Sunday, August 7, 2011

Relevance of Vedas in Modern Times

Vedas' Relevance in Modern Times
( Subodh Kumar Email subodh1934@gmail.com)
In popular conception Vedas are held to be religious books of Hindus. The fact is that Vedas are repositories of eternal knowledge applying to the entire creation. The wisdom of Vedas is valid, relevant and applicable for the humanity without admitting any national, ideological, historical and social barriers of time and geography.
Human language and speech undergo changes of natural evolution with time and geography. But to ensure purity of text, tradition has frozen the language of Vedas, in its prehistoric past. Vedas had already become difficult to understand as early as the time of Mahabharat.
Yask in his Nirukt very clearly explains that “The ancient Rishis (the one’s who visualized and vocalized the individual Suktas of Vedas) had grasp of the multidiscipline knowledge, and those men, who do not have knowledge of all the Vedang, are not able to understand the Vedas, and blame the Vedic language for it.” But while Yask’s Nirukta is perhaps the only available oldest key to study Vedas, we also have to bear in our mind that Yask belongs to Post Mahabharat times. We had already suffered a great loss of sciences and technologies by that time. Thus Yask is also of not great help in finding linkages to scientific secrets in Vedas.
( Vedang and UpVedas, consist of लौकिक विद्या current knowledge, and encompass all areas of current human knowledge. These are describe as कल्प,छन्द,ज्योतिष,निरुक्त, व्याकरण,शिक्षा,आयुर्वेद,धनुर्वेद,वास्तु,यान्त्रिकी, and दर्शन शास्त्र- न्याय, सान्ख्य,वैशेषिक,योग,मीमॉसा।)


In this context for any one person to study and understand Vedas will appear to be physically an impossible mission. Starting from the ancient Rishis themselves to MaxMuller in modern times this fact is well acknowledged.
Vedas offer a vast scholastic area of enquiry and call for good expertise and general awareness in social , political , physical sciences and technology. Interest and knowledge in at least one specific scientific/technological discipline is necessary, for any individual to attempt the study, to explore scientific and technological knowledge from Vedas. No wonder later day, traditions of Vedic interpretations, starting with Sayan leave more questions than answers about Vedas.
Response from educated scientific community due to lack of interest in our heritage for exploration of Vedas is practically nonexistent. It needs a conviction & dedication in Vedas with self motivation. Experts in the management field, Social, and environmental sustainability areas have been more active in discovering relevance of Vedic Wisdom to modern times.
With the benefit of an engineering science background, after developing interest in Cows, Agriculture, Nutrition and Ecological issues, I have been involving myself in study of Vedas for many years. It has been possible for me to open a very small window for myself to look for guidance from Vedas in these areas.
In this continuing study, I have been able to learn that Vedas give the most modern up-to-date knowledge of sciences with linkages to agriculture, nutrition and ecology. Vedic guidance has also been the base on which we are making use of modern veterinary science with spectacular success, in the running, of Maharishi Dayanand Gosamwardhan Kendra in Ghazipur Delhi-96. We are also very actively sharing our experience and ideas with other sister Goshalas .
In this note attempt is made here to show how Vedas can guide the Humanity in finding directions in some of the most modern perplexing, social and community situations, and provide highly enlightened relevant insights in to these problem areas.

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