Question

The oldest of the Vedas is ___.

Answer 1

Hint: The Vedas are a set of religious texts that dates back to ancient India. The books, written in Vedic Sanskrit, are the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature as well as Hinduism's oldest scriptures. The Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, and the Atharvaveda are the four Vedas.

Complete answer:
The Vedas instruct us to seek truth and consider nothing but the Truth, which is one: ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti, though the wise explain it in various ways. Reality, or sat, is synonymous with being and being, as well as existence and living in all of its forms.

The Vedas are divided into four parts (turya), each of which has its own canon:
Rigveda: The oldest extant Indic text is the Rigveda Samhita. It consists of ten books with a total of 1,028 Vedic Sanskrit hymns and 10,600 chapters (Sanskrit: mandalas). The hymns pay homage to Rigvedic gods. The Rigveda is organised around a set of principles.

Samaveda: The Samaveda Samhita is made up of 1549 stanzas that are almost entirely drawn from the Rigveda (except for 75 mantras). While its earliest sections are thought to date from the Rigvedic era, the current collection dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, roughly contemporaneous with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda, between c. 1200 and 1000 BCE or "slightly later."

Yajurveda: Prose mantras make up the Yajurveda Samhita. It is a set of ritual offering formulas recited by a priest as a person performed ritual acts such as those performed before the yajna fire. The Yajurveda's core text dates from the end of the second millennium BCE, making it younger than the Rigveda and approximately contemporaneous with the Atharvaveda, Rigvedic Khilani, and Smaveda. The Yajurveda hymns are dated to the early Indian Iron Age, between c. 1200 and 800 BCE, which corresponds to the early Kuru Kingdom, according to Witzel.

Atharvaveda: The text 'belonging to the Atharvan and Angirasa poets' is known as the Artharvaveda Samhita. It contains about 760 hymns, with about 160 of them being shared with the Rigveda. The majority of the verses are metrical, although there are a few parts that are written in prose. The Paippalda and the aunakya are two separate versions of the text that have survived into modern times.
Hence, the Rigveda is the oldest of the Vedas. It was written sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC.

Note: The Vedas are called ruti ("what is heard"), in contrast to other religious texts, which are called smti ("what is remembered"). The Vedas are considered apaurueya, which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless" revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation, according to Hindus. Since the second millennium BCE, the Vedas have been passed down orally.