Rigveda

Rig Veda is regarded as the oldest of all Vedas. Westernised scholars date the Rig Veda as 1200 BC - 4000 B.C. but traditional Hindus believe that Vedas are eternal knowledge and beyond time and space. The Rig-Vedic ‘samhita’ or collection of mantras consists of 1,028 hymns or ‘suktas’, The 10,589 verses of the Rigveda are divided into ten mandalas or books.

First mandala consists of 191 suktas and 2006 mantras
Second mandala consists of 43 suktas and 429 mantras
Third mandala consists of 62 suktas and 617 mantras
Fourth mandala consists of 58 suktas and 589 mantras
Fifth mandala consists of 87 suktas and 727 mantras
Sixth mandala consists of 75 suktas and 765 mantras
Seventh mandala consists of 104 suktas and 841 mantras
Eighth mandala consists of 103 suktas and 1716 mantras
Ninth mandala consists of 114 suktas and 1108 mantras
Tenth mandala consists of 191 suktas and 1754 mantras

According to the Shatapatha Brahmana, the number of syllables in the Rigveda is 432,000, equalling the number of muhurtas (1 day = 30 muhurtas) in forty years.The Rig-Vedic hymns were compiled by Paila under the guidance of Vyasa, and went to form the Rig mantra Samhita. Rgveda intones that let there be goodness in the hearts and thoughts. Since all are embodiments of the Divinity, all human beings are one. Rig Veda is important not only from religious and philosophical point of view but as some recent research has shown it also contains immense information on cosmology, astrology and mathematics.

Creation

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.

What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, of unfathomed depth?

Death was not then, nor was there immortality: no sign was there, the divider of day and night.

That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this All was indiscriminated chaos.

All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Singularity.

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit.

Sages, who searched with their hearts, discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?

There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.

Who verily knows and who can declare it, when was it born and whence comes this creation?

The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then when it first came into being?

He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,

Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not.

[from Rig-Veda Samhita ~ Transl. R.T.H. Griffith]

Rigveda

Ekam Sat, Vipra Bahudha Vadanti

What is but one, the wise call by manifold names

Sarvam khalvidam Brahma
(All this is verily Brahma)

And That (Tat) is the Truth (Sat)