This article is part of an introductory series on Hinduism: 1. What it is · 2. The texts · 3. Key words · 4. The paths to liberation · 5. The deities.
Hinduism does not have one sacred book: it has hundreds, written over a span of almost three thousand years. To avoid getting lost, it helps to use a distinction the tradition itself has always made, between śruti and smṛti.
Śruti: what was heard
Śruti means “what was heard”. These are the texts regarded not as composed by human beings, but as “heard” by the ancient seers (ṛṣi) and handed down word for word. They are the Vedas: the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, the Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda. The oldest, the Ṛgveda, is a collection of more than a thousand hymns that scholars generally date to roughly 1500–1200 BCE.
Each Veda is made up of layers. At the centre are the hymns (Saṃhitā); around them, the texts that explain the ritual (Brāhmaṇa), those meant for people who withdraw to the forest (Āraṇyaka) and finally the Upaniṣads, which shift the focus from ritual to the question of what the self and ultimate reality are. The oldest Upaniṣads, such as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya, probably date from the 7th–6th century BCE; they are the root of much of Indian philosophy.
For centuries the Vedas were not written down: they were learned by heart through highly refined recitation techniques that made it possible to check every syllable. In 2008 UNESCO inscribed the tradition of Vedic chanting on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Smṛti: what is remembered
Smṛti means “what is remembered”: texts attributed to human authors, which in theory carry less authority but in daily life often carry far more. They include:
- the two great epic poems (Itihāsa): the Rāmāyaṇa, attributed to Vālmīki, the story of Prince Rāma and his wife Sītā; and the Mahābhārata, the longest poem in the world, with around a hundred thousand verses;
- the Bhagavad Gītā, the “Song of the Blessed One”: eighteen chapters set within the Mahābhārata, the dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa on the eve of a battle. It is probably the most widely read Indian text in the world;
- the Purāṇas, the “ancient stories”: tales of the gods, of the origin of the cosmos and of sacred places, such as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, much loved by devotees of Kṛṣṇa;
- the Dharmaśāstras, the treatises on dharma, such as the Laws of Manu: rules for life, ritual and society. They are also the most debated texts today, because of what they say about caste and about women;
- the Āgamas and the Tantras, the texts of temple worship and of many ritual and meditative practices.
Living texts, heard more than read
For most Hindus these texts are not books to be read in silence. They are chants in rituals, stories told by grandparents, dance and theatre performances, television series (the Rāmāyaṇa broadcast on Indian television in the late 1980s literally brought the country to a standstill). Their authority comes through listening and recitation more than through reading.
Compared with other traditions
The idea that a sacred text is first and foremost something to recite is one that Hinduism shares with Islam: Qurʾān means precisely “recitation”, and the Qur'an is learned by heart by millions of people. The distinction between a revealed core and a tradition that interprets it recalls the Jewish distinction between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, which was later set down in writing in the Mishnah and the Talmud.
The Buddhist Pāli canon, too, was handed down orally for centuries before being written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BCE. And the Yoruba religion still preserves an immense oral corpus today, the verses of Ifá, which priests learn by heart over years of apprenticeship. The Christian Bible, on the other hand, has a closed and defined canon: a precise list of books, something Hinduism has never had.
What can we take from this? That in many traditions the sacred word lives in the voice before it lives on the page. Listening to a text being recited, learning a few of its verses by heart, is a way of knowing it that differs from study: it makes the text part of the person who carries it.
In the next article: the key words of Hinduism, from dharma to mokṣa.
Further reading
- Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, 1996, chs. 2–4.
- Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Upaniṣads, Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Tradition of Vedic chanting, UNESCO, Intangible Cultural Heritage (2008)
- Upanisads, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Bhagavad Gītā, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Bhagavad Gita, English verse translation by Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial, 1885 (public domain), on sacred-texts.com