• Welcome to Tamil Brahmins forums.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our Free Brahmin Community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.

Pearls of scientific knowledge in vedas:

Status
Not open for further replies.
I belong to taittiriya shAkhA (T.S.) of krsna Yajurvedam and after donkey’s years of learning by rote not knowing the meaning of my blabbering/incantanations, I tried to acquire a very very basic knowledge of Sanskrit (more particularly of vedic Sanskrit – which has a lot of exceptions to pANini’s ashtAdhyAyee) to understand what I was chanting away in vedic glory.

I was also impressed by the knowledge of science and mathematics in vedAs proper, but these are scattered in various places and many would miss these pearls of knowledge unless he was scanning for the precise information with a fine comb.

At the same time I also came across various bombastic claims made by many in various internet blogs and forums and chats, which contained highly exaggerated, contested and incredulous claims, downright blatant and mischievous translations which many a times brought derision from the readers even in our forum.

I would like to present my tit-bits in this thread and seek the indulgence of the learned members to contribute to, refute, and challenge my presentation, but refrain from showing mere disdain (without any rationale) or mere polemics.

I have a job to keep and not that fabulously financially endowed, so I can contribute only during my spare time, so posts from me would not be in a time bound manner.

If anyone proposes to add stuff from the ever mushrooming cyber space, please take care that the stuff you copy paste does not suffer from the infirmities of convenient translations and downright wrong and unsustainable translation of original passage.

If possible, please include the original Sanskrit/vedic passage either in devanAgari or in roman transliteration and if possible, give the chapter and verse (like mantra #, khAnda # etc)

Oh yes, those who wish to bash me, please open a separate thread for bashing where we can do dishum-dishum, but let the readers get uninterrupted of content rather than polemics in this thread.

More in the next post.
 
Click to expand...
Great...awaiting more posts.

Where are you going to begin from?

So that I can look up the Veda Samhitams I have to follow what you write.
 
renuka said:
Great...awaiting more posts.

Where are you going to begin from?

So that I can look up the Veda Samhitams I have to follow what you write.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your words of encouragement.

I propose to start with what I still retain in my memory, without resorting to "book" reference and I would be furnishing the mantra #, anuvAkA # and khaNDA # for all my postings and the original vedic passage in ITRANS. as it would I suppose take a long time for me to type out in Sanskrit.
 
HAIR AND NAILS AS "DEAD" - equivalent to Dead Cells:


Taittiriya Samhita 6.1.1 has this passage. This passage is classified as "brAhmaNam" meaning procedure or "vidhi" as contrasted to mantra or incantation.

"kesha shmashru vapathE naKhAni ni krunthathe mrutA vA EshA tvak ameDhyA yath kesha shmashru mrutam eva tvacham amEDhyAm apahatya yajniyO BhUtvA medam upaiti"

I have made the words which represents "dead" or "death" in block letters for easy reading.

Paraphrasing the above passage would mean:

"He shaves his hair and beard, he trims his nails. The hair and the nails are dead and the skin is impure; by thus destroying (i.e. by taking bath) the dead (hair) and impure skin he becomes fit for yajna and approaches the wisdom/yajna.

The reading of the above passage will explain why the vedics were so fastidious about bath before (and even after) yajna, though the normal explanation of being hygienic etc. will also hold good.

I could not find the mention of "nails" and "hair" as "dead" in any literature of that antiquity. Of course, I welcome members to fill in the gap in my knowledge if such one exists.
 
I would like to start with the Arithmetic progression and Geometric series which appear in the vedAs. There are quite a few mantras which show the knowledge of vedic Rsis in basic arithmetic, so I will start with the fairly common one.

chamaka praSnam (taittiriya samhita anuvAkam) 4.7.11:

“EkA cha mE, thisrascha mE, pancha cha mE, sapta cha mE nava cha mE, EkAdaSa cha mE, trayOdaSa cha mE, panchadaSa cha mE, saptadasa cha mE, NavadaSa cha mE, EkA vimSathi cha mE, trayo vimSathi cha mE, pancha vimShathi cha mE, sapta vimSathi cha mE, nava vimSathi cha mE, eka trimshatis cha mE, trayasthrimShatis cha

Contains all Odd numbers from one to thirty three, forming an arithmetic progression.

Chatasras cha mE, ashtou cha mE, dwAdasa cha mEy, shODasa cha mE, Vimsatis cha mEy, chaturvimshatis cha mE, ashtAvimshatis cha mE, DwAthrimashatis cha mE, shattrimshas cha mE, chatvarimshas cha mE, ChatuSchatvarimshas cha mE, ashtAchatvarimshas cha mE”

Geometric Progression of numbers starting from 4 till 48 with a common ratio of 2.

Though various commentators and BhAshyAkars have given various explanations as to what these odd and even entities are or represent (they must be entities because Sri Rudram is singing paens to Rudra in his various manifestations) there is no unanimity as to what these odd-even entities are and why there are only 12 even entities invoked upon whereas there are 17 odd entities.

And lots of thanks for Sri MSK Moorthy for pointing out my errors
 
Last edited:
I made a mistake: This (The second sequence given) is not a geometric progression. This is also an arithmetic progression (the difference is 4 between successive terms) These are multiples of 4 starting from 4 to 48. The entire series is:4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32, 36, 40, 44 and 48.Geometirc progression means that the ratio of successive numbers have to be the same.
mskmoorthy said:
A minor correction (kindly excuse me if it is too pedantic)It may be more appropriate to say Geometric Progression of numbers starting from 4 to 48 with a common ratio of 2 instead of- The reason being even numbers 6, 10, 14 are not in this series and ends in 48 and not in 44.Looking forward to learning more.
Click to expand...
 
mskmoorthy said:
A minor correction (kindly excuse me if it is too pedantic)It may be more appropriate to say Geometric Progression of numbers starting from 4 to 48 with a common ratio of 2 instead of- The reason being even numbers 6, 10, 14 are not in this series and ends in 48 and not in 44.Looking forward to learning more.
Click to expand...

You are not being pedantic at all. In fact there should be precision in topics of maths at least. I am thankful to you for pointing out my errors. I am making suitable corrections to the original post.
 
Aren't rain drops in constellation of Swati falling into the sea to be consumed by oysters anymore? Why don't I see any more pearls?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

Share this page

Latest posts

Latest ads

Follow us on Social Media

Back
Top