Indian Philosophy. The Rig Ved.

The Rigveda, the expression of hymns from the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of Hinduism. The practice dates back at least 3,000 years and is probably the world's oldest continuous vocal tradition. The earliest collection, or Samhita, of Vedic texts is the Rigveda, containing about 1,000 hymns. These are chanted in syllabic style--a type of heightened speech with one syllable to a tone. Three levels of pitch are employed: a basic reciting tone is embellished by neighbouring tones above and below, which are used to emphasize grammatical accents in the texts. These Rigveda hymns are the basis for a later collection, the Samaveda ("Veda of the Chants"), the hymns of which are sung in a style that is more florid, melodic, and melismatic (one word to two or more notes) rather than syllabic, and the range of tones is extended to six or more.A simple, numerical system of notation--together with an oral tradition that stresses absolute precision in text, intonation, and bodily gestures--has served to perpetuate this stable tradition and to ensure its uniformity throughout all parts of India. The Vedas are chanted today exactly as they were centuries ago.

The Rigveda is divided into 10 mandalas (books), of which the 10th is believed to be somewhat later than the others. Each mandala consists of a number of hymns, and most mandalas are ascribed to priestly families. The texts include invocations to the gods, ritual hymns, battle hymns, and narrative dialogues. The 9th mandala is a collection of all the hymns dedicated to soma, the unidentified hallucinogenic juice that was drunk on ritual occasions.Few events of political importance are related in the hymns. Perhaps the most impressive is a description of the battle of the 10 chiefs or kings: when Sudas, the king of the preeminent Bharatas of southern Punjab, replaced his priest Vishvamitra with Vasistha, Vishvamitra organized a confederacy of 10 tribes, including the Puru, Yadu, Turvashas, Anu, and Druhyu, which went to war against Sudas. The Bharatas survived and continued to play an important role in historical tradition. In the Rigveda, the head of a clan is called the rajac this term has commonly been translated as "king," but recent scholarship suggests "chief" as more appropriate in this early context. If such a distinction is recognized, the entire corpus of Vedic literature can be interpreted as recording the gradual evolution of the concept of kingship from earlier clan organization. Among the clans there is little distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, but the hymns refer to a people, called the Dasas, who are said to have had an alien language and a dark complexion and to worship strange gods. Some Dasas were rich in cattle and lived in fortified places (pur) that were often attacked by the god Indra. In addition to the Dasas, there were the wealthy Panis, who were hostile and stole cattle.The Early Vedic was the period of transition from nomadic pastoralism to settled village communities intermixing pastoral and agrarian economies. Cattle were initially the dominant commodity, as indicated by the use of the word gotra ("cowpen") to signify the endogamous kinship group and gavisti ("searching for cows") to denote war. A patriarchal extended family structure gave rise to the practice of niyoga ("levirate"), which permitted a widow to marry her husband's brother. A community of families constituted a grama. The term vish is generally interpreted to mean "clan." Clan assemblies appear to have been frequent in the early stages. Various categories of assemblies are mentioned, such as vidatha, samiti, and sabha, although the precise distinctions among these categories are not clear. The clan also gathered for the yajña, the Vedic sacrifice conducted by the priest, whose ritual actions ensured prosperity and imbued the chief with valour. The chief was primarily a war leader with responsibility for protecting the clan, for which function he received a bali ("tribute"). Punishment was exacted according to a principle resembling the wergild ("man payment") of ancient Germanic law, whereby the social rank of a wronged or slain man determined the compensation due him or his survivors.