Sunday, May 18, 2008

Daily Dedroidify: Vedic Boom

Daily Dedroidify: Vedic Boom

The Vedas collectively refers to a collection of ancient Indo Aryan religious literature that are considered by adherents of Hinduism to be revealed knowledge. Many Hindus believe the Vedas existed since the beginning of creation. The oldest text found, the RigVeda is now dated to around 1,500 BC, but most Indologists agree that a long oral tradition possibly existed before it was written down.

Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita of the Vedas after the world's first atomic bomb test. But was it really the first? Let's remind ourselves of what we have done to each other in our own past as described in the Vedas and hope it doesn't happen again:

"The valiant Adwatthaman, then staying resolutely on his vimana (flying machine!) touched water and invoked the Agneya weapon, incapable of being resisted by the very Gods. Aiming at all his visible and invisible foes, the preceptor's son, that Slayer of hostile heroes, inspired with mantras a blazing shaft of the effulgence of a smokeless fire and let it off on all sides, filled with rage. Dense showers of arrows then issued from it in the welkin. Endued with fiery flames those arrows encompassed Parthie on all sides. Meteors flashed down from the firmament. A thick gloom suddenly shrouded the (Pandava) host. All points of the compass also were enveloped by that darkness... Inauspicious winds began to blow. The Sun himself no longer gave any heat... The very elements seemed to be perturbed... The Universe scorched with heats seemed to be in a fever. The elephants and other creatures of the land scorched by the energy of that weapon, ran in fright, breathing heavily and desirous of protection against that terrible force. The very water being heated, the creatures residing in that element, O Bharata, became exceedingly uneasy and seemed to burn...

Huge elephants burnt by that weapon, fell down on the Earth all around, uttering fierce cries loud as those of the clouds. Other huge elephants, scorched by that fire, ran hither and thither, roared aloud in fear, as if in the midst of a forest conflagration. The steeds, O King, and the cars also burnt by that weapon looked, O Sire, like the tops of trees burnt in a forest fire."
From page 677 of the transcription of the ancient Drona Parva text

Vedic literature - especially the Bhagavad-gita - was studied and praised by personalities like Einstein, Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, Emerson, Thoreau, Schweizer,... and many other scientists and scholars.

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