black Death because we have a radiocarbon date that's shown when he died, and we know he was a fairly old individual.
(Tense music) One of the things we're doing here is a project looking at the effect of the bubonic plague
upon the British population, specifically in Cambridge. And what we're trying to find out is what are different about people who survived compared with people who died.
That way, we can work out how the Black Death really changed the population of Britain
and what our population might have been like had half of us not died in the mid-1300s.
And to do that, we're looking at the genetics, the height, the health, and many other aspects
of the skeletons that we find who died before the Black Death and the ones who died afterwards
so we can see the effect of this epidemic upon people in Britain. So what we're hoping to find out is what is different
about the genes of the people that survived. Did they somehow have a better resistance to bubonic plague than other people,
or was it just mere chance as to who survived and who died? (Tense music)
NARRATOR: Those who did survive led better lives as the greatest horror of their age gave way to a new era.
NARRATOR: The Black Death had decimated Europe's workforce.
Desperate for labour, the nobility had to compete for surviving workers by offering higher wages.
(Soft music)
PIERS: Over the next few centuries, we see a complete rebalancing in the population.
So the poor hungry farmers who didn't have enough land were suddenly in a different position. The farmers around them had died.
Their income could go up because they could farm much more land. And so there was less poverty and famine among the farmers.
NARRATOR: Opportunities increased due to the shortage of workers.
Women could now be scribes and hold other jobs formerly reserved for men.
The European middle class was born.
The fact that we then had fewer people able to do manual labour means that not only
did the price of their labour go up so then they had better income.
It also means that there seems to have been a number of inventions made specifically for labour-saving devices.
We find the introduction of the spinning wheel. We find horizontal looms. We find fulling mills.
We had blast furnaces, mechanized tools, and we have three-masted ships
that could hold a lot more cargo for only a small number of more sailors, so it's a much more efficient way of trade.
So over the next 200 years or so, we see big improvements in mechanization.
And the fact that-- fewer people around meant that these things may have been invented because
of the shortage of people following the Black Death. (Soft music)
NARRATOR: Newly affluent Europeans created a bigger market for exotic imported goods.
(Indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR: Especially for one faraway luxury traded since ancient times along the Silk Road.
(Bright music) NARRATOR: Spices.
NARRATOR: In the late Middle Ages, Asian spices like pepper, cinnamon, and cloves
were highly valuable commodities. (Indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR: In London, dockworkers' bonuses were paid with Indonesian cloves.
In Venice, people bought houses with pepper.
NARRATOR: Anyone brave enough to seek out spices could get very, very rich.
And trading in spices meant travelling the trade routes between East and West.
NARRATOR: Venetian merchants travelled those routes and dominated the spice trade.
Europe had to pay whatever Venice demanded.
Venice became a fabulously wealthy city, while the rest of Europe grumbled and paid.
(Soft music) Meanwhile, China was also making epic voyages
to the spice lands and developing some of the world's most advanced maritime technology.
During the 13th and 14th centuries, foreign visitors to China were awed by the size
and sophistication of Chinese vessels. In the year 1345, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta
wrote of seeing massive ships that could carry a thousand men, the only ships big enough
to make the long journey from China to India. (Speaking Italian)
NARRATOR: And Marco Polo told of sailing on a Chinese spice trading vessel in the year 1292 CE.
The experience deeply impressed him.
He claimed the Chinese ship he sailed on was capable of holding 5,000 to 6,000 baskets of pepper,
a much bigger cargo than the spice ships of his native Venice could hold.
And that his vessel was escorted by smaller ships that could carry a thousand pepper baskets.
(Tense music) NARRATOR: Polo embarked on his journey from the Chinese port of Quanzhou,
a place he described as teeming with hundreds of vessels from China and from distant lands.
But he didn't report his vessel's exact dimensions, leaving historians to wonder
if he'd exaggerated the ship's size or even if he'd actually sailed on it.
And then, in 1973, Chinese archaeologists found a shipwreck in Quanzhou Harbour.
NARRATOR: The Quanzhou Ship was carrying rare woods from Java and Cambodia, frankincense from Arabia,
even ambergris from Somalia. (Soft music)
NARRATOR: It sank in the year 1277, just 15 years before Marco Polo visited Quanzhou.
And its design and construction were remarkably advanced for their time, featuring watertight compartments
and other innovations centuries before Western vessels had them.
NARRATOR: 35 metres long and 10 metres wide, the Quanzhou Ship could have been
one of the smaller vessels that escorted Marco Polo's bigger ship. (Tense music)
NARRATOR: And there's also evidence that very large Chinese trading vessels did exist.
NARRATOR: This park in the Chinese city of Nanjing is built on the remains of a shipyard dating from the 14th century.
When they excavated that shipyard, archaeologists found two giant rudder posts,
each of them over 10 metres long.
NARRATOR: Chinese records speak of giant treasure ships carrying trade goods on epic journeys to faraway lands.
Commanded by the distinguished admiral Zheng He, a Chinese armada called the Great Fleet
made seven voyages between the years 1405 and 1433.
From Liugiagang in China's Jiangsu Province, the fleet sailed on diplomatic missions to southeast Asia,
the great Indian seaport of Calicut, Arabia, and along Africa's east coast, forging relationships
that linked seaborne and overland trade. Over 300 ships carrying nearly 30,000 men
sailed on the first of those expeditions. (Dramatic music) NARRATOR: Chronicles of those voyages
claim that the largest of Zheng He's ships were over 130 metres long and over 50 metres wide.
NARRATOR: But marine engineers doubt ships that big would have been seaworthy.
The American clipper ship "Great Republic" launched in 1853,
was 102 metres long and 16 metres wide.
In 1872, her leaking hull sank her in a hurricane.
The "Wyoming," built in 1909, was 110 metres long.
(Soft music) NARRATOR: Its extreme length made it
structurally unstable in heavy seas.
In 1924, the "Wyoming" sank during a storm.
If Zheng He's treasure ships were as big as Chinese chronicles claim,
they would have been as long and wide as the "Wyoming" and longer than the "Great Republic."
NARRATOR: Whatever the size of its ships, the Great Fleet deeply impressed maritime trading nations from Indochina to Africa.
China seemed poised to dominate the coveted spice trade.
But in 1433, Admiral Zheng He died.
About the same time, the Chinese court began losing interest in long-distance voyaging,
and Chinese seafaring entered a long decline.
Scarcely more than 100 years after the Great Fleet's last voyage, the emperor declared overseas voyaging a crime,
and it wasn't long before east-west trade suffered another blow.
(Computer beeping) NARRATOR: By the middle of the 15th century, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire
was in deep decline. The Ottoman Turks, descendants of central Asian nomads,
had conquered most of its territory. The Byzantine emperor ruled only his capital of Constantinople.
(Tense music)
NARRATOR: In the Spring of 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II
laid siege to Constantinople. (Clamouring)
NARRATOR: The city was defended by a mere 7,000 troops.
Mehmed had an army of some 80,000 men, but Mehmed wasn't sure he would win.
The city's massive walls had withstood sieges for a thousand years.
Protected by those walls, Constantinople's defenders held out for weeks.
(Clamouring) NARRATOR: But Mehmed didn't just have an army.
He had a mega-weapon: a bronze cannon nearly 10 metres long
with a barrel nearly a metre in diameter and 20 centimetres thick. It's said it could hurl a 450-kilogram
stone cannonball more than 1 1/2 kilometres. This behemoth and nearly 70 smaller cannon
bombarded Constantinople's walls day and night, damaging them so badly
that the Turks succeeded in taking the city. (Clamouring)
(Soft music)
NARRATOR: The fall of Constantinople was a devastating blow to Europe.
Constantinople had been one of Christendom's oldest and holiest cities.
Now it was the capital of a powerful Muslim empire renamed Istanbul from a Turkish word meaning "find Islam."
From their new capital of Istanbul, the Ottomans now controlled access to the Black Sea
and the eastern Mediterranean. Europeans merchants were cut off from the Silk Road.
For nearly 100 years, Europeans had been growing wealthier and more and more eager to buy Asia's luxury goods.
Europe needed to find new routes to the East. (Tense music)
NARRATOR: And within 50 years of Constantinople's fall, it would.
At the Battle of Crécy and the siege of Constantinople...
An ancient Chinese invention, gunpowder, had helped transform medieval Europe.
(Soft music)
NARRATOR: Now another Chinese invention and European innovation
would help transform the future.
NARRATOR: Sometime in China's ancient past, some unknown person invented something new...
(water running) NARRATOR: By pounding plants until they fell apart...
(wet thudding) (flames crackling) NARRATOR: Then boiling them in water...
(flames crackling) (water sloshing)
NARRATOR: And then collecting the boiled plants on a screen and letting them dry,
making what the ancient Chinese called "refuse fibre"...
And what we know today as paper,
an invention so influential that some believe the Silk Road should have been named for it.
JONATHAN: I would call it the paper road, because I think paper was far more important than silk,
and that, you know silk is a very nice fabric. It's very strong; it's beautiful, lustrous, and stuff like that.
But it didn't have the impact on world history, I would argue, that paper did.
The Chinese believe that the court eunuch Cai Lun invented paper around the year 100 of the Common Era
and started using it for writing then. Chinese archaeologists, however,
have discovered examples of paper in the deserts of western China
that pre-date this by several centuries, perhaps three centuries or even more. NARRATOR: The Chinese probably
first used the new invention as a wrapping material, while they kept writing the old-fashioned way,
on strips of bamboo. JONATHAN: You can write so many characters
on a strip of bamboo that's maybe 40 centimetres long, or you know, 12 inches. The problem is, if you want to write a novel, for example,
or a long historical text, you need to have a whole pile of those bamboo strips and keep them together in order.
So that becomes heavy. Paper, which is made from plant materials,
from the cellulose in plants, can be made anywhere that plants grow.
So you can make it virtually anywhere in the world, out of virtually anything.
NARRATOR: By the early centuries of the Common Era, China was using paper in all the ways we do now,
even as facial tissue and toilet paper.
And it wasn't long before it travelled West along the Silk Road--
a journey that began as a pilgrimage. JONATHAN: The transformation of paper into a writing material
came just at the time that Buddhism was introduced to China.
Buddhists of China were interested in finding the original writings about the Buddha
and would travel to India to collect them. And so, it's thought
that the Chinese Buddhist monks and missionaries brought knowledge of paper and papermaking
with them to India to collect these Buddhist scriptures
and brought them back to China.
NARRATOR: Chinese Buddhists travelled to India along the Silk Road, detouring around the Himalayas through China's western desert
and turning the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang into a magnificent Buddhist library.
In a desert without plants, Dunhuang monks made paper from rope and rags
and copied thousands of Buddhist texts they'd brought from India.
Thanks to Chinese Buddhism and to paper's obvious usefulness for keeping commercial accounts,
papermaking began to spread throughout Asia.
As the Chinese then disseminated Buddhism throughout East Asia,
they took knowledge of paper and papermaking to such places as Korea, Japan, Vietnam.
We know that this is certainly before the time of the Muslim conquest of Central Asia, which occurred around the year 700.
NARRATOR: In the eighth century C.E., Arab armies fighting in the name of a new religion, Islam,
thrust deep into Central Asia and clashed with Chinese forces.
During the same century, the Arab world began making its own paper,
something that's traditionally been explained with a story about an iconic victory of Arabs over Chinese.
(swords clanging) The Battle of Talas was a battle that took place between Muslim forces and Chinese forces
in central Asia in 751. According to the historian Atha Al Abi
who lived something like 250 years after the event, he says that at this battle,
Chinese papermakers were captured and that is how Muslims learned about papermaking.
It seems to me that this is a sort of nice but not terribly believable story.
Why would papermakers have been in the Chinese army? It's not as if, when you needed a sheet of paper,
then you said, "Please, make me a sheet of paper." (swords clanging, men shouting indistinctly)
NARRATOR: It's more likely that Arabs learned about paper by trading along the Silk Road and recognized its immense practical value.
Middle Easterners could write on Egyptian papyrus, but they had to buy papyrus from Egypt.
Paper they could make themselves. By the end of the eighth century,
Arab papermaking was well underway.
JONATHAN: The break-out moment for paper was when Muslim bureaucracy encountered it.
NARRATOR: Those bureaucrats ran the Abbasid Caliphate, founded around 750 C.E.
From their capital in Baghdad, the Abbasids ruled the greatest empire of its day.
JONATHAN: The administrators of the empire had responsibility to keep records
about who was paid what, who owed what, who owned what, who had to do what.
Less than a century of Muslims first encountering it in central Asia,
they were already making it in the capital of the empire. NARRATOR: And they quickly began using paper
for more than keeping records. In eighth-century Baghdad and across the Arab world,
the availability of cheap paper made possible one of humanity's greatest literary eras.
JONATHAN: Baghdad becomes a centre of learning where books are written, books are translated from other languages.
People wrote books on every possible subject, not only on words in the traditions of the Prophet,
but also cookbooks, popular literature, science, astronomy, geography,
translations of Greek books on mathematics, all sorts of subjects.
And this explosion of learning has long been known, but it's never been appreciated that it was based on the availability of paper.
NARRATOR: During the Middle Ages, an intellectual Golden Age flowered in Arab Spain.
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars collaborated to translate, teach, and preserve
great works of science, mathematics, and philosophy.
One story about the library of the Cordovan Caliphate in Spain
in the year 960 or 970 or something like that says that there were 400,000 books
in the royal library. Now, that probably is an exaggeration.
So let's take a zero off it and say that there were 40,000 books, but that is still more than ten times
the number of books that was in the largest university library in Europe, several centuries later.
Because libraries in Europe were all on parchment and the libraries in the Muslim world were on paper.
NARRATOR: Spain was probably where Europeans first encountered paper.
But Italian merchants were also discovering it through long-distance trade.
This is a time when Christian merchants from Europe, from such cities as Pisa and Genoa, Venice,
are travelling to the cities of the Muslim world such as Cairo and Damascus
in search of exotic items, goods like spices and silks,
and they undoubtedly encountered paper.
Our first European use of paper would've been by merchants who had seen
Muslims using this stuff and must have brought it back.
NARRATOR: But at first, many Europeans were suspicious of paper. It seemed so flimsy compared with parchments
made from animal skins. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II,
for example, was familiar with paper but didn't think much of its qualities for preservation
or didn't know how long it would last, so he ordered all documents that had previously been copied on paper to be recopied onto parchment.
Similarly, the Abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, knew about paper but said,
"Oh, it was really disgusting "that they made this stuff "from vile materials
rather than the pure reeds of the riverbed," meaning papyrus, or the skins of--of pure animals.
And he was worried that paper could be made from dirty or unclean things.
NARRATOR: But Europe's growing middle class was not concerned with paper's cleanliness.
A single parchment book needed 200 animal skins and cost a fortune.
And as it happened, geography had given Europeans the edge in mass-producing paper.
(bell tolling distantly) (water sloshing)
JONATHAN: The rivers in the Middle East tended not to flow fast enough to create enough water power,
whereas the greater variability in European terrain meant that you could harness the water power
more efficiently to make more pulp more quickly.
Europeans also had a ready supply of linen rags.
In the late Middle Ages, a new way of processing linen had been developed
using something called the flax breaker, which meant that there was a lot more linen
being made from flax and made into people's underwear.
(fabric ripping)
JONATHAN: Linen underwear was lot more comfortable than woollen underwear because it didn't scratch, and so linen became very, very popular
and became the source of rags for papermaking.
NARRATOR: By the late Middle Ages, Italian hill towns like Fabriano and Amalfi had become Europe's leading paper manufacturers
shipping tons of paper to businessmen throughout Europe. (machinery clanking)
NARRATOR: And this mass production of cheap paper was changing Europe in other profound ways.
One of the most interesting documents that I've seen, or seen photographs of,
is a poem by Petrarch, the Italian poet.
It's on paper. And it is crossed out.
He wrote out the poem and then he changed his mind and he put in a better word.
So he was able to compose, in effect on paper,
as opposed to composing it in his mind, repeating it over and over again until he got it perfect and then putting down
a fair copy on the final expensive material. This is something you wouldn't do on parchment
because it was too expensive. You'd have to scrape it off.
Paper allowed all sorts of new ways of doing things.
It seems to me that it's no accident that the art of drawing really develops in the 15th century in Italy.
JONATHAN: Paper allowed an artist to actually do a drawing and work out an idea in front of his eyes
and preserve it for later use, or to look at it and say, "I'll change this; I'll change that."
And save it and make a copy of the drawing. And we know that Michelangelo, for example,
did drawings of his drawings or did drawings of other people's drawings.
This wouldn't have been possible with parchment because it was too expensive to waste in this way.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, in Asia, the country that had given paper to the world had developed a technology that had turned book production
from a laborious job for scribes into a standardized process:
Printing. In the ninth century C.E., the time of the Tang Dynasty,
Chinese printers were printing book pages carved from a single block of wood.
The world's oldest printed book is this Chinese copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra
printed in the year 868 C.E. Some 400 years later, around 1300,
Asian woodblock printing had travelled the Silk Road to the West.
But by then, China had invented a more efficient way of printing.
Instead of carving a single wooden block into a book page, printers engraved pieces of clay
with individual Chinese characters, baked the clay letters to harden them,
and then arranged them in a frame to create a book page...
The earliest known use of moveable type.
And then, in the year 1440, Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith in the German city of Mainz,
came up with a new way of printing. Gutenberg began with a screw press,
a wooden screw that pushed a plate down on a flat surface
invented by the Romans to make wine and used in Gutenberg's time to make woodblock prints.
He made his own moveable type by punching letters out of metal
and casting them using a hand mould he'd invented himself.
He devised a system for quickly composing lines of type in trays.
And he invented a new oil-based printing ink that transferred easily to metal type.
Gutenberg's new printing process was much faster and more efficient than Asian printing techniques.
But its biggest advantage may simply have been this: The Latin alphabet.
JONATHAN: In Chinese you have many characters, and so you have to have like 6,000 individual characters
in order to print something. In Europe, where you have the Latin alphabet
with individual letters that are not connected to each other and you only have 26 of them
and you have upper case and lower case capital letters and small letters, you don't really need that many to write out a text.
NARRATOR: If ever a new technology re-wrote human history, it was Gutenberg's printing press.
Within a few years of Gutenberg's first printing run, millions of Europeans were reading the Bible
and other best-selling books translated into their own languages,
something we take for granted. But in 15th-century Europe, it was revolutionary.
Working together, paper and the printing press had achieved something never done before.
They had democratized knowledge. (speaking German)
NARRATOR: Europe's new demand for books and its new ability to mass-produce books to meet that demand
would soon have enormous consequences. In Germany, a firebrand monk named Martin Luther
wrote a list of 95 proposals for reforming what Luther denounced
as the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church.
Thanks to paper and the printing press, his ideas spread like wildfire across Germany and Switzerland.
And so began the Protestant Reformation, a spiritual revolt that ended Catholicism's
thousand-year monopoly of the European soul.
And some other best-selling books helped an Italian living in Spain realize his dream.
His name was Cristobal Colon, and he was deeply disturbed that the holy cities of Christendom
had fallen under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.
Colon drew up plans for a new Crusade to liberate Jerusalem.
To fund it, he decided to travel to Asia to trade for spices and other luxury goods
he could sell for a large profit back home.
NARRATOR: But the Ottoman Empire had blocked Europeans from the Silk Road.
Colon needed to find a new route to Asia.
His deep study of two books, "The Travels of Marco Polo"
and the ancient Greek author Ptolemy's "Geography," convinced him that he could find Asia
by sailing West across the Atlantic. And when he landed in the Americas in 1492,
Colon, known to history as Christopher Columbus, was sure he'd found it.
In fact, it wouldn't be until 1498 that the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama
rounded Africa's Cape of Good Hope and sailed east to India,
discovering the true sea route to Asia.
But the new world Columbus had given Spain proved to have riches of its own.
By the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese had established good trading relations
with China in Guangzhou and Macau.
And Spain's American colonies were sending so much silver home that there was hardly any room to store it.
Spain was sending it on to northern Europe, especially the Netherlands, as payment for trade goods.
Their pockets bursting with American silver, Europeans became addicted to two Asian luxuries.
One was porcelain, an extraordinary ceramic
made by firing a soft white clay called kaolin at very high temperatures,
well over 1,000 degrees Celsius. China had been making porcelain for export
and trading it throughout Asia and the Middle East since at least the ninth century C.E.
In the 17th century, the Dutch captured two Portuguese ships filled with porcelain
and held a giant porcelain auction. It was the beginning of Europe's 300-year obsession
with Chinese ceramics or, as they became known in Europe and America,
"fine China." It was a status symbol for the West,
and they had never seen anything like that before. But also, they certainly didn't know how it was made.
NARRATOR: Porcelain imports were indispensable to consuming another Chinese trade good craved by Europeans:
Tea. Like porcelain, tea had been a profitable Chinese export
since at least the ninth century to the Middle East but not to Europe.
The Portuguese began trading for it in the 16th century.
In 1657, a London merchant sold the first tea in Britain.
By the year 1700, tea-drinking had become a British obsession
heavily promoted by the British East India Company, which traded British textiles to China
and needed a profitable luxury good to bring back to Britain.
And as Chinese tea began moving West to Europe, Europeans began trading exotic new foods to China.
(children laughing) NARRATOR: In the 17th century, dozens of never-before seen food crops
from the Americas-- potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peanuts, pineapples, chilies, and tomatoes--
began appearing in Chinese markets. Some of these new foods offered more
than just the appeal of the exotic.
Corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes grew in harsh New World environments
like the South American Andes. Chinese farmers soon discovered these hardy crops
would survive the frequent droughts that wiped out many native crops starving large numbers of Chinese.
It's no coincidence that in the 17th century, after the introduction of drought-resistant crops,
China's population began to grow
and kept growing until China became the world's most populous nation.
And the new sea routes brought even more to China from the West.
An Italian named Matteo Ricci arrived in China in 1582
and spent the rest of his life there. Ricci was a Catholic missionary,
and his mission to China produced one of history's most enlightened meetings of minds.
Ricci learned to speak, read, and write Chinese, and formed deep friendships with Chinese scholars.
One of Matteo Ricci's closest collaborators and first converts to Catholicism
was the mathematician Xu Guangqi. AGNES: My ancestor Xu Guangqi,
who is known in Vatican history as Paul Hsu, met him around the time when he first came to China.
And in 1603, my ancestor converted to Roman Catholicism.
NARRATOR: Working together, Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi translated works from
the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and other classics of Western science and mathematics into Chinese.
They also translated Confucian writings into Latin.
Ricci wrote to his superiors in Europe, asking them to send more missionaries to China,
but only their smartest men. In China, he wrote, "We are dealing with a people both intelligent and learned."
Xu Guangqi himself was an astronomer, a highly accomplished astronomer and a mathematician.
But the introduction of Western science opened his eyes to a different way of thinking,
a different way of approaching natural phenomena.
NARRATOR: Matteo Ricci was a Jesuit, a member of the Society of Jesus, a new Catholic order founded on the principles
of the European Renaissance. Jesuit priests were trained in science and mathematics
as well as in theology. As missionaries, they respected other cultures
and worked to integrate Christianity with non-Christian beliefs.
From the 16th until the 19th century, nearly a thousand Jesuits worked in China
teaching everything from engineering to mathematics to geography and sending back translated classics
of Chinese learning to Europe, giving Europe its first in-depth knowledge
of Chinese civilization and China its first in-depth knowledge of the West.
Chinese and Europeans became more and more fascinated with each other's civilizations.
King Louis XIV of France sent French Jesuits to the mission in China.
And Chinese emperors appointed Jesuits to important government positions.
For more than 100 years, Jesuit astronomers directed the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.
One of them, the German Johann Adam Schall von Bell, helped create a new Chinese calendar
that predicted solar and lunar eclipses with more accuracy.
He also introduced his Chinese colleagues to a new European invention, the telescope.
The Belgian priest Ferdinand Verbiest built an aqueduct, made European-style cannons for the army,
and built a steam-powered vehicle for the emperor considered by some to be the world's earliest automobile.
In 1674, Verbiest presented the emperor with a new map of the world.
The collaborative product of European and Chinese knowledge, it was more than just a map.
It was an expression of a new worldview. A worldview based on science, exploration,
and confidence in the human ability to discover, to invent, and to create a better world.
A worldview that saw the world as one. Arguably the most famous scholar
of that age is Voltaire. And in his essay "Sur le Moeurs"
which was first published in 1756,
he argued that China was the paragon
of Enlighted monarchy ruled by intellectuals.
It challenges the fundamental notion that the Christian European world
was the beginning and the centre of civilization.
China, in Voltaire's mind, was a civilization ruled by reason
and ruled by men promoted through education...
Through virtue, and through their scholarly accomplishments,
their merits; not by hereditary rights.
(gunfire, faint shouting) NARRATOR: In Voltaire's time, Europeans were fighting their hereditary kings
for the right to rule themselves. By 1800, political revolutions in Britain, America, and France
had ended centuries of absolute monarchy.
New technologies like the mechanical loom and the steam engine and the rise of industrial capitalism
were connecting the far corners of the world. And an ancient Chinese invention
that had spread westward centuries earlier was playing a critical role. (men shouting faintly, gunfire)
NARRATOR: Gunpowder had made modern warfare possible. (cannon booms)
(gunshot)
NARRATOR: And in mineral-rich areas like France's Vosges Mountains, it was helping in a different way
to create the modern world. At the beginning of the 17th century,
these mountains were honeycombed with mines and crowded with miners from all over Europe
chasing rumours of riches underground.
(Francis speaking French)
(water dripping)
NARRATOR: In the accounting books of the Thillot Mine, archaeologists discovered an entry from the year 1617
recording the purchase of gunpowder to do something revolutionary--
blast a mine tunnel from the living rock. (water dripping)
(speaking French)
NARRATOR: By the beginning of the 19th century, gunpowder was helping European mining evolve
from laborious hand digging to a modern enterprise, supplying Europe's growing industrial economy.
And across the Atlantic, it was about to help a new nation unlock its vast economic potential.
On July 4, 1817, the United States of America's 41st birthday,
crews in New York State began digging the Erie Canal, a nearly 600-kilometre shipping channel
designed to connect the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean
so towns and farms on America's frontier could ship and sell their products worldwide.
Most of the canal route lay in flat country, and the canal builders had little trouble digging through soft soil.
But 50 kilometres from Lake Erie, the landscape suddenly changed.
By 1824, they got here, to Lockport. And what they encountered was a solid rock ledge
of a very hard rock called Lockport Dolomite. 10 or 12 miles from here,
there was more hard rock excavation than anywhere else in the canal system put together.
This is the same rock that forms the lip of Niagara Falls.
It's as if they were climbing the face of Niagara Falls in order to get canal boats past here
and onto Lake Erie and the upper Great Lakes. NARRATOR: Lifting canal boats from Lockport
to the level of Lake Erie meant raising them 15 metres high.
The only way to do that was by building a series of locks.
But cutting those locks though dolomite with picks and shovels would have been next to impossible.
You can chip away with chisels and picks, but it would've taken years and years and years to whittle down, to hew your way down
through this rock. Without explosives, they weren't going any further. They weren't gonna reach
their ultimate goal of Lake Erie; they weren't gonna be able to open the Great Lakes to maritime commerce.
They needed some way to move massive quantities of rock.
NARRATOR: Using gunpowder instead of pick and shovel, the canal builders excavated the lock chambers in two years.
But gunpowder's work was just beginning.
As soon as the canal diggers reached the height of Lake Erie, they had to lower the channel below it
so the lake would flow into the canal and keep it full of water.
Behind me you're looking at the final challenge in Erie Canal construction. It's not terribly exciting looking.
It's not like the locks. But this, cutting this slot, the Deep Cut through four miles of rock
was the last major challenge before the canal builders could get to Lake Erie and the one that took them more than a year to accomplish.
The Deep Cut required them to cut a vertical slot through rock, something they hadn't encountered
anywhere else on the entire canal construction project. They probably used more gunpowder, more explosives in these four or five miles
than they used in the rest of the canal put together. (explosion) DUNCAN: Rock went all over the place.
There are lots of stories about anything from a pebble to a boulder raining down on the construction camp,
this hail of rock every time they set off a charge. And the blasting went on day and night.
(explosion) DUNCAN: Construction workers were killed in blasting. There were residents of the city who were killed,
There are newspaper accounts of women being killed by falling rock while they were simply minding their business
walking from one house to another. NARRATOR: By the end of 1825,
the Deep Cut was finished and the Erie Canal was officially open for business.
Before roads and railroads had penetrated the North American wilderness, the Erie Canal made possible
the westward economic expansion of the young United States.
And the digging of the Erie Canal had another enormous consequence.
It would play a key role in transforming the American seaport at its eastern end into the modern world's greatest city.
The Erie Canal vaulted New York City from being one of several Atlantic ports
competing with Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston to the head of the pack.
New York became a world leader in maritime commerce, and all the other business activities
that go along with maritime commerce, things like insurance and financing and the grain exchange,
that all happened in New York because the Erie Canal brought the produce of the interior of a continent
to the Atlantic in New York harbour. NARRATOR: By the 20th century,
New York had become the prototype of the megacity.
Spawned and sustained by global trade, the megacity transcends its national roots
and becomes a world city, encompassing human diversity.
New York's evolution was the ultimate expression of forces that have been at work for thousands of years,
set in motion and sustained by the East-West commerce of the Silk Road...
A path through history that didn't just link human beings together but shaped their fates.
AGNES: The Silk Road was like a ray of light.
It opened our eyes, East and West, to intangible ideas,
to beautiful things, to beautiful thoughts.
NARRATOR: Today, the ancient tale of the Silk Road seems like the story of an exotic past.
But in fact, it's just as much a story of the future.
Two or three times a week, a train departs from the Chinese city of Yiwu.
It's loaded with Chinese- manufactured consumer goods, and its route takes it across six countries
in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. (train whistle blows)
NARRATOR: It takes 18 to 20 days to reach one of several destinations in Western Europe,
over distances of some 12,000 to 13,000 kilometres.
Loaded up with European manufactured goods, it returns to China.
The Yiwu Railway is pioneering the return of the Silk Road.
On 14 May 2017, China hosted a conference in Beijing to promote its "One Belt, One Road" initiative.
Attending were delegates from around the world, including the heads of the International Monetary Fund,
the World Bank, and the United Nations and nearly 30 heads of state.
Known as OBOR, One Belt, One Road plans to build a $1 trillion U.S. dollar transport network
that will connect some 60 countries, 2/3 of the world's population, and 1/3 of the world's GDP.
Inspired by the Old Silk Road, it will re-establish the ancient trade routes overland and by sea.
And it will also create a New Silk Road in space.
On August 1, 2017, China's Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft
released the nano-satellite SilkRoad-1 01 CubeSat into orbit.
SilkRoad-1 is a pathfinder for a constellation of around 30 satellites
operating across a variety of wavelengths. (rocket roaring)
NARRATOR: These satellites will help build an efficient and reliable satellite navigation system
that will provide mapping and navigation services and remote sensing technology to all the cities of Western China
and to other countries along the new Silk Road. (speaking foreign language)
(rocket roars) (speaking foreign language)
(Yang Liwei speaking foreign language)
(Zhou Jianping speaking foreign language)
NARRATOR: For thousands of years, the movement of goods, people, and inventions
across Eurasia has played a critical role in shaping human destiny.
And it may soon be helping to shape humanity's future.

