/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13175836]

Where should I start to properly read Vedic literature

[Anonymous No.13175854]

>Indian voodoo shit

[Anonymous No.13175887]

>>13175854
That’s a yikes from me dawg

[Anonymous No.13175907]

Meme answer: Guenon

Real answer: Read Raymond Schwab's Oriental Renaissance, then use that as a guide to reading the major works of all 19th century and early 20th century classics of Sanskrit studies. Read lots of classics that previous generations of scholars read, even outdated ones, like Max Muller's History of Sanskrit Literature and Radakrishnan's Sourcebook of Indian Philosophy. Even Surendranath Dasgupta's History of Indian Philosophy. Alongside all this, read more recent histories of the field(s) of oriental studies, and more recent sourcebooks, all while learning Sanskrit of course. The aim is to get as synoptic a perspective as possible on not just the history of Sanskrit literature and Hindu thought but of the various modern schools of interpretation themselves, so that you don't get sucked into any one interpretation without realizing it was actually founded in the '70s by a hippie follower of Eliade or some neo-Vedantist in the 1890s who claimed to have visions but who was actually hanging out with Theosophists from New Jersey who were later brought up on charges for fondling little boys. During all this you can also be reading Guenon and his fellow travelers of course.

By the time you have decent mastery of Sanskrit yourself, you will have sufficient self-awareness to study the texts themselves while drawing upon all these traditions, scholarly vogues, and schools of thought, without being blinkered by any one of them. Then when you talk to some guy online who says "just read Steve McWhogivesashit bro he is right about everything" you can effortlessly situate not only Professor McWhogivesashit in his respective milieu but your interlocutor by extension as well.

[Anonymous No.13176014]

>>13175836
>Vedic literature
>posts Jain symbol

[Anonymous No.13176025]

>>13176014
It’s a Vedic religion

[Anonymous No.13176153]

>>13176025
It explicitly rejects the Vedas.

[R Æ V S S Q A N D V S !KNDYYIIins No.13176313]

>>13176025

[Anonymous No.13176314]

>>13176313
>>13176153
I withdraw my claim

[Anonymous No.13176759]

Maybe the Vedas lol

[Anonymous No.13176979]

The usual answer is the Upanishads, this was common knowledge before Traditionalist school became popular, I say this having read Traditionalist works as well. They're generally the latest parts of the vedas, but considered better than the Brahmanas and Aranyakas. After that, get the rest of them and read in chronological order.
It's easy to put things off into a list of perfectionist, but it's better to just jump into it.

[Anonymous No.13177200]

>>13175836
Rig Veda

[Anonymous No.13177290]

First learn sanskrit. Then you read the bhagavad gita, then the itihasas (ramayana and mahabharata) the puranas and the upanishads. Don't start with the vedas because you won't understand shit

[Anonymous No.13177349]

>>13176759
>>13177200
Vedas are just deity worship and ritual chants

[Anonymous No.13177608]

>>13177349
They're much more than that.

[Anonymous No.13177847]

>>13177349
Yeah why would you want to start by becoming familiar with the deities and the ritual chants when learning about a new religion

[Anonymous No.13177917]

>>13175907
This is all gay and unnecessary

[Anonymous No.13178178]

>>13175836
First, read an intro book to Vedanta or a medium length book explaining it. Then, read Shankara's Upanishad commentaries. The Upanishads are the culmination of all Vedic knowledge, once you've fully grasped them you're pretty much ready to read and grasp the rest of the Vedas. Shankara and others took the position that the Sruti (Vedas & Upanishads) teach contradictory aims (viz. rites and renunciation/gnosis) because they prescribe different paths for people with different tendencies or different levels of understanding, that for people who still have all sorts of attachments and illusions that they proscribe rites and behavioral injunctions to aid them in said aims, but for people who have grown weary of mundane existence and who desire to know the higher truth that the Upanishads provide a path for them to do so. Despite this, once you've read the Upanishads and studied Vedanta you can still find all sorts of lines in the pre-Upanishads layers like in the mantras and brahmanas that are clearly describing Upanishad-like concepts viz metaphysics and the Absolute. Also, the Rig-Veda is one of the oldest texts in any Indoeuropean language, and certainly the oldest one of such depth and poetics. Coomaraswamy's books on the Vedas are excellent.

[Anonymous No.13178290]

>>13175836
literally nowhere they're all horribly boring
all of the actual Vedas are just liturgical texts and the Upanishads have nothing that can't also be found in the Stoics or Schopenhauer