Vedas: hidden know-how or spiritual guides?

Some believe that the Vedas were transmitted orally for up to 8000 years. Most Western and a few Indian commentators see this as an exaggeration and date the earliest part of the Veda, the Rig-Veda Samhita, to around 1800-800 BCE. Mainstream scholarship places the Vedic period into the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, continuing up to the 6th century BCE while using Vedic Sanskrit and the Shrauta tradition, when the culture began to be transformed into classical forms of Hinduism.

What do the Vedas mean?: Are the Vedas allegories; or actual knowledge? Sri Aurobindo (August 15, 1872–December 5, 1950) was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru ]. His followers further believe that he was an avatar, an incarnation of the Absolute. Aurobindo decided to look for hidden meanings in the Vedas. He looked at the Rig Veda as a psychological book, inspiring the people to move towards God, but in hidden language.

Vedas as spiritual allegory: Sri Aurobindo spent his life — through his vast writings and through his own development — working for the freedom of India, the path to the further evolution of life on earth, and to bring down what he called the Supermind to enable such progress. He referred to his teachings as the "integral yoga". See “The Secret of the Vedas” by Sri Aurobindo.

Or - are the Vedas practical mechanics: Early medieval Hindu authors (Āryabhaṭa ) (476 – 550) - the first of the great mathematician-astronomers of the classical age of Indian mathematics. Available evidences suggest that he went to Kusumapura for higher studies. He lived in Kusumapura, which his commentator Bhāskara I (629 AD) identifies as Pataliputra (modern Patna).) suggest dates as early as the 4th millennium BCE. ( 476 - 550) is the first of the great astronomers of the classical age of India.

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