India has always been known as a ‘knowledge society’. Derived from the verbal root ‘vid’ meaning ‘to know’, the Vedas as ‘shruti’, are considered the fountainhead of what came to be known as the Indic Knowledge Tradition (IKT, also knowns as the Hindu Intellectual Tradition). According to the tradition, the ‘rishis’ composed the Vedic hymns, the mantras, out of some outworldly experience-perception. These hymns “were and are always there unchanging beyond our common world of change”, according to N Kazanas. Hence the Vedic mantras are called ‘nitya’ and ‘apaurusheya’ (eternal and not created by humans).
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