Tales from the Vedas and other Scriptures

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Vedas are the ancient tomes of Hindu religion which are the treasure troves of the values of an ideal life. Various tales given in the Vedas and other Scriptures give a detailed account of the origin of universe, man, nature, animals, Brahm, God, ages, society, culture, sin and virtues, life and death, king and subjects, planets and Nakshatras, dissolution of the world, etc. The Vedas are a storehouse of knowledge. Even a small Mantra, though consisting of a mere few syllables, shows unfathomable depth and vastness of the universe. This book has been prepared by culling some tales from these very precious gems of divine learning.

The Vedas and our Scriptures contain the gems of ancient learning which have their almost eternal relevance because they reveal the fundamental traits of human nature. Of course, they have been interpreted in a myriad ways by scholars, seers and sages but taking out their essence and presenting it in the format of short stories for the benefit of our young readers has not had many endeavours in the field of print media. This is our humble attempt in that direction. We wish them to learn about these 'gems' not out of their 'hallowed sanctity' hammered into their young brains but to learn them as a part of their growing life. They must know the determination of Dhruva when he was just five-year old, the chivalry of Abhimanyu when he was hardly in the teens so that they may get inspired to incorporate such traits in their life right from the beginning.

In the modern world getting increasingly complicated with cut-throat competitions growing at their dawning consciousness right at the toddling stage, it is hoped that these stories will help us build a nation of citizens committed to the basic values not imparted through 'nursery rhymes' of 'ringa-ringa roses. pocketful of poses' genre without realising that this song was sung in England when the young ones recovered from the plague-menace. Let them have something which is truly positive, inspiring and refreshing. Those who believe that such thing should be taught when the children cross the childhood threshold commit a serious lapse. Only recently a study report about children's behaviour, prepared under the aegis of the Union H.R.D. Ministry has revealed that the basic personality of a child gets fully defined when he becomes five-year-old and afterwards only little additions to and subtraction from the basic 'grey' material is possible. It is solely with this intention that we present this book 'Tales from the Vedas and other Scriptures' in your hands.

It has been quite an uphill task to scan through our ancient lore and come out with the stories rich in moral message. Since they had to be told to the young toddlers they could not be incorporated or interpreted without modifications. The time when they were composed or compiled the social norms were quite different and society was much open than it is now. Many details of sexual nature were then casually explained by a learned father to his young daughters. Since it was an age of human awakening, in order to make the young generation encounter lesser problem than the previous one, the fathers, grandfathers or grandmothers would not shun from doing so because of their obscurity. Their knowledge encompassed their entire range of experience vis-a-vis the universe. In fact, the Vedas contain such details as might not appear fit to pass on by an old father to his young and married son. All these considerations made our task a bit more difficult as each story was to be interpreted so as to sidetrack the unwanted details and the real moral could be conveniently highlighted. That is why to stress a particular moral culled from the Vedas we had to take recourse to many other allied scriptural references. Thus, strictly these may not be only the stories from the Vedas but from many other Hindu scriptures as well. But in the seed form every message contained in these stories has some reference in the Vedas.