Textual Tradition of India and the West: A Study

Indian textual tradition dates back to the later Vedic Period. It is a firm belief that Veda has directly come from the Almighty and is created even before the existence of human beings. They are considered among the oldest, if not the oldest, religious works in the world. They are commonly referred to as “scripture”, which is accurate in that they can be defined as holy writ concerning the nature of the Divine. Unlike the scriptures of other religions, however, the Vedas are not thought to have been revealed to a certain person or persons at a specific historical moment; they are believed to have always existed and were apprehended by sages in deep meditative states at some point prior to c. 1500 BCE but precisely when is unknown. In contrast to this, the Holy bible focuses on ‘WORD’. According to the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). This passage suggests that Jesus is not only a messenger of God's word but that He is the very essence of that word. The importance of ‘word’ has given the required ground to the acquired prosperity of the textual culture in the west and with the spread of Christianity in the world this concept is spread. The current paper tries to study both the textual traditions in this light and provide a just comparison with the help of selected texts.