The Brahmanas are commentaries on the four Vedas detailing the proper ways of performing rituals. Basically Vedas relied on the truth content while Brahmanas proposes infallible power of mantras in their correct pronunciations. In other words, content having been taken from Vedas; the focus here is on the process for execution to get complete advantage of the magical powers of the mantras.
The Brahmanas were very advantageous in the development of later Indian thought and scholarship, including Hindu philosophy, predecessors of Vedanta, law, astronomy, geometry, linguistic, the concept of Karma, or the stages in life such as brahmacharya, grihastha and eventually, sannyasa. Some Brahmanas contain sections that are Aranyakas or Upanishads in their own right.
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| Brahmanas |
The language of the Brahmanas is a next stage of Vedic Sanskrit, which is younger than the text of the Samhitas (the mantra texts of the Vedas proper), but for the most part is older than the texts of the Sutras. Some of the younger Brahmanas (such as the Shatapatha Brahmana) are estimated to have been written around 6th century BC or late Vedic period. This roughly corresponds to the period of emergence of great maha-jan-padas or kingdoms out of the earlier tribal kingdoms.
The Brahmanas got composed during a revolutionary social and intellectual transformation of urbanization post decline of Sindhu Sarasvati civilization. By this time, there was a significant geographical and social shift in the history of India. These texts start to mention the Ganga Yamuna plains of Doab, which is an area that is covered in detail in the long poem of Mahabharata. The main cities finding reference in here are Hastinapur, Kashi (capital of Koshala/Videha) and Kaushambhi. The language of Brahmanas is bit different than used in Vedas suggesting a good time difference in the composition. The Brahmanas basically cite Vedic verses and explain them by describing the circumstances under which those were first created. But many stories retold in here have under gone transformation impacted by the social changes in the interim period. In that context, the Brahmanas are a step forward in evolving and continuing the Hinduism constantly borrowing from the past and responding and recreating newer texts incorporating the changes that took place in the actual world.
This was the time when people have started settling down in their well-built houses as against nomad nature in the early Vedic time. Trade has started in through the river routes in north India. Forests and minerals were getting converted into resources. The Vedic people moved from Punjab up to Magadha and in a back flow from east to west area of Gujarat. Agricultural surplus allowed formation of many towns and cities all along the Ganga and Yamuna. The agricultural surplus resulted in a new kind of economic power resulting in higher importance of Vaishyas in the social structure. Many also started accumulating notable wealth cutting across the earlier social orders.
More surpluses meant bigger kings, which meant bigger sacrifices, which in turn meant more elaborate rites and celebrations necessitating the focus on vidhi vidhan covered in the Brahmanas. The kings also had to spend increasingly larger amounts on maintaining armies and other administrative systems, which were not important earlier. This resulted in squeezing the money available for priests and sacrifices. Henceforth, financial condition of priests were never to be similar to past.
The Brahmanas era also witnessed big change in meat eating practices of Hindus. Meat eating is actually linked to non-acceptance of Ahimsa which slowly became a basic foundation in area where agriculture grew much better and capable of sustaining human life. Eating meat got accepted only when the meat was from a sacrifice. At this time in history; killing of a cow or bull got equated to expelling the embryo from own wife. This change in meat eating appears to be a result of philosophical considerations, method of livestock breeding, easy use for utilizing the surplus produce from cattle unlike in the past, etc. arising from the urbanization in the basin of Ganga Valley.
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