वेदveda · knowledge
The Vedas and the roots of yoga
4 min read · Updated October 17, 2026 · sources checked October 17, 2026
In short
The Vedas are the oldest scriptures of Hinduism: four collections, the Ṛg-, Yajur-, Sāma- and Atharvaveda, composed in Vedic Sanskrit from roughly 1500 BCE and transmitted orally. Each has four layers: hymns (saṃhitā), ritual prose (brāhmaṇa), forest texts (āraṇyaka) and Upanishads. The Vedas use yuj for yoking horses and mention ascetics, but describe no yoga method.
Veda means knowledge
Veda, from the root vid, to know, means knowledge, and above all sacred knowledge. For Hindu tradition the Vedas are śruti, "what was heard": revealed to the seers (ṛṣi) rather than written by authors. For historians they are the oldest literature of India, composed in an archaic form of Sanskrit by poets and priests of the northwest of the subcontinent and passed down by memory for centuries before anyone wrote them down.
Four Vedas, four layers
| Veda | What it contains | In daily practice today |
|---|---|---|
| Ṛgveda | Hymns of praise to the gods: Agni, Indra, Soma, Savitṛ… in ten books (maṇḍala) | the Gāyatrī mantra, many mantras used in pūjā |
| Yajurveda | Formulas recited by the priest who performs the sacrifice; a Black and a White recension | formulas still recited in Vedic rites and fire offerings |
| Sāmaveda | Verses, mostly from the Ṛgveda, set to melodies for chanting | the roots of Indian music, according to tradition |
| Atharvaveda | Hymns and spells for daily life: healing, protection, marriage, house | home rites; the Māṇḍūkya and Muṇḍaka Upanishads |
Each Veda grew in layers, from the oldest to the latest:
- Saṃhitā, the collection of verses (mantra): what we usually call "the Veda".
- Brāhmaṇa, prose explaining the meaning and performance of the ritual.
- Āraṇyaka, the "forest" texts, reflections on the ritual's inner meaning.
- Upaniṣad, the philosophical dialogues on the self and brahman: see the Upanishads.
In numbers. In Theodor Aufrecht's edition (1877), the Ṛgveda has 1,028 hymns and 10,552 verses. Its composition is usually dated between about 1500 and 1000 BCE; the Indologist Michael Witzel places its codification around 1200-1000 BCE. Its text has been handed down orally with such precision that UNESCO inscribed the tradition of Vedic chanting as intangible heritage of humanity in 2008.
Three Vedic verses yogis meet
The Gāyatrī (Ṛgveda 3.62.10). Recited in the traditional prayers at dawn, noon and dusk (sandhyā), and the verse most yogis know from the Veda.
तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यं भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि । धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥
tat savitur vareṇyaṃ bhargo devasya dhīmahi | dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt ||
May we receive that excellent radiance of the god Savitṛ, who shall inspire our thoughts.
Word by word, metre and chanting are on the Gāyatrī mantra page.
One truth, many names (Ṛgveda 1.164.46).
एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति
ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti
What is one, the inspired poets call by many names.
The hymn of creation (Ṛgveda 10.129.7). A hymn that ends with a question rather than an answer, already the spirit of the Upanishads:
इयं विसृष्टिर्यत आबभूव यदि वा दधे यदि वा न । यो अस्याध्यक्षः परमे व्योमन्सो अङ्ग वेद यदि वा न वेद ॥
iyaṃ visṛṣṭir yata ābabhūva yadi vā dadhe yadi vā na | yo asyādhyakṣaḥ parame vyoman so aṅga veda yadi vā na veda ||
Where this creation came from, whether it was made or not, the one who watches over it in the highest heaven surely knows. Or perhaps he does not know.
What the Vedas say about yoga, and what they do not
What they say. The verb yuj, from which yoga comes, is everywhere in the Ṛgveda, in its concrete sense: to yoke horses to a chariot. Poets apply it to the mind as well: "they yoke the mind and they yoke their thoughts" (yuñjate mana uta yuñjate dhiyaḥ), says a hymn to Savitṛ (Ṛgveda 5.81.1), though the yoking here serves the sacrifice, not a method of meditation. As Gavin Flood notes, the Saṃhitās mention ascetics on the edge of society: the silent muni and the long-haired keśin of hymn 10.136, "girdled with the wind" (quoted on the history of yoga), and the vrātya of the Atharvaveda. Austerity (tapas) is a creative power. Historians of yoga such as Knut A. Jacobsen add that techniques for controlling breath and vital energies are mentioned in the Atharvaveda and in the Brāhmaṇas.
What they do not say. The Vedic hymns teach no postures, no method of meditation and no definition of yoga as a discipline of the mind. The Indologist Karel Werner, who reads the keśin hymn as an early portrait of yogis, himself stresses that the evidence the Vedas give of them is "scanty and indirect" (1977). The first definitions come later, in the Kaṭha Upanishad (the steady holding of the senses, 6.11), then in the Bhagavad Gita and Patañjali's Yoga Sutras.