[admin]

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century
Translated & edited by W.H. Schoff
(London, Bombay & Calcutta 1912).

The Periplus claims that Greek buildings and wells exist in Barigaza, falsely attributing them to Alexander the Great, who never went this far south. [???!!! NO CITATION!] This account of a kingdom tracing its beginnings to Alexander's campaigns and the Hellenistic Seleucid empire that followed:

The metropolis of this country is Minnagara, from which much cotton cloth is brought down to Barygaza. In these places there remain even to the present time signs of the expedition of Alexander, such as ancient shrines, walls of forts and great wells.

— Periplus, §41

The Periplus further claims to the circulation of Indo-Greek coinage in the region:

To the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus [sic] and Menander.

— Periplus, §47[23]

47. The country inland from Barygaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria. Above these is the very warlike nation of the Bactrians, who are under their own king. And Alexander, setting out from these parts, penetrated to the Ganges, leaving aside Damirica and the southern part of India; and to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus and Menander. [Librarian's Comment: A significant and presumably knowing omission from the Wikipedia article on the Periplus is paragraph 47, missing along with everything from 42-48, this extraordinary piece of testimony that cuts against the general trend of Indian pseudo-history that contends Alexander never reached the Ganges. Indeed, never crossed the Indus, spooked by Sandrocottus' herd of war elephants.]

-- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, Translated & edited by W.H. Schoff (London, Bombay & Calcutta 1912).

The Greek city of Alexandria Bucephalous on the Jhelum River is mentioned in the Periplus, as well as in the Roman Peutinger Table:

The country inland of Barigaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria

— Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, §47[25]

-- Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, by Wikipedia

Gangaridai (Greek: Γανγαρίδαι; Latin: Gangaridae) is a term used by the ancient Greco-Roman writers to describe a people or a geographical region of the ancient Indian subcontinent. Some of these writers state that Alexander the Great withdrew from the Indian subcontinent because of the strong war elephant force of the Gangaridai. The writers variously mention the Gangaridai as a distinct tribe, or a nation within a larger kingdom (presumably the Nanda Empire [???!!!]).

A number of modern scholars locate Gangaridai in the Ganges Delta of the Bengal region, although alternative theories also exist. Gange or Ganges, the capital of the Gangaridai (according to Ptolemy), has been identified with several sites in the region, including Chandraketugarh and Wari-Bateshwar.

-- Gangaridai [Gandaridai] [Gandaridae] [Gandaritae] [Gandridae] [Gangaridae] [Gargaridae], by Wikipedia

1. Of the designated ports on the Erythraean Sea, and the market-towns around it, the first is the Egyptian port of Mussel Harbor. To those sailing down from that place, on the right hand, after eighteen hundred stadia, there is Berenice. The harbors of both are at the boundary of Egypt, and are bays opening from the Erythraean Sea.

2. On the right-hand coast next below Berenice is the country of the Berbers. Along the shore are the Fish-Eaters, living in scattered caves in the narrow valleys. Further inland are the Berbers, and beyond them the Wild-flesh-Eaters and Calf-Eaters, each tribe governed by its chief; and behind them, further inland, in the country towards the west, there lies a city called Meroe.

3. Below the Calf-Eaters there is a little market-town on the shore after sailing about four thousand stadia from Berenice, called Ptolemais of the Hunts, from which the hunters started for the interior under the dynasty of the Ptolemies. This market-town has the true land-tortoise in small quantity; it is white and smaller in the shells. And here also is found a little ivory like that of Adulis. But the place has no harbor and is reached only by small boats.

4. Below Ptolemais of the Hunts, at a distance of about three thousand stadia, there is Adulis, a port established by law, lying at the inner end of a bay that runs in toward the south. Before the harbor lies the so-called Mountain Island, about two hundred stadia seaward from the very head of the bay, with the shores of the mainland close to it on both sides. Ships bound for this port now anchor here because of attacks from the land. They used formerly to anchor at the very head of the bay, by an island called Diodorus, close to the shore, which could be reached on foot from the land; by which means the barbarous natives attacked the island. Opposite Mountain Island, on the mainland twenty stadia from shore, lies Adulis, a fair-sized village, from which there is a three-days' journey to Coloe, an inland town and the first market for ivory. From that place to the city of the people called Auxumites there is a five days' journey more; to that place all the ivory is brought from the country beyond the Nile through the district called Cyeneum, and thence to Adulis. Practically the whole number of elephants and rhinoceros that are killed live in the places inland, although at rare intervals they are hunted on the seacoast even near Adulis. Before the harbor of that market-town, out at sea on the right hand, there lie a great many little sandy islands called Alalaei, yielding tortoise-shell, which is brought to market there by the Fish-Eaters.

5. And about eight hundred stadia beyond there is another very deep bay, with a great mound of sand piled up at the right of the entrance; at the bottom of which the opsian stone is found, and this is the only place where it is produced. These places, from the Calf-Eaters to the other Berber country, are governed by Zoscales; who is miserly in his ways and always striving for more, but otherwise upright, and acquainted with Greek literature.

6. There are imported into these places, undressed cloth made in Egypt for the Berbers; robes from Arsinoe; cloaks of poor quality dyed in colors; double-fringed linen mantles; many articles of flint glass, and others of murrhine, made in Diospolis; and brass, which is used for ornament and in cut pieces instead of coin; sheets of soft copper, used for cooking-utensils and cut up for bracelets and anklets for the women; iron, which is made into spears used against the elephants and other wild beasts, and in their wars. Besides these, small axes are imported, and adzes and swords; copper drinking-cups, round and large; a little coin for those coming to the market; wine of Laodicea and Italy, not much; olive oil, not much; for the king, gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country, and for clothing, military cloaks, and thin coats of skin, of no great value. Likewise from the district of Ariaca across this sea, there are imported Indian iron, and steel, and Indian cotton cloth; the broad cloth called monache and that called sagmatogene, and girdles, and coats of skin and mallow-colored cloth, and a few muslins, and colored lac. There are exported from these places ivory, and tortoiseshell and rhinoceros-horn. The most from Egypt is brought to this market from the month of January to September, that is, from Tybi to Thoth; but seasonably they put to sea about the month of September.

7. From this place the Arabian Gulf trends toward the east and becomes narrowest just before the Gulf of Avalites. After about four thousand stadia, for those sailing eastward along the same coast, there are other Berber market-towns, known as the 'far-side' ports; lying at intervals one after the other, without harbors but having roadsteads where ships can anchor and lie in good weather. The first is called Avalites; to this place the voyage from Arabia to the far-side coast is the shortest. Here there is a small market-town called Avalites, which must be reached by boats and rafts. There are imported into this place, flint glass, assorted; juice of sour grapes from Diospolis; dressed cloth, assorted, made for the Berbers; wheat, wine, and a little tin. There are exported from the same place, and sometimes by the Berbers themselves crossing on rafts to Ocelis and Muza on the opposite shore, spices, a little ivory, tortoise-shell, and a very little myrrh, but better than the rest. And the Berbers who live in the place are very unruly.

8. After Avalites there is another market-town, better than this, called Malao, distant a sail of about eight hundred stadia. The anchorage is an open roadstead, sheltered by a spit running out from the east. Here the natives are more peaceable. There are imported into this place the things already mentioned, and many tunics, cloaks from Arsinoe, dressed and dyed; drinking-cups, sheets of soft copper in small quantity, iron, and gold and silver coin, not much. There are exported from these places myrrh, a little frankincense, (that known as far-side), the harder cinnamon, duaca, Indian copal and macir, which are imported into Arabia; and slaves, but rarely.

9. Two days' sail, or three, beyond Malao is the market-town of Mundus, where the ships lie at anchor more safely behind a projecting island close to the shore. There are imported into this place the things previously set forth, and from it likewise are exported the merchandise already stated, and the incense called mocrotu. And the traders living here are more quarrelsome.

10. Beyond Mundus, sailing toward the east, after another two days' sail, or three, you reach Mosyllum, on a beach, with a bad anchorage. There are imported here the same things already mentioned, also silver plate, a very little iron, and glass. There are shipped from the place a great quantity of cinnamon, (so that this market-town requires ships of larger size), and fragrant gums, spices, a little tortoise shell, and mocrotu, (poorer, than that of Mundus), frankincense, (the far-side), ivory and myrrh in small quantities.

11. Sailing along the coast beyond Mosyllum, after a two days' course you come to the so-called Little Nile River, and a fine spring, and a small laurel-grove, and Cape Elephant. Then the shore recedes into a bay, and has a river, called Elephant, and a large laurel-grove called Acannae; where alone is produced the far-side frankincense, in great quantity and of the best grade.

12. Beyond this place, the coast trending toward the south, there is the Market and Cape of Spices, an abrupt promontory, at the very end of the Berber coast toward the east. The anchorage is dangerous at times from the ground-swell, because the place is exposed to the north. A sign of an approaching storm which is peculiar to the place, is that the deep water becomes more turbid and changes its color. When this happens they all run to a large promontory called Tabae, which offers safe shelter. There are imported into this market town the things already mentioned; and there are produced in it cinnamon (and its different varieties, gizir, asypha, areho, iriagia, and moto) and frankincense.

13. Beyond Tabae, after four hundred stadia, there is the village of Pano. And then, after sailing four hundred stadia along a promontory, toward which place the current also draws you, there is another market-town called Opone, into which the same things are imported as those already mentioned, and in it the greatest quantity of cinnamon is produced, (the arebo and moto), ind slaves of the better sort, which are brought to Egypt in increasing numbers; and a great quantity of tortoiseshell, better than that found elsewhere.

14. The voyage to all these farside market-towns is made from Egypt about the month of July, that is Epiphi. And ships are also customarily fitted out from the places across this sea, from Ariaca and Barygaza, bringing to these far-side market-towns the products of their own places; wheat, rice, clarified butter, sesame oil, cotton cloth, (the monache and the sagmatogene), and girdles, and honey from the reed called sacchari. Some make the voyage especially to these market-towns, and others exchange their cargoes while sailing along the coast. This country is not subject to a King, but each market-town is ruled by its separate chief.

15. Beyond Opone, the shore trending more toward the south, first there are the small and great bluffs of Azania; this coast is destitute of harbors, but there are places where ships can lie at anchor, the shore being abrupt; and this course is of six days, the direction being south-west. Then come the small and great beach for another six days' course and after that in order, the Courses of Azania, the first being called Sarapion and the next Nicon; and after that several rivers and other anchorages, one after the other, separately a rest and a run for each day, seven in all, until the Pyralax islands and what is called the channel; beyond which, a little to the south of south-west, after two courses of a day and night along the Ausanitic coast, is the island Menuthias, about three hundred stadia from the mainland, low and and wooded, in which there are rivers and many kinds of birds and the mountain-tortoise. There are no wild beasts except the crocodiles; but there they do not attack men. In this place there are sewed boats, and canoes hollowed from single logs, which they use for fishing and catching tortoise. In this island they also catch them in a peculiar wav, in wicker baskets, which they fasten across the channel-opening between the breakers.

16. Two days' sail beyond, there lies the very last market-town of the continent of Azania, which is called Rhapta; which has its name from the sewed boats (rhapton ploiarion) already mentioned; in which there is ivory in great quantity, and tortoise-shell. Along this coast live men of piratical habits, very great in stature, and under separate chiefs for each place. The Mapharitic chief governs it under some ancient right that subjects it to the sovereignty of the state that is become first in Arabia. And the people of Muza now hold it under his authority, and send thither many large ships; using Arab captains and agents, who are familiar with the natives and intermarry with them, and who know the whole coast and understand the language.

17. There are imported into these markets the lances made at Muza especially for this trade, and hatchets and daggers and awls, and various kinds of glass; and at some places a little wine, and wheat, not for trade, but to serve for getting the good-will of the savages. There are exported from these places a great quantity of ivory, but inferior to that of Adulis, and rhinoceros-horn and tortoise-shell (which is in best demand after that from India), and a little palm-oil.

18. And these markets of Azania are the very last of the continent that stretches down on the right hand from Berenice; for beyong these places the unexplored ocean curves around toward the west, and running along by the regions to the south of Aethiopia and Libya and Africa, it mingles with the western sea.

19. Now to the left of Berenice, sailing for two or three days from Mussel Harbor eastward across the adjacent gulf, there is another harbor and fortified place, which is called White Village, from which there is a road to Petra, which is subject to Malichas, King of the Nabataeans. It holds the position of a market-town for the small vessels sent there from Arabia; and so a centurion is stationed there as a collector of one-fourth of the merchandise imported, with an armed force, as a garrison.

20. Directly below this place is the adjoining country of Arabia, in its length bordering a great distance on the Erythraean Sea. Different tribes inhabit the country, differing in their speech, some partially, and some altogether. The land next the sea is similarly dotted here and there with caves of the Fish-Eaters, but the country inland is peopled by rascally men speaking two languages, who live in villages and nomadic camps, by whom those sailing off the middle course are plundered, and those surviving shipwrecks are taken for slaves. And so they too are continually taken prisoners by the chiefs and kings of Arabia; and they are called Carnaites. Navigation is dangerous along this whole coast of Arabia, which is without harbors, with bad anchorages, foul, inaccessible because of breakers and rocks, and terrible in every way. Therefore we hold our course down the middle of the gulf and pass on as fast as possible by the country of Arabia until we come to the Burnt Island; directly below which there are regions of peaceful people, nomadic, pasturers of cattle, sheep and camels.

21. Beyond these places, in a bay at the foot of the left side of this gulf, there is a place by the shore called Muza, a market-town established by law, distant altogether from Berenice for those sailing southward, about twelve thousand stadia. And the whole place is crowded with Arab shipowners and seafaring men, and is busy with the affairs of commerce; for they carry on a trade with the far-side coast and with Barygaza, sending their own ships there.

22. Three days inland from this port there is a city called Saua, in the midst of the region called Mapharitis; and there is a vassal-chief named Cholaebus who lives in that city.

23. And after nine days more there is Saphar, the metropolis, in which lives Charibael, lawful king of two tribes, the Homerites and those living next to them, called the Sabaites; through continual embassies and gifts, he is a friend of the Emperors.

24. The market-town of Muza is without a harbor, but has a good roadstead and anchorage because of the sandy bottom thereabouts, where the anchors hold safely. The merchandise imported there consists of purple cloths, both fine and coarse; clothing in the Arabian style, with sleeves; plain, ordinary, embroidered, or interwoven with gold; saffron, sweet rush, muslins, cloaks, blankets (not many), some plain and others made in the local fashion; sashes of different colors, fragrant ointments in moderate quantity, wine and wheat, not much. For the country produces grain in moderate amount, and a great deal of wine. And to the King and the Chief are given horses and sumpter-mules, vessels of gold and polished silver, finely woven clothing and copper vessels. There are exported from the same place the things produced in the country: selected myrrh, and the Gebanite-Minaean stacte, alabaster and all the things already mentioned from Avalites and the far-side coast. The voyage to this place is made best about the month of September, that is Thoth; but there is nothing to prevent it even earlier.

25. After sailing beyond this place about three hundred stadia, the coast of Arabia and the Berber country about the Avalitic gulf now coming close together, there is a channel, not long in extent, which forces the sea together and shuts it into a narrow strait, the passage through which, sixty stadia in length, the island Diodorus divides. Therefore the course through it is beset with rushing currents and with strong winds blowing down from the adjacent ridge of mountains. Directly on this strait by the shore there is a village of Arabs, subject to the same chief, called Ocelis; which is not so much a market-town as it is an anchorage and watering-place and the first landing for those sailing into the gulf.

26. Beyond Ocelis, the sea widening again toward the east and soon giving a view of the open ocean, after about twelve hundred stadia there is Eudaemon Arabia, a village by the shore, also of the Kingdom of Charibael, and having convenient anchorages, and watering places, sweeter and better than those at Ocelis; it lies at the entrance of a bay, and the land recedes from it. It was called Eudaemon, because in the early days of the city when the voyage was not yet made from India to Egypt, and when they did not dare to sail from Egypt to the ports across this ocean, but all came together at this place, it received the cargoes from both countries, just as Alexandria now receives the things brought both from abroad and from Egypt. But not long before our own time Charibael destroyed the place.

27. After Eudaemon Arabia there is a continuous length of coast, and a bay extending two thousand stadia or more, along which there are Nomads and Fish-Eaters living in villages; just beyond the cape projecting from this bay there is another market-town by the shore, Cana, of the Kingdom of Eleazus, the Frankincense Country; and facing it there are two desert islands, one called Island of Birds, the other Dome Island, one hundred and twenty stadia from Cana. Inland from this place lies the metropolis Sabbatha, in which the King lives. All the frankincense produced in the country is brought by camels to that place to be stored, and to Cana on rafts held up by inflated skins after the manner of the country, and in boats. And this place has a trade also with the far-side ports, with Barygaza. and Scythia and Ommana and the neighboring coast of Persia.

28. There are imported into this place from Egypt a little wheat and wine, as at Muza; clothing in the Arabian style, plain and common and most of it spurious; and copper and tin and coral and storax and other things such as go to Muza; and for the King usually wrought gold and silver plate, also horses, images, and thin clothing of fine quality. And there are exported from this place, native produce, frankincense and aloes, and the rest of the things that enter into the trade of the other ports. The voyage to this place is best made at the same time as that to Muza, or rather earlier.

29. Beyond Cana, the land receding greatly, there follows a very deep bay stretching a great way across, which is called Sachalites; and the Frankincense Country, mountainous and forbidding, wrapped in thick clouds and fog, and yielding frankincense from the trees. These incense-bearing trees are not of great height or thickness; they bear the frankincense sticking in drops on the bark, just as the trees among us in Egypt weep their gum. The frankincense is gathered by the King's slaves and those who are sent to this service for punishment. For these places are very unhealthy, and pestilential even to those sailing along the coast; but almost always fatal to those working there, who also perish often from want of food.

