Prajaapati Vishva Aashram Foundation (PVAF) has been presenting ved on this web site through the vedik students and scholars who wish to perfrom their daily brhmah-yagna. One performs a brhmah-yagna by studying ved, teaching ved and meditating on ved. In vedik lifestyle one should perfrom daily panch-mahaa-yagna, meaning 5 great yagna.  In vedik lifestyle, a yagna is a ceremony performed with a hom in which fire is lighted to invoke agni-dev and offerings are made by yajmaan (performer of a yagna) through presiding priests. agni-dev carries the offerings to whoever it is meant for. The yagna is performed to achieve a desire by propitiating through an offering a dev or devi who presides over the domain of the desired objective. Offerings vary from just adoration... to... bhakti.. to.. tapas... to... giving away of wealth... or.. a promise to do something in return to any imaginable infinite number of offerings.....   The panch-mahaa-yagna to be performed daily are:  1)    dev-yagna is a worship of a dev or devi one believes in.   2)    brhmah-yagna is study, teaching and meditating on ved. 3)    pitru-yagna is worship of pitruo (ancestors) 4)    bhut-yagna is providing for the life needs of fellow living beings including animals and plants 5)    nara-yagna is welcoming, honouring and