Radhey Radhey Swamiji! My question is all religions have one sacred book that they
respect, like the Bible. What is the Bible of Hinduism? Just like when you get a
machine you have a manual that explains how to use it, similarly God has sent us
into this world and he has the manual which is the sacred book right and then
there are the teachers which are the prophets who came down. So religious
traditions around the world have had their sacred book. Christianity has the
Bible, Islam has the Quran, Judaism has the Torah, Confucianism has their own
Taoism has the Tao Te Ching, Sikhism has the Guru Grantha Sahib, Buddhism has the
Tipi Takas the three baskets of knowledge and similarly the Parsees have
their own the Zend Avesta etc so what is the book of the Hindus? The book of
the Hindus is the Vedas and this is based on a very subtle concept according
to the Hindu philosophy knowledge is eternal divine knowledge just like God
is eternal his knowledge is also eternal. Ever since God has existed his knowledge
has existed. So to say that there is a holy book that exists since such in such
period in time seems a little illogical. What about the
people who came before that? They had no access to being saved. If there is a
sacred book that is the basis of being saved then what about the
people who came before that? Right so there must be some knowledge that has
existed ever since God has existed. Our scriptures say that eternal knowledge of
God is the Vedas. These Vedas was not the name of book, they referred to God's
knowledge. Rvery time God engages in creation he manifests that knowledge and
then that knowledge was coming down through the ears. The Guru would speak it
to his disciple, the disciple would hear it and pass it on to his disciple that
is how the Vedas were coming down and since they were coming through the ears
and the ear is called Shruti hence another name for the Vedas is Shruti.
However 5,000 years ago Veda Vyasa who was an avatar of God himself he felt
that the people of Kali Yug will not be Shruti-dhari, they will not have the
capacity to hear and remember so he put that knowledge into a book he wrote it
down and that became the physical Vedas that is the Bible of Hinduism the
physical Vedas. The world says that the most ancient scripture in history is
the Vedas. But we say no that's an inaccurate statement
don't say most ancient that means it had a beginning. This is the eternal
scripture which has ever existed and that is why what the Vedas are
explaining is not Hinduism as such. The word Hinduism came up later in history
it was a name that was given when the invaders
came to conquer India, all those who were on this side of the Hindu Kush were
called Hindus but the word Hinduism is not there in the Vedas they talk about
Sanatana-Dharma the eternal religion, the eternal principles, the internal science
of how to purify yourself, how to elevate yourself, that is Sanatana-Dharma and
that is now loosely being called hinduism. So you have holy books in all
the other traditions and we respect all of them because the same truth is being
explained by the great prophets so in the Hindu mind we respect all the
scriptures we respect knowledge we respect spirituality and devotion
wherever we see it but at the same time we must understand the specialty of our
own tradition. Now how did the Bible come about after Christ many of his disciples
they wrote Testaments and so there were about 50 different Testaments about 50!
So two hundred years after Christ by the throw of dice four of them got selected
these were the Bible by Matthew, Luke, John and Mark and on the basis of that the
New Testament got created. If you see in the Buddhist tradition five hundred
years after the Buddha his teachings were compiled and put in the form of a
book right but still we respect them as books of knowledge and in the Vedas this
is the eternal knowledge of God and hence it is the authority on which
principles or spiritual principles are determined, "quoting scriptures"
"quoting scriptures". So every Acharya in Hinduism every
writer has accepted the Vedas as authority and then expounded that in
their own writings. So if Tulsidas writes the Ramayan he
says I'm writing it in accordance with the Vedas. If Veda Vyasa writes the bhagwat
he says I am writing on the authority and testimony of the Vedas that creates
a body of scriptures called Vedic literature that is the basis of
knowledge in our Hindu tradition.