30. On this bay there is a very great promontory facing the east, called Syagrus; on which is a fort for the defence of the country, and a harbor and storehouse for the frankincense that is collected; and opposite this cape, well out at sea, there is an island, lying between it and the Cape of Spices opposite, but nearer Syagrus: it is called Dioscorida, and is very large but desert and marshy, having rivers in it and crocodiles and many snakes and great lizards, of which the flesh is eaten and the fat melted and used instead of olive oil. The island yields no fruit, neither vine nor grain. The inhabitants are few and they live on the coast toward the north, which from this side faces the continent. They are foreigners, a mixture of Arabs and Indians and Greeks, who have emigrated to carry on trade there. The island produces the true sea-tortoise, and the land-tortoise, and the white tortoise which is very numerous and preferred for its large shells; and the mountain-tortoise, which is largest of all and has the thickest shell; of which the worthless specimens cannot be cut apart on the under side, because they are even too hard; but those of value are cut apart and the shells made whole into caskets and small plates and cake-dishes and that sort of ware. There is also produced in this island cinnabar, that called Indian, which is collected in drops from the trees.

31. It happens that just as Azania is subject to Charibael and the Chief of Mapharitis, this island is subject to the King of the Frankincense Country. Trade is also carried on there by some people from Muza and by those who chance to call there on the voyage from Damirica and Barygaza; they bring in rice and wheat and Indian cloth, and a few female slaves; and they take for their exchange cargoes, a great quantity of tortoise-shell. Now the island is farmed out under the Kings and is garrisoned.

32. Immediately beyond Syagrus the bay of Omana cuts deep into the coast-line, the width of it being six hundred stadia; and beyond this there are mountains, high and rocky and steep, inhabited by cave-dwellers for five hundred stadia more; and beyond this is a port established for receiving the Sachalitic frankincense; the harbor is called Moscha, and ships from Cana call there regularly; and ships returning from Damirica and Barygaza, if the season is late, winter there, and trade with the King's officers, exchanging their cloth and wheat and sesame oil for frankincense, which lies in heaps all over the Sachalitic country, open and unguarded, as if the place were under the protection of the gods; for neither openly nor by stealth can it be loaded on board ship without the King's permission; if a single grain were loaded without this, the ship could not clear from the harbor.

33. Beyond the harbor of Moscha for about fifteen hundred stadia as far as Asich, a mountain range runs along the shore; at the end of which, in a row, lie seven islands, called Zenobian. Beyond these there is a barbarous region which is no longer of the same Kingdom, but now belongs to Persia. Sailing along this coast well out at sea for two thousand stadia from the Zenobian Islands, there meets you an island called Sarapis, about one hundred and twenty stadia from the mainland. It is about two hundred stadia wide and six hundred long, inhabited by three settlements of Fish-Eaters, a villainous lot, who use the Arabian language and wear girdles of palm-leaves. The island produces considerable tortoise-shell of fine quality, and small sailboats and cargo-ships are sent there regularly from Cana.

34. Sailing along the coast, which trends northward toward the entrance of the Persian Sea, there are many islands known as the Calxi, after about two thousand stadia, extending along the shore. The inhabitants are a treacherous lot, very little civilized.

35. At the upper end of these Calaei islands is a range of mountains called Calon, and there follows not far beyond, the mouth of the Persian Gulf, where there is much diving for the pearl-mussel. To the left of the straits are great mountains called Asabon, and to the right there rises in full view another round and high mountain called Semiramis; between them the passage across the strait is about six hundred stadia; beyond which that very great and broad sea, the Persian Gulf, reaches far into the interior. At the upper end of this Gulf there is a market-town designated by law called Apologus, situated near Charax Spasini and the River Euphrates.

36. Sailing through the mouth of the Gulf, after a six-days' course there is another market-town of Persia called Ommana. To both of these market-towns large vessels are regularly sent from Barygaza, loaded with copper and sandalwood and timbers of teakwood and logs of blackwood and ebony. To Ommana frankincense is also brought from Cana, and from Ommana to Arabia boats sewed together after the fashion of the place; these are known as madarata. From each of these market-towns, there are exported to Barygaza and also to Arabia, many pearls, but inferior to those of lndia; purple, clothing after the fashion of the place, wine, a great quantity of dates, gold and slaves.

37. Beyond the Ommanitic region there is a country also of the Parsids, of another Kingdom, and the bay of Gedrosia, from the middle of which a cape juts out into the bay. Here there is a river affording an entrance for ships, with a little market-town at the mouth, called Oraea; and back from the place an inland city, distant a seven days' journey from the sea, in which also is the King's court; it is called ----- (probably Rhambacia). This country yields much, wheat, wine, rice and dates; but along the coast there is nothing but bdellium.

38. Beyond this region, the continent making a wide curve from the east across the depths of the bays, there follows the coast district of Scythia, which lies above toward the north; the whole marshy; from which flows down the river Sinthus, the greatest of all the rivers that flow into the Erythraean Sea, bringing down an enormous volume of water; so that a long. way out at sea, before reaching this country, the water of the ocean is fresh from it. Now as a sign of approach to this country to those coming from the sea, there are serpents coming forth from the depths to meet you; and a sign of the places just mentioned and in Persia, are those called graoe. This river has seven mouths, very shallow and marshy, so that they are not navigable, except the one in the middle; at which by the shore, is the market-town, Barbaricum. Before it there lies a small island, and inland behind it is the metropolis of Scythia, Minnagara; it is subject to Parthian princes who are constantly driving each other out.

39. The ships lie at anchor at Barbaricum, but all their cargoes are carried up to the metropolis by the river, to the King. There are imported into this market a great deal of thin clothing, and a little spurious; figured linens, topaz, coral, storax, frankincense, vessels of glass, silver and gold plate, and a little wine. On the other hand there are exported costus, bdellium, lycium, nard, turquoise, lapis lazuli, Seric skins, cotton cloth, silk yarn, and indigo. And sailors set out thither with the Indian Etesian winds, about the, month of July, that is Epiphi: it is more dangerous then, but through these winds the voyage is more direct, and sooner completed.

40. Beyond the river Sinthus there is another gulf, not navigable, running in toward the north; it is called Eirinon; its parts are called separately the small gulf and the great; in both parts the water is shallow, with shifting sandbanks occurring continually and a great way from shore; so that very often when the shore is not even in sight, ships run aground, and if they attempt to hold their course they are wrecked. A promontory stands out from this gulf, curving around from Eirinon toward the East, then South, then West, and enclosing the gulf called Baraca, which contains seven islands. Those who come to the entrance of this bay escape it by putting about a little and standing further out to sea; but those who are drawn inside into the gulf of Baraca are lost; for the waves are high and very violent, and the sea is tumultuous and foul, and has eddies and rushing whirlpools. The bottom is in some places abrupt, and in others rocky and sharp, so that the anchors lying there are parted, some being quickly cut off, and others chafing on the bottom. As a sign of these places to those approaching from the sea there are serpents, very large and black; for at the other places on this coast and around Barygazal, they are smaller, and in color bright green, running into gold.

41. Beyond the gulf of Baraca is that of Barygaza and the coast of the country of Ariaca, which is the beginning of the Kingdom of Nambanus and of all India. That part of it lying inland and adjoining Scythia is called Abiria, but the coast is called Syrastrene. It is a fertile country, yielding wheat and rice and sesame oil and clarified butter, cotton and the Indian cloths made therefrom, of the coarser sorts. Very many cattle are pastured there, and the men are of great stature and black in color. The metropolis of this country is Minnagara, from which much cotton cloth is brought down to Barygaza. In these places there remain even to the present time signs of the expedition of Alexander, such as ancient shrines, walls of forts and great wells. The sailing course along this coast, from Barbaricum to the promontory called Papica opposite Barygaza, and before Astacampra, is of three thousand stadia.

42. Beyond this there is another gulf exposed to the sea-waves, running up toward the north, at the mouth of which there is an island called Baeones; at its innermost part there is a great river called Mais. Those sailing to Barygaza pass across this gulf, which is three hundred stadia in width, leaving behind to their left the island just visible from their tops toward the east, straight to the very mouth of the river of Barygaza; and this river is called Nammadus.

43. This gulf is very narrow to Barygaza and very hard to navigate for those coming from the ocean; this is the case with both the right and left passages, but there is a better passage through the left. For on the right at the very mouth of the gulf there lies a shoal, long and narrow, and full of rocks, called Herone, facing the village of Cammoni; and opposite this on the left projects the promontory that lies before Astacampra, which is called Papica, and is a bad anchorage because of the strong current setting in around it and because the anchors are cut off, the bottom being rough and rocky. And even if the entrance to the gulf is made safely, the mouth of the river at Barygaza is found with difficulty, because the shore is very low and cannot be made out until you are close upon it. And when, you have found it the passage is difficult because of the shoals at the mouth of the river.

44. Because of this, native fishermen in the King's service, stationed at the very entrance in well-manned large boats called tappaga and cotymba, go up the coast as far as Syrastrene, from which they pilot vessels to Barygaza. And they steer them straight from the mouth of the bay between the shoals with their crews; and they tow them to fixed stations, going up with the beginning of the flood, and lying through the ebb at anchorages and in basins. These basins are deeper places in the river as far as Barygaza; which lies by the river, about three hundred stadia up from the mouth.

45. Now the whole country of India has very many rivers, and very great ebb and flow of the tides; increasing at the new moon, and at the full moon for three days, and falling off during the intervening days of the moon. But about Barygaza it is much greater, so that the bottom is suddenly seen, and now parts of the dry land are sea, and now it is dry where ships were sailing just before; and the rivers, under the inrush of the flood tide, when the whole force of the sea is directed against them, are driven upwards more strongly against their natural current, for many stadia.

46. For this reason entrance and departure of vessels is very dangerous to those who are inexperienced or who come to this market-town for the first time. For the rush of waters at the incoming tide is irresistible, and the anchors cannot hold against it; so that large ships are caught up by the force of it, turned broadside on through the speed of the current, and so driven on the shoals and wrecked; and smaller boats are overturned; and those that have been turned aside among the channels by the receding waters at the ebb, are left on their sides, and if not held on an even keel by props, the flood tide comes upon them suddenly and under the first head of the current they are filled with water. For there is so great force in the rush of the sea at the new moon, especially during the flood tide at night, that if you begin the entrance at the moment when the waters are still, on the instant there is borne to you at the mouth of the river, a noise like the cries of an army heard from afar; and very soon the sea itself comes rushing in over the shoals with a hoarse roar.

47. The country inland from Barygaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria. Above these is the very warlike nation of the Bactrians, who are under their own king. And Alexander, setting out from these parts, penetrated to the Ganges, leaving aside Damirica and the southern part of India; and to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus and Menander.

48. Inland from this place and to the east, is the city called Ozene, formerly a royal capital; from this place are brought down all things needed for the welfare of the country about Barygaza, and many things for our trade: agate and carnelian, Indian muslins and mallow cloth, and much ordinary cloth. Through this same region and from the upper country is brought the spikenard that comes through Poclais; that is, the Caspapyrene and Paropanisene and Cabolitic and that brought through the adjoining country of Scythia; also costus and bdellium.

49. There are imported into this market-town, wine, Italian preferred, also Laodicean and Arabian; copper, tin, and lead; coral and topaz; thin clothing and inferior sorts of all kinds; bright-colored girdles a cubit wide; storax, sweet clover, flint glass, realgar, antimony, gold and silver coin, on which there is a profit when exchanged for the money of the country; and ointment, but not very costly and not much. And for the King there are brought into those places very costly vessels of silver, singing boys, beautiful maidens for the harem, fine wines, thin clothing of the finest weaves, and the choicest ointments. There are exported from these places spikenard, costus, bdellium, ivory, agate and carnelian, lycium, cotton cloth of all kinds, silk cloth, mallow cloth, yarn, long pepper and such other things as are brought here from the various market-towns. Those bound for this market-town from Egypt make the voyage favorably about the month of July, that is Epiphi.

50. Beyond Barygaza the adjoining coast extends in a straight line from north to south; and so this region is called Dachinabades, for dachanos in the language of the natives means 'south.' The inland country back from the coast toward the east comprises many desert regions and great mountains; and all kinds of wild beasts -- leopards, tigers, elephants, enormous serpents, hyenas, and baboons of many sorts; and many populous nations, as far as the Ganges.

51. Among the market-towns of Dachinabades there are two of special importance; Paethana, distant about twenty days' journey south from Barygaza; beyond which, about ten days' journey east, there is another very great city, Tagara. There are brought down to Barygaza from these places by wagons and through great tracts without roads, from Paethana carnelian in great quantity, and from Tagara much common cloth, all kinds of muslins and mallow cloth, and other merchandise brought there locally from the regions along the sea-coast. And the whole course to the end of Damirica is seven thousand stadia; but the distance is greater to the Coast Country.

52. The market-towns of this region are, in order, after Barygaza: Suppara, and the city of Calliena, which in the time of the elder Saraganus became a lawful market-town; but since it came into the possession of Sandares the port is much obstructed, and Greek ships landing there may chance to be taken to Barygaza under guard.

53. Beyond Calliena there are other market-towns of this region; Semylla, Mandagora, Palaepatmoe, Melizigara, Byzantium, Togarum and Aurannoboas. Then there are the islands called Sesecrienae and that of the Aegidii, and that of the Caenitae, opposite the place called Chersonesus (and in these places there are pirates), and after this the White Island. Then come Naura and Tyndis, the first markets of Damirica, and then Muziris and Nelcynda, which are now of leading importance.

54. Tyndis is of the Kingdom of Cerobothra; it is a village in plain sight by the sea. Muziris, of the same kingdom, abounds in ships sent there with cargoes from Arabia, and by the Greeks; it is located on a river, distant from Tyndis by river and sea five hundred stadia, and up the river from the shore twenty stadia. Nelcynda is distant from Muziris by river and sea about five hundred stadia, and is of another Kingdom, the Pandian. This place also is situated on a river, about one hundred and twenty stadia from the sea.

55. There is another place at the mouth of this river, the village of Bacare, to which ships drop down on the outward voyage from Nelcynda, and anchor in the roadstead to take on their cargoes; because the river is full of shoals and the channels are not clear. The kings of both these market-towns live in the interior. And as a sign to those approaching these places from the sea there are serpents coming forth to meet you, black in color, but shorter, like snakes in the head, and with blood-red eyes.

56. They send large ships to these market-towns on account of the great quantity and bulk of pepper and malabathrum. There are imported here, in the first place, a great quantity of coin; topaz, thin clothing, not much; figured linens, antimony, coral, crude glass, copper, tin, lead; wine, not much, but as much as at Barygaza; realgar and orpiment; and wheat enough for the sailors, for this is not dealt in by the merchants there. There is exported pepper, which is produced in quantity in only one region near these markets, a district called Cottonara. Besides this there are exported great quantities of fine pearls, ivory, silk cloth, spikenard from the Ganges, malabathrum from the places in the interior, transparent stones of' all kinds, diamonds and sapphires, and tortoise-shell; that from Chryse Island, and that taken among the islands along the coast of Damirica. They make the voyage to this place in a favorable season who set out from Egypt about the month of July, that is Epiphi.

57. This whole voyage as above described, from Cana and Eudaemon Arabia, they used to make in small vessels, sailing close around the shores of the gulfs; and Hippalus was the pilot who by observing the location of the ports and the conditions of the sea, first discovered how to lay his course straight across the ocean. For at the same time when with us the Etesian winds are blowing, on the shores of India the wind sets in from the ocean, and this southwest wind is called Hippalus, from the name of him who first discovered the passage across. From that time to the present day ships start, some direct from Cana, and some from the Cape of Spices; and those bound for Damirica throw the shlp's head considerably off the wind; while those bound for Barygaza and Scythia keep along shore not more than three days and for the rest of the time hold the same course straight out to sea from that region, with a favorable wind, quite away from the land, and so sail outside past the aforesaid gulfs.

58. Beyond Bacare there is the Dark Red Mountain, and another district stretching along the coast toward the south, called Paralia. The first place is called Balita; it has a fine harbor and a village by the shore. Beyond this there is another place called Comari, at which are the Cape of Comari and a harbor; hither come those men who wish to consecrate themselves for the rest of their lives, and bathe and dwell in celibacy; and women also do the same; for it is told that a goddess once dwelt here and bathed.

59. From Comari toward the south this region extends to Colchi, where the pearl-fisheries are; (they are worked by condemned criminals); and it belongs to the Pandian Kingdom. Beyond Colchi there follows another district called the Coast Country, which lies on a bay, and has a region inland called Argaru. At this place, and nowhere else, are bought the pearls gathered on the coast thereabouts; and from there are exported muslins, those called Argaritic.

60. Among the market-towns of these countries, and the harbors where the ships put in from Damirica and from the north, the most important are, in order as they lie, first Camara, then Poduca, then Sopatma; in which there are ships of the country coasting along the shore as far as Damirica; and other very large vessels made of single logs bound together, called sangara; but those which make the voyage to Chryse and to the Ganges are called colandia, and are very large. There are imported into these places everything made in Damirica, and the greatest part of what is brought at any time from Egypt comes here, together with most kinds of all the things that are brought from Damirica and of those that are carried through Paralia.

61. About the following region, the course trending toward the east, lying out at sea toward the west is the island Palaesimundu, called by the ancients Taprobane. The northern part is a day's journey distant, and the southern part trends gradually toward the west, and almost touches the opposite shore of Azania. It produces pearls, transparent stones, muslins, and tortoise-shell.

62. About these places is the region of Masalia stretching a great way along the coast before the inland country; a great quantity of muslins is made there. Beyond this region, sailing toward the cast and crossing the adjacent bay, there is the region of Dosarene, yielding the ivory known as Dosarenic. Beyond this, the course trending toward the north, there are many barbarous tribes, among whom are the Cirrhadae, a race of men with flattened noses, very savage; another tribe, the Bargysi; and the Horse-faces and the Long-faces, who are said to be cannibals.

63. After these, the course turns toward the east again, and sailing with the ocean to the right and the shore remaining beyond to the left, Ganges comes into view, and near it the very last land toward the east, Chryse. There is a river near it called the Ganges, and it rises and falls in the same way as the Nile. On its bank is a market-town which has the same name as the river, Ganges. Through this place are brought malabathrum and Gangetic spikenard and pearls, and rnuslins of the finest sorts, which are called Gangetic. It is said that there are gold-mines near these places, and there is a gold coin which is called caltis. And just opposite this river there is an island in the ocean, the last part of the inhabited world toward the cast, under the rising sun itself; it is called Chryse; and it has the best tortoise-shell of all the places on the Erythraean Sea.

64. After this region under the very north, the sea outside ending in a land called This, there is a very great inland city called Thinae, from which raw silk and silk yarn and silk cloth are brought on foot through Bactria to Barygaza, and are also exported to Damirica by way of the river Ganges. But the land of This is not easy of access; few men come from there, and seldom. The country lies under the Lesser Bear, and is said to border on the farthest parts of Pontus and the Caspian Sea, next to which lies Lake Maeotis; all of which empty into the ocean.

65. Every year on the borders of the land of This there comes together a tribe of men with short bodies and broad, flat faces, and by nature peaceable; they are called Besatae, and are almost entirely uncivilized. They come with their wives and children, carrying great packs and plaited baskets of what looks like green grape-leaves. They meet in a place between their own country and the land of This. There they hold a feast for several days, spreading out the baskets under themselves as mats, and then return to their own places in the interior. And then the natives watching them come into that place and gather up their mats; and they pick out from the braids the fibers which they call petri. They lay the leaves closely together in several layers and make them into balls, which they pierce with the fibers from the mats. And there are three sorts; those made of the largest leaves are called the large-ball malabathrum; those of the smaller, the medium-ball; and those of the smallest, the small-ball. Thus there exist three sorts of malabathrum, and it is brought into India by those who prepare it.

66. The regions beyond these places are either difficult of access because of their excessive winters and great cold, or else cannot be sought out because, of some divine influence of the gods.

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Fossil claimed to be new species of mosasaur is suspected forgery: A jawbone found in a Moroccan mine was thought to be a novel species of marine reptile from the Cretaceous period, but other researchers believe it is probably a fake
by Taylor Mitchell Brown
NewScientist
16 January 2025
https://www.newscientist.com/article/24 ... d-forgery/


Artist’s impression of Carinodens, a mosasaur whose remains scientists suspect might have been manipulated and then labelled as a new species. Henry Sharpe

Remnants of a bizarre “shark-toothed” aquatic predator that lived alongside dinosaurs were probably forged, according to new research.

The contentious fossil of a jaw fragment was apparently collected by miners working at the Sidi Chennane phosphate mines in Morocco, in rock that is 66 to 72 million years old. Nick Longrich at the University of Bath, UK, and his colleagues analysed the find and classified it as a new species of mosasaur named Xenodens calminechari in 2021.

The fossil possesses highly unusual blade-like teeth similar to those of sharks, which Longrich and his colleagues suggested would help carve up large prey.

Morocco is uniquely rich in mosasaur fossils, says Henry Sharpe at the University of Alberta in Canada. “Miners working in the phosphate mines come across mosasaurs all the time.”

The problem is many people in Morocco make a living selling fossils, says Sharpe. “So many of the mosasaur fossils being sold from Morocco are modified [there] – teeth are added, bones are sculpted, all to make the fossil worth more to sell.”

Sharpe and his colleagues have now reassessed the evidence published by Longrich’s team. The biggest indication that the fossil is forged are the teeth, says Sharpe. Each mosasaur tooth corresponds to a pit in the jaw. “Even if the fossil is very poor quality, you can still count the correct number of teeth by counting the number of these pits,” he says. But X. calminechari has four teeth over two pits.

The teeth also appear to be glued onto the jaw in ways that don’t align with the pits, says Sharpe. “The tooth implantation looks likely to be faked.”

There are ways to determine whether a fossil was forged, says Sharpe. Typically, forgeries are sculpted using a mixture of bone fragments and glue, and then embedded in a mixture of glue and sand that looks like natural rock. CT scans allow you to see into the underlying bones and rock to determine whether they were modified.

“CT scanning fossils is common, and really should be standard for mosasaurs coming from Morocco,” says Sharpe.

Rather than a new species, Sharpe’s team suspects the fossil represents a known, albeit manipulated, mosasaur. Its teeth are similar to those of juvenile mosasaurs named Carinodens and Globidens, says Sharpe.

“I applaud the authors of this paper,” says Valentina Rossi at University College Cork in Ireland. “To address this [forgery] problem, we must keep talking about it [and] report fossils that have been prepared in ways that are misleading.”

There can be many reasons to produce forged fossils, but it mostly boils down to money, says Rossi. “A broken fossil bone will not sell, but a complete piece, like a jaw bone full of well-preserved teeth, will likely sell well,” she says.

Countries like Canada largely prohibit private fossil sales, says Sharpe. Without such regulations, there may be a temptation to tweak fossils to fetch high prices.

Longrich was approached for a comment on this story, but didn’t reply. Sharpe hopes Longrich’s team will CT scan the fossil and publish the results. “Scientific consensus isn’t reached by agreement; it’s reached by disagreement until both sides gather enough data to answer the question,” he says.

Journal reference: The Anatomical Record DOI: 10.1002/ar.25612

*************************

Buyer Beware: Fake Mosasaurus Jaws
by Matt Heaton
Accessed: 1/26/25
fossilera.com
https://www.fossilera.com/pages/buyer-b ... aurus-jaws

The problem of fake and forged fossils is an ongoing issue both to collectors and academic paleontologists, though it certainly isn’t a new problem. Interest in the prehistoric predator the Mosasaurus has soared due to its prominence in Jurassic World.

Unfortunately, fake Mosasaurus jaws are one of the most prevalent and widely available forgeries out there. Hundreds of them can be found all over the Internet, Ebay, rock shops, fossil shows, and I’ve even seen them make their way into collections used for educational purposes. Most of the time they are sold as being “authentic”, and I actually think most of the time the sellers don’t even realize they are peddling fakes.


A typical fake Mosasaurus jaw. If you see one that looks like this, run away.

In nearly all the examples the teeth in the jaw are real fossil Mosasaur teeth from the phosphate deposits near Khourigba, Morocco, but everything else isn’t. Isolated Mosasaur teeth, particularly the smaller ones (<1 ½”) are actually very common fossils, and huge numbers of them are collected by locals as a byproduct of the massive phosphate mining operations.

Jaws and rooted teeth are much more. The bone in these fake jaws are typically crudely constructed out of plaster, animal bone, fossil fragments or a combination of the three and mounted in fake matrix. Even in the case of real jaws, the teeth are almost never found in place and must be remounted.

In most cases these fake jaws weren’t created to be purposely deceptive. One of the biggest segments of the economy in Morocco is tourism and these fake jaws are mass-produced in workshops as cheap trinkets to sell tourists. Tourists by and large just want something cheap that looks cool to take home as a souvenir. It’s farther down the supply chain where the true nature of these items is lost, either through lack of information of dishonesty by sellers.


