The Vedas, the Scriptures of the Hindus are voluminous.
They were not written by any one but grasped from Ether.
(Image copyright Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts)
There are four Vedas, Rig,Yajur, Sama and Atharva .
In addition to this, we have Upavedas,Vedangas,Parisista, not to speak of the Smritis.
Of this lot this is what has been collected.
“The complete corpus of Vedic mantras as collected in Bloomfield‘s Vedic Concordance (1907) consists of some 89,000 padas (metrical feet), of which 72,000 occur in the four Samhitas”
This is only for the Samhitas.
Brahmanas,Aranyakas,Upanishads remain.
There seems to be no information on when the Vedas were written in the form of manuscripts.
The Digitized copies of The Rigveda Brahmanas: the Aitareya and Kausītaki Brāhmanas of the Rigveda are in American Libraries.
(Link provided below).
- Rgvedasamhita
Accession No. : 5/1875-76
Material : Birch Bark
Uniqueness / Pecularity : The manuscript was used by Prof. F. Max Müller for the edition of the Rgveda with Sayana’s commentary. The manuscript is a beautiful specimen of the old style Manuscript of Kashmir. - Bhagavata Purana
Accession No. : 61/1907-1915
No. of Illustrations : 128
Uniqueness / Pecularity : It is one of the most precious mss. of the Institute’s collection. It contains 128 beautiful paintings in color.
These are Thirty Volumes of Rig Veda Samhitas which Max Mueller had quoted and wrote his Books upon.
Rest of the manuscripts’ whereabouts not known despite claims that they are in Germany, US do not seem to hold, as far as I could fathom.
Readers may contribute.
The best that had happened to Hinduism is that they have not been written but transmitted Orally.
That is the reason they have survived.
Hope efforts have been made to preserve available oral material has been saved.
The Vedas on UNESCO Register.
The Vedas comprise a vast corpus of Sanskrit poetry, philosophical dialogue, myth, and ritual incantations developed and composed by Aryans over 3,500 years ago. Regarded by Hindus as the primary source of knowledge and the sacred foundation of their religion, the Vedas embody one of the world’s oldest surviving cultural traditions.
The Vedic heritage embraces a multitude of texts and interpretations collected in four Vedas, commonly referred to as “books of knowledge” even though they have been transmitted orally. The Rig Veda is an anthology of sacred hymns; the Sama Veda features musical arrangements of hymns from the Rig Veda and other sources; the Yajur Veda abounds in prayers and sacrificial formulae used by priests; and the Atharna Veda includes incantations and spells. The Vedas also offer insight into the history of Hinduism and the early development of several artistic, scientific and philosophical concepts, such as the concept of zero.
Expressed in the Vedic language, which is derived from classical Sanskrit, the verses of the Vedas were traditionally chanted during sacred rituals and recited daily in Vedic communities. The value of this tradition lies not only in the rich content of its oral literature but also in the ingenious techniques employed by the Brahmin priests in preserving the texts intact over thousands of years. To ensure that the sound of each word remains unaltered, practitioners are taught from childhood complex recitation techniques that are based on tonal accents, a unique manner of pronouncing each letter and specific speech combinations.
Although the Vedas continue to play an important role in contemporary Indian life, only thirteen of the over one thousand Vedic recitation branches have survived. Moreover, four noted schools – in Maharashtra (central India), Kerala and Karnataka (southern India) and Orissa (eastern India) – are considered under imminent threat.
Citation.
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/0006
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vedas
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