Śruti / The four Vedas / Architecture · 1 of 10

1. The four layers

Architecture (चतुःस्तर)

The books are taught in four layers. The order is a teaching order. It is not a claim that every sentence was composed in that sequence, and it is not a claim that each layer is a separate volume on a shelf. One text can sit in more than one layer. The Īśāvāsya (ईशावास्य) is chapter 40 of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā (वाजसनेयि संहिता) and it is an upaniṣad. In the Kāṇva recension, both descriptions are true of the same eighteen mantras.

The saṃhitā (संहिता) is the collection of hymns and formulas. A hymn praises, asks, describes a god, or describes the rite while it is being done. The line is metrical. The gods have names. The world is addressed as if it can hear.

The brāhmaṇa (ब्राह्मण) is the prose of the rite and of its meaning. It tells which formula goes with which act, and it identifies a part of the rite with a part of the world or of the person. Those identifications are the bandhu (बन्धु), the ties. This portal does not become a manual of the acts. It says what the prose is for.

The āraṇyaka (आरण्यक) is the forest book. The person who has left the village, or who is no longer the one who must keep the full public fire, takes the rite inward. Fire, chant, and breath are set next to each other. The book is still about the sacrifice. The sacrifice is no longer only a public performance.

The upaniṣad (उपनिषद्) is the sitting close. The word is taught as upa (उप), near, ni (नि), down, and sad (सद्), sit. A student sits near a teacher and asks what the rite was about, what remains at death, what the self is. The summit is philosophical because the question has changed, and because the same families of reciters kept the question inside the Veda.

Each Veda is kept by śākhā (शाखा), branches. A branch is a recension: its own order, its own brāhmaṇa, sometimes its own upaniṣad. This guide names a branch when the tradition is stable, and it says so when a number or an order is only one school's. It does not freeze a census of every branch that ever recited.

नेपालीमा

श्रुति सुनिएको हो। स्मृति पछि सम्झिएको कथा र आचरण हो। चार तह पढाइको क्रम हो, रचनाको कडा कालक्रम होइन। एउटै पाठ दुई तहमा बस्न सक्छ। ईशावास्य वाजसनेयि संहिताको चालिसौँ अध्याय हो, र उपनिषद् पनि हो।

संहिता मन्त्रको सङ्ग्रह हो। ब्राह्मण कर्म र त्यसको अर्थको गद्य हो। आरण्यक वनको पुस्तक हो, जहाँ यज्ञ भित्रतिर सारिन्छ। उपनिषद् गुरुको नजिक बस्नु हो। प्रश्न बदलिन्छ। आत्मा के हो? मृत्युमा के रहन्छ? शाखा पाठको हाँगो हो। जहाँ परम्परा स्थिर छ, त्यहीँ नाम लिइन्छ।

Where it sits

The four saṃhitās begin with the Ṛgveda. The twelve Upaniṣads are a separate book in this portal. The one-sitting map is the Śruti portal.