You are in a section of this web site which gives accented examples of the Vedic hymns with full diacritic markings. These images were added to enable critical analysis of the words in the word search.

This hymn, and some 290 others which I have included in this site thus far, is from the earliest--"beginning"--portions of the Rig Veda. Though it comes from the 2nd through 7th books, as it turns out, these are the oldest (c. 1500 b.c.e.) from the text, with ideas and themes dating even as much as two millenia older. It is the largest text of its kind, and the oldest of such size, currently available to humankind. It traces the earliest thoughts of ancient South Asian minds on life, death, victory, success, and--important most for this study--self-hood or identity.

I have been tracing, in the word search, line-by-line through some 500 hymns thus far, about 10 words which marked the earliest beginnings of the idea of identity known to us. Profound changes in society, the use of language to shape peoples' worldview, the origins of language theory, and even the study of the mind can be found when this key core of words is followed. India has long studied and refined the philosophy of the mind and identity. Most studies, however, have been based on later Vedic literature and, particularly, the profound philosophy of Shankara- in the 8th century, c.e. My study looks back at the time before these later developments.




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