Fake Mosasaurus jaws in a workshop in Morocco. The crowns of the teeth are real, the rest is fake.

Once you’ve seen a few of these fake jaws and what real ones look like picking out most of the completely fake ones visually is pretty easy. They just don’t look right, the bone has no surface detail, isn’t shaped correctly, is all a single shade, the teeth are in the wrong position, etc. It’s the higher end composites out there that can pose much bigger challenge and sometimes it takes more than a visual inspection to root them out.

Fake Jaw



Real Jaw



Fake Jaw



Real Jaw

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Butchering the Elephant: A History of Colonial Exploitation of India
Excerpt from India A History: From the Earliest Civilisations to the Boom of the Twenty-First Century
Excerpt from Chapter 15. From Taj to Raj: 1682–1750. ‘FRAUD AND FOX-PLAY’
by John Keay

We go now to Declan Walsh, chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Last month, he wrote a piece headlined “The Gold Rush at the Heart of a Civil War.”...

AMY GOODMAN: And, Declan Walsh, as we wrap up, I wanted you to take us on the journey that you begin “The Gold Rush at the Heart of a Civil War” piece with. You say, “The luxury jet touched down in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on a mission to collect hundreds of pounds of illicit gold. On board was a representative of a ruthless paramilitary group accused of ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s sprawling civil war, the flight manifest showed. The gold itself had been smuggled from Darfur, a region of famine and fear in Sudan that is largely under his group’s brutal control.” Take us from there to UAE, where the gold goes to, and the fact that you interviewed the head of the RSF, what, back in 2019, when they took over a gold mine, and yet minimized its power, though ultimately it fueled the RSF to the power it is today.

DECLAN WALSH: Yeah, gold is really at the heart of the RSF’s ascent to power. I mean, the RSF endeared itself to the autocratic ruler of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, before he was overthrown in 2019. But it also grew incredibly rich by taking over the largest gold mine in the country and by using that money to build a business empire that extended into many businesses. And that’s why when I met the leader of the RSF in 2019, I asked him about that. At the time, he tried to downplay it, but our reporting shows just how pervasive it’s been.

And the incident that you referred to that we reported on in the story was really just an effort to illustrate just one of many, many routes that gold follows when it flows out of Sudan. Sudan is a country that borders about seven other countries. Gold seems to be flowing across almost all of those borders into those countries, and sometimes through very circuitous smuggling routes involving a whole range of officials, not just in Sudan, but in neighboring countries, involving companies, gold traders in the UAE themselves. It ends up in the UAE, where, you know, research has showed about 90% of the gold from across Africa, including many conflict zones, like Sudan, ultimately is traded.

AMY GOODMAN: Declan Walsh, we want to thank you so much for being with us, chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. We’ll link to your pieces on Sudan at democracynow.org, “The Gold Rush at the Heart of a Civil War.”

-- Gold, Guns & Genocide: How the UAE Profits from RSF War Crimes in Sudan, by Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow, January 28, 2025

Of more immediate concern to the directors of the Company were the activities of its employees in a personal capacity. English fortunes were notoriously made in India not by loyal service in the purchase and despatch of the Company’s piece-goods but by private investment in a variety of financial opportunities. Some were concerned with trade. Only over the ‘out and back’ traffic between England and the East was the Company able to enforce its monopoly. Within the East and within India itself, Company men took advantage of the decline in Indian-operated shipping which had begun during Portugal’s sixteenth-century Estado da India to invest heavily in the Indian Ocean trade. They owned or leased ships, freighted cargoes, sold insurance, and above all took advantage of the security and protection of their employer’s flag. Thus from Madras, as employees of the Company, the American-born Yale brothers amassed considerable fortunes in trade with Siam (Thailand) and Canton in China; part of Elihu Yale’s earnings would endow the college, and later university, in Connecticut which bears his name. Some Company men also invested in, and often defected to, shipping interests which did not recognise even the Company’s ‘out and back’ monopoly. These might be other European East India Companies like those of the Dutch or the French. They might be the ‘illegal’ English syndicates usually known as ‘interlopers’. Or they might be a bit of both -– English interlopers sailing under a flag of convenience. Up the Hughli river in search of Bengal produce there sailed in the early eighteenth century vessels which, though largely financed by Englishmen, flew the colours of the Ostend Company, the Swedish Company, the Prussian Company, the Royal Polish Company and the Royal Danish Company.

Thomas Pitt, once an interloper, then a Member of Parliament, had already made and spent one Indian fortune when in 1699 he returned to Madras as governor of its Fort St George. He stayed there for twelve years, amassing a second fortune which included the Pitt diamond (bought for £45,000 and sold to the Regent of France for £135,000); it would comfortably sustain the political careers of his prime ministerial grandson (Chatham) and great-grandson (William Pitt the Younger). Governor Pitt also jealously protected the Company’s interests during the uncertain times before and after Aurangzeb’s death. In 1701 another English ambassador, the first since Roe, had toiled up to the emperor’s peripatetic court in the Deccan with a lavish presentation of cannons, horses and cartloads of glassware and crockery. But Aurangzeb would only entertain the idea of a farman if the English would undertake the expensive task of policing the Indian Ocean and suppressing the piratical activities of mainly European interlopers and renegades. No such undertaking was forthcoming, and nor was the farman. The embassy proved to be the expensive disaster which Pitt had predicted.

Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 and the subsequent succession struggle opened new possibilities. On behalf of Prince Muazzam, an imperial intermediary asked for English assistance in cutting off the retreat of one of the prince’s rivals; in return, Pitt was invited to draw up the terms of a farman. Although the prince’s rival never reached Madras, Muazzam duly ascended the throne as Bahadur Shah and the Company began assembling the elephants, horses, clocks and musical boxes deemed suitable to accompany another mission to the imperial court. When Pitt left India in 1709 he was still sanguine of its prospects, and in 1710 overtures from the same intermediary, who had now been posted to Bengal, were renewed. The clocks and elephants were duly shipped to Calcutta and by 1712 the mission to the Mughal was ready to start. Then news came from Delhi that Bahadur Shah had died.

His ‘imbecilic’ successor barely lasted long enough for an exchange of letters, but with the accession of Farrukhsiyar the Company’s hopes soared again. The new emperor had been brought up in Bengal, where his father had been governor after Shaista Khan. He was known to some of the English in Calcutta, and the Company had supplied his nursery with toys. Evidently the toys had been appreciated, for news that some forty tons of more adult exotica now awaited the emperor’s orders brought an interim confirmation of the Company’s existing privileges plus a request that the mission proceed to Delhi forthwith. In 1715, headed by the unexciting John Surman and guarded by some six hundred troops, a caravan consisting of 160 bullock carts, twelve hundred porters, and a choice assortment of carriages, cannons and camels headed west across the Gangetic plain.

‘Considering the great pomp and state of the kings of Hindustan, we was very well received,’ wrote Surman on arrival in Delhi. He relished the impressive ceremonial and was soon dispensing lavish bribes. Meanwhile the mission’s doctor successfully treated some swellings in the imperial groin. He was handsomely rewarded, but as to the farman Farrukhsiyar remained infuriatingly indifferent. Only when threatened with the withdrawal of the Company from Surat and its other establishments in Gujarat did he relent. Losing the Company’s bullion and trade for the price of a piece of paper was unthinkable. On New Year’s Eve 1716, more than a century since Captain William Hawkins had first applied for it, the farman received the imperial signature.

Explicit as to the territorial and commercial rights enjoyed by the Company throughout India, the farman did indeed ‘indicate such favour as has never before been granted to any European nation’. In Calcutta, Madras and Bombay celebrations were held, toasts were drunk, and salutes fired as the document was paraded through the streets and proclaimed at the cities’ gates. ‘Our dear bought farman’ became ‘the Magna Carta of the Company in India’. It provided imperial confirmation of a host of privileges, some of which had hitherto been more assumed than assured. It inducted the Company into the political hierarchy of Mughal India through a direct relationship with the emperor which bore comparison with that enjoyed by imperial office-holders. And in that it legitimised action against anyone supposedly infringing its terms, it offered great scope for future intervention. Thirty years later it would be on the strength of Farrukhsiyar’s farman that Robert Clive would justify his advance to Plassey and the overthrow of Bengal’s nawab.

But if the Company’s direct participation in the emasculation of the empire was still a generation away, not so the participation of its employees in the Mughal economy nor of its troops in what has been called ‘the all-India military bazaar’.22 In a private capacity Company men invested not only in all those different forms of maritime trade but also in the whole range of monopolies, offices, franchises, revenue farms and commercial concessions which were now openly marketed within the empire. Office-holders and jagirdars had long since been in the habit of accepting cash advances against expected revenue receipts. But now, just as imperial authority was being devolved and farmed out, so were the constituent rights and revenues of nearly all subsidiary officials. Within the provinces of the empire, governors or autonomous nawabs increasingly leased their revenue rights to a handful of major zamindars who might, for a further consideration, be elevated to the status of subsidiary nawabs or rajas. Thus in Bengal ‘by 1728 over a quarter of the nominal revenue depended on the zamindars [and later rajas] of Burdwan and Rajshahi alone. By end of the Nawab’s rule 60 per cent of the revenue came from fifteen zamindars.’23 But these major zamindars in turn farmed out most of their rights to lesser zamindars, merchants, local warlords and substantial cultivators. Major Indian banking houses and powerful mercantile interests helped to finance this market in taxation rights and were amongst its principal beneficiaries. And, since the realisation of revenues, and their conversion into coin, often depended on a show of force, both local warrior aristocracies and freewheeling English factors joined in.

Typically, every Company man had his local agent, known as a ‘banian’ or ‘dubash’. Surman’s negotiations in Delhi had relied heavily on a mercurial Armenian; Pitt had employed ‘the cursedest villain that ever was in the world’ because he was also ‘the most dextrous indefatigable fellow in business’.24 Appreciating the farman-enhanced status of the Company and the creditworthiness of its employees, such agents placed a high value on their English clients and readily arranged both their investments and the loans needed to finance them. ‘The British were sucked into the Indian economy by the dynamic of its political economy as much as by their own relentless drive for profit.’25 Recent studies of colonialism emphasise the crucial role played by native elites willing to collaborate with the colonial power. Such were the dubashes and banians and, through them as intermediaries, British residents joined the new entrepreneurial class of later Mughal India.

The dynamic of the Mughal political economy was as much about troops as money. Military leaders financed their activities by engaging in entrepreneurial ventures, and entrepreneurs secured their investments by supporting military ventures. Thus, even before war broke out with the French in the 1740s, the English Company, through its employees, was already indirectly involved in the hire and maintenance of troops by neighbouring zamindars and revenue collectors. Encouraged by the farman’s confirmation of certain local revenue rights, the Company had also significantly increased the number of troops deemed necessary to defend its own establishments. The Madras garrison, for instance, increased from 360 in 1717 to some twelve hundred in 1742. Most were recruited locally, many being from the Indo-Portuguese community. But Indian troops, known as ‘peons’ or ‘sepoys’ (sipahis, soldiers), were also hired, there being a ready pool of professional soldiers -– Marathas, Deccanis, Afghans, rajputs, Baksaris (from Awadh) –- which Mughal rule had left stranded, and often unpaid, throughout the subcontinent. The existence of this market in troops, like that of the market in offices and revenue farms, positively invited European participation.

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Part 1 of 3

Vedas [2]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/12/25

-- Vedas [1], by Wikipedia

Four Vedas
Rigveda manuscript page, Mandala 1, Hymn 1 (Sukta 1), lines 1.1.1 to 1.1.9 (Sanskrit, Devanagari script)
Information
Religion Historical Vedic religion
Hinduism
Language Vedic Sanskrit
Period Vedic period
c. 1500–1200 BCE (Rigveda),[1][note 1]
c. 1200–900 BCE (Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda)[1][2]
Verses 20,379 mantras[3]

De Nobili's Vedic Restoration Project

Since access to the Vedas was nearly impossible, most of the information about their content was pure fantasy. We have seen in the chapter on Holwell how easy it was to be misled by speculation. But a few missionaries (whose writings were mostly doomed to sleep in archives for several centuries) were in a position to consult vedic texts or question learned informants. The Jesuit Roberto DE NOBILI (1577-1656) obtained direct access to some Vedas from his teacher, a Telugu Brahmin called Shivadharma.

Nobili is the first European known to have read parts of the Vedas. In a number of his works defending his strategy of tolerating aspects of Brahminical lifestyle among his converts, he cites directly from the texts associated with the Black Yajur Veda... Nobili’s access to these texts was mediated by the Telugu Brahmin convert who taught him Sanskrit, Śivadharma or Bonifacio... Śivadharma, who had falling out with Nobili, assisted [Goncalo] Fernandes with scriptural quotations in his 1616 treatise attacking Nobili... as Fernandes did not know Sanskrit, the texts were translated into Tamil by Śivadharma and only thence into Portuguese by Fernandes with his assistant Andrea Buccerio. This kind of mediated access to Sanskrit texts, likely the same method used by Azevedo and Rogerius, would be repeated in the following century by other missionaries.

-- The Absent Vedas, by Will Sweetman

He wrote that the four traditional Vedas are "little more than disorderly congeries of various opinions bearing partly on divine, partly on human subjects, a jumble where religious and civil precepts are miscellaneously put together" (Rubies 2000:338). Having been told in 1608 that the fourth Veda was no longer extant, the missionary decided to proclaim himself "teacher of the fourth, lost Veda which deals with the question of salvation" (Zupanov 1999:116). De Nobili apparently believed, like his contemporary Matteo Ricci in China, that though original pure monotheism had degenerated into idolatry, vestiges of the original religion survived and could serve to regenerate the ancient creed under the sign of the Cross. After his failed experiment with Buddhist robes (see Chapter I), Ricci adopted the dress of a Confucian scholar, asserted that the Chinese had anciently been pure monotheists, and proclaimed Christianity to be the fulfillment of the doctrines found in ancient Chinese texts. A few years later, Ricci's compatriot de Nobili presented himself in India as an ascetic "sannayasi from the North" and "restorer of 'a lost spiritual Veda'" (Rubies 2000:339) who hailed from faraway Rome where the Ur-tradition had been best preserved. In his Relafao annual for the year 1608, Fernao Guerreiro wrote on a similar line that he was studying Brahmin letters to present his Christian message as a restoration of the spiritual Veda, the true original religion of all countries, including India whose adulterated vestiges were the religions of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva (p. 344).

For de Nobili, the word "Veda" signified the spiritual law revealed by God. He called himself a teacher of Satyavedam, that is, the true revealed law, who had studied philosophy and this very law in Rome. He maintained that his was exactly the same law that "by God's order had been taught in earlier times by Sannyasins" in India (Bachmann 1972:154). De Nobili thus had come to India to restore satyavedam and to bring back, as the title of his didactic Sanskrit poem says, "The Essence of True Revelation [satyavedam]" (Castets 1935:40). De Nobili's description of the traditional Indian Vedas clearly shows that he did not regard them as "genuine Vedas" or genuine divine revelations. That de Nobili was for a long time suspected of being the author of the Ezour-vedam is understandable because in that text Chumontou has fundamentally the same role as de Nobili: he exposes the degenerate accretions of the reigning clergy's "Veda," represented by the traditional Veda compiler Biache (Vyasa), in order to teach them about satyavedam, the divine Ur-revelation whose correct transmission he represents against the degenerate transmission in the Vedas of the Brahmins. This "genuine Veda" had once upon a time been brought to India, but subsequently the Indians had forgotten it and instituted the false Veda that is now religiously followed. The common aim of de Nobili and of Chumontou was the restoration of the true, most ancient divine revelation (Veda) and the denunciation of the false, degenerated Veda that the Brahmins now call their own.

In the wake of Ricci in China and de Nobili in India, the desire to find and study ancient texts and to acquire the necessary linguistic skills to handle them was increasing both among China and India missionaries, and this desire was clearly linked to the idea of a common Ur-tradition and its local vestiges that could be put to use for "accommodation" or, as I prefer to call it, "friendly takeover." What we have observed in other chapters, namely, that religion is deeply linked to the beginnings of the systematic study of oriental languages and literatures, clearly also applies to India; and if such study produced wondrous Egyptian (Kircher) and Chinese figurist flowers in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the heyday of India in this respect was yet to come.

Calmette's Veda Purchase

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Europeans in search of humanity's oldest texts received some enticing news in letters by Jesuit missionaries in India. For example, on January 30, 1709, Pierre de la Lane wrote in a letter that Indians are idolaters but also have some books that prove "that they had antiently a pretty distinct Knowledge of the true God." The missionary went on to quote the beginning of the Panjangan almanac that, as we saw in Chapter I, was among the earliest materials that impressed Voltaire about India (Pomeau 1995:161). In John Lockman's English translation of 1743, this passage reads as follows:

I worship that Being who is not subject to Change and Disquietude; that Being whose Nature is indivisible; that Being whose Simplicity admits of no Composition with respect to Qualities; that Being who is the Origin and Cause of all Beings, and surpasses 'em all in Excellency; that Being who is the Support of the Universe, and the Source of the triple Power." (Lockman 1743:2.377-78)

Father de la Lane wrote that the majority of Indian books are works of poetry and that "the Poets of the Country have, by their Fictions, imperceptibly obliterated the Ideas of the Deity in the Minds of these Nations" (p. 378). But India also has far older books, especially the Veda:7

As the oldest Books, which contained a purer Doctrine, were writ in a very antient Language, they were insensibly neglected, and at last the Use of that Tongue was quite laid aside. This is certain, with regard to their sacred Book called the Vedam, which is not now understood by their Literati; they only reading and learning some Passages of it by Heart; and these they repeat with a mysterious Tone of Voice, the better to impose upon the Vulgar. (pp. 378-79)

Such mystery, antiquity, and potential orthodoxy whetted the appetite of Europeans with an interest in origins and ancient religion. After Abbe Jean-Paul Bignon had been nominated to the post of director of the Royal Library in 1719 and of the special library at the Louvre in 1720 (Leung 2002:130), he gave orders to acquire the Vedas. But this was easier said than done. In 1730 a young and linguistically gifted Jesuit by the name of Jean CALMETTE (1693-1740), who had joined the Jesuit India mission in 1726, wrote about the difficulties:

Those who for thirty years have written that the Vedam cannot be found were not completely wrong: there was not enough money to find them. Many people, missionaries, and laymen, have spent money for nothing and were left empty-handed when they thought they would get everything. Less than six years ago [in 1726] two missionaries, one in Bengal and the other one here [in Carnate], were duped. Mr. Didier, the royal engineer, gave sixty rupees for a book that was supposed to be the Vedam on the order of Father Pons, the superior of [the Jesuit mission of] Bengal. (Bach 1847:441)

But in the same letter Calmette announced that he was certain of having found the genuine Vedas:

The Vedams found here have clarified issues regarding other books. They had been considered so impossible to find that in Pondicherry many people could not believe that it was the genuine Vedam, and I was asked if I had thoroughly examined it. But the investigations I have made leave no doubt whatsoever; and I continue to examine them every day when scholars or young brahmins who learn the Vedam in the schools of the land come to see me and I make them recite it. I even recite together with them what I have learned from some text's beginning or from other places. It is the Vedam; there is no more doubt about this. (p. 441)

Calmette achieved this success thanks to a Brahmin who was a secret Christian, and in 1731 he reported having acquired all four Vedas, including the fourth that de Nobili had thought lost (p. 442). In 1732, Father le Gac mailed to Paris two Vedas written in Telugu letters on palm leaves, and the copying of the remaining two was ongoing (p. 442).

From the early 1730s Father Calmette devoted himself intensively to the study of the Vedas and wrote on January 24, 1733:

Since the King has made the decision to form an Oriental library, Abbe Bignon has graced us with the honor of relying on us for research of Indian books. We are already benefiting much from this for the advancement of religion; having acquired by these means the essential books which are like the arsenal of paganism, we extract from it the weapons to combat the doctors of idolatry, and the weapons that hurt them the most are their own philosophy, their theology, and especially the four Vedam which contain the law of the brahmins and which India since time immemorial possesses and regards as the sacred book: the book whose authority is irrefragable and which derived from God himself. (Le Gobien 1781:13.394)

The opponents in this combat were mainly Brahmins who considered the Europeans worse than outcasts. Calmette explained: "Nothing is here more contrary to [our Christian] religion than the caste of brahmins. It is they who seduce India and make all these peoples hate the name of Christian" (p. 362). The label Prangui, which the Indians first gave to the Portuguese and with which "those who are ignorant about the different nations composing our colony designate all Europeans" (p. 347), was a major problem from the beginning of the mission, and the Jesuits' Sannyasi attire and "Brahmin from the North" identity were in part designed to avoid such ostracism. The fight against the Brahmin "ministers of the devil" who "never cease to pursue their plan to ruin both our church and the Christians who depend on it" (p. 363) is featured prominently in Calmette's letters, and it is clear that the Frenchman meant business when he spoke about stocking up an arsenal of weapons especially from the four Vedas for combating these doctors of idolatry.

The preparation consisted in the intensive study of Sanskrit and a survey of India's sacred literature, in particular, of the Vedas.

The Veda has occupied an ambiguous position in Hinduism. On the one hand, many Hindus have proclaimed it their most authoritative and sacred body of literature. On the other, for the past two thousand years its contents have been almost completely unknown to the vast majority of Hindus, and have had virtually no relevance to their religious practices. In the last centuries before the Common Era, access to the Vedic texts was limited to male members of the three highest social classes, and since at least the second century CE, Hindu law-makers have declared that only male Brahmins are eligible to study the Veda. Between then and now, the great majority of the people we retrospectively identify as “Hindu” have been deliberately excluded from the Veda, and for most of this period we have little means of knowing whether such people accepted its authority. In ancient India, the maintenance of the Veda’s exclusivity was largely dependent on two factors: first, that it was prohibited to commit the Vedic texts to writing; second, that Brahmins were the guardians not only of the Vedas, but also of Sanskrit. By excluding all except male Brahmins from learning Sanskrit, the Veda was kept out of the majority’s reach. However, after the Sanskrit of the Vedas had developed, in the last centuries BCE, into the distinct, post-Vedic “Classical Sanskrit”, the content of the Vedas became inaccessible even to many Brahmins. Already in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, a Brahminical text composed probably around the 2nd century CE (Olivelle 2004), there is a reference to Brahmins who recite the Veda but do not understand it, and ethnographies attest to the existence of such persons today. This neglect of the content of the Vedas, together with the sustained emphasis on their correct recitation, signals the prevalent belief that the sacredness of these texts is in their sounds rather than their meaning. Thus, to recite correctly, or to hear such a recital, is intrinsically efficacious.

-- A religion of the book? On sacred texts in Hinduism, by Robert Leach

Of course, Calmette was eager to find any possible allusion to Jesus and major events of the Old and New Testaments. He searched for textual traces of the deluge and asked himself whether Vishnu is Jesus, if Chambelam means Bethlehem, and if the Brahmins stem from the race of Abraham (pp. 379-85). But the study of Sanskrit was also useful for disputing with Brahmins and scholars:

Up to now we have had little dealings with this kind of scholars; but since they noticed that we understand their books of science and their Samouscroutam [Sanskrit] language, they begin to approach us, and because they are intelligent and have principles, they follow us better than the others in dispute and agree more readily to the truth when they have nothing solid to oppose it. (p. 396)

Naturally, Calmette profited from the experience of other missionaries who had mastered difficult languages and were interested in antiquity, for example, Claude de Visdelou who resided in Pondicherry for three decades and was very familiar with missionary tactics and methods in China.8 But even more important, in 1733 a learned fellow Jesuit by the name of Jean-Francois PONS (1698-1751) had joined Calmette in the Carnate mission. Pons and Calmette came from the same town of Rodez in southern France, had both joined the Jesuit novitiate in Toulouse, were both sent to India, and were both studying Sanskrit. Pons had arrived in India two years prior to Calmette, in 1724, and spent his first four years in the Carnate region. It was Pons who had tried to buy a copy of the Veda for 60 rupees in 1726, only to find out that he had fallen victim to a scam. From 1728 to 1733, he was superior of the Bengal mission, and it is during this time that he studied Sanskrit. As superior in Chandernagor he became an important channel for the European discovery of India's literature. He spent on behalf of Abbe Bignon and the Royal Library in Paris a total of 1,779 rupees for researchers, copyists, and manuscripts in Sanskrit and Persian. They included the Mahabharata in 17 volumes, 24 volumes of Puranas, 31 volumes about philology, 22 volumes about history and mythology, 7 volumes about astronomy and astrology, and 8 volumes of poems, among other acquisitions (Castets 1935:47). Though Pons was Calmette's junior by five years, he was thus more experienced and knowledgeable than his countryman when he joined the Carnate mission for a second time in 1733, and the two gifted missionaries could combine their efforts.

