New Approach to the Vedas

The Vedas, over the centuries, were interpreted in different forms by different sampradayas, mystics, legalists and religious reformers. It has been subjected to interpretation and re-interpretation by Vedic scholars such as Adi Shankaracharya, Sayanacharya, Mahidhara, Dayananda Saraswati and so forth. This small volume by Coomaraswamy is a comparative study of the Vedas with other traditions, such as Christianity, Gnosticism, Sumerian, Sufi and other religious traditions, which is a modern approach adopted for understanding relationships of non-Indian and Indian values. The text follows a pattern comprising verses and the commentaries made by the author. The book contains the selected verses taken from the Rigveda, Brhadaranayaka and the Maitri Upanishads, written on issues, such as cosmogony, ontology and teleology. Besides, Coomaraswamy offers his commentary based on the philological aspect, as the writers of the Vedas did not have previous knowledge of metaphysics, but had developed ontological knowledge from the existing Sanskrit sources.