A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"ManTHE RELIGION WE ARE BORN IN. 535come, when in every home the Veda will be worshippedtog^her with the Salagrama, the household Deity,the young, the old, and the women will inaugurate the wor-, *ship of the Vdas. ,/I h#ve no faith in the theories acVanced by WesternSavaitts with regard to the Ve^as. They are to-dayxrag the antiquity of the Vedas at a certain period,and^again to-morrow upsetting it and bringing it onethousand year& forward, and so on. However, aboutthe Puranas, T have told you that they are authoritativejnly in so far as they agree with the Vedas, otherwisenot. In the Puranas we find many things which do notwith the Vedas. Asagree for instance, it is written in thePu^nas that some one lived ten thousand years, anotherone, twenty thousand years, bu in the Vedas we find :lives, indeed, a hundred years."Which are we toaccept in this case ? Certainly the Vedas. Notwithstandingstatements like these, ,1do not depreciate the Puranas.They contain many beautiful and illuminating teachingsand words of wisdom on Yoga, Bhakti, Jnan^-, and Karma;those of course, we should accept. Then there are theTantras. The real meaning of ithe word Tantra is Shastra,as for example, KapilaTantra. But the word Tantra isgenerally used in a limited sense. Under the sway ofkings who took up Buddhism and preached broadcast thedoctrine of Ahimsti, the performances of the Vedic YdgaYajnas .became a thing of the ?past, and no one could *killany animal in sacrifice, for fear of the king. But subsequently amongst the Buddhists themselves who wereconverts from Hinduism the best parts of these Ydga,Yajnas were taken up, and practised in secret. From thesesprung up the Tantras. Barring some of the abominablethings in the Tantras, such as the Vdmdchra &c., the