In 1735 Calmette described some of the benefits of the study of Sanskrit and the Vedas for his mission:

Ever since their Vedam, which contains their sacred books, has been in our hands, we have extracted texts suitable for convincing them of the fundamental truths that ruin idolatry; because the unity of God, the characteristics of the true God, salvation, and reprobation are in the Vedam; but the truths that are found in this book are only sprinkled like gold dust on piles of dirt; because the rest consists in the principle of all Indian sects, and maybe the details of all errors that make up their body of doctrines. (Le Gobien 1781:13.437)

Vedic Talking Points and Broken Teeth

From the early 1730s Calmette thus collected -- probably with the help of knowledgeable Indians and later of Pons -- examples of "fundamental truths" as well as "details of all errors" from the Vedas. This was the first systematic effort by Europeans to study such a mass of ancient Indian texts; and it was not an easy task because the language of these texts proved to be so difficult that even most Indians were at a loss:

What is surprising is that the majority of those who are its depositaries do not understand its meaning because it is written in a very ancient language, and the Samouscroutam [Sanskrit], which is as familiar to the scholars as Latin is among us, is not yet sufficient [for understanding] unless aided by a commentary both for the thought and for the words. It is called the Maha Bachiam, the great commentary.9 Those who make that kind of book their study are first-rate scholars among them. (p. 395)

At the time there were only six active Jesuit missionaries in the whole Carnate region around Pondicherry (p. 391), but they were assisted by many more Indian catechists who were essential for the mission. The missionaries could not personally go to some regions because of Brahmin opposition and other reasons, and to preach there was a main task of these catechists. Calmette's objective in studying the Vedas was not a translation of any part of them. That would definitely have been impossible after just a few years of study, even with the help of Pons. The language of these texts, particularly that of earlier Vedas, was a tough nut to crack even for learned Indians. In a letter dated September 16, 1737, Calmette wrote to Father Rene Joseph de Tournemine in Paris:

I think like you, reverend father, that it would have been appropriate to consult original texts of Indian religion with more care; but we did not have these books at hand until now, and for a long time they were considered impossible to find, especially the principal ones which are the four Vedan. It was only five or six years ago that, due to [the establishment of] an oriental library system for the King, I was asked to do research about Indian books that could form part of it. I then made discoveries that are important for [our] Religion, and among these I count the four Vedan or sacred books. But these books, which even the most able doctors only half understand and which a brahmin would not dare to explain to us for fear of a scandal in his caste, are written in a language for which Samscroutam [Sanskrit], the language of the learned, does not yet provide the key because they are written in a more ancient language. These books, I say, are in more than one way sealed for us. (Le Gobien 1781:14.6)

But Calmette tried his hand at composing some verses in Sanskrit and wrote on December 20, 1737, after a bout of fever that had hindered his study of Sanskrit: "I could not help composing a few verses in this language, in the style of controversy, to oppose them to those poured forth by the Indians" (Castets 1935:40). Calmette was inspired by de Nobili's writings that were stored at the Pondicherry mission and seems to have partly copied and rearranged de Nobili's Sattia Veda Sanghiragham (Essence of genuine revelation) (p. 40), whose title expresses exactly the idea that seems to have influenced Calmette so profoundly: the notion of a true Veda (satya veda).

Unlike de Nobili who had thought that the fourth Veda was lost and had presented himself as the guru who brought at least its teaching back to India, Calmette had also bought the fourth Veda10 [In his letter of September 17, 1735, Calmette describes this Veda as "The Adarvanam, which is the fourth Vedam, and teaches the secret of applying magic" (Le Gobien 1781:13-420).] and found that it was far more readable and therefore of somewhat later origin:

There are texts that are explained in their theology books: some are intelligible for a reader of Sanskrit, particularly those that are from the last books of the Vedan, which by the difference of language and style are known to be more than five centuries younger than the earlier ones. (Le Gobien 1781:14.6)

Even if the Vedas remained for the most part a sealed book for Calmette and Pons, they could make a survey of their contents and pick out certain topics, stories, and quotations that could be used as talking points in debates and serve as "weapons" in the missionary "arsenal." One goal of such a collection of "truth" and "error" passages drawn from the Veda was their use in public disputes against Brahmins. A favorite tactic mentioned by Calmette is the following:

Another way of controversy is to establish the truth and unity of God by definitions or propositions drawn from the Vedam. Since this book is among them of the highest authority, they do not fail to admit this. Following this, it is very easy to reject the plurality of gods. Now if they reply that this plurality is found in the Vedam, which is true, it is confirmed that there is a manifest contradiction in their law as it does not accord with itself. (Le Gobien 1781:13.438)

Calmette described various dispute strategies that are based on the knowledge of the Vedas and address themes such as the concept of a world soul, punishment in hell, and reward in paradise. (pp. 445-50).

Like de Nobili, Calmette thought that the word "Veda" referred to the divinely revealed "word of God" and explained: "I translated the word Vedam by divine scriptures [divines Ecritures] because when I asked some brahmins what they understood by Vedam, they told me that for them it means the word of God" (p. 384). But if this was God's revelation, then it had been incredibly corrupted. The best proof of this was that Calmette had to look so hard for those little specks of gold. The more he studied, the clearer it must have become to him that de Nobili had been right in concluding that the Indian Veda was far removed from the "genuine Veda" or satya vedam, that is, the divine revelation to the first patriarchs. That true Veda had been disfigured in India and needed to be restored to its ancient glory. It is for this purpose that Calmette collected both the specks of gold and the worst symptoms of degeneration in the Veda. In the quoted example, the unity and goodness of God were first confirmed on the basis of Vedic passages and then contrasted with very human failings and even crimes of Indian gods like Shiva and Vishnu. In this manner an inner contradiction of the Veda could be exposed, and the opponents in the debate who could not deny the accuracy of the quotations from the Vedas could be caught in a no-win, "heads I win, tails you lose" type of situation.

Such tactics thus required intensive study of Indian sacred scriptures. Since the Indian catechists were almost never from the Brahmin caste, they were at best familiar with some puranic literature but certainly not with the Vedas. But since they most often had to conduct the debates, the quotations from the Vedas and talking points had to be set in writing; and because the disputes were held in front of ordinary people, such texts and quotations needed to be in Telugu rather than Sanskrit. In the Edifying and curious letters there are many examples of disputes involving catechists; but one of them is of particular interest here since it features a catechist who used exactly the kind of text that could have resulted from Calmette's "talking points" effort. The letter by Father Saignes is dated June 3, 1736, a couple of years after the acquisition and copying of the Vedas, and it stems from the very region in which Calmette worked:

A brahmin, the intendant of the prince, passed through a village of his dependency and saw several persons assembled around one of my catechists who explained the Christian law to them. He stopped, called him, and asked him who he was, of what caste, what job he had, and what the book which he held in his hand was about. When the catechist had answered these questions, the brahmin took the book and read it. He just hit upon a passage which said that the gods of the land are no more than feeble men. "That's a rare teaching," said the brahmin, "and I would like you to try to prove that to me." "Sir," replied the catechist, "that will not be difficult if you order me to do so." "If that's all you need then I order you," rejoined the brahmin. The catechist began to recite two or three events from the life of Vishnu, which were theft, murder, and adultery. The brahmin wanted to change the topic [detourner le discours]; but the catechist would not let him and pressed on even more. The brahmin realized too late that he had become caught in a dispute without paying attention to his status as a brahmin; and not knowing how to extricate himself honorably from this affair, he flew into a violent rage against the Christian law. "Law of Pranguis," he said, "law of miserable Parias, infamous law." "Permit me to say this," said the catechist, "the law is without stain: the sun is equally worshipped [adore] by the brahmins and the Parias, and it must not be called the sun of the Parias even though they worship it just as the brahmins do." This comparison enraged the brahmin even more and he had no other response than to hit the catechist several times with his stick. He also hit him on the mouth and shattered all his teeth, and he had him chased out of the village like a Parias, prohibiting him ever to come there again and ordering the villagers to never give him shelter. (Le Gobien 1781:14.29-30).

Father Saignes wrote that this catechist "explained the Christian law" to his local audience and that for this purpose he used a "book" that one could practically open at random and hit upon a passage that says that "the gods of the land are no more than feeble men." Was this a praeparatio evangelica type of work that denounces the reigning local religion (see Chapter I) in order to prepare the people for the Good News of the Christians? At any rate, it must have been a book in Telugu whose content stemmed from the Carnate missionaries who intensively studied the local religion and prepared such materials for the catechists. All this would seem to point to Father Calmette and Father Pons who at that very time (in the mid-1730s) and in that very region devoted much time to the study of the sacred scriptures of India.

We do not know what book the catechist read, but to my knowledge, the only extant text that would fit the missionary's description is the Ezour-vedam. A Telugu translation of this text must have existed since both Anquetil-Duperron's and Voltaire's Ezour-vedam manuscripts contain the following passage:

Biache. I would now be interested in knowing the names of the different countries inhabited by people and the differences among them. You have told me about heaven and hell. Give me a brief description of the earth which brings me up to date on all the different countries that are inhabited.

Chumontou responding to the question tells him the names of the different countries he knew and marks their location for him. Those interested can find them on the other page in the Telegoa language.11

Apart from indicating that the Ezour-vedam's original French text had been translated into Telugu and was illustrated with a map, this passage is also extremely significant because it shows that the Ezour-vedam was designed for use by missionaries or catechists in the region where Telugu is spoken. It is one of two passages in the book that betrays the book's intended use. The target audience must have spoken Telugu, and the content of the map must have conveyed not classical Indian geography but rather a more correct and modern vision of the world and its countries. World maps played an important role in the Christian mission since the vast advantage in knowledge they embodied could boost the claim of expertise about other unknown regions such as heaven and hell. Ricci's world maps created quite a sensation in China but I ignore if seventeenth-century world maps from the Indian missions are extant in some Indian or Roman archives.

Thus a Telugu version of the Ezour-vedam could very well have been in the hands of that catechist. Opening the Ezour-vedam at random, one may indeed hit upon some passage that could enrage a Brahmin. For example,

Are you stupid enough to overlook even what is right there before your eyes? What you say about the inhabitants of the air is completely insane! How can beings born of a man and a woman and therefore with a body like us live in the air and keep afloat? ... There is only one god, and there has never been any other; this god is not born from Kochiopo, and those who are born from him were never gods. They are all simply men, composed of a body and a soul like us. If they were gods, they would not be numerous, one would not have seen them getting born, and they would not be subject to death. (Rocher 1984:161-62)

There are many other pages in the Ezour-vedam that more or less fit the missionary's description, but the following example may suffice to make the point: "I will not stop, however, to repeat and tell you that Brahma is no God at all, that Vishnu is no God either, and neither are Indra and all the others on whom you lavish this name; and Shiva, finally, is no God either, and even less the Lingam" (p. 180).

The speaker of these words in the Ezour-vedam, Chumontou, uses a method that strangely resembles Calmette's: "in order to instruct people and save them," Chumontou examines common features of Indian religion such as the "different incarnations" of its gods and "refutes them through the words of the Vedan" (p. 135) -- the very "weapons" that, according to Calmette who was proud of this method, hurt the Brahmins most. But there is another feature that links Calmette to the Ezour-vedam and the other texts found by Francis Ellis in 1816 among the remains of the Jesuit library at Pondicherry: his overall view of the Vedas.

True and False Vedas

Ludo Rocher has pointed our that for many Europeans the word Vedam (which is Veda pronounced the Tamil way) signified the sacred scripture or Bible of the Indians. La Croze, for example, defined it as "a collection of ancient sacred books of the Brachmans" that "has among these idolaters the same authority the Holy Scripture has among us" (Rocher 1984:65). However, for Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo, the word "Veda" "does not signify exclusively a sacred book but implies in general as much as a sacred law, whether observed by Indians or other nations" (p. 65). Of course, Paulinus famously (and wrongly) [??!] argued that "the Vedas" do not exist as a specific set of ancient Indian scriptures and that the Indians call many texts, even non-Indian ones, "Vedas." But modern southern Indian usage agrees with Paulinus's view about the word, as the entries in the University of Madras Tamil Lexicon cited by Rocher (1984:65) show:

vetam: 1. The Vedas; 2. The Jaina scriptures; 3. The Bible; ...
veta-k-karan: Christian (the only meaning!)
veta-pustakam: 1. The Vedas; 2. The Bible.
veta-vakkiyam: 1. Vedic text; 2. Gospel truth.
veta-vakkiyanam: 1. Commentaries on the Vedas; 2. Expounding the Bible.

As mentioned above, Calmette defined the word "Veda" as "divine scriptures [divines Ecritures]" and explained this use in a letter of the year 1730, which is when he got hold of the Vedas (Le Gobien 1781:13-384). But in order to understand how the author of the Ezour-vedam understood this word, we need to examine its use in the Ezour-vedam and in the notes published by those researchers who saw the originals of the other Pondicherry Vedas before they vanished in the 1930s (Rocher 1984:75). In the Ezour-vedam's first book, the fourth chapter is titled "Of the Vedams," and it is here that we can find the best expression of the Ezour-vedam author's overall view of the Vedas. In this chapter, Biache asks Chumontou how the vedams have come to humankind and who its authors are. Chumontou's explanation begins as follows:

At the outset, God dictated them [the vedams] to the first man, and ordered that he communicate them to the other men so that they might learn in that way to do good and avoid evil. These are the names that one gave to them: the first is called Rik, the second Chama, the third Zozur, and the fourth Adorbo. (Sainte-Croix 1778:1.200)12

Though the first man was in the Ezour-vedam's previous chapter called Adimo ("Adimo is the name of the first man to come from the hands of God," p. 195), we readily identify him as Adam. Instead of letting Biache ask immediately about the fate of these vedams, the Ezour-vedam's author makes him first inquire about the origin of evil.

Biache. One sees that on earth vice as well as virtue reign; God, who is author of all things, is thus the author of both; at least that's what I thought until now. But how could this God, whose goodness is his essence, create vice? That's a problem that weighs on me and that I cannot resolve.

Chumontou. You're wrong about that; God never created vice. He cannot be its author; and this God, who is wisdom and holiness itself, was author of nothing but virtue. He has given us his law in which he prescribes to us what we have to do. Sin is a transgression of this law and is expressly prohibited by this very law. Our bad inclinations have made us transgress God's law. From that [transgression] the first sin was born, and once the first sin was committed it entailed many others. (pp. 201-2)

The (Christian) reader will find this association of the first man with the first sin natural, but the Ezour-vedam's author used it ingeniously to create the basis for his transmission scenario of the Vedas. Thanks to evil and sin, God's original divine revelation (the vedams he dictated to Adimo) could get into the wrong hands:

Biache. You've told me the names of the Vedams that God communicated to the first man. Tell me now to whom the first man communicated them in turn?

Chumontou. The most virtuous children were the first to whom he communicated them, because they were the only ones who could appreciate them [prendre gout]. Sinners into whose hands these sacred books fell have abused and corrupted them, going so far as to have them serve as foundation for their fables and musings [reveries]. That's what you yourself have done. (pp. 202-3)

This conversation leaves no doubt that the author of the Ezour-vedam thought that the Indians and their purported Veda author Vyasa (Biache) used a corrupt version of the original divine revelation. In other words, what the Indians and Vyasa consider to be the true Veda is in reality a degenerate imitation Veda. For Chumontou (who speaks for the Ezour-vedam's author), the true Veda maintained its purity only in a single transmission line. A long time ago, this line had also reigned in India, and the "teachers" in the Ezour-vedam as well as the other Pondicherry Vedas represent this correct transmission.

By contrast, the "pupils" such as Biache (Vyasa) are transmitters of the corrupted tradition. Their Veda is thus for the most part degenerate, though its original pure source is still apparent in a few vestiges of genuine revealed truth. In the words of Calmette's 1735 letter, the Vedas in use by the Indian Brahmins are a "pile of dirt" since they contain "the principle of all Indian sects, and maybe the details of all errors that make up their body of doctrines"; but they also contain a few "specks of gold" (Le Gobien 1781:13.437). These specks could be used to highlight how degraded the original pure teaching has become. They could thus be used as a weapon for "the advancement of [our Christian] religion," which, of course, is the crown of the genuine transmission line. Calmette's view of the Vedam appears to be strikingly similar to both de Nobili's and Chumontou's.

To return to the Ezour-vedam's chapter on the Vedas, like a Catholic priest in a confessional, Chumontou now sternly reproaches Biache for having "abused and corrupted" the sacred books:

That's what you yourself have done, but you've promised me that you won't do it anymore. It's only on this condition, remember, that I will continue to teach you the Vedam, and you will only be in a position to profit from this [teaching] if you renounce these gross errors. (Sainte-Croix 1778:1.203)

With this the stage is set for the final question and answer of the Vedam chapter. It concerns the genuine Veda transmission:

Biache. I will not be satisfied if you do not tell me the names of those to whom the Vedams were entrusted for the first time, or who were its first authors.

Chumontou. Poilo was the author of the Rik-Vedam; Zomeni of the Chama-Vedam; Chumontou of the Ezour-Vedam; and finally, Onguiro composed the Adorbo-Vedam. Each of them communicated it to his children and made them learn it. And those [children] in turn communicated them to their descendants. That is how they have come down to us. (pp. 203-5)

What is important to keep in mind here is the fundamental narrative of the Pondicherry Vedas. It sets a pure, "teacher" transmission line of divine revelation against a degenerate "pupil" transmission line. Both teachers and pupils, of course, had to be Indian and not foreign Pranguis. Famous "pupils" were desirable, and authors of the Vedas or other sacred scriptures were an optimal choice. It is true that the author of the Ezour-vedam was far less knowledgeable and consistent than modern Indologists would wish, but in exchange, he was very systematic in his black-and-white vision. For him the objective was not the satisfaction of some scholar or Brahmin but rather the hammering in of a basic message conveyed to the people in the Telugu language by catechists. Each time the "teacher" insists on something, the famous "pupil" has to admit his error and promise to be a good boy from now on. The obvious objective was to pave the way for the "true Veda" and for conversion, and pupil Biache in the Ezour-vedam demonstrates what the desired outcome was: the rejection of his traditional creed and sacred scriptures, the confession of his sins, a place at his teacher's feet, and the permission to ask questions about the true transmission of God's teachings. For the author of the Ezour-vedam, the true Veda had to open the door for the Good News, the "science of salvation" at whose sight those suffering from bad transmission disease (especially the authors of the Indian Vedas) were to cry out: "Adoration to the Supreme Being! We have hitherto lived in ignorance, but you have now, great God, put us into the hands of the science of salvation!" (p. 205). It was pure praeparatio evangelica. But not all Indians reacted so enthusiastically, as the unfortunate catechist who read from his book about the degeneration of Indian religion had to learn the hard way.

-- The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App

The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the Atharvaveda.
The Vedas (/ˈveɪdəz/[4] or /ˈviːdəz/;[5] Sanskrit: वेदः, romanized: Vēdaḥ, lit. 'knowledge'), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.[6][7][8]

There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda.[9][10] Each Veda has four subdivisions – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Brahmanas (commentaries on and explanation of rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices – Yajñas), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices), and the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).[9][11][12] Some scholars add a fifth category – the Upāsanās (worship).[13][14] The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana traditions.[15] The Samhitas and Brahmanas describe daily rituals and are generally meant for the Brahmacharya and Gr̥hastha stages of the Chaturashrama system, while the Aranyakas and Upanishads are meant for the Vānaprastha and Sannyasa stages, respectively.

Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"),[16] distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smr̥ti ("what is remembered"). Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means "not of a man, superhuman"[17] and "impersonal, authorless",[18][19][20] revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation.[21][22]

The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques.[23][24][25] The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer.[26] By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base."[26]

The various Indian philosophies and Hindu sects have taken differing positions on the Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy that acknowledge the importance or primal authority of the Vedas comprise Hindu philosophy specifically and are together classified as the six "orthodox" (āstika) schools.[note 2] However, śramaṇa traditions, such as Charvaka, Ajivika, Buddhism, and Jainism, which did not regard the Vedas as authoritative, are referred to as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" (nāstika) schools.[15][27]

Etymology and usage
The Sanskrit word véda "knowledge, wisdom" is derived from the root vid- "to know". This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weyd-, meaning "see" or "know".[28][29]

The noun is from Proto-Indo-European *weydos, cognate to Greek (ϝ)εἶδος "aspect", "form" . This is not to be confused with the homonymous 1st and 3rd person singular perfect tense véda, cognate to Greek (ϝ)οἶδα ((w)oida) "I know". Root cognates are Greek ἰδέα, English wit, Latin videō "I see", Russian ве́дать (védat') "to know", etc.[30]

The Sanskrit term veda as a common noun means "knowledge".[28] The term in some contexts, such as hymn 10.93.11 of the Rigveda, means "obtaining or finding wealth, property",[31] while in some others it means "a bunch of grass together" as in a broom or for ritual fire.[32]

Vedic texts

Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari
Vedic Sanskrit corpus
The term "Vedic texts" is used in two distinct meanings:

Texts composed in Vedic Sanskrit during the Vedic period (Iron Age India)
Any text considered as "connected to the Vedas" or a "corollary of the Vedas"[33]
The corpus of Vedic Sanskrit texts includes:

The Samhitas (Sanskrit saṃhitā, "collection"), are collections of metric texts ("mantras"). There are four "Vedic" Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda and Atharva-Veda, most of which are available in several recensions (śākhā). In some contexts, the term Veda is used to refer only to these Samhitas, the collection of mantras. This is the oldest layer of Vedic texts, which were composed between c. 1500–1200 BCE (Rig Veda book 2–9),[note 1] and 1200–900 BCE for the other Samhitas. The Samhitas contain invocations to deities like Indra and Agni, "to secure their benediction for success in battles or for welfare of the clan."[34] The complete corpus of Vedic mantras as collected in Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance (1907) consists of some 89,000 padas (metrical feet), of which 72,000 occur in the four Samhitas.[35]
The Brahmanas are prose texts that comment on and explain the solemn rituals as well as expound on their meaning and many connected themes. Each of the Brahmanas is associated with one of the Samhitas or its recensions.[36][37] The oldest dated to about 900 BCE, while the youngest Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana), were complete by about 700 BCE.[38][39] The Brahmanas may either form separate texts or can be partly integrated into the text of the Samhitas. They may also include the Aranyakas and Upanishads.
The Aranyakas, "wilderness texts" or "forest treaties", were composed by people who meditated in the woods as recluses and are the third part of the Vedas. The texts contain discussions and interpretations of ceremonies, from ritualistic to symbolic meta-ritualistic points of view.[40] It is frequently read in secondary literature.
Older Principal Upanishads (Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chandogya, Kaṭha, Kena, Aitareya, and others),[1][41] composed between 800 BCE and the end of the Vedic period.[42] The Upanishads are largely philosophical works, some in dialogue form. They are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions.[43][44] Of the Vedic corpus, they alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishads are still influential in Hinduism.[43][45]
The texts considered "Vedic" in the sense of "corollaries of the Vedas" are less clearly defined, and may include numerous post-Vedic texts such as the later Upanishads and the Sutra literature, such as Shrauta Sutras and Gryha Sutras, which are smriti texts. Together, the Vedas and these Sutras form part of the Vedic Sanskrit corpus.[1][note 3][note 4]
While production of Brahmanas and Aranyakas ceased with the end of the Vedic period, additional Upanishads were composed after the end of the Vedic period.[46] The Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads, among other things, interpret and discuss the Samhitas in philosophical and metaphorical ways to explore abstract concepts such as the Absolute (Brahman), and the soul or the self (Atman), introducing Vedanta philosophy, one of the major trends of later Hinduism. In other parts, they show evolution of ideas, such as from actual sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice, and of spirituality in the Upanishads. This has inspired later Hindu scholars such as Adi Shankara to classify each Veda into karma-kanda (कर्म खण्ड, action/sacrificial ritual-related sections, the Samhitas and Brahmanas); and jnana-kanda (ज्ञान खण्ड, knowledge/spirituality-related sections, mainly the Upanishads').[47][48][49][50][51][note 5]

Śruti and smṛti
Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"),[16] distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what is remembered"). This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Müller and, while it is subject to some debate, it is still widely used. As Axel Michaels explains:

These classifications are often not tenable for linguistic and formal reasons: There is not only one collection at any one time, but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools; Upanişads [...] are sometimes not to be distinguished from Āraṇyakas [...]; Brāhmaṇas contain older strata of language attributed to the Saṃhitās; there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools. Nevertheless, it is advisable to stick to the division adopted by Max Müller because it follows the Indian tradition, conveys the historical sequence fairly accurately, and underlies the current editions, translations, and monographs on Vedic literature."[41]

Among the widely known śrutis include the Vedas and their embedded texts – the Samhitas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas. The well-known smṛtis include Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavata Purana and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, amongst others.

