Vedic religion is primarily a liturgy differentiated in various types of ritual, which are described in the sacred texts in great detail and are designed for almost any purpose. In these rites, theoretically, no operation, no gesture, no formula is meaningless or left to an officiant’s discretion. The often complicated ritual technique, based on an equally complicated speculative system of thought, was devised mainly to safeguard human life and survival, to enable people to face the many risks and dangers of existence, to thwart the designs of human and superhuman enemies that cannot be counteracted by ordinary means, to control the unseen powers, and to establish and maintain beneficial relations with the supramundane sacred order. Belief in the efficacy of the rites is the natural consequence of the belief that all things and events are connected with or participate in one another.
Another characteristic of Vedic religion is the belief that there is a close correspondence between sacred places—such as the sacrificial place of many Vedic rites, a place of pilgrimage, or a consecrated area—and provinces of the universe or even the universe itself. In such places, direct communication with other cosmic regions (heaven or underworld) is possible, because they are said to be at the point of contact between this world and the “pillar of the universe”—the “navel of the earth.” The sacred place is understood as identical to the universe in its various states of emanation from, reabsorption into, integration with, and disintegration from the sacred. This idea has as its corollary the possibility of ritually enacting the cosmic drama and, thus, of influencing those events in the cosmos that continuously affect human weal and woe.
The Vedic ritual system is organized into three main forms. The simplest, and hierarchically inferior, type of Vedic ritualism is the grihya, or domestic ritual, in which the householder offers modest oblations into the sacred household fire. The more ambitious, wealthy, and powerful married householder sets three or five fires and, with the help of professional officiants, engages in the more complex shrauta sacrifices. These require oblations of vegetable substances and, in some instances, of parts of ritually killed animals. At the highest level of Vedic ritualism are the soma sacrifices, which can continue for days or even years and whose intricacies and complexities are truly stunning.
In the major shrauta rites, requiring three fires and 16 priests or more, “the man who knows”—the person with insight into the correspondences (bandhu) between the mundane and cosmic phenomena and the eternal transcendent reality beyond them and who knows the meaning of the ritual words and acts—may, it is believed, set great cosmic processes in motion for the benefit of humanity. In these rites, Brahman officiants repeat the mythic drama for the benefit of their patron, the “sacrificer,” who temporarily becomes its centre and realizes through ritual symbolism his identity with the universe. Such officiants are convinced of the efficacy of their rites: “the sun would not rise, were he [the officiant] not to make that offering; this is why he performs it” (Shatapatha Brahmana). The oblations should not be used to propitiate the gods or to thank them for favours bestowed, since the efficacy of the rites, some of which are still occasionally performed, does not depend on the will of the gods. The Upanishads
With the last component of the Vedas, the philosophically oriented and esoteric texts known as the Upanishads (traditionally “sitting near a teacher” but originally understood as “connection” or “equivalence”), Vedic ritualism and the doctrine of the interconnectedness of separate phenomena were superseded by a new emphasis on knowledge alone—primarily knowledge of the ultimate identity of all phenomena, which merely appeared to be separate. The beginnings of philosophy and mysticism in Indian religious history occurred during the period of the compilation of the Upanishads, roughly between 700 and 500 bce. Historically, the most important of the Upanishads are the two oldest, the Brihadaranyaka (“Great Forest Text”; c. 10th–5th century bce) and the Chandogya (pertaining to the Chandogas, priests who intone hymns at sacrifices), both of which are compilations that record the traditions of sages (rishis) of the period—notably Yajnavalkya, who was a pioneer of new religious ideas.
The Upanishads reveal the desire to obtain the mystical knowledge that ensures freedom from “re-death” (punarmrityu), or birth and death in a new existence. Throughout the later Vedic period, the idea that the world of heaven is not the end of existence—and that even in heaven death is inevitable—became increasingly common. Vedic thinkers became concerned about the impermanence of religious merit and its loss in the hereafter, as well as about the transience of any form of existence after death—an existence that would culminate in re-death. The means of escaping and conquering death devised in the Brahmanas were of a ritual nature, but one of the oldest Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, emphasizes the knowledge of the cosmic connection underlying ritual. When the doctrine of the identity of atman (the self) and brahman (the Absolute) was established in the Upanishads, those sages who were inclined to meditative thought substituted the true knowledge of the self and the realization of this identity for the ritual method.
This theme of the quest for a supreme unifying truth, for the reality underlying existence, is exemplified in the question posed by the seeker in the Mundaka Upanishad: “What is it that, by being known, all else becomes known?” What is sought is an experiential knowledge that is different from the “lower” knowledge that can be conceptualized and articulated by human beings. Thus, the supreme truth is understood as ineffable. The Taittiriya Upanishad says that brahman is this ineffable truth; brahman is also truth (satya), knowledge (jnana), infinity (ananta), consciousness (chit), and bliss (ananda). Other Upanishads describe brahman as the hidden, inner controller of the human soul. The experiential knowledge of the relationship between the human soul (atman) and the supreme being (brahman) is said to bring an end to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. To know brahman is to know all; in knowing brahman, one achieves a transcendental consciousness that comprehends, in some measure, the unity of the universe and the deep connection between the soul and brahman.
In subsequent centuries the main theories concerned with the divine essence underlying the world were harmonized and synthetically combined. The tendency of these theories was to extol one god as the supreme lord and originator (Ishvara)—at once Purusha and Prajapati and brahman and the self of all beings. For those who worshipped him, he was the goal of identificatory meditation, which leads to complete cessation of phenomenal existence and becomes the refuge of those who seek eternal peace. The Advaita Vedanta philosopher and theologian Shankara (8th century ce) exercised enormous influence on subsequent Hindu thinking through his elegant synthesis of the nontheistic and theistic aspects of Upanishadic teaching. In his commentaries on several of the Upanishads, he distinguished between nirguna brahman (without attributes) and saguna brahman (with attributes). His was a monistic teaching that stressed that saguna brahman was a lesser, temporary form of nirguna brahman. He taught also that the self (atman) is identical with nirguna brahman and that through knowledge of this unity the cycle of rebirth can be broken.