Hindu Religious Texts

This is not a comprehensive list and is only meant to be indicative in nature. It may not be absolutely accurate.

Shruti (revealed truth) :

The Vedas:

The Vedas c. 2000 BC (?) are the oldest Hindu religious texts. They are believed to be shruti or divinely heard / revealed and are therefore considered to be perfect. They are:

1. Rig Veda: Hymns of Praise
2. Yajur Veda: Formulae for the performance of sacrifices (yajna)
3. Sama Veda: Melodies to be sung during worship and yajna
4. Atharva Veda: Magic formulae largely outside the scope of yajna

Each Veda has four parts:

1. Sanhitas: metrical hymns (mantras)
2. Brahmanas : prose explaining the hymns
3. Aranyakas: 'forest books' / treatises for hermits and saints
4. Upanishads / Vedanta: philosophical treatises

The Aranyakas and Upanishads are sometimes considered appendices of the Brahmanas.


Supplementary literature related to the Vedas:

The six Vedangas (sometimes considered smriti) expound the sciences required to understand and apply the Vedas.

1. Kalp (ritual) Srauta, Grihya, Dharma and Sulba by various sages
2. Siksha (pronunciation / phonetics) of Panini
3. Vyakaran (grammar) of Panini
4. Nirukti (etymology) of Yaska
5. Chandas (metre) of Pingalacharya
6. Jyotishi (astronomy/astrology) of Garga

The four Upavedas (usually considered smriti) deal with the four traditional arts and sciences.

1. Ayurved (medicine)
2. Gandharvaved (music and dance)
3. Dhanurved (warfare)
4. Shilpaved (architecture)

Smriti (realised truth) :

Smriti is secondary and changeable. It is not as old as Shruti and is not entirely religious; it speaks of secular matters as well e.g. folklore etc.. It is authoritative only as far as it conforms to shruti and includes:

• (a) Shastra: law books e.g. Manu Smriti c. 200 BC, Yajnavalkya Smriti c. 300 AD, Narada Smriti c. 400 AD), treatises on administration e.g. Arthashastra by Kautilya etc.
  

(b) Nibandh: commentaries on individual shastras c. 700 to 1700 AD

• Itihas: histories or epics viz. the Mahabharata, Valmiki-Ramayana, Yogavasishtha, Harivamsa

• Agam: mainly theological philosophy dealing with knowledge (jnan), ritual (kriya), concentration (yoga), worship (charya) and is of three kinds:
  (a) Sakta Agamas or Tantras which glorify Devi (Goddess)
  (b) Vaishnava Agamas or Pancharatra Agamas which glorify Lord Vishnu
  (c) Saiva Agamas which glorify Lord ShivaSakta Agamas or Tantras which glorify Devi (Goddess)

• Puran: history, legends and myths about Gods, sages and kings freely mixed. There are eighteen main Puranas and many subsidiary 'Upapuranas'. The main Puranas include Matsya Purana, Padma Purana, Naradiya Purana, Vishnu Purana, Varaha Purana, Vamana Purana, Bhavishya Purana, Brahma Purana, Shiva Purana, Devi Purana, Skanda Purana and Markandeya Purana.

• (a) Sutra: proverbs etc. c. 800 BC to 200 BC e.g. Ashtadhyayi composed by Panini, Naradbhakti Sutra, Sandilyabhakti Sutra
  (b) Vritti: a short explanation of a sutra e.g. is Bodhayana's Vritti on the Brahma Sutra
  (c) Bhashya: an elaborate commentary on a Sutra e.g. Mahabhashya by Patanjali on the Vyakaran (grammar) Sutra of Panini
  (d) Tippani: Less orthodox than Vritti, it explains difficult words and phrases in the original sutra. e.g. are Kaiyata's Tippani on the Mahabhashya of Patanjali
  (e) Varttika: a critical analysis of a Bhashya e.g. Varttika of Katyayana on Panini's Sutra
  
• Darshana constitute the six schools of Hindu philosophical thought.

1. Yoga by Patanjali
2. Nyaya by Gautama
3. Vaiseshika by Kanada
4. Sankhya by Kapila
5. Purva Mimamsa by Jaimini
6. Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta by Badarayana or Vyasa

Women in Hindu Texts

Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere); or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a dutiful wife. [Manu V.154] (c. 200 CE)

He who addresses the wife of another man at a Tirtha, outside the village, in a forest, or at the confluence of rivers, suffer the punishment for adulterous acts (samgrahana). [Manu VIII:356]

When a woman, proud of her relations or abilities, deceives her husband with another man, the king should ensure that she be torn apart by dogs in place much frequented by people. [Manu VIII:371]
Earlier, if a husband accused his wife of infidelity she had to 'pass through fire' and any burns were a sign of guilt. This was based on Ram's conduct towards his wife, Sita as narrated at the end of the Ramayana.

