The Vedic Faith: An Overview

Vedic texts enable us to study the religious faith of the ancient Indians of Vedic age and their mythology.

The beliefs of the Vedic tribes took shape and crystallized over an extremely long period of time and particular stages of that process are reflected in various Vedic writings. Vedic religion can be regarded as a well-defined system, a whole complex of religious and philosophical beliefs together with corresponding rites and ceremonies. These are extremely archaic beliefs reflecting primitive social relations or what can be traced back to the ancient culture of the Indo-Europeans or the Indo-Iranians or finally concepts that emerged as a result of the development of Vedic society itself in that period.

Vedic Religion is the most ancient system of religious beliefs in India and it was to exert a major influence on later religious trends and philosophical teachings in the sub-continent, although, unlike Buddhism, it did not penetrate beyond. An essential element of the Vedic Religion is polytheism-worship of a large number of gods and divinities endowed with anthropomorphism.

The Indians of the Vedic age endowed various phenomena of Nature and also their gods with human attributes, human vices as also virtues. Certain other gods encountered in the Rig-Veda are endowed with terriomorphism, appearing in the form of animals and maintain a fundamental link with phenomena of Nature. The god Indra is sometimes represented as a bull and the god Agni or fire as a steed. It was to the gods that they addressed their hymns and it was for the gods that the sacrifices were offered.

Apart from the benevolent gods, the Indians of the Vedic age believed in the existence of evil spirits and demons also who were enemies of gods.

A charismatic feature of the Vedic beliefs was the absence of any clear-cut individualization of the gods or clear-cut distribution of their functions. The deification of the forces of nature in the Vedic hymns took the form of anthropomorphism, which led to a certain degree of syncretism in the description of the gods. Interestingly, there is no hierarchy for the gods; but rather something in the way of an all-embracing essence intrinsic to a whole number of gods. At any moment a god might be turned to as the unique, only existing god, to who would be ascribed those actions and powers, which in other situations might be associated with other gods. This veneration for one god at a time as opposed to the "One God, the Most High" came to be known as genotheism.

In later Vedic literature, a distinct trend is to be observed: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva gradually emerge as the three principal deities forming a trinity. The Indians of the Vedic age also worshipped various spirits and deified plants, mountains and rivers.