 The Vedas consist almost entirely of man's attempt to understand the most lofty things-What is God, Bliss, Truth-and the conclusion they reach concerning these questions.
For a long time the Vedas were popularly known as Sruti. The word in its ordinary sense means something that is heard, but its deeper meaning is the revealed Truth. The contents of the Vedas are believed to have revealed by the Supreme Being to the Rishis during their meditation. Some of the vedic Rishis, such as Vasishtha, Viswamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa, and Madhucchanda figure so often in mythology, legends and old stories that we are familiar with their names. Besides, most Indian families trace their origins to these Rishis. So, our association with the authors of the Vedas is deep-rooted.
The Rishis of the Vedas believed that man had, besides his body and mind, an inmost self or soul, the 'atman'. To discover that self means to know one self truly. A man became a Rishi, a seer, only when he knew himself available to others to help them to achieve this knowledge. The Rishi would instruct the few students seated on the ground about him by rote and for many hours daily they would repeat verse of the Vedas.
The Vedas do not preach any religion or dogma. They are the records of the inner experiences of the Rishis. However, the experiences are not described as we would describe our experience of, say, a journey to a remote land or an expedition to a mountain. What the Rishis realized in their meditations was too profound to be expressed in the usual way. So. They used what is known as 'symbolic language'. That is to say, words used in the Vedas have a deeper meaning than is obvious. Here are two examples: "Usha" means dawn. But in the Vedas the word means the Goddess who brings divine light into man's clouded mind. Or take the word 'Agni' which means fire. In the Vedic sense, it means not only fire-the devourer and the purifier-but also energy, will and the force that drives one on towards truth.
 The great seer-poet Vyasa had divided the Vedas into four sections: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva. They contain hymns in praise of various gods, prose texts on various sacrificial rites and ceremonies and philosophical texts, which clearly reveal a very high stage of, abstract thinking.
When were the Vedas written?
Many answers have been made to this question. It is difficult to say whether any one of them is correct. Many scholars believe that they were written about 2500 B.C. But there are others like H. Jacobi of Bonn and Lakamanya Tilak who believe that they were written about 6000 years ago. Tilak's conclusion is based on a study of the position of the planets as described in the Vedas. But another scholar, Madame Blavatsky, says that the planetary positions described in the Vedas were not written 60,000 years ago? She personally was of the opinion that they were written in an extremely remote past.
Indian tradition states that man is an older creature than science would have us believe. The Puranas say that there was once a great deluge in which all-living creatures and things were submerged and destroyed. Vishnu, however, entered the waters and rescued the Vedas.
Does this legend suggest that the Vedas are the documents of a civilization that existed once upon a time in the dim past?
For a very long time before they written down, the Vedas were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. The language in which they are composed is very mature; it is capable of expressing a great deal in a very few words. To achieve this stage of maturity the language must have been in use for a very long time. Only a great civilization could have developed such a language.
Let us hope that one day we will know about the civilization that produced the Vedas and understand the hymns in their true sense, for it is said in the Vedas that their meaning can be understood only when man develops the seer's wisdom.
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