What is the original source of cultural life of the Hindus?

Concept

Hindu sacred literature is traditionally divided into two streams. Śruti — “that which is heard” — is the revealed Vedic corpus: the four Saṃhitās, together with the Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads attached to them. Smṛti — “that which is remembered” — is the humanly composed literature built upon that base: the epics, the Purāṇas and the dharmaśāstras.

In this scheme śruti supplies the raw material of the tradition — its ritual, its philosophy, its picture of society — while smṛti narrates, systematises and codifies that material for later ages. A question about the original source of a people’s cultural life is therefore asking which stream that material first appears in, not which text is most widely read.

Application

Read the passage as an inventory of where its evidence comes from. Every strand of Hindu cultural life it describes is drawn from the Vedic Saṃhitās:

1. Spiritual doctrine — karma and jñāna are said to be recognised as two separate factors in man’s spiritual progress “even in the early times” of the Rig-Veda.

2. Religion and ritual — the pantheon is read straight off the Saṃhitās: Agni and Indra tied to sacrifice, the gods of the highest world to prayer and jñāna, their relative prominence explained by the Saṃhitās’ intimate link with sacrifice.

3. Philosophy — the ṛṣis of the Rig-Vedic period are credited with an already “highly complicated system of philosophy”, in which the value of jñāna as the means to final release was well established.

4. Material and social life — the optimism about this world and the next, the gold and ornaments spoken of as covetable objects, the cows counted in thousands, all come from the Yajur-Veda.

5. Scope — the passage then levels the three: “So far as culture is concerned, so far as religion and philosophy go, there is no difference between the Rig-Veda and the other two Vedas.”

Nothing in the account is traced to anything earlier than, or outside, the Vedas; the Vedas are where the passage locates the beginning of every strand it follows. The original source of the cultural life of the Hindus is therefore the sacred Vedas.

Cross-check

The contrast with the other bodies of literature named confirms the reading. Each belongs to the smṛti stream and presupposes the Vedic base rather than preceding it:

• Itihāsa — the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa — dramatises dharma through the careers of kings and sages, and tradition places it long after the Saṃhitās.

• The Purāṇas retell cosmogony, royal genealogy and sectarian myth in popular narrative form, later still.

• Manu, that is the Manusmṛti, codifies varṇāśrama duty, civil and criminal law and ritual obligation, drawing its authority from the Vedic injunctions it systematises.

None of the three is cited anywhere in the passage, and none of them stands prior to the Saṃhitās — which leaves the Vedas as the origin the passage identifies.