A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property ; the wealth which they earn is (acquired) for him to whom they belong. [Manu VIII.416]

Her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth and her sons protect her in old age; a woman is never fit for independence. [Manu IX.3]

Manu allotted to women a love of their bed, seat and ornament, and impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice and bad conduct. [Manu IX.17]

Women have no business with the text of the veda. [Manu IX.18]

Though a man may have accepted a damsel in due form, he may abandon her if she be blemished, diseased or deflowered, and if she has been fraudulently given to him. [Manu IX.72]

The best partner for a man was one-third his age: A man, aged thirty years, shall marry a maiden of twelve who pleases him, or a man of twenty-four a girl of eight years of age; if (the performance of) his duties would otherwise be impeded, he must marry sooner. [Manu IX.94]

The following eight qualities are characteristic qualities of women. They are: uttering lies, unsteadiness, deceit, stupidity, greed, impurity, wickedness and rashness. [Sukra III.163]

The friendship of women does not last long. Their nature is like that of the hyena. [Rig Veda X.95.10]

And as women, Sudras and the inferior members of the twice-born classes were unfit for hearing the Veda and were infatuated with the blessings arising from the ceremonies, the muni, with a vision to their felicity, in his kindness, composed the narrative called the Mahabharata. [Bhag. Pur. I.4.25] (900 CE)

Hence they reject a female child when born, and take up a male. [Taittirya Samhita VI.5.10.3]

Let a female child be born somewhere else; here, let a male child be born. [Atharva Veda VI.2.3]

Random Thoughts on ITPA

This is part of a reply to a friend who's a Human Rights researcher who'd asked me what I thought of the ITPA amendments.

Prostitution shouldn't exist in an ideal society but the fact is that we don't live in a society which even remotely resembles Utopia, and as such, I believe that prostitution should be legalised since that would at the very least be a mechanism to afford some sort of protection to sex-workers who are, as a group, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

ITPA (Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1986), even as it stands today, has failed in its objective --- it tends to create human rights abuses and does not prevent them. Making prostitution illegal and passing the proposed amendments would be a human rights disaster to my mind.

Today, in this country, prostitution in itself is legal (although trafficking and pimping are illegal) but Commercial Sex Workers are treated like criminals with no rights nonetheless. While ITPA itself does not make prostitution illegal, it might as well have done so since it criminalises the activities required to carry it out and does nothing to help. It makes it illegal to solicit in public places, keep a brothel or allow premises to be used as a brothel, procure a person to work as a prostitute or in immoral trafficking. In addition to this, the law punishes a person for living on the earning of prostitution by saying, "any person over the age of 18 years who knowingly lives, wholly or in part, on the earnings of prostitution shall be punishable with imprisonment. If her partner, parent or adult child is dependent on her income for survival, they are liable to prosecution." Evn though it has been proposed to scrap Section 8 of the Act which deals with the offece of solicitation, God help CSWs if prostitution itself is made illegal because nobody else will.

What I find most scary is that the proposed sections 5A, 5B and 5C not only fail to segregate trafficking from sex work but in fact integrate the two. I think that if at all the law is to be amended to help CSWs, the definition of pimps should be made wider. For example, it should include 'marriage-brokers' who arrange the kind of marriages where women are made wives but treated as unpaid servants by day and sex-slaves by night.

The current amendments remind me of the early Domestic Violence Bills which would have done more harm than good. Domestic violence itself was, for example, not defined --- Under Section 4 (1) of the 2002 Bill, Domestic violence, for the purposes of this Act was defined as, "any conduct of the respondent shall constitute domestic violence if he (a) habitually assaults or makes the life of the aggrieved person miserable by cruelty of conduct even if such conduct does not amount to physical ill-treatment; etc." --- and there was no one to define what 'habitually' meant. Once a day? Once a week? Once a fortnight?

These amendments, like the Domestic Violence proposals, will need to be significantly changed before they can claim to be of any benefit to Commercial Sex Workers. As they stand right now, although they might so a little good, they are far more likely to a lot of harm.