How did the Rishis obtain the knowledge of the Vedas?

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

All knowledge is obtained by appreciating the notion of 'original principles':
The most basic first ideas which are indisputable: Essentially: logic, ethics, aesthetics.

This is what Plato called 'forms', or Kant called 'a priori' truth.
This is why Descartes was critical of those incapable of appreciating the perfection of geometry.

Meditating on which truths are indisputable in any context will lead to greater understanding of that context.

 

[Shantanu]

All knowledge is obtained by appreciating the notion of 'original principles':
The most basic first ideas which are indisputable: Essentially: logic, ethics, aesthetics.

This is what Plato called 'forms', or Kant called 'a priori' truth.
This is why Descartes was critical of those incapable of appreciating the perfection of geometry.

Meditating on which truths are indisputable in any context will lead to greater understanding of that context.

Are you discussing the logic of God or some human-constructed logic and mathematics?

 

[sayak83]

My observations pertained to suggestion of ShivaFan that Upanishads were commentaries on Vedas and that they were separate from the Vedas and also to his allusion that upanishads came after Jainism and thus were different in contents from the Vedas.

Upanishads are very much embedded in the araynaka portions of the Vedas. For Hindu scripture drawing a chronological time line may not be a correct thing to do. For example, in Svestavatara upanishad the rishi says that the upanishad was taught in an earlier period. Similarly in Gita, Shri Krishna says that the same knowledge was earlier imparted to sun by Lord. My point was that the truth remains truth whether it is heard today or 500 hundred years later. The veda (knowledge) is understood to be the very body of param atman and thus does not come and go. In today's parlance, you may say that information is immortal.

Note that by this definition, chronology of any knowledge is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is whether it true, no matter how late or early it emerges in history. Note further that both Jains and Buddhists claims that Mahavira and Gautama are simply the latest of the revealers and each had been preceded by countless Tirthankars and Arhants both in this world and previous cycles of creation. Historical chronology concerns about establishing, as best as possible, the time at which a certain literature or religious thinking emerged in society as an observable, but if you wish to move aways from that, chronology becomes inconsequential and all knowledge, new or old are decided only on the criteria of truth and not timing.

 

[atanu]

Great teachers have taught us that the enlightenment and the Veda are never separate from us. Veda that we read and ascribe chronology to is a pointer to the aatmaa and not the aatmaa itself.