The Rig Veda: Early Hindu Hymns

Synopsis
To be clear, when I say Rig Veda I refer, as in the western traditional way, to the Rig Veda Samnita.
The Rig Veda is a collection of religious hymns and are the oldest, in what became, the Hindu religion. They were originally written in Sanskrit. It is broken into 10 Mandalas, or chapters, each containing a collection of hymns.
These hymns cover a multitude of subjects including:

• Creation by an unnamed creator
• The dividing of humans and the start of the caste system
• Death and Yama king of the dead
• Agni as the first human
• Introduction of the hallucinogen Soma
• Introduction of Indra the king of the gods
• Hymns to:
• storm gods
• sun gods
• sky and earth
• The place of women
• Spells and prayers for giving birth and for healing sickness.

Reflections
The Rig Veda showed me that Hindus revering cows goes right back to its infancy. One of the reasons they have such a view on cows, is that it relates to their creation myth and to one of their gods.
They also seem to have a very high place for heat and fire with it receiving direct praise in at least one of the hymns.
It seems a little odd to me that the last mandala deals in spells and invocations, as this feels like a tangent to the rest of the mandalas. These are focused around the gods and setting everything in its place where as the spells and invocations are more about what a human can do to try to achieve certain outcomes.

Comparisons
Reading the Rig Veda made me realise just how readable the Old testament of the Bible is. The Rig Veda took a fair bit of puzzling out and there were passages, I note, that even the translator didn't understand what was going on.
It is interesting to see a different creation myth and to see that both the Rig Veda and the Bible have an active creator. However the Rig Veda has an unnamed creator that is next to never mentioned, after the creation account.

Have you read the The Rig Veda? If so what did you think?
Does this inspire you to read the The Rig Veda? If so tell me what you think when your done!

Buy a copy of the Rig Veda