The Rigveda
1,028 hymns composed orally and transmitted for three thousand years without writing.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 400 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
The Rigveda is composed in archaic Sanskrit from around 1500 BCE and preserved by an oral tradition of extraordinary rigour — memorised with multiple redundant recitation patterns designed to detect and prevent error, and not written down for over a millennium. It is the oldest text of any living religion still in use. Its hymns address Indra, Agni and Varuna, and its cosmology and ritual underlie all later Hindu tradition.