Why Do the Vedas Emphasize Rituals Over Philosophy?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. What is the relevance of The Vedas’ Karmkand part? As for the common human mind, in the massive volume of Vedas, there is a higher chance of missing out the Upanishads. Why was it considered fit to design the body of Vedas in such a way that a massive part belongs to that which is non-Upanishadic and a little place for Upanishads?
Acharya Prashant: The compilation is a testament to the honesty of the compiler. They were not saying, "We have dropped right from the sky." They are not just giving you the final, finished end product—they are revealing to you the entire process.
If only the Upanishads are given to you, you will be overawed. You'll almost be struck with an inferiority complex—"Oh my God, where did this come from?" And you will not be able to develop any direct relationship with the Upanishads. Not only this, it will become very intuitive for you to think that reaching the heights of the Upanishads is beyond you. But when you look at the entire body of the Vedas, what you see is a very human thing.
Now again, I'm saying this knowing fully well that the Vedas are not supposed to be talked of as human in their origins. But you look at the honesty of the compiler—he didn't hide anything. He said, "This is the entire process, this is the entire body of knowledge, and we are presenting everything to you."
It's like your grandparents not just telling you the glories of their times but also their struggles, their inadequacies, their failures, and then revealing to you how the summit came after a series of attempts, struggles, and suffering—everything.
Therefore, I'm saying that when you look at the whole massive compendium, the word that emerges from there is honesty. So much could have been hidden—very easily hidden. There is no need to give all that. Just give the selected excerpts, the best kind of assortment, and the Vedas would have been glorified to an even higher extent. You would have said, "Look at the Vedas—such brief, precise scriptures containing the highest wisdom!"
And mind you, it's not as if the entire wisdom part is contained in the Upanishads and the rest of it is crap. It's not that way. When you go, for example, to the Devi Sukta or to the Nasadiya Sukta, you see the beginnings of what is going to come very soon. So it's an organic growth. You cannot totally compartmentalize and say the Karmkand part is just rubbish and the Upanishadic part is just fantastic.
In fact, if you go to the early Upanishads, they are not even brief. If you go to Chandogya or to Brihadaranyaka—especially these two—these are quite voluminous, and these are also not as cleanly filtered as the later Upanishads. There is a lot in the early Upanishads that you can say is not of the same level, not of the same glory, as the rest of Vedanta.
If you pick up Chandogya and juxtapose it with the Ashtavakra Gita or the Bhagavad Gita, the Chandogya doesn't stand a chance. Still, the entirety of it was presented to you—nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.
You please look at everything, because that's the human process. Please see—it is through struggles, tribulations, failures that something of glory finally emerges. The Vedas are clearly disclosing to you how many times they have stumbled. That's fine. Everything has been given, and it is a matter of trust that the inheritors of this body of knowledge will have the common sense, the discretion to sift what is useful, what is timeless, from that which is time-bound and merely preparatory.
You go to the Atharvaveda—you know, some people do not even call it a Veda. They say there are not four but only three Vedas, and it contains a lot of things that will make you wonder, "How do I even call it a body of knowledge?"
All kinds of, what you'll call, superstitions are found there. At the same time the Atharvaveda also contains some glorious Upanishads. The compiler obviously was at liberty to exclude what was not up to the level of the Upanishads but nothing was excluded.
You don't hide from the ones you love, do you? The sages loved us. They didn't want to hide anything. They said, ‘this is the entire bundle, you look at everything.’ I will not present a nicely chiseled and pedicured and manicured family album to you.
I'll also tell you of the gossip and the petty squabbles and even the internet sign fights. We'll tell you everything. You deserve to know everything. Right to information—now everything is being told to you. Now it depends on you what to pick up and what to very respectfully keep in the museum. You must know what is of contemporary use and what is merely historical.
The sages are saying, "We are placing this trust on you. We hope you'll have the common sense to see that there is a lot that has no contemporary relevance. But still, it is useful because you must know the whole process through which you came to the fruit. Apples don't fall from the sky. We are teaching you the entire process that leads to the apple. The Vedas are not just the apple—the Vedas are the making of the apple. The entire process of the making has been disclosed."