Authorship
Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeyā, which means "not of a man, superhuman"[17] and "impersonal, authorless".[18][19][20] The Vedas, for orthodox Indian theologians, are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation, and texts that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times.[21][22] In the Hindu Epic Mahabharata, the creation of Vedas is credited to Brahma.[52] The Vedic hymns themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot.[22][note 6]

The oldest part of the Rig Veda Samhita was orally composed in north-western India (Punjab) between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[note 1] while book 10 of the Rig Veda, and the other Samhitas were composed between 1200 and 900 BCE more eastward, between the Yamuna and the Ganges rivers, the heartland of Aryavarta and the Kuru Kingdom (c. 1200 – c. 900 BCE).[2][54][55][56][57] The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000–500 BCE.

According to tradition, Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas, who arranged the four kinds of mantras into four Samhitas (Collections).[58][59]

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Part 2 of 3

Chronology, transmission, and interpretation
See also: Vedic period
Chronology
The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts.[60] The bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region (Punjab) of the Indian subcontinent, most likely between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[2][54][61] although a wider approximation of c. 1700–1100 BCE has also been given.[62][63][note 1] The other three Samhitas are considered to date from the time of the Kuru Kingdom, approximately c. 1200–900 BCE.[1] The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000–500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.[note 7] The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts, with the establishment of the various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise of the Mahajanapadas (archaeologically, Northern Black Polished Ware). Michael Witzel gives a time span of c. 1500 to c. 500–400 BCE. Witzel makes special reference to the Near Eastern Mitanni material of the 14th century BCE, the only epigraphic record of Indo-Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period. He gives 150 BCE (Patañjali) as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature, and 1200 BCE (the early Iron Age) as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda.[64]

Transmission
The Vedas were orally transmitted since their composition in the Vedic period for several millennia.[23][65][66] The authoritative transmission[67] of the Vedas is by an oral tradition in a sampradaya from father to son or from teacher (guru) to student (shishya),[23][24][66][68][69] believed to be initiated by the Vedic rishis who heard the primordial sounds.[70] Only this tradition, embodied by a living teacher, can teach the correct pronunciation of the sounds and explain hidden meanings, in a way the "dead and entombed manuscript [???]" cannot do.[68][note 8] As Leela Prasad states, "According to Shankara, the "correct tradition" (sampradaya) has as much authority as the written Shastra", explaining that the tradition "bears the authority to clarify and provide direction in the application of knowledge".[71]

The emphasis in this transmission[note 9] is on the "proper articulation and pronunciation of the Vedic sounds", as prescribed in the Shiksha,[73] the Vedanga (Vedic study) of sound as uttered in a Vedic recitation,[74][75] mastering the texts "literally forward and backward in fully acoustic fashion".[67] Houben and Rath note that the Vedic textual tradition cannot simply be characterized as oral, "since it also depends significantly on a memory culture".[76] The Vedas were preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques,[23][24][25] such as memorizing the texts in eleven different modes of recitation (pathas),[67] using the alphabet as a mnemotechnical device,[77][78][note 10] "matching physical movements (such as nodding the head) with particular sounds and chanting in a group"[79] and visualizing sounds by using mudras (hand signs).[80] This provided an additional visual confirmation, and also an alternate means to check the reading integrity by the audience, in addition to the audible means.[80] Houben and Rath note that a strong "memory culture" existed in ancient India when texts were transmitted orally, before the advent of writing in the early first millennium CE.[78] According to Staal, criticising the Goody-Watt hypothesis "according to which literacy is more reliable than orality",[81] this tradition of oral transmission "is closely related to Indian forms of science" and "by far the more remarkable" than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission.[note 11]

While according to Mookerji, understanding the meaning (vedarthajnana[84] or artha-bodha[85][note 12]) of the words of the Vedas was part of the Vedic learning,[85] Holdrege and other Indologists[86] have noted that in the transmission of the Samhitas, the emphasis is on the phonology of the sounds (śabda) and not on the meaning (artha) of the mantras.[86][87][68] Already at the end of the Vedic period their original meaning had become obscure for "ordinary people",[87][note 13] and niruktas, etymological compendia, were developed to preserve and clarify the original meaning of many Sanskrit words.[87][89] According to Staal, as referenced by Holdrege, though the mantras may have a discursive meaning, when the mantras are recited in the Vedic rituals "they are disengaged from their original context and are employed in ways that have little or nothing to do with their meaning".[86][note 14] The words of the mantras are "themselves sacred",[90] and "do not constitute linguistic utterances".[26] Instead, as Klostermaier notes, in their application in Vedic rituals they become magical sounds, "means to an end".[note 15] Holdrege notes that there are scarce commentaries on the meaning of the mantras, in contrast to the number of commentaries on the Brahmanas and Upanishads, but states that the lack of emphasis on the "discursive meaning does not necessarily imply that they are meaningless".[91] In the Brahmanical perspective, the sounds have their own meaning, mantras are considered as "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer.[26] By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base. As long as the purity of the sounds is preserved, the recitation of the mantras will be efficacious, irrespective of whether their discursive meaning is understood by human beings."[26][note 16] Frazier further notes that "later Vedic texts sought deeper understanding of the reasons the rituals worked", which indicates that the Brahmin communities considered study to be a "process of understanding".[92]

A literary tradition is traceable in post-Vedic times, after the rise of Buddhism in the Maurya period,[note 17] perhaps earliest in the Kanva recension of the Yajurveda about the 1st century BCE; however oral tradition of transmission remained active.[65] Jack Goody has argued for an earlier literary tradition, concluding that the Vedas bear hallmarks of a literate culture along with oral transmission,[94][95] but Goody's views have been strongly criticised by Falk, Lopez Jr,. and Staal, though they have also found some support.[96][97]

The Vedas were written down only after 500 BCE,[23][65][98] but only the orally transmitted texts are regarded as authoritative, given the emphasis on the exact pronunciation of the sounds.[67] Witzel suggests that attempts to write down the Vedic texts towards the end of 1st millennium BCE were unsuccessful, resulting in smriti rules explicitly forbidding the writing down of the Vedas.[65] Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material (birch bark or palm leaves), surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years.[99] The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century;[100] however, there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards.[101]

Vedic learning
Main article: Svādhyāya
The Vedas, Vedic rituals and its ancillary sciences called the Vedangas, were part of the curriculum at ancient universities such as at Taxila, Nalanda and Vikramashila.[102][103][104][105] According to Deshpande, "the tradition of the Sanskrit grammarians also contributed significantly to the preservation and interpretation of Vedic texts."[106] Yāska (4th c. BCE[107]) wrote the Nirukta, which reflects the concerns about the loss of meaning of the mantras,[note 13] while Pāṇinis (4th c. BCE) Aṣṭādhyāyī is the most important surviving text of the Vyākaraṇa traditions. Mimamsa scholar Sayanas (14th c. CE) major Vedartha Prakasha[note 18] is a rare[108] commentary on the Vedas, which is also referred to by contemporary scholars.[109]

Yaska and Sayana, reflecting an ancient understanding, state that the Veda can be interpreted in three ways, giving "the truth about gods, dharma and parabrahman."[110][111][note 19] The pūrva-kāņda (or karma-kanda), the part of the Veda dealing with ritual, gives knowledge of dharma, "which brings us satisfaction." The uttara-kanda (or jnana-kanda),[note 20] the part of the Veda dealing with the knowledge of the absolute, gives knowledge of Parabrahma, "which fulfills all of our desires."[112] According to Holdrege, for the exponents of karma-kandha the Veda is to be "inscribed in the minds and hearts of men" by memorization and recitation, while for the exponents of the jnana-kanda and meditation the Vedas express a transcendental reality which can be approached with mystical means.[113]

Holdrege notes that in Vedic learning "priority has been given to recitation over interpretation" of the Samhitas.[108] Galewicz states that Sayana, a Mimamsa scholar,[114][115][116] "thinks of the Veda as something to be trained and mastered to be put into practical ritual use", noticing that "it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential [...] but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form."[117] According to Galewicz, Sayana saw the purpose (artha) of the Veda as the "artha of carrying out sacrifice", giving precedence to the Yajurveda.[114] For Sayana, whether the mantras had meaning depended on the context of their practical usage.[117] This conception of the Veda, as a repertoire to be mastered and performed, takes precedence over the internal meaning or "autonomous message of the hymns."[118] Most Śrauta rituals are not performed in the modern era, and those that are, are rare.[119]

Mukherjee notes that the Rigveda, and Sayana's commentary, contain passages criticizing as fruitless mere recitation of the Ŗik (words) without understanding their inner meaning or essence, the knowledge of dharma [the religious and moral law governing individual conduct] and Parabrahman [the Supreme Absolute Truth and ultimate reality that transcends all forms and attribute; the highest consciousness or the ultimate essence of existence, beyond the veil of maya or illusion; the state of complete knowledge of the Self.].[120] Mukherjee concludes that in the Rigvedic education of the mantras "the contemplation and comprehension of their meaning was considered as more important and vital to education than their mere mechanical repetition and correct pronunciation."[121] Mookei refers to Sayana as stating that "the mastery of texts, akshara-praptī, is followed by artha-bodha, perception of their meaning."[85][note 12] Mukherjee explains that the Vedic knowledge was first perceived by the rishis and munis. Only the perfect language of the Vedas, as in contrast to ordinary speech, can reveal these truths, which were preserved by committing them to memory.[123] According to Mukherjee, while these truths are imparted to the student by the memorized texts,[124] "the realization of Truth" and the knowledge of paramatman as revealed to the rishis is the real aim of Vedic learning, and not the mere recitation of texts.[125] The supreme knowledge of the Absolute, para Brahman-jnana, the knowledge of rta and satya, can be obtained by taking vows of silence and obedience[126] sense-restraint, dhyana, the practice of tapas (austerities),[111] and discussing the Vedanta.[126][note 21]

Vedic schools or recensions
Part of a series on Hindu scriptures
Vedas and their Shakhas
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Rigveda
Samaveda
Krishna Yajurveda
Shukla Yajurveda
Atharvaveda
Hinduism portal
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Main article: Shakha
The four Vedas were transmitted in various śākhās (branches, schools).[128][129] Each school likely represented an ancient community of a particular area, or kingdom.[129] Each school followed its own canon. Multiple recensions (revisions) are known for each of the Vedas.[128] Thus, states Witzel as well as Renou, in the 2nd millennium BCE, there was likely no canon of one broadly accepted Vedic texts, no Vedic “Scripture”, but only a canon of various texts accepted by each school. Some of these texts have survived, most lost or yet to be found. Rigveda that survives in modern times, for example, is in only one extremely well preserved school of Śåkalya, from a region called Videha, in modern north Bihar, south of Nepal.[130] The Vedic canon in its entirety consists of texts from all the various Vedic schools taken together.[129]

There were Vedic schools that believed in polytheism in which numerous gods had different natural functions, henotheistic beliefs where only one god was worshipped but others were thought to exist, monotheistic beliefs in a single god, agnosticism, and monistic beliefs where "there is an absolute reality that goes beyond the gods and that includes or transcends everything that exists."[131] Indra, Agni, and Yama were popular subjects of worship by polytheist organizations.[131]

Each of the four Vedas were shared by the numerous schools, but revised, interpolated and adapted locally, in and after the Vedic period, giving rise to various recensions of the text. Some texts were revised into the modern era, raising significant debate on parts of the text which are believed to have been corrupted at a later date.[132][133] The Vedas each have an Index or Anukramani, the principal work of this kind being the general Index or Sarvānukramaṇī.[134][135]

Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity.[136] For example, memorization of the sacred Vedas included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the jaṭā-pāṭha (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated in the original order.[137] That these methods have been effective, is attested to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Rigveda, as redacted into a single text during the Brahmana period, without any variant readings within that school.[137]

The Vedas were orally transmitted by memorization, and were written down only after 500 BCE,[23][65][98] All printed editions of the Vedas that survive in the modern times are likely the version existing in about the 16th century CE.[138]

Four Vedas
The Vedas
Share by size
Rig (51.78%)
Yajur (9.69%)
Sama (9.2%)
Atharva (29.33%)
The canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold (turīya) viz.,[139]

Rigveda (RV)
Yajurveda (YV, with the main division TS vs. VS)
Samaveda (SV)
Atharvaveda (AV)
Of these, the first three were the principal original division, also called "trayī vidyā"; that is, "the triple science" of reciting hymns (Rigveda), performing sacrifices (Yajurveda), and chanting songs (Samaveda).[140][141] The Rig Veda most likely was composed between c. 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE.[note 1] Witzel notes that it is the Vedic period itself, where incipient lists divide the Vedic texts into three (trayī) or four branches: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva.[129]

Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies such as newborn baby's rites of passage, coming of age, marriages, retirement and cremation, sacrifices and symbolic sacrifices), the Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (text discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).[9][11][12] The Upasanas (short ritual worship-related sections) are considered by some scholars[13][14] as the fifth part. Witzel notes that the rituals, rites and ceremonies described in these ancient texts reconstruct to a large degree the Indo-European marriage rituals observed in a region spanning the Indian subcontinent, Persia and the European area, and some greater details are found in the Vedic era texts such as the Grhya Sūtras.[142]

Only one version of the Rigveda is known to have survived into the modern era.[130] Several different versions of the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda are known, and many different versions of the Yajur Veda have been found in different parts of South Asia.[143]

The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana-traditions.[15]

Rigveda
Main article: Rigveda
Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of non-Eternity):

Who really knows?
Who can here proclaim it?
Whence, whence this creation sprang?
Gods came later, after the creation of this universe.

Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute;
Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows,
He only knows, or perhaps He does not know.

—Rig Veda 10.129.6–7[144]
The Rigveda Samhita is the oldest extant Indic text.[145] It is a collection of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 verses in all, organized into ten books (Sanskrit: mandalas).[146] The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities.[147]

The books were composed by poets from different priestly groups over a period of several centuries between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE,[note 1] (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the northwest Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, the initial codification of the Rigveda took place at the end of the Rigvedic period at c. 1200 BCE, in the early Kuru kingdom.[148]

The Rigveda is structured based on clear principles. The Veda begins with a small book addressed to Agni, Indra, Soma and other gods, all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection; for each deity series, the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones, but the number of hymns per book increases. Finally, the meter too is systematically arranged from jagati and tristubh to anustubh and gayatri as the text progresses.[129]

The rituals became increasingly complex over time, and the king's association with them strengthened both the position of the Brahmans and the kings.[149] The Rajasuya rituals, performed with the coronation of a king, "set in motion [...] cyclical regenerations of the universe."[150] In terms of substance, the nature of hymns shift from praise of deities in early books to Nasadiya Sukta with questions such as, "what is the origin of the universe?, do even gods know the answer?",[144] the virtue of Dāna (charity) in society,[151] and other metaphysical issues in its hymns.[note 22]

There are similarities between the mythology, rituals and linguistics in Rigveda and those found in ancient central Asia, Iranian and Hindukush (Afghanistan) regions.[152]

Yajurveda
Main article: Yajurveda
The Yajurveda Samhita consists of prose mantras.[153] It is a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire.[153] The core text of the Yajurveda falls within the classical Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE – younger than the Rigveda, and roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda, the Rigvedic Khilani, and the Sāmaveda.[154] Witzel dates the Yajurveda hymns to the early Indian Iron Age, after c. 1200 and before 800 BCE.[155] corresponding to the early Kuru Kingdom.[156]


A page from the Taittiriya Samhita, a layer of text within the Yajurveda
The earliest and most ancient layer of Yajurveda samhita includes about 1,875 verses, that are distinct yet borrow and build upon the foundation of verses in Rigveda.[157] Unlike the Samaveda which is almost entirely based on Rigveda mantras and structured as songs, the Yajurveda samhitas are in prose, and they are different from earlier Vedic texts linguistically.[158] The Yajur Veda has been the primary source of information about sacrifices during Vedic times and associated rituals.[159]

There are two major groups of texts in this Veda: the "Black" (Krishna) and the "White" (Shukla). The term "black" implies "the un-arranged, motley collection" of verses in Yajurveda, in contrast to the "white" (well arranged) Yajurveda.[160] The White Yajurveda separates the Samhita from its Brahmana (the Shatapatha Brahmana), the Black Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary. Of the Black Yajurveda, texts from four major schools have survived (Maitrayani, Katha, Kapisthala-Katha, Taittiriya), while of the White Yajurveda, two (Kanva and Madhyandina).[161][162] The youngest layer of Yajurveda text is not related to rituals nor sacrifice, it includes the largest collection of primary Upanishads, influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy.[163][164]

Samaveda
Main article: Samaveda
The Samaveda Samhita[165] consists of 1549 stanzas, taken almost entirely (except for 75 mantras) from the Rigveda.[41][166] While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, between c. 1200 and 1000 BCE or "slightly later", roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda.[166]

The Samaveda samhita has two major parts. The first part includes four melody collections (gāna, गान) and the second part three verse “books” (ārcika, आर्चिक).[166] A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the arcika books. Just as in the Rigveda, the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with hymns to Agni and Indra but shift to the abstract. Their meters shift also in a descending order. The songs in the later sections of the Samaveda have the least deviation from the hymns derived from the Rigveda.[166]

In the Samaveda, some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated.[167] Including repetitions, there are a total of 1875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith.[168] Two major recensions have survived, the Kauthuma/Ranayaniya and the Jaiminiya. Its purpose was liturgical, and they were the repertoire of the udgātṛ or "singer" priests.[169]

Atharvaveda
Main article: Atharvaveda
The Artharvaveda Samhita is the text 'belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets. It has about 760 hymns, and about 160 of the hymns are in common with the Rigveda.[170] Most of the verses are metrical, but some sections are in prose.[170] Two different versions of the text – the Paippalāda and the Śaunakīya – have survived into the modern times.[170][171] The Atharvaveda was not considered as a Veda in the Vedic era, and was accepted as a Veda in late 1st millennium BCE.[172][173] It was compiled last,[174] probably around 900 BCE, although some of its material may go back to the time of the Rigveda,[2] or earlier.[170]

The Atharvaveda is sometimes called the "Veda of magical formulas",[175] an epithet declared to be incorrect by other scholars.[176] The Samhita layer of the text likely represents a developing 2nd millennium BCE tradition of magico-religious rites to address superstitious anxiety, spells to remove maladies believed to be caused by demons, and herbs- and nature-derived potions as medicine.[177][178] The text, states Kenneth Zysk, is one of oldest surviving record of the evolutionary practices in religious medicine and reveals the "earliest forms of folk healing of Indo-European antiquity".[179] Many books of the Atharvaveda Samhita are dedicated to rituals without magic, such as to philosophical speculations and to theosophy.[176]

The Atharva veda has been a primary source for information about Vedic culture, the customs and beliefs, the aspirations and frustrations of everyday Vedic life, as well as those associated with kings and governance. The text also includes hymns dealing with the two major rituals of passage – marriage and cremation. The Atharva Veda also dedicates significant portion of the text asking the meaning of a ritual.[180]

Embedded Vedic texts


Manuscripts of the Vedas are in the Sanskrit language, but in many regional scripts in addition to the Devanagari. Top: Grantha script (Tamil Nadu), Below: Malayalam script (Kerala).
Brahmanas
Further information: Brahmana
The Brahmanas are commentaries, explanation of proper methods and meaning of Vedic Samhita rituals in the four Vedas.[36] They also incorporate myths, legends and in some cases philosophy.[36][37] Each regional Vedic shakha (school) has its own operating manual-like Brahmana text, most of which have been lost.[181] A total of 19 Brahmana texts have survived into modern times: two associated with the Rigveda, six with the Yajurveda, ten with the Samaveda and one with the Atharvaveda. The oldest dated to about 900 BCE, while the youngest Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana), were complete by about 700 BCE.[38][39] According to Jan Gonda, the final codification of the Brahmanas took place in pre-Buddhist times (ca. 600 BCE).[182]

The substance of the Brahmana text varies with each Veda. For example, the first chapter of the Chandogya Brahmana, one of the oldest Brahmanas, includes eight ritual suktas (hymns) for the ceremony of marriage and rituals at the birth of a child.[183][184] The first hymn is a recitation that accompanies offering a Yajna oblation to Agni (fire) on the occasion of a marriage, and the hymn prays for prosperity of the couple getting married.[183][185] The second hymn wishes for their long life, kind relatives, and a numerous progeny.[183] The third hymn is a mutual marriage pledge, between the bride and groom, by which the two bind themselves to each other. The sixth through last hymns of the first chapter in Chandogya Brahmana are ritual celebrations on the birth of a child and wishes for health, wealth, and prosperity with a profusion of cows and artha.[183] However, these verses are incomplete expositions, and their complete context emerges only with the Samhita layer of text.[186]

Aranyakas and Upanishads
Further information: Vedanta, Upanishads, and Aranyaka
The Aranyakas layer of the Vedas include rituals, discussion of symbolic meta-rituals, as well as philosophical speculations.[14][40]

Aranyakas, however, neither are homogeneous in content nor in structure.[40] They are a medley of instructions and ideas, and some include chapters of Upanishads within them. Two theories have been proposed on the origin of the word Aranyakas. One theory holds that these texts were meant to be studied in a forest, while the other holds that the name came from these being the manuals of allegorical interpretation of sacrifices, for those in Vanaprastha (retired, forest-dwelling) stage of their life, according to the historic age-based Ashrama system of human life.[187]

The Upanishads reflect the last composed layer of texts in the Vedas. They are commonly referred to as Vedānta, variously interpreted to mean either the "last chapters, parts of the Vedas" or "the object, the highest purpose of the Veda".[188] The central concern of the Upanishads are the connections "between parts of the human organism and cosmic realities."[189] The Upanishads intend to create a hierarchy of connected and dependent realities, evoking a sense of unity of "the separate elements of the world and of human experience [compressing] them into a single form."[190] The concepts of Brahman, the Ultimate Reality from which everything arises, and Ātman, the essence of the individual, are central ideas in the Upanishads,[191][192] and knowing the correspondence between Ātman and Brahman as "the fundamental principle which shapes the world" permits the creation of an integrative vision of the whole.[190][192] The Upanishads are the foundation of Hindu philosophical thought and its diverse traditions,[43][193] and of the Vedic corpus, they alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishads have influenced the diverse traditions of Hinduism.[43][194]

Aranyakas are sometimes identified as karma-kanda (ritualistic section), while the Upanishads are identified as jnana-kanda (spirituality section).[48][49][50][note 5] In an alternate classification, the early part of Vedas are called Samhitas and the commentary are called the Brahmanas which together are identified as the ceremonial karma-kanda, while Aranyakas and Upanishads are referred to as the jnana-kanda.[51]

Post-Vedic literature
Vedanga
Main article: Vedanga
The Vedangas developed towards the end of the vedic period, around or after the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. These auxiliary fields of Vedic studies emerged because the language of the Vedas,[195] composed centuries earlier, became too archaic to the people of that time.[196] The Vedangas were sciences that focused on helping understand and interpret the Vedas that had been composed many centuries earlier.[196]

The six subjects of Vedanga are phonetics (Śikṣā), poetic meter (Chandas), grammar (Vyākaraṇa), etymology and linguistics (Nirukta), rituals and rites of passage (Kalpa), time keeping and astronomy (Jyotiṣa).[197][198][199]

Vedangas developed as ancillary studies for the Vedas, but its insights into meters, structure of sound and language, grammar, linguistic analysis and other subjects influenced post-Vedic studies, arts, culture and various schools of Hindu philosophy.[200][201][202] The Kalpa Vedanga studies, for example, gave rise to the Dharma-sutras, which later expanded into Dharma-shastras.[196][203]

Parisista
Main article: Pariśiṣṭa
Pariśiṣṭa "supplement, appendix" is the term applied to various ancillary works of Vedic literature, dealing mainly with details of ritual and elaborations of the texts logically and chronologically prior to them: the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Sutras. Naturally classified with the Veda to which each pertains, Parisista works exist for each of the four Vedas. However, only the literature associated with the Atharvaveda is extensive.

