Sat Ma­haraj

Ac­cord­ing to the Pu­ran­ic En­cy­clo­pe­dia, the root "VID" in San­skrit means to know. The books com­posed of the an­cient Hin­du knowl­edge col­lect­ed and com­piled were known as the Vedas. These four vol­umes are con­sid­ered the most an­cient and sa­cred scrip­ture of all Hin­duism.

Holy hymns and San­skrit mantras were put to­geth­er in four col­lec­tions known as Rig Ve­da, Ya­jur Ve­da, Athar­va Ve­da and Sama Ve­da. For thou­sands of years they were passed on oral­ly from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Dat­ing of these sa­cred Hin­du re­li­gious in­struc­tions is dif­fi­cult to pin-point.

Some of these San­skrit chants are con­sid­ered se­cret and to­day in Trinidad, when pun­dits ini­ti­ate their young devo­tees (chela), the stan­dard Vedic mantra (Gay­a­tri) for this cer­e­mo­ny is whis­pered by the pun­dit di­rect­ly in­to the ear of the devo­tee. The mantras (hymns) con­tained in the Vedas are dat­ed by Hin­du his­to­ri­ans to be over 5,000 years. Some be­lieve that the Rig-Ve­da could have been writ­ten as ear­ly as 12,000 BC.

Prof Mac­Don­nell who, no doubt writ­ing from the per­spec­tive of the con­queror, ex­pressed the view that the Vedas were com­plied be­tween BC 1500 and 1200. But Prof Ja­co­bi's opin­ion is that "all the Vedas were made be­fore BC 4000." We con­sid­er the Vedas to be be­gin­ning­less and end­less. West­ern­ers who con­quered and colonised In­dia for cen­turies will have us be­lieve that the ear­ly Aryans en­tered In­dia and in­tro­duced the Vedic mes­sage and present-day Hin­du civil­i­sa­tion.

Ev­i­dence that is now emerg­ing in a mod­ern and in­de­pen­dent In­dia with its own in­tel­le­gen­cia has suc­cess­ful­ly proven that there was no Aryan in­va­sion and that Eu­ro­pean con­querors used this non-ex­is­tent the­o­ry to di­vide In­dia in­to two parts-the light-skinned north of the coun­try and the dark­er-skinned peo­ple who in­hab­it the low­er half of In­dia. They hoped to use this way to con­vert in­hab­i­tants of In­dia to Chris­t­ian re­li­gious be­liefs.

The Rig Ve­da is a col­lec­tion of songs or hymns and is a main source of in­for­ma­tion on the Rig Vedic civil­i­sa­tion. The Sama Ve­da is pure­ly a col­lec­tion of melodies. The hymns in the Sama Ve­da are used as mu­si­cal notes. Vedic schol­ar David Fraw­ley writes: "If the Rig Ve­da is the word, Sama Ve­da is the song or the mean­ing. If Rig Ve­da is the knowl­edge, Sama Ve­da is its re­al­i­sa­tion, if Rig Ve­da is the wife, the Sama Ve­da is her hus­band."

The Ya­jur Ve­da is a col­lec­tion that was made to meet the de­mands of a cer­e­mo­ni­al Hin­du re­li­gion. The Ya­jur Ve­da prac­ti­cal­ly serves as a guide book for the pun­dits who per­form sac­ri­fi­cial acts chant­i­ng si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly the prayers and the sac­ri­fi­cial for­mu­lae. The Athar­va Ve­da is the last of the Vedas. This is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­er three Vedas and is next in im­por­tance to Rig Ve­da with re­gard to his­to­ry and so­ci­ol­o­gy.

In Trinidad and in many Hin­du out­posts across the world, the Ra­mayan of Tul­si­das is con­sid­ered to be a fifth Ve­da (Pan­cham Ve­da). The Ra­mayan was first writ­ten by the sage Valmi­ki who was con­sid­ered to be a con­tem­po­rary of Lord Ram. But the ver­sion of the Ra­mayan that has sus­tained Hin­dus who were trans­port­ed as sug­ar cane work­ers to Trinidad, Guyana, Suri­name, South Africa, Mau­ri­tius, Fu­ji and oth­er des­ti­na­tions have been the sto­ries con­tained in Tul­si­das' Ra­mayan.

In this ver­sion, the ex­ile and the dif­fi­cul­ties en­coun­tered by Lord Ram is iden­ti­fied close­ly with our an­ces­tors who were vir­tu­al­ly force­ful­ly trans­port­ed through­out the far-flung pos­ses­sions of colo­nial British mas­ters. The sim­ple life of Lord Ram, his broth­er Lutch­man and Moth­er Si­ta dur­ing his 14-year ex­ile to re­gions of the for­est ar­eas and be­yond served as sup­port to our an­ces­tors who had to toil end­less­ly in the sug­ar in­dus­try with­out prop­er nu­tri­tion, health fa­cil­i­ties, med­ical care and bar­rack-type ac­com­mo­da­tions.

The suc­cess of our an­ces­tors and their present-day de­scen­dants is a re­flec­tion of de­vo­tion to dhar­ma, hard work and per­se­ver­ance that has been dis­played by Lord Ram in the Ra­mayan. The words and de­scrip­tion of the Ra­mayan may be dif­fer­ent from those con­tained in the Vedas but the mes­sages por­trayed in the Do­has, Chow­pais and oth­er sweet po­et­ic chants of the Ra­mayan make it equal to the Vedas.

As she sat in cap­tiv­i­ty, a pris­on­er of the evil Lan­ka King Ra­vana, the uni­ver­sal Moth­er Si­ta called up­on her as­signed fe­male at­ten­dant to pre­pare a pyre for her self-im­mo­la­tion. The mes­sage to all women was that the Moth­er of the Uni­verse will pre­fer self-de­struc­tion rather than suc­cumb to the phys­i­cal de­mands of evil as per­son­i­fied by King Ra­vana.

Our grand­moth­ers, our moth­ers and our sis­ters draw strength from that sim­ple episode from this fifth Ve­da called the Ra­mayan. In to­day's T&T, the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion is still be­ing guid­ed by the sto­ries of hard­ship and even­tu­al tri­umph that our God in hu­man form en­dured while on plan­et Earth.

The Hin­du vil­lages across our land are for­tu­nate to lis­ten to the mu­si­cal and pul­sat­ing rhythm of the Ra­mayan sung to them by our pun­dits on a night­ly ba­sis. We val­ue, not on­ly the ab­stract and philo­soph­i­cal mes­sages of the Vedas but more es­pe­cial­ly the liv­ing and hu­man face of this fifth Ve­da called the Ra­mayan.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha