Who wrote the Vedas?- Part 2
This article is the second part of my previous writing on the authorship/creation of the Vedas in the unmade Vedas.
If we accept that the Vedas are created by god/composed by him, there is an issue of that of अन्योन्याश्रय.
The beauty of Vedic traditions of theology is that we do not know who god is yet. We are in search of god. We can by logic, know that this world with all its magnificence and complexities need an engineer/creator. That creator must be god and we must now find him; for if we know him, we will know everything.
But to find him, we need his description, we need to know his attributes and characteristics, we need a guide. But, where can we find this information about god? Much to our convenience, these are the exact line of thoughts our ancient Rishis conceived in them and their efforts in this direction has borne a fruit in the form of Vedas for the world to taste its sweetness.
It is evident that sensual perceptions cannot make us know about god because he is not the subject of our senses i.e. he is अतीन्द्रिय. Logic can be used to realize that there is a creator of this world and he must be god but this logic can do a little to make us know who and how he is; as our Upanishads proclaim न ईश तर्केण मतिरापनेया. Now, the only way to know about god is through scriptures/ श्रुतिः/Vedas. Yes, Vedas are telling us everything about god, his creation and ourselves. It can be substantiated by our experiences and rational thinking too, for it is telling a lot about the dynamics of the functioning of this world and ourselves.. We now have a route map to reach the god.
But, as some did, if we now take up the case that the Vedas are authored by god and these are his revelations (may be because we have a lot of revelations of god around us), we end up with a big problem called अन्योन्याश्रय according to Indian epistemology. The form of the problem is thus:
“A is dependent on B and B is dependent on A for their proofs”. That is
“Until A is proved to be; B cannot be proved and until B is proved to be A cannot be proved.”
“If Vedas are authored by god, then; Vedas cannot be proved to be the word of god until god is proved and
God cannot be proved to be a God until Vedas are proved.
This becomes a vicious circle between the god and the Vedas and hence we can prove none to be what they are. There is no way out of this vicious circle. This relationship between Vedas and god as its author cannot be justified.
This is an important reason as to why the eternity of the Vedas becomes inescapable and why some of our brightest philosophers take it to be so.
Another important problem is of self agrandization. Our philosophers have questioned everything including god. Nothing in our theology is beyond debates and discussions. If Vedas are the word of god, why should anyone believe in what god is saying about himself? Or why should I believe the author of the Vedas to be the real god? It is in everybody’s experience that when asked about one ’s self, even the worst personalities project themselves to be more upright and grand. How can we know, god is not doing the same? Don’t we see the darker sides of men who project themselves as gods every day?
To mitigate these problems, the only way out is to keep god (anyone for that matter) outside the authorship of the Vedas. It is also because; god himself has not said that he is the author of the Vedas anywhere. Thus, God and Vedas are both eternal and un-composed and the Vedas are under the control of the god just like the Jivas are.
It must always be in our minds that the truth of knowledge is our ultimate destination. Questioning and inquiry is the essence of this journey. As long as we are moving in the right direction; paths are numerous to reach our destination.