The Āśvalāyana Gṛhya Pariśiṣṭa is a very late text associated with the Rigveda canon.
The Gobhila Gṛhya Pariśiṣṭa is a short metrical text of two chapters, with 113 and 95 verses respectively.
The Kātiya Pariśiṣṭas, ascribed to Kātyāyana, consist of 18 works enumerated self-referentially in the fifth of the series (the Caraṇavyūha) and the Kātyāyana Śrauta Sūtra Pariśiṣṭa.
The Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda has 3 parisistas The Āpastamba Hautra Pariśiṣṭa, which is also found as the second praśna of the Satyasāḍha Śrauta Sūtra', the Vārāha Śrauta Sūtra Pariśiṣṭa
For the Atharvaveda, there are 79 works, collected as 72 distinctly named parisistas.[204]
Upaveda
The term upaveda ("applied knowledge") is used in traditional literature to designate the subjects of certain technical works.[205][206] Lists of what subjects are included in this class differ among sources. The Charanavyuha mentions four Upavedas:[207]

Archery (Dhanurveda), associated with the Yajurveda
Architecture (Sthapatyaveda), associated with the Rigveda.
Music and sacred dance (Gāndharvaveda), associated with the Samaveda
Medicine (Āyurveda), associated with the Atharvaveda.[208][209]
"Fifth" and other Vedas
Some post-Vedic texts, including the Mahabharata, the Natyasastra[210] and certain Puranas, refer to themselves as the "fifth Veda".[211] The earliest reference to such a "fifth Veda" is found in the Chandogya Upanishad in hymn 7.1.2.[212]

Let drama and dance (Nātya, नाट्य) be the fifth vedic scripture. Combined with an epic story, tending to virtue, wealth, joy and spiritual freedom, it must contain the significance of every scripture, and forward every art. Thus, from all the Vedas, Brahma framed the Nātya Veda. From the Rig Veda he drew forth the words, from the Sama Veda the melody, from the Yajur Veda gesture, and from the Atharva Veda the sentiment.

— First chapter of Nātyaśāstra, Abhinaya Darpana [213][214]
"Divya Prabandha", for example Tiruvaymoli, is a term for canonical Tamil texts considered as Vernacular Veda by some South Indian Hindus.[215][216]

Other texts such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedanta Sutras are considered shruti or "Vedic" by some Hindu denominations but not universally within Hinduism. The Bhakti movement, and Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular extended the term veda to include the Sanskrit Epics and Vaishnavite devotional texts such as the Pancharatra.[217]

Puranas
Main article: Puranas
The Puranas is a vast genre of encyclopedic Indian literature about a wide range of topics particularly myths, legends and other traditional lore.[218] Several of these texts are named after major Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi.[219][220] There are 18 Maha Puranas (Great Puranas) and 18 Upa Puranas (Minor Puranas), with over 400,000 verses.[218]

The Puranas have been influential in the Hindu culture.[221][222] They are considered Vaidika (congruent with Vedic literature).[223] The Bhagavata Purana has been among the most celebrated and popular text in the Puranic genre, and is of non-dualistic tenor.[224][225] The Puranic literature wove with the Bhakti movement in India, and both Dvaita and Advaita scholars have commented on the underlying Vedanta themes in the Maha Puranas.[226]

Vedas in Sangam literature
Vedas finds its earliest literary mention in the Sangam literature dated to the 5th century BCE. The Vedas were read by almost every caste in ancient Tamil Nadu. An Indian historian, archaeologist and epigraphist named Ramachandran Nagaswamy mentions that Tamil Nadu was a land of Vedas and a place where everyone knew the Vedas.[227] The Vedas are also considered as a text filled with deep meaning which can be understood only by scholars.[228] The Purananuru mentions that the ancestors of Velir kings where born from the Sacred fire of a Northern sage[229] and the Paṭṭiṉappālai mentions that the four Vedas were chanted by the priests of Ancient Tamilakam,[230] this shows chanting of Vedas and growing sacred fires are part of the Tamil culture. Vedas are called Maṛai or Vaymoli in parts of South India. Marai literally means "hidden, a secret, mystery". Perumpāṇāṟṟuppaṭai mentions a yupa post (a form of Vedic altar) in the Brahmin village.[231] Vedas are recited by these Brahmins, and even their parrots are mentioned in the poem as those who sing the Vedic hymns. People in these Vedic villages did not eat meat, nor raise fowls. They ate rice, salad leaves boiled in ghee, pickles and vegetables.[232][233] Apart from the Sanskrit Vedas there are other texts like Naalayira Divya Prabandham and Tevaram called as Tamil Veda and Dravida Veda.[234][215]

Authority of the Vedas
The various Hindu sects and Indian philosophies have taken differing positions on the authority of the Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy which acknowledge the authority of the Vedas are classified as "orthodox" (āstika).[note 23] Other śramaṇa traditions, such as Charvaka, Ajivika, Buddhism and Jainism, which do not regard the Vedas as authorities, are referred to as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" (nāstika) schools.[15][27]

Certain traditions which are often seen as being part of Hinduism also rejected the Vedas. For example, authors of the tantric Vaishnava Sahajiya tradition, like Siddha Mukundadeva, rejected the Vedas' authority.[236] Likewise, some tantric Shaiva Agamas reject the Vedas. The Anandabhairava-tantra for example, states that "the wise man should not elect as his authority the word of the Vedas, which is full of impurity, produces but scanty and transitory fruits and is limited."[237]

Though many religious Hindus implicitly acknowledge the authority of the Vedas, this acknowledgment is often "no more than a declaration that someone considers himself [or herself] a Hindu",[238][note 24] and "most Indians today pay lip service to the Veda and have no regard for the contents of the text."[239] Some Hindus challenge the authority of the Vedas, thereby implicitly acknowledging its importance to the history of Hinduism, states Lipner.[240]

While Hindu reform movement such as Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj accept the authority of Vedas,[241] Hindu modernists like Debendranath Tagore and Keshub Chandra Sen;[242] and social reformers like B. R. Ambedkar reject its authority.[243]

Western Indology
Further information: Sanskrit studies
The study of Sanskrit in the West began in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to Vedic texts, specifically the Upanishads. The importance of Vedic Sanskrit for Indo-European studies was also recognized in the early 19th century. English translations of the Samhitas were published in the later 19th century, in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Müller between 1879 and 1910.[244] Ralph T. H. Griffith also presented English translations of the four Samhitas, published 1889 to 1899.

Rigveda manuscripts were selected for inscription in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2007.[245]

See also
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Hindu philosophy
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Notes
It is certain that the hymns of the Rig Veda post-date Indo-Iranian separation of ca. 2000 BCE and probably that of the relevant Mitanni documents of c. 1400 BCE. The oldest available text is estimated to be from 1200 BCE. Philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to the second half of the second millennium:
Max Müller: "the hymns of the Rig-Veda are said to date from 1500 B.C."[246]
The EIEC (s.v. Indo-Iranian languages, p. 306) gives 1500–1000 BCE.
Flood and Witzel both mention c. 1500–1200 BCE.[2][54]
Anthony mentions c. 1500–1300 BCE.[61]
Thomas Oberlies (Die Religion des Rgveda, 1998, p. 158) based on 'cumulative evidence' sets a wide range of 1700–1100 BCE.[62] Oberlies 1998, p. 155 gives an estimate of 1100 BCE for the youngest hymns in book 10.[247]
Witzel 1995, p. 4 mentions c. 1500–1200 BCE. According to Witzel 1997, p. 263, the whole Rig Vedic period may have lasted from c. 1900 BCE – c. 1200 BCE: "the bulk of the RV represents only 5 or 6 generations of kings (and of the contemporary poets)24 of the Pūru and Bharata tribes. It contains little else before and after this “snapshot” view of contemporary Rgvedic history, as reported by these contemporary “tape recordings.” On the other hand, the whole Rgvedic period may have lasted even up to 700 years, from the infiltration of the Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent, c. 1900 B.C. (at the utmost, the time of collapse of the Indus civilization), up to c. 1200 B.C., the time of the introduction of iron which is first mentioned in the clearly post-vedic hymns of the Atharvaveda."
Elisa Freschi (2012): "The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed, but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school."Freschi 2012, p. 62 This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions.
For a table of all Vedic texts see Witzel 2003, pp. 100–101.

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Part 3 of 3

The Vedic Sanskrit corpus is incorporated in A Vedic Word Concordance (Vaidika-Padānukrama-Koṣa) prepared from 1930 under Vishva Bandhu, and published in five volumes in 1935–1965. Its scope extends to about 400 texts, including the entire Vedic Sanskrit corpus besides some "sub-Vedic" texts. Volume I: Samhitas, Volume II: Brahmanas and Aranyakas, Volume III: Upanishads, Volume IV: Vedangas; A revised edition, extending to about 1800 pages, was published in 1973–1976.
Edward Roer (Translator), Shankara's Introduction at Google Books to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad at pp. 1–5: "The Vedas are divided in two parts, the first is the karma-kanda, the ceremonial part, also (called) purva-kanda, and treats on ceremonies; the second part is the jnana kanda, the part which contains knowledge, also named uttara-kanda or posterior part, and unfolds the knowledge of Brahma or the universal soul."
"As a skilled craftsman makes a car, a singer I, Mighty One! this hymn for thee have fashioned. If thou, O Agni, God, accept it gladly, may we obtain thereby the heavenly Waters". – Rigveda 5.2.11, Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith[53]
Gavin Flood sums up mainstream estimates, according to which the Rigveda was compiled from as early as 1500 BCE over a period of several centuries.[2]
Broo 2016, p. 92 quotes Harold G. Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja.
Of the complete Veda, by pāțha-śālā (priestly schools), as distinguished from the transmission in the pūjā, the daily services.[72]
Several authors refer to the Chinese Buddhist Monk I-Tsing, who visited India in the 7th century to retrieve Buddhist texts and gave examples of mnemonic techniques used in India:[77] "In India there are two traditional ways in which one can attain great intellectual power. Firstly by repeatedly committing to memory the intellect is developed; secondly the alphabet fixes (to) one's ideas. By this way, after a practice of ten days or a month, a student feels his thoughts rise like a fountain, and can commit to memory whatever he has heard once."[78][77]
Staal: [this tradition of oral transmission is] "by far the more remarkable [than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission], not merely because it is characteristically Indian and unlike anything we find elsewhere, but also because it has led to scientific discoveries that are of enduring interest and from which the contemporary West still has much to learn." Schiffman (2012, p. 171), quoting Staal (1986, p. 27)
Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially Pāṇini, had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by Noam Chomsky. (Chomsky himself has said that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar).[82] These early Indian methods allowed the construction of discrete, potentially infinite generative systems. Remarkably, these early linguistic systems were codified orally, though writing was then used to develop them in some way. The formal basis for Panini's methods involved the use of "auxiliary" markers, rediscovered in the 1930s by the logician Emil Post.[83]
Artha may also mean "goal, purpose or essence," depending on the context.[122]
Klostermaier 2007, p. 55: "Kautas, a teacher mentioned in the Nirukta by Yāska (ca. 500 BCE), a work devoted to an etymology of Vedic words that were no longer understood by ordinary people, held that the word of the Veda was no longer perceived as meaningful "normal" speech but as a fixed sequence of sounds, whose meaning was obscure beyond recovery."

The tenth through twelfth volumes of the first Prapathaka of the Chandogya Upanishad (800-600 BCE) describe a legend about priests and it criticizes how they go about reciting verses and singing hymns without any idea what they mean or the divine principle they signify.[88]
According to Holdrege, srotriyas (a group of male Brahmin reciters who are masters of sruti[67]) "frequently do not understand what they recite" when reciting the Samhitas, merely preserving the sound of the text.[86]
Klostermaier: "Brahman, derived from the root bŗh = to grow, to become great, was originally identical with the Vedic word, that makes people prosper: words were the pricipan means to approach the gods who dwelled in a different sphere. It was not a big step from this notion of "reified speech-act" to that "of the speech-act being looked at implicitly and explicitly as a means to an end." Klostermaier 2007, p. 55 quotes Deshpande 1990, p. 4.
Coward 2008, p. 114: "For the Mimamsa the ultimate reality is nothing other than the eternal words of the Vedas. They did not accept the existence of a single supreme creator god, who might have composed the Veda. According to the Mimamsa, gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names. The power of the gods, then, is nothing other than the power of the mantras that name them."
The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first Pali Canon written many centuries after the death of the Buddha.[93]
Literally, "the meaning of the Vedas made manifest."
Sayana repeats Yaska; see interpretation of the Vedas.
The Upanishads.[49]
Mookerji also refers to the Uśanā smriti (81-2), which "states that mastery of mere text of Veda is to be followed up by its meaning" by discussing the Vedanta.[126] where-after they were able to engage in discourses on the Vedas.[127][92]
For example,
Hymn 1.164.34, "What is the ultimate limit of the earth?", "What is the center of the universe?", "What is the semen of the cosmic horse?", "What is the ultimate source of human speech?"
Hymn 1.164.34, "Who gave blood, soul, spirit to the earth?", "How could the unstructured universe give origin to this structured world?"
Hymn 1.164.5, "Where does the sun hide in the night?", "Where do gods live?"
Hymn 1.164.6, "What, where is the unborn support for the born universe?";
Hymn 1.164.20 (a hymn that is widely cited in the Upanishads as the parable of the Body and the Soul): "Two birds with fair wings, inseparable companions; Have found refuge in the same sheltering tree. One incessantly eats from the fig tree; the other, not eating, just looks on.";
Sources: (a) Antonio de Nicholas (2003), Meditations Through the Rig Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, ISBN 978-0-595-26925-9, pp. 64–69;
Jan Gonda, A History of Indian Literature: Veda and Upanishads, Volume 1, Part 1, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2, pp. 134–135;
Rigveda Book 1, Hymn 164 Wikisource
Elisa Freschi (2012): "The Vedas are not deontic authorities in absolute sense and may be disobeyed, but are recognized as a deontological epistemic authority by a Hindu orthodox school."[235] This differentiation between epistemic and deontic authority is true for all Indian religions.
Lipner quotes Brockington (1981), The sacred tread, p.5.
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Wiman Dissanayake (1993), Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Editors: Thomas P. Kasulis et al.), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-1080-6, p. 39; Quote: "The Upanishads form the foundations of Hindu philosophical thought and the central theme of the Upanishads is the identity of Atman and Brahman, or the inner self and the cosmic self.";
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Coward, Raja & Potter 1990, p. 106.
Mookerji 2011, p. 34.
Mookerji 2011, p. 30.
Holdrege 1996, pp. 355, 356–357.
Galewicz 2004, p. 40.
Galewicz 2011, p. 338.
Collins 2009, "237 Sayana".
Galewicz 2004, p. 41.
Galewicz 2004, pp. 41–42.
Michaels 2016, pp. 237–238.
Mookerji 2011, pp. 29–31.
Mookerji 2011, pp. 29, 34.
See:
• Sanskrit English Dictionary University of Kloen, Germany (2009)
• Karl Potter (1998), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume 4, ISBN 81-208-0310-8, Motilal Banarsidass, pp 610 (note 17)
Mookerji 2011, pp. 34–35.
Mookerji 2011, pp. 35–36.
Mookerji 2011, p. 36.
Mookerji 2011, p. 196.
Mookerji 2011, p. 29.
Flood 1996, p. 39.
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu", Harvard University, in Witzel 1997, pp. 261–264
Jamison and Witzel (1992), Vedic Hinduism, Harvard University, p. 6
Stevenson, Jay (2000). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eastern Philosophy. Indianapolis: Alpha Books. p. 46. ISBN 9780028638201.
J. Muir (1872), Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India, their religion and institutions, Vol. 1 at Google Books, 2nd Edition, p. 12
Albert Friedrich Weber, Indische Studien, herausg. von at Google Books, Vol. 10, pp. 1–9 with footnotes (in German); For a translation, Original Sanskrit Texts at Google Books, p. 14
For an example, see Sarvānukramaṇī Vivaraṇa Univ of Pennsylvania rare texts collection
R̥gveda-sarvānukramaṇī Śaunakakr̥tāʼnuvākānukramaṇī ca, Maharṣi-Kātyayāna-viracitā, OCLC 11549595
Staal 1986
Filliozat 2004, p. 139
Witzel 2003, p. 69, "... almost all printed editions depend on the late manuscripts that are hardly older than 500 years"
Radhakrishnan & Moore 1957, p. 3; Witzel 2003, p. 68
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, pp. 257–348
MacDonell 2004, pp. 29–39.
Jamison and Witzel (1992), Vedic Hinduism, Harvard University, p. 21
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, p. 286
Original Sanskrit: Rigveda 10.129 Wikisource;
• Translation 1: Max Müller (1859). A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature. Williams and Norgate, London. pp. 559–565.
• Translation 2: Kenneth Kramer (1986). World Scriptures: An Introduction to Comparative Religions. Paulist Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8091-2781-8.
• Translation 3: David Christian (2011). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. University of California Press. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-0-520-95067-2.
see e.g. Avari 2007, p. 77.
For 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses and division into ten mandalas, see: Avari 2007, p. 77.
For characterization of content and mentions of deities including Agni, Indra, Varuna, Soma, Surya, etc. see: Avari 2007, p. 77.
Witzel 1997, p. 261.
Prasad 2020, pp. 150–151.
Prasad 2020, p. 151.
Original text translated in English: The Rig Veda, Mandala 10, Hymn 117, Ralph T.H. Griffith (Translator);
C Chatterjee (1995), Values in the Indian Ethos: An Overview, Journal of Human Values, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 3–12
Michael Witzel, The Rigvedic religious system and its central Asian and Hindukush antecedents, in The Vedas – Texts, Language and Ritual, Editors: Griffiths and Houben (2004), Brill Academic, ISBN 978-90-6980-149-0, pp. 581–627
Witzel 2003, pp. 76–77.
The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools, Michael Witzel, Harvard University
Autochthonous Aryans? Michael Witzel, Harvard University
Early Sanskritization Archived 20 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Michael Witzel, Harvard University
Antonio de Nicholas (2003), Meditations Through the Rig Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, ISBN 978-0-595-26925-9, pp. 273–274
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, pp. 270–271
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, pp. 272–274
Paul Deussen, Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-1468-4, pp. 217–219
Michaels 2004, p. 52 Table 3.
CL Prabhakar (1972), The Recensions of the Sukla Yajurveda, Archiv Orientální, Volume 40, Issue 1, pp. 347–353
Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, Motilal Banarsidass (2011 Edition), ISBN 978-81-208-1620-6, p. 23
Patrick Olivelle (1998), Upaniṣhads, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-282292-6, pp. 1–17
From sāman, the term for a melody applied to a metrical hymn or a song of praise, Apte 1965, p. 981.
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, pp. 269–270
M Bloomfield, Rig-veda Repetitions, p. 402, at Google Books, pp. 402–464
For 1875 total verses, see the numbering given in Ralph T. H. Griffith. Griffith's introduction mentions the recension history for his text. Repetitions may be found by consulting the cross-index in Griffith pp. 491–499.
Wilke & Moebus 2011, p. 381.
Michaels 2004, p. 56.
Frits Staal (2009), Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-309986-4, pp. 136–137
Frits Staal (2009), Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-309986-4, p. 135
Alex Wayman (1997), Untying the Knots in Buddhism, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-1321-2, pp. 52–53
"The latest of the four Vedas, the Atharva-Veda, is, as we have seen, largely composed of magical texts and charms, but here and there we find cosmological hymns which anticipate the Upanishads, – hymns to Skambha, the 'Support', who is seen as the first principle which is both the material and efficient cause of the universe, to Prāna, the 'Breath of Life', to Vāc, the 'Word', and so on." Zaehner 1966, p. vii.
Laurie Patton (2004), Veda and Upanishad, in The Hindu World (Editors: Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby), Routledge, ISBN 0-415-21527-7, p. 38
Jan Gonda (1975), Vedic Literature: Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, Vol 1, Fasc. 1, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2, pp. 277–280, Quote: "It would be incorrect to describe the Atharvaveda Samhita as a collection of magical formulas".
Kenneth Zysk (2012), Understanding Mantras (Editor: Harvey Alper), Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0746-4, pp. 123–129
On magic spells and charms, such as those to gain better health: Atharva Veda 2.32 Bhaishagykni, Charm to secure perfect health Maurice Bloomfield (Translator), Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 42, Oxford University Press; see also chapters 3.11, 3.31, 4.10, 5.30, 19.26;
On finding a good husband: Atharva Veda 4.2.36 Strijaratani Maurice Bloomfield (Translator), Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 42, Oxford University Press; Atharvaveda dedicates over 30 chapters to love relationships, sexuality and for conceiving a child, see e.g. chapters 1.14, 2.30, 3.25, 6.60, 6.78, 6.82, 6.130–6.132; On peaceful social and family relationships: Atharva Veda 6.3.30 Maurice Bloomfield (Translator), Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 42, Oxford University Press;
Kenneth Zysk (1993), Religious Medicine: The History and Evolution of Indian Medicine, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-56000-076-1, pp. x–xii
Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" in Witzel 1997, pp. 275–276
Moriz Winternitz (2010), A History of Indian Literature, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0264-3, pp. 175–176
Klostermaier 1994, p. 67.
Max Müller, Chandogya Upanishad, The Upanishads, Part I, Oxford University Press, p. lxxxvii with footnote 2
Paul Deussen, Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-1468-4, p. 63
The Development of the Female Mind in India, p. 27, at Google Books, The Calcutta Review, Volume 60, p. 27
Jan Gonda (1975), Vedic Literature: (Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas), Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2, pp. 319–322, 368–383 with footnotes
AB Keith (2007), The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0644-3, pp. 489–490
Max Müller, The Upanishads, Part 1, Oxford University Press, p. lxxxvi footnote 1
Olivelle 1998, p. liii.
Olivelle 1998, p. lv.
Mahadevan 1952, p. 59.
PT Raju (1985), Structural Depths of Indian Thought, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-88706-139-4, pp. 35–36
Wiman Dissanayake (1993), Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Editors: Thomas P. Kasulis et al), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-1080-6, p. 39; Quote: "The Upanishads form the foundations of Hindu philosophical thought and the central theme of the Upanishads is the identity of Atman and Brahman, or the inner self and the cosmic self.";
Michael McDowell and Nathan Brown (2009), World Religions, Penguin, ISBN 978-1-59257-846-7, pp. 208–210
Patrick Olivelle (2014), The Early Upanisads, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-535242-9, p. 3; Quote: "Even though theoretically the whole of vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth [shruti], in reality it is the Upanishads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanishads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism".
"Sound and meaning of Veda". 11 September 2022.
Olivelle 1999, p. xxiii.
James Lochtefeld (2002), "Vedanga" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A–M, Rosen Publishing, ISBN 0-8239-2287-1, pp. 744–745
Wilke & Moebus 2011, pp. 391–394 with footnotes, 416–419.
Coward, Raja & Potter 1990, pp. 105–110.
Eggeling, Hans Julius (1911). "Hinduism" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 501–513, see page 505.
Wilke & Moebus 2011, pp. 472–532.
Coward, Raja & Potter 1990, p. 18.
Rajendra Prasad (2009). A Historical-developmental Study of Classical Indian Philosophy of Morals. Concept. p. 147. ISBN 978-81-8069-595-7.
BR Modak, The Ancillary Literature of the Atharva-Veda, New Delhi, Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan, 1993, ISBN 81-215-0607-7
Monier-Williams 1899, p. 207.
Apte 1965, p. 293.
"Upaveda". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
Narayanaswamy, V. (1981). "Origin and Development of Ayurveda: A Brief History". Ancient Science of Life. 1 (1): 1–7. PMC 3336651. PMID 22556454.
Frawley, David; Ranade, Subhash (2001). Ayurveda, Nature's Medicine. Lotus Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-914955-95-5. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
Paul Kuritz (1988), The Making of Theatre History, Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-547861-5, p. 68
Sullivan 1994, p. 385.
Sanskrit original: Chandogya Upanishad, Wikisource;
• English translation: Chandogya Upanishad 7.1.2, G Jha (Translator), Oriental Book Agency, p. 368
"Natyashastra" (PDF). Sanskrit Documents.
Coormaraswamy and Duggirala (1917). The Mirror of Gesture. Harvard University Press. pp. 2–4.
John Carman (1989), The Tamil Veda: Pillan's Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-09305-5, pp. 259–261
Vasudha Narayanan (1994), The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-0-87249-965-2, pp. 43, 117–119
Goswami, Satsvarupa (1976), Readings in Vedic Literature: The Tradition Speaks for Itself, S.l.: Assoc Publishing Group, p. 240, ISBN 978-0-912776-88-0
Greg Bailey (2001), Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (Editor: Oliver Leaman), Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-17281-3, pp. 437–439
Ludo Rocher (1986), The Puranas, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-02522-5, pp. 1–5, 12–21
Nair, Shantha N. (2008). Echoes of Ancient Indian Wisdom: The Universal Hindu Vision and Its Edifice. Hindology Books. p. 266. ISBN 978-81-223-1020-7.
Ludo Rocher (1986), The Puranas, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-02522-5, pp. 12–13, 134–156, 203–210
Greg Bailey (2001), Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (Editor: Oliver Leaman), Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-17281-3, pp. 442–443
Dominic Goodall (1996), Hindu Scriptures, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-20778-3, p. xxxix
Thompson, Richard L. (2007). The Cosmology of the Bhagavata Purana 'Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 10. ISBN 978-81-208-1919-1.
Dominic Goodall (1996), Hindu Scriptures, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-20778-3, p. xli
BN Krishnamurti Sharma (2008), A History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-1575-9, pp. 128–131
Chakravarty, Pradeep (18 October 2016). "Vedic route to the past". The Hindu.
Kamil Zvelebil (1974). Tamil Literature. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 49. ISBN 978-3-447-01582-0.
"Ettuthokai – Puranānūru 201-400". 14 December 2014.
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Vasudha Narayanan (1994), The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-0-87249-965-2, p. 194
Freschi 2012, p. 62.
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Lipner 2012, p. 16.
Axel Michaels (2004), Hinduism: Past and Present, Princeton University Press, p.18; see also Julius Lipner (2012), Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Routledge, p.77; and Brian K. Smith (2008), Hinduism, p.101, in Jacob Neusner (ed.), Sacred Texts and Authority, Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Lipner 2012, pp. 15–17.
Muhammad Khalid Masud (2000). Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablīghī Jamāʻat as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. BRILL. p. 50. ISBN 978-90-04-11622-1.
Rambachan 1994, p. 272.
Nagappa 2011, p. 283 ("It is said that the Varna system [...] Sanatan Hindu").
Müller, Friedrich Max (author) & Stone, Jon R. (author, editor) (2002). The essential Max Müller: on language, mythology, and religion. Illustrated edition. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-29309-3. Source: [1] (accessed: Friday May 7, 2010), p. 44
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Further reading
Overviews
Gonda, J. (1975), Vedic Literature: Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, vol. 1, Veda and Upanishads, Wiesnaden: Harrassowitz: A History of Indian literature, ISBN 978-3-447-01603-2.
Santucci, J.A. (1976), "An Outline of Vedic Literature", Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion.
Shrava, S. (1977), A Comprehensive History of Vedic Literature – Brahmana and Aranyaka Works, Pranava Prakashan.
A Vedic Concordance, (an alphabetic index to every line, every stanza of the Vedas published before 1906), Harvard University: Maurice Bloomfield, 1906.
The Vedas at sacred-texts.com, Sacred Texts.
Concordances
Bloomfield, M. (1907), A Vedic Concordance.
Bandhu, Vishva; Dev, Bhim (1963), Bhaskaran Nair, S. (ed.), Vaidika-Padānukrama-Koṣa: A Vedic Word-Concordance, Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute.
An Enlarged Electronic Version of Bloomfield's A Vedic Concordance, Harvard University Press.
Conference proceedings
Griffiths, Arlo (2004), Houben, Jan E.M. (ed.), The Vedas : texts, language & ritual: proceedings of the Third International Vedic Workshop, Leiden 2002, Groningen : Forsten: Groningen Oriental Studies 20, ISBN 90-6980-149-3.
Michael, Witzel, On the History and the Present State of Vedic Tradition in Nepal (PDF).
Journals
Arnold, Edward Vernon (1897), "Sketch of the Historical Grammar of the Rig and Atharva Vedas", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 18: 203–353, doi:10.2307/592303, ISSN 0003-0279, JSTOR 592303.
External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vedas.

