Unit 4 · What the Hindu Texts Are

Some religions have one main holy book. Hinduism is different. It has a large library of sacred texts. They were made over more than 3,000 years. The oldest texts are older than any city in America.

The library holds hymns, songs, poems and long stories. It also holds teachings and rules for living. Different texts came from different times and places in India.

Hindus sort these texts into two big groups. One group is shruti. The other group is smriti. In this chapter you will learn what goes in each group.

The word Hindu is old. It comes from the name of the Indus River. People from outside India used it for the people who lived near that river. Today about a billion people call themselves Hindu.

Over time, the word came to mean the religion too. Many Hindus also use another name. They call their tradition Sanatana Dharma. That means "the eternal way."

Eternal means lasting forever. Hindus who use this name believe their way has no beginning. Scholars study how the tradition grew and changed over time.

Not every Hindu reads every text. That would take many lifetimes! Different families and groups treasure different books. Many read only a few texts closely and know others through stories.

Some families read the Bhagavad Gita every day. Some love the Ramayana most. Some sing hymns to Shiva or to the Goddess. Many groups follow a teacher who explains certain texts.

There are many groups within Hinduism. Vaishnavas honor Vishnu most. Shaivas honor Shiva. Shaktas honor the Goddess, Devi. Each group has favorite texts.

Shruti means "what is heard." Hindus hold that these texts were not made up by people. They believe ancient seers heard them. These seers are called rishis.

Many Hindus believe the rishis heard these words in deep meditation. Then they taught them to students. The students taught their own students. Hindus call this long chain of teachers a living tradition.

For this reason, many Hindus treat shruti as the most sacred group of texts. Scholars date the oldest shruti text, the Rig Veda, to about 1500 to 1200 BCE.

Veda means "knowledge." There are four Vedas. They are the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. All four were first passed on by memory.

The Rig Veda is a book of hymns. A hymn is a song of praise. Many hymns praise Agni, god of fire, and Indra, god of storms. The Sama Veda sets many hymns to melodies.

The Yajur Veda has words for rituals. The Atharva Veda has prayers for health and daily life. Priests still chant verses from the Vedas today at weddings and other rites.

The Upanishads come at the end of the Vedas. Many are written as talks between a teacher and a student. They ask big questions. Who am I? What is real?

The Upanishads teach about Brahman. Many Hindus understand Brahman as the one reality behind everything. They also teach about atman, the true self inside each being.

Scholars date the oldest Upanishads to about 800 to 500 BCE. There are more than 200 texts called Upanishads. About a dozen are the oldest and most famous.

Smriti means "what is remembered." Hindus hold that people made these texts. People remembered them and passed them on. They still count as sacred. Many Hindus treat them with great respect all the same.

Smriti includes the two great epics. It includes the Puranas, books of old stories. It includes law books too. Many of the stories children love come from these books.

Shruti is ranked highest. But many Hindus know smriti best. Children grow up hearing the epics. Families act them out at festivals. A child may know the Ramayana long before hearing a Veda.

Hindus have two great epics. The Ramayana tells the story of Rama and Sita. Tradition says the poet Valmiki made it. Rama is honored by many Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu.

The Mahabharata tells of a great family and a great war. Tradition says the sage Vyasa made it. It is one of the longest poems in the world. Its story is full of hard choices about what is right.

Scholars think both epics grew over many centuries. They date them roughly between 400 BCE and 400 CE. Hindus have retold them ever since. The stories are still told on stage, on screen and at home.

Inside the Mahabharata is a short text. It is called the Bhagavad Gita. The name means "song of the Lord." It has 18 chapters and 700 verses. Most Hindus simply call it the Gita.

In the Gita, the warrior Arjuna does not want to fight. Krishna, his charioteer, teaches him. Many Hindus honor Krishna as God. Their talk takes place on a battlefield, just before a war.

The Gita is smriti. But many Hindus love it as much as any text. Some read a chapter every day. Some learn it by heart. Mahatma Gandhi called the Gita a guide for his whole life.

There are 18 great Puranas, by traditional count. They tell stories of Vishnu, Shiva, the Goddess and many others. Many stories you know come from them.

The story of Krishna lifting the hill is in the Bhagavata Purana. The story of Prahlada is there too. Families read these stories aloud at festivals and at home.

Smriti also has law books, called Dharma Shastras. They give rules for daily life. People have argued about some of these rules for a long time. Today most Hindus do not follow the old law books word for word.

