The Encyclopedia of World Religions

464 S Vatican Councils

usually play a much larger role in their religious lives. HISTORY The Veda is known as sruti, “what is heard.” Tra ditional Hindus believe that it contains the sounds that arose at the very moment of creation, heard, remembered, and repeated by the sages. The Veda as we know it is an entire library of literature that rose in conjunction with the practice of public sacrifices in ancient India. Its oldest por tions are written in a distinctive language, Vedic, which is an older relative of classical Sanskrit. On some interpretations the oldest portions of the Veda reveal evidence of migration and conquest. European and American scholarship has tended to associate these passages with the “Aryan invasion” of India around 1500 B . C . E . Some today dispute whether this invasion ever occurred and date the Veda much earlier. The Vedic texts were preserved orally for cen turies. Indeed, they were written down for the first time only within the last 500 years. Indian schol ars developed very elaborate methods for preserv ing the texts unchanged. The reliability of these methods seems to have been confirmed by modern scholarship. For generations students memorized certain Vedic phrases that seemed to be meaning less. Historical linguists have now recovered their meanings by coming to understand the process of linguistic development. The Veda has been preserved by several different sakhas or schools of priests, each of which looks to a sage as its founder. As a result, there are different versions of the major texts. CONTENTS Leaving aside the many kinds of supplementary lit erature, we may say that there are four main strata or chronological layers of Vedic literature. The oldest texts are the samhitas (roughly 1500–1000 B . C . E .). They are collections of RITUAL formulae that were used by the priests in performing the public sacrifices. Because different priests had different ritual tasks, there are four major samhita collec tions. The oldest of all, the Rig-Veda(-samhita), is a

highly respected D ALAI L AMA , its best-known expo nent, but also to the subtle psychological insight it seems to many to employ. Further reading: John Blofeld, The Way of Power (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970); Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Robert A. Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (New York: Bantam, 1994). Vatican Councils Two councils of the Roman Catholic Church held in Vatican City about a hundred years apart. In C HRISTIANITY a council is a meeting of bishops from all over the world to make decisions on teaching and practice. Vatican City is a small, independent state that the Pope rules within the city of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church has held two councils in the Vatican. They contrast sharply. The first Vatican Council (1869–70)—Vatican I —rejected much of the social, political, and phil osophical thinking of modern Europe. Its most important single act was to establish the doctrine of papal infallibility. According to this doctrine, when the Pope makes religious pronouncements, he cannot be mistaken. The second Vatican Council (1962–65)—Vatican II —took just the opposite approach. It emphasized the need for the Catholic Church to modernize. For example, Vatican II encouraged Catholics to say the Mass in the language that they used in everyday life. Until that time Catholics had said the Mass in Latin. Vatican II also encouraged congregations to participate in the Mass rather than simply observ ing it. Catholics around the world have widely adopted these recommendations. Veda (or Vedas) Sanskrit for “wisdom”; the col lection of the most sacred texts in H INDUISM . The position of the Veda is unlike that of the B IBLE in J UDAISM and C HRISTIANITY or the Q UR ’ AN in I SLAM . Although all Hindus respect the authority of the Vedas, other texts, such as the EPICS and P URANAS ,