Look up Veda or Vedic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Vedas.
"GRETIL etexts", Goettingen.
Vedas, Curlie

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Veda Notes:

The Birth of Orientalism
by Urs App

Since access to the Vedas was nearly impossible, most of the information about their content was pure fantasy….The Jesuit Roberto DE NOBILI (1577-1656) obtained direct access to some Vedas from his teacher, a Telugu Brahmin called Shivadharma.

Nobili’s access to these texts was mediated by the Telugu Brahmin convert who taught him Sanskrit, Śivadharma or Bonifacio…
He wrote that the four traditional Vedas are "little more than disorderly congeries of various opinions bearing partly on divine, partly on human subjects, a jumble where religious and civil precepts are miscellaneously put together" (Rubies 2000:338). Having been told in 1608 that the fourth Veda was no longer extant, the missionary decided to proclaim himself "teacher of the fourth, lost Veda which deals with the question of salvation" …Ricci's compatriot de Nobili presented himself in India as an ascetic "sannayasi from the North" and "restorer of 'a lost spiritual Veda'" (Rubies 2000:339) who hailed from faraway Rome where the Ur-tradition had been best preserved. In his Relafao annual for the year 1608, Fernao Guerreiro wrote on a similar line that he was studying Brahmin letters to present his Christian message as a restoration of the spiritual Veda, the true original religion of all countries, including India whose adulterated vestiges were the religions of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva (p. 344).

For de Nobili, the word "Veda" signified the spiritual law revealed by God. …De Nobili's description of the traditional Indian Vedas clearly shows that he did not regard them as "genuine Vedas" or genuine divine revelations. That de Nobili was for a long time suspected of being the author of the Ezour-vedam is understandable because in that text Chumontou has fundamentally the same role as de Nobili: he exposes the degenerate accretions of the reigning clergy's "Veda," represented by the traditional Veda compiler Biache (Vyasa), in order to teach them about satyavedam, the divine Ur-revelation whose correct transmission he represents against the degenerate transmission in the Vedas of the Brahmins. This "genuine Veda" had once upon a time been brought to India, but subsequently the Indians had forgotten it and instituted the false Veda that is now religiously followed. The common aim of de Nobili and of Chumontou was the restoration of the true, most ancient divine revelation (Veda) and the denunciation of the false, degenerated Veda that the Brahmins now call their own….

[O]n January 30, 1709, Pierre de la Lane wrote in a letter that Indians are idolaters but also have some books that prove "that they had antiently a pretty distinct Knowledge of the true God." …

Father de la Lane wrote that the majority of Indian books are works of poetry and that "the Poets of the Country have, by their Fictions, imperceptibly obliterated the Ideas of the Deity in the Minds of these Nations". But India also has far older books, especially the Veda:

“As the oldest Books, which contained a purer Doctrine, were writ in a very antient Language, they were insensibly neglected, and at last the Use of that Tongue was quite laid aside. This is certain, with regard to their sacred Book called the Vedam, which is not now understood by their Literati; they only reading and learning some Passages of it by Heart; and these they repeat with a mysterious Tone of Voice, the better to impose upon the Vulgar…”.

After Abbe Jean-Paul Bignon had been nominated to the post of director of the Royal Library in 1719 and of the special library at the Louvre in 1720 (Leung 2002:130), he gave orders to acquire the Vedas. But this was easier said than done. In 1730 a young and linguistically gifted Jesuit by the name of Jean CALMETTE (1693-1740), who had joined the Jesuit India mission in 1726, wrote about the difficulties:

"Those who for thirty years have written that the Vedam cannot be found were not completely wrong: there was not enough money to find them. Many people, missionaries, and laymen, have spent money for nothing and were left empty-handed when they thought they would get everything. Less than six years ago [in 1726] two missionaries, one in Bengal and the other one here [in Carnate], were duped. Mr. Didier, the royal engineer, gave sixty rupees for a book that was supposed to be the Vedam on the order of Father Pons, the superior of [the Jesuit mission of] Bengal….

“The Vedams found here have clarified issues regarding other books. They had been considered so impossible to find that in Pondicherry many people could not believe that it was the genuine Vedam, and I was asked if I had thoroughly examined it. But the investigations I have made leave no doubt whatsoever…”

Calmette achieved this success thanks to a Brahmin who was a secret Christian, and in 1731 he reported having acquired all four Vedas, including the fourth that de Nobili had thought lost (p. 442). In 1732, Father le Gac mailed to Paris two Vedas written in Telugu letters on palm leaves, and the copying of the remaining two was ongoing…

“[W]e extract from it the weapons to combat the doctors of idolatry, and the weapons that hurt them the most are their own philosophy, their theology, and especially the four Vedam which contain the law of the brahmins and which India since time immemorial possesses and regards as the sacred book: the book whose authority is irrefragable and which derived from God himself”….

The preparation consisted in the intensive study of Sanskrit and a survey of India's sacred literature, in particular, of the Vedas.

“The Veda has occupied an ambiguous position in Hinduism. On the one hand, many Hindus have proclaimed it their most authoritative and sacred body of literature. On the other, for the past two thousand years its contents have been almost completely unknown to the vast majority of Hindus, and have had virtually no relevance to their religious practices. In the last centuries before the Common Era, access to the Vedic texts was limited to male members of the three highest social classes, and since at least the second century CE, Hindu law-makers have declared that only male Brahmins are eligible to study the Veda. Between then and now, the great majority of the people we retrospectively identify as “Hindu” have been deliberately excluded from the Veda, and for most of this period we have little means of knowing whether such people accepted its authority. In ancient India, the maintenance of the Veda’s exclusivity was largely dependent on two factors: first, that it was prohibited to commit the Vedic texts to writing; second, that Brahmins were the guardians not only of the Vedas, but also of Sanskrit….

However, after the Sanskrit of the Vedas had developed, in the last centuries BCE, into the distinct, post-Vedic “Classical Sanskrit”, the content of the Vedas became inaccessible even to many Brahmins. Already in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, a Brahminical text composed probably around the 2nd century CE (Olivelle 2004), there is a reference to Brahmins who recite the Veda but do not understand it, and ethnographies attest to the existence of such persons today. This neglect of the content of the Vedas, together with the sustained emphasis on their correct recitation, signals the prevalent belief that the sacredness of these texts is in their sounds rather than their meaning. Thus, to recite correctly, or to hear such a recital, is intrinsically efficacious….”

in 1733 a learned fellow Jesuit by the name of Jean-Francois PONS (1698-1751) had joined Calmette in the Carnate mission….It was Pons who had tried to buy a copy of the Veda for 60 rupees in 1726, only to find out that he had fallen victim to a scam….he became an important channel for the European discovery of India's literature. He spent on behalf of Abbe Bignon and the Royal Library in Paris a total of 1,779 rupees for researchers, copyists, and manuscripts in Sanskrit and Persian….

[T]he unity of God, the characteristics of the true God, salvation, and reprobation are in the Vedam; but the truths that are found in this book are only sprinkled like gold dust on piles of dirt; because the rest consists in the principle of all Indian sects, and maybe the details of all errors that make up their body of doctrines….

This was the first systematic effort by Europeans to study such a mass of ancient Indian texts; and it was not an easy task because the language of these texts proved to be so difficult that even most Indians were at a loss:

“What is surprising is that the majority of those who are its depositaries do not understand its meaning because it is written in a very ancient language, and the Samouscroutam [Sanskrit], which is as familiar to the scholars as Latin is among us, is not yet sufficient [for understanding]…”

Calmette's objective in studying the Vedas was not a translation of any part of them. That would definitely have been impossible after just a few years of study, even with the help of Pons. The language of these texts, particularly that of earlier Vedas, was a tough nut to crack even for learned Indians. …

“[W]e did not have these books at hand until now, and for a long time they were considered impossible to find, especially the principal ones which are the four Vedan…. these books, which even the most able doctors only half understand and which a brahmin would not dare to explain to us for fear of a scandal in his caste, are written in a language for which Samscroutam [Sanskrit], the language of the learned, does not yet provide the key because they are written in a more ancient language. These books, I say, are in more than one way sealed for us. …

There are texts that are explained in their theology books: some are intelligible for a reader of Sanskrit, particularly those that are from the last books of the Vedan, which by the difference of language and style are known to be more than five centuries younger than the earlier ones….”

Calmette thought that the word "Veda" referred to the divinely revealed "word of God" and explained: "I translated the word Vedam by divine scriptures [divines Ecritures] because when I asked some brahmins what they understood by Vedam, they told me that for them it means the word of God" (p. 384). But if this was God's revelation, then it had been incredibly corrupted. The best proof of this was that Calmette had to look so hard for those little specks of gold. The more he studied, the clearer it must have become to him that de Nobili had been right in concluding that the Indian Veda was far removed from the "genuine Veda" or satya vedam, that is, the divine revelation to the first patriarchs. That true Veda had been disfigured in India and needed to be restored to its ancient glory. It is for this purpose that Calmette collected both the specks of gold and the worst symptoms of degeneration in the Veda….

Since the Indian catechists were almost never from the Brahmin caste, they were at best familiar with some puranic literature but certainly not with the Vedas. But since they most often had to conduct the debates, the quotations from the Vedas and talking points had to be set in writing; and because the disputes were held in front of ordinary people, such texts and quotations needed to be in Telugu rather than Sanskrit….

Father Saignes wrote that this catechist "explained the Christian law" to his local audience and that for this purpose he used a "book" that one could practically open at random and hit upon a passage that says that "the gods of the land are no more than feeble men." Was this a praeparatio evangelica type of work that denounces the reigning local religion (see Chapter I) in order to prepare the people for the Good News of the Christians? At any rate, it must have been a book in Telugu whose content stemmed from the Carnate missionaries who intensively studied the local religion and prepared such materials for the catechists. All this would seem to point to Father Calmette and Father Pons who at that very time (in the mid-1730s) and in that very region devoted much time to the study of the sacred scriptures of India….

[T]he only extant text that would fit the missionary's description is the Ezour-vedam. A Telugu translation of this text must have existed since both Anquetil-Duperron's and Voltaire's Ezour-vedam manuscripts contain the following passage:

Apart from indicating that the Ezour-vedam's original French text had been translated into Telugu and was illustrated with a map, this passage is also extremely significant because it shows that the Ezour-vedam was designed for use by missionaries or catechists in the region where Telugu is spoken. It is one of two passages in the book that betrays the book's intended use. The target audience must have spoken Telugu, and the content of the map must have conveyed not classical Indian geography but rather a more correct and modern vision of the world and its countries….

Thus a Telugu version of the Ezour-vedam could very well have been in the hands of that catechist. Opening the Ezour-vedam at random, one may indeed hit upon some passage that could enrage a Brahmin….

The speaker of these words in the Ezour-vedam, Chumontou, uses a method that strangely resembles Calmette's: "in order to instruct people and save them," Chumontou examines common features of Indian religion such as the "different incarnations" of its gods and "refutes them through the words of the Vedan" (p. 135) -- the very "weapons" that, according to Calmette who was proud of this method, hurt the Brahmins most. But there is another feature that links Calmette to the Ezour-vedam and the other texts found by Francis Ellis in 1816 among the remains of the Jesuit library at Pondicherry: his overall view of the Vedas….

[F]or many Europeans the word Vedam (which is Veda pronounced the Tamil way) signified the sacred scripture or Bible of the Indians….

Paulinus famously … argued that "the Vedas" do not exist as a specific set of ancient Indian scriptures and that the Indians call many texts, even non-Indian ones, "Vedas." But modern southern Indian usage agrees with Paulinus's view about the word, as the entries in the University of Madras Tamil Lexicon cited by Rocher (1984:65) show:

“vetam: 1. The Vedas; 2. The Jaina scriptures; 3. The Bible; ...
veta-k-karan: Christian (the only meaning!)
veta-pustakam: 1. The Vedas; 2. The Bible.
veta-vakkiyam: 1. Vedic text; 2. Gospel truth.
veta-vakkiyanam: 1. Commentaries on the Vedas; 2. Expounding the Bible….”

But in order to understand how the author of the Ezour-vedam understood this word, we need to examine its use in the Ezour-vedam and in the notes published by those researchers who saw the originals of the other Pondicherry Vedas before they vanished in the 1930s (Rocher 1984:75). In the Ezour-vedam's first book, the fourth chapter is titled "Of the Vedams," and it is here that we can find the best expression of the Ezour-vedam author's overall view of the Vedas….

Though the first man was in the Ezour-vedam's previous chapter called Adimo ("Adimo is the name of the first man to come from the hands of God," p. 195), we readily identify him as Adam. Instead of letting Biache ask immediately about the fate of these vedams, the Ezour-vedam's author makes him first inquire about the origin of evil….

The (Christian) reader will find this association of the first man with the first sin natural, but the Ezour-vedam's author used it ingeniously to create the basis for his transmission scenario of the Vedas. Thanks to evil and sin, God's original divine revelation (the vedams he dictated to Adimo) could get into the wrong hands:

“Biache. You've told me the names of the Vedams that God communicated to the first man. Tell me now to whom the first man communicated them in turn?

Chumontou. The most virtuous children were the first to whom he communicated them, because they were the only ones who could appreciate them [prendre gout]. Sinners into whose hands these sacred books fell have abused and corrupted them, going so far as to have them serve as foundation for their fables and musings [reveries]. That's what you yourself have done. (pp. 202-3)”

This conversation leaves no doubt that the author of the Ezour-vedam thought that the Indians and their purported Veda author Vyasa (Biache) used a corrupt version of the original divine revelation. In other words, what the Indians and Vyasa consider to be the true Veda is in reality a degenerate imitation Veda. For Chumontou (who speaks for the Ezour-vedam's author), the true Veda maintained its purity only in a single transmission line. A long time ago, this line had also reigned in India, and the "teachers" in the Ezour-vedam as well as the other Pondicherry Vedas represent this correct transmission.

By contrast, the "pupils" such as Biache (Vyasa) are transmitters of the corrupted tradition. Their Veda is thus for the most part degenerate, though its original pure source is still apparent in a few vestiges of genuine revealed truth. In the words of Calmette's 1735 letter, the Vedas in use by the Indian Brahmins are a "pile of dirt" since they contain "the principle of all Indian sects, and maybe the details of all errors that make up their body of doctrines"; but they also contain a few "specks of gold". These specks could be used to highlight how degraded the original pure teaching has become. They could thus be used as a weapon for "the advancement of [our Christian] religion," which, of course, is the crown of the genuine transmission line. Calmette's view of the Vedam appears to be strikingly similar to both de Nobili's and Chumontou's….

“Biache. I will not be satisfied if you do not tell me the names of those to whom the Vedams were entrusted for the first time, or who were its first authors.

Chumontou. Poilo was the author of the Rik-Vedam; Zomeni of the Chama-Vedam; Chumontou of the Ezour-Vedam; and finally, Onguiro composed the Adorbo-Vedam. Each of them communicated it to his children and made them learn it. And those [children] in turn communicated them to their descendants. That is how they have come down to us. (pp. 203-5)…”

[T]he objective was not the satisfaction of some scholar or Brahmin but rather the hammering in of a basic message conveyed to the people in the Telugu language by catechists. Each time the "teacher" insists on something, the famous "pupil" has to admit his error and promise to be a good boy from now on. The obvious objective was to pave the way for the "true Veda" and for conversion, and pupil Biache in the Ezour-vedam demonstrates what the desired outcome was: the rejection of his traditional creed and sacred scriptures, the confession of his sins, a place at his teacher's feet, and the permission to ask questions about the true transmission of God's teachings.

*****************

Vedas
by Wikipedia

Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless", revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation....

The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer. By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base."...

The Sanskrit word véda "knowledge, wisdom" is derived from the root vid- "to know". This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weyd-, meaning "see" or "know"....

The Sanskrit term veda as a common noun means "knowledge"...."obtaining or finding wealth, property"... "a bunch of grass together" as in a broom or for ritual fire....

The Samhitas (Sanskrit saṃhitā, "collection"), are collections of metric texts ("mantras"). There are four "Vedic" Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda and Atharva-Veda, most of which are available in several recensions (śākhā). In some contexts, the term Veda is used to refer only to these Samhitas, the collection of mantras....

Vedas are śruti ("what is heard")...

There is not only one collection at any one time, but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools; Upanişads [...] are sometimes not to be distinguished from Āraṇyakas [...]; Brāhmaṇas contain older strata of language attributed to the Saṃhitās; there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools....

The Vedas, for orthodox Indian theologians, are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation...

Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas....

The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts, with the establishment of the various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini ...

The Vedas were orally transmitted...from father to son or from teacher (guru) to student ...by the Vedic rishis who heard the primordial sounds. Only this tradition, embodied by a living teacher, can teach the correct pronunciation of the sounds and explain hidden meanings...

[E]mphasis in this transmission is on the "proper articulation and pronunciation of the Vedic sounds", as prescribed in the Shiksha, the Vedanga (Vedic study) of sound as uttered in a Vedic recitation, mastering the texts "literally forward and backward in fully acoustic fashion"....

Already at the end of the Vedic period their original meaning had become obscure for "ordinary people"...when the mantras are recited in the Vedic rituals "they are disengaged from their original context and are employed in ways that have little or nothing to do with their meaning". The words of the mantras are "themselves sacred", and "do not constitute linguistic utterances"....they become magical sounds, "means to an end". Holdrege notes that there are scarce commentaries on the meaning of the mantras... the purity of the sounds is preserved....

A literary tradition is traceable in post-Vedic times, after the rise of Buddhism ...however oral tradition of transmission remained active....

The Vedas were written down only after 500 BCE, but only the orally transmitted texts are regarded as authoritative, given the emphasis on the exact pronunciation of the sounds. Witzel suggests that attempts to write down the Vedic texts towards the end of 1st millennium BCE were unsuccessful, resulting in smriti rules explicitly forbidding the writing down of the Vedas....surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years. The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century; however, there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards....

[T]he Nirukta, which reflects the concerns about the loss of meaning of the mantras...

[T]he Vedas express a transcendental reality which can be approached with mystical means....

In Vedic learning "priority has been given to recitation over interpretation" of the Samhitas...."it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential [...] but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form."...

Understanding their inner meaning or essence, the knowledge of dharma [the religious and moral law governing individual conduct] and Parabrahman [the Supreme Absolute Truth and ultimate reality that transcends all forms and attribute; the highest consciousness or the ultimate essence of existence, beyond the veil of maya or illusion; the state of complete knowledge of the Self.]...

The four Vedas were transmitted in various śākhās (branches, schools). Each school likely represented an ancient community of a particular area, or kingdom. Each school followed its own canon....in the 2nd millennium BCE, there was likely no canon of one broadly accepted Vedic texts...only a canon of various texts accepted by each school.... most lost or yet to be found. Rigveda that survives in modern times, for example, is in only one extremely well preserved school of Śåkalya, from a region called Videha, in modern north Bihar, south of Nepal. The Vedic canon in its entirety consists of texts from all the various Vedic schools taken together.

There were Vedic schools that believed in polytheism in which numerous gods had different natural functions, henotheistic beliefs where only one god was worshipped but others were thought to exist, monotheistic beliefs in a single god, agnosticism, and monistic beliefs where "there is an absolute reality that goes beyond the gods and that includes or transcends everything that exists."...

Each of the four Vedas were shared by the numerous schools, but revised, interpolated and adapted locally...Some texts were revised into the modern era...

All printed editions of the Vedas that survive in the modern times are likely the version existing in about the 16th century CE....

Only one version of the Rigveda is known to have survived into the modern era....

There are similarities between the mythology, rituals and linguistics in Rigveda and those found in ancient central Asia, Iranian and Hindukush (Afghanistan) regions....

The Vedangas developed towards the end of the vedic period, around or after the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. These auxiliary fields of Vedic studies emerged because the language of the Vedas, composed centuries earlier, became too archaic to the people of that time....

Vedas finds its earliest literary mention in the Sangam literature dated to the 5th century BCE.

Vedas are called Maṛai or Vaymoli in parts of South India. Marai literally means "hidden, a secret, mystery"....

The Anandabhairava-tantra for example, states that "the wise man should not elect as his authority the word of the Vedas, which is full of impurity, produces but scanty and transitory fruits and is limited."...

"[M]ost Indians today pay lip service to the Veda and have no regard for the contents of the text."...

"[T]he bulk of the RV represents only 5 or 6 generations of kings (and of the contemporary poets)24 of the Pūru and Bharata tribes. It contains little else before and after this “snapshot” view of contemporary Rgvedic history...

The Vedic Sanskrit corpus is incorporated in A Vedic Word Concordance (Vaidika-Padānukrama-Koṣa) prepared from 1930 under Vishva Bandhu, and published in five volumes in 1935–1965. Its scope extends to about 400 texts, including the entire Vedic Sanskrit corpus besides some "sub-Vedic" texts....

"Kautas, a teacher mentioned in the Nirukta by Yāska (ca. 500 BCE), a work devoted to an etymology of Vedic words that were no longer understood by ordinary people, held that the word of the Veda was no longer perceived as meaningful "normal" speech but as a fixed sequence of sounds, whose meaning was obscure beyond recovery."

The tenth through twelfth volumes of the first Prapathaka of the Chandogya Upanishad (800-600 BCE) describe a legend about priests and it criticizes how they go about reciting verses and singing hymns without any idea what they mean or the divine principle they signify.
According to Holdrege, srotriyas (a group of male Brahmin reciters who are masters of sruti) "frequently do not understand what they recite" when reciting the Samhitas, merely preserving the sound of the text....

"For the Mimamsa the ultimate reality is nothing other than the eternal words of the Vedas. They did not accept the existence of a single supreme creator god, who might have composed the Veda. According to the Mimamsa, gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names. The power of the gods, then, is nothing other than the power of the mantras that name them."

The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first Pali Canon written many centuries after the death of the Buddha....