Most of the old Hindu texts are in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a very old language of India. The Vedas use an early form of it. Sanskrit has its own careful rules of grammar.

The name Sanskrit means "well made" or "polished." For centuries, scholars and priests used it. Few people speak it at home today. But priests still chant it every day.

Sanskrit is related to many other languages. It is a cousin of Latin, Greek and even English. That is why some Sanskrit words look a little like English words.

You may already know some Sanskrit words. English borrowed them. Guru is one. Karma, yoga and mantra are others. You may hear them in a yoga class or a video game.

Avatar is another borrowed word. In Hindu texts, an avatar is a form in which a deity comes into the world. Many Hindus honor Rama and Krishna as avatars of Vishnu.

In English, these words often change meaning. A video game avatar is a picture of you. The Sanskrit word has a much deeper meaning. So it helps to ask what a word means in the old texts.

A script is a set of letters. English uses the Latin alphabet. Sanskrit has been written in many scripts over time. Some scripts use lines and curves. Some use loops and dots.

Today Sanskrit is most often written in Devanagari. Hindi uses this script too. Each letter hangs from a line across the top. You can see it on signs and books all across North India.

Long ago, people in different regions wrote Sanskrit in their own local scripts. The sounds stayed the same. Only the letters looked different. A text could travel far and still sound the same.

The Vedas are very old. For many centuries, nobody wrote them down. Teachers taught them by heart. Students learned every word by listening. They repeated the lines many times each day.

Many Hindus treat the sound of the Vedas as sacred. The exact sounds matter. So it was important not to change even one syllable. A small slip could change the meaning or the sound.

Scholars think the Vedas were written down much later, perhaps in the first thousand years CE. Even then, many teachers kept teaching them by memory. Some families still pass on the chanting this way today.

Vedic teachers made clever methods. Students chanted the words straight through. Then they chanted them one at a time. Each way of chanting made them listen very closely.

Next they chanted in pairs: one-two, two-three, three-four. Harder patterns went forward and backward. These patterns have names like krama and ghana.

If a student made a mistake, the patterns showed it. This worked like a checking system. Many scholars say it kept the Rig Veda very close to its old form.

UNESCO is part of the United Nations. It honors treasures that belong to all people. Some are buildings. Some are traditions. Places and traditions from all over the world are on its lists.

In 2003, UNESCO named Vedic chanting a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Intangible means you cannot touch it. The chanting was written onto UNESCO’s official list in 2008.

A song or a chant cannot be touched. But it can be lost if no one learns it. UNESCO hoped to help keep this tradition alive. Schools that teach Vedic chanting still exist in India today.

A guru is a teacher. In old India, students often lived with their guru. They helped with daily work. They learned texts by heart. Learning could take many years.

The Upanishads often show a guru and a student talking. The student asks a question. The guru answers with a story or an example. This way of learning is still used in many Hindu schools.

Many Hindus still honor their gurus. They see learning as a chain. Each teacher passes on what an earlier teacher gave. Some families invite a guru to bless a child’s first lessons.

Later, people wrote texts down. In much of India, they wrote on dried palm leaves. Each leaf was long and thin. Leaves were easy to find in warm, green parts of India.

Scribes scratched letters into the leaf with a pointed tool. Then they rubbed ink or soot on it. The letters turned dark. This made the writing easy to read and hard to wipe away.

The leaves were tied together with a string. Palm leaves wear out over time. So scribes copied texts again and again. Wooden boards on the top and bottom kept the leaves flat.

Most people in India did not speak Sanskrit. So poets retold the stories in their own languages. They spoke Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and many other languages.

The poet Kamban retold the Ramayana in Tamil, perhaps in the 1100s. The poet Tulsidas retold it in Hindi in the 1500s. His Ramcharitmanas is loved across North India.

The stories spread to many other languages too. Each retelling is a little different. Each helped more people know the stories. Some tell parts of the story that Valmiki’s poem does not.

The stories keep traveling. In 1967, Amar Chitra Katha began making comic books of the stories. Many children grew up reading them. The comics used bright pictures and simple words.

In 1987, a TV series of the Ramayana aired in India. Many people stopped what they were doing to watch each Sunday. Streets in many towns became quiet while the show was on.

Today there are cartoons, podcasts and apps. Families in Illinois can read the Gita on a phone. The ways change. The stories keep being told. Temples in Illinois hold classes on the texts as well.