Brahmana

Brahmana

The Brāhmaṇas (Devanagari: ब्राह्मणम्) are part of the Hindu śruti literature. They are commentaries on the four Vedas, detailing the proper performance of rituals.

Each Vedic shakha (school) had its own Brahmana, and it is not known how many of these texts existed during the Mahajanapadas period. A total of 19 Brahmanas are extant at least in their entirety: two associated with the Rigveda, six with the Yajurveda, ten with the Samaveda and one with the Atharvaveda. Additionally, there are a handful of fragmentarily preserved texts. They vary greatly in length; the edition of the Shatapatha Brahmana fills five volumes of the Sacred Books of the East, while the Vamsa Brahmana can be printed on a single page.

The Brahmanas are glosses on the mythology, philosophy and rituals of the Vedas. Whereas the Rig Veda expressed uncertainty and was not dogmatic, the Brahmanas express confidence in the infallible power of the mantras. The Brahmanas hold the view that, if expressed correctly, the texts will not fail. They were composed during a period of urbanisation and considerable social change.During the first millennium bce the people who composed the Veda gradually abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and began to build. During this time the rituals became more complex, giving rise to developments in mathematics, geometry, animal anatomy and grammar.

The Brahmanas were seminal in the development of later Indian thought and scholarship, including Hindu philosophy, predecessors of Vedanta, law, astronomy, geometry, linguistics (Pāṇini), the concept of Karma, or the stages in life such as brahmacarya, grihastha and eventually, sannyasi. Some Brahmanas contain sections that are Aranyakas or Upanishads in their own right.

The language of the Brahmanas is a separate stage of Vedic Sanskrit, younger than the text of the samhitas (the mantra text of the Vedas proper) but for the most part older than the text of the Sutras. It dates to 900- 700 BC. with some of the younger Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana), dating to about the 6th century BC. Historically, this corresponds to the emergence of great kingdoms or Mahajanapadas out of the earlier tribal kingdoms during the later Vedic period.