VEDANGAS
Vedangas,
limbs of Veda; are six in number and are to be reflected along with Vedas. Just
like the limbs of the body, they perform various supportive and augmenting
functions in the study, preservation and protection of the Vedas and the Vedic
traditions. They are Shiksha (Phonetics), Niruktam (explanation), Kalpam (Ritual
Canon), Jyothisham (Astrology), Chandas (Vedic meter), and Vyakaranam (Grammar).
All these are additional chapters in the Vedas; disciplines associated with the
study and understanding of the Vedas.
They
represent the organs of the Veda Purusha. Paniniya Shiksha (41-42) narrates two
verses on the importance of the Vedangas which describe Veda as a Purusha
having six limbs as six Vedangas : Chandas are his two feet, Kalpam are his two
arms, Jyotisham are his eyes, Niruktam is his ears, Shiksha is his nose and
Vyakarana is his mouth.
Shiksha
and Chandas are aids for pronouncing and reciting Vedic mantras correctly,
Vyakaranam and Niruktam are for understanding their meaning, and Jyotisham and
Kalpam provide appropriate times and methods for performing the Vedic
sacrificial rites and rituals.
The
Vedangas played an important role in maintaining the purity and integrity of
the Vedic tradition. For centuries they taught and continue to teach Vedic students
how to recite the Vedic hymns, understand their meaning and perform the various
rituals and ceremonies strictly according the established procedures. The
Vedangas greatly help us in proper understanding and application of the Vedas.
The Vedangas likely developed towards the end of the Vedic
period. Individually, these auxiliary disciplines of study are traceable to the
1st to 5th-century BCE. However, it is unclear when and where a list
of six Vedangas were first conceptualized.
The Vedangas developed as ancillary studies for the
Vedas, were sciences that focused on helping understand and interpret the Vedas
that had been composed many centuries earlier. The insights into meters,
structure of sound and language, grammar, linguistic analysis and other
subjects influenced post-Vedic studies, arts, culture and various schools
of Hindu philosophy. The Kalpa Vedanga studies, for example, gave rise
to the Dharma-sutras, which later expanded into Dharma-shastras.
Let
us learn in brief, each of the six Vedangas:
1. SHIKSHA: phonetics, phonology, pronunciation. This auxiliary discipline has focused on
the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, accent, quantity, stress, melody and
rules of euphonic combination of words during a Vedic recitation.
2. NIRUKTAM: etymology, explanation of words, particularly those that are
archaic and have ancient uses with unclear meaning. This auxiliary
discipline has focused on linguistic analysis to help establish the proper
meaning of the words, given the context they are used in.
3. KALPAM: ritual instructions. This field focused on
standardizing procedures for Vedic rituals, rites of passage rituals
associated with major life events such as birth, wedding and death in family,
as well as discussing the personal conduct and proper duties of an individual
in different stages of his life.
4. JYOTISHAM: Auspicious time for rituals, astrology and
astronomy. This auxiliary Vedic discipline focused on time keeping.
5. CHANDAS: prosody. This auxiliary discipline has focused
on the poetic meters, including those based on fixed number of syllables per
verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse.
6. VYAKARANAM: grammar and linguistic analysis. This auxiliary
discipline has focused on the rules of grammar and linguistic analysis to
establish the exact form of words and sentences to properly express ideas.
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