Scholars stress on relevance and importance of Vedas in modern life

Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams and Sri Venkateswara Vedic University had organised a three day international vedic seminar. The purpose behind organising vedic seminar was to prove importance and benefits of Vedas in todays modern world.

From various states of the country around 1000 academics gathered for the seminar and presented papers on the Vedas in Sanskrit, Telugu and English. The papers written in English were presented at the Max Muller Vedika on Vedic University campus and mainly stressed on importance of Vedas in modern lifestyle.

While focusing on relevance of Vedas the scholars had explained various aspects in papers. ‘Ayurveda: Its Vedic roots and foundational ideas’, ‘The pancha bhutas: Their origin and role in understanding the physical world’, ‘The scope of vedic sciences and contemporary relevance’, ‘Vedic mathematics - language of space’, ‘Mathematical concept in vedic scripture’, ‘Plants in vedic literature: their scientific and social dimensions’, ‘Mimamsa Sastra and Computer Science’, ‘Astronomy in Vedic lore’ and ‘Open issues in using unicode for representation of vedic text’ were the topics that scholars had included.

Vedic University, SV College of Ayurveda, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, SV Institute of Sculpture and Temple Architecture, and SV Central Library of TTD had together organised an exhibition which was the major attraction of the seminar. The presentations at the exhibition were prepared by the students of the Vedic University students with due assistance from their faculty.

The vedic culture hall hosted various posters and models elaborating the vedic rituals, traditions in detail along with yagas and utensil used during the rituals giving out their relevance. The RSVP hall displayed scripts and manuscripts of day to day vedic science.

The most attractive section was held at the Ayurveda hall which drew maximum crowd. Demonstrations regarding several aspects of Ayurveda which in today’s modern science still remain a mystery were displayed. Dr Dattatreya, HoD Surgery, Ayurvedic College and Hospital stated that, “Ayurveda is the perfect example for application of Vedic sutras. Maharishis like Sushrutha and Charaka in the days of yore had extracted knowledge from various sutras of the four Vedas for the health and well being of human race and over a period of time it came to be known as Ayurveda.’’

GP Rami Reddy, HoD of Fundamental Principles of Ayurvedic College explained the term of ‘Panchabhautic’, meaning that whole universe and even human body is made out of five basic elements. He further explained

“...however, one should understand that when Ayurveda says ‘Prithvi’, it is not just earth but also means to indicate the solid state. The Ayurveda sutras may seem simple strands of hymns, but they contain vast knowledge.”

Posters of Dola Yantra, Patala Yantra, Katchapa Yantra of Rasa Sala demonstrated that in Ayurveda, knowledge of creating life saving drugs out of poisonous metals and minerals was well practiced from ancient times.