The Upanishads themselves take a distance. The Muṇḍaka (1.1.4-5) distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: the lower, which includes the four Vedas and their auxiliary sciences (phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metre and astronomy), and the higher, "by which the imperishable is reached".
"Yoga comes from the Vedas": the honest answer
You will often read that yoga is "5,000 years old" and "Vedic". The sources support something more nuanced:
- The Indus seals. A seated figure on a seal from Mohenjo-daro was read in the twentieth century as a yogi in meditation, or a proto-Śiva. Many recent scholars reject this reading; nothing in the undeciphered Indus script tells us what the figure is doing.
- Vedic and non-Vedic roots. Traditional Hinduism holds the Vedas as the source of all spiritual knowledge. Some historians, such as Richard Gombrich and Geoffrey Samuel, see the ascetic and meditative movements (śramaṇa) that shaped early yoga as originating in the non-Vedic culture of the eastern Ganges basin. Others, like Thomas McEvilley, propose a composite origin. Gavin Flood warns that opposing the two is too simple: there are continuities between the Vedic world and the renouncers.
- What is widely accepted. The vocabulary of yoking, the figure of the silent ascetic, the power of sacred sound and of tapas are Vedic. Yoga named and defined as a discipline of the mind first appears in writing in the Upanishads, from the second half of the first millennium BCE, when early Buddhist and Jain texts were also describing meditative practices.
Good to know
A good test for any claim about yoga's age: ask which text says it, and when that text was written. "Vedic roots" is true for the vocabulary and the sacred sound; "taught in the Vedas" is not true for postures or meditation methods.
Where to start
You do not need to read the Ṛgveda to practise yoga. Start with what the tradition itself kept closest to practice: the Gāyatrī, the Vedic verses chanted in mantras, and the Upanishads, the part of the Veda that speaks most directly to the meditator. Ralph T. H. Griffith's translation of the Ṛgveda (1896) is in the public domain if you want to explore further.
Our book The Upanishads for Yogis opens with a chapter "From the Vedas to the Upanishads", then gives the passages that shaped yoga, in Devanāgarī, transliteration and our own translation.
Questions people ask
What are the Vedas?
Veda means knowledge. The Vedas are four collections of Sanskrit hymns, chants and ritual formulas, with the prose texts and Upanishads attached to them. Hindu tradition regards them as revealed (śruti), heard by ancient seers rather than composed by authors.
How many Vedas are there, and what are they?
Four: the Ṛgveda (hymns of praise), the Yajurveda (formulas for the sacrifice, in a Black and a White recension), the Sāmaveda (verses set to melodies for chanting) and the Atharvaveda (hymns and incantations for daily life, healing and protection).
How long are the Vedas?
Very long. The Ṛgveda alone, in Aufrecht's edition of 1877, has 1,028 hymns and 10,552 verses in ten books. With the other collections, the Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Upanishads, the Vedic corpus runs to many thousands of pages.
Is the Rigveda the oldest book in the world?
It is the oldest text of India and one of the oldest in any Indo-European language, usually dated between about 1500 and 1000 BCE. Older written texts exist elsewhere, in Mesopotamia and Egypt; the Ṛgveda is exceptional because it was preserved orally, word for word, for three thousand years.
How do people learn the Vedas?
Traditionally, by ear, from a teacher, through recitation methods that repeat each word in several orders so that nothing is lost. UNESCO inscribed the tradition of Vedic chanting on its list of the intangible heritage of humanity in 2008. For reading, translations of the Ṛgveda by Griffith (1896) are in the public domain.
Sources
- Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), entry veda (Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries) checked October 17, 2026
- Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), entry yuj, to yoke or harness horses (RV) checked October 17, 2026
- Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā, ed. Theodor Aufrecht (Bonn, 1877), Sanskrit text, GRETIL: 1.164.46, 3.62.10, 5.81.1, 10.129, 10.136 checked October 17, 2026
- Rigveda, Wikipedia (1,028 hymns and 10,552 verses in Aufrecht's edition; dating c. 1500-1000 BCE; codification after Witzel) checked October 17, 2026
- Vedas, Wikipedia (four Vedas and four layers; oral transmission) checked October 17, 2026
- Yoga, Wikipedia, history section (Werner 1977, Flood 1996, Samuel, Gombrich, McEvilley; the Pashupati seal) checked October 17, 2026
- Geoffrey Samuel, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2008) DOI 10.1017/CBO9780511818820 checked October 17, 2026
- Karel Werner, Yoga and the Ṛg Veda: An Interpretation of the Keśin Hymn (RV 10, 136), Religious Studies 13(3), 1977, pp. 289-302 DOI 10.1017/S0034412500010076 checked October 17, 2026
- UNESCO, Tradition of Vedic chanting, inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity checked October 17, 2026
- Ralph T. H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigveda, vol. 1, 2nd edition (Benares, 1896), Internet Archive checked October 17, 2026
- Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, Sanskrit text, 1.1.4-5 (sanskritdocuments.org) checked October 17, 2026