Geohistory of the Vedas: language, space and science.

• Grant number: 23/11285-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2023
• End date: November 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Carlos Vitte
• Grantee: Jahan Natanael Domingos Lopes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In view of the understanding of Indian space, the geo-history of the Vedas is delineated from the Vedic period (1500 BCE to 600 BCE). Within the Vedic world, there is a correlation between three inquiries: language, space, and science. In this sense, through Hindu language, from Sanskrit to the materializations of temples and sculptures, Indian space opens up in the systemic relationship between thought and constructions - mediated by the symbolic - and furthermore, it is intertwined in the sciences (especially numerical ones), imbuing Indian knowledge permeated by Hindu religiosity. Thus, the reading of the Vedas - Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda - is woven as the foundation of the encompassed period and, especially, as the cornerstone of the symbolic structure to be derived from Hindu space: towards its territorial structuring. These books, philosophical-religious in the Indian world, consist of hymns that shape the cosmological history of ancient India and its Hindu unity. Through the language-space-science nexus, the framework of the project is conceptualized to be transposed by Vedic historiography, from its incursions into Indian space to its synchro-diachronic reverberations, envisioning the natural and cultural conception of Vedic India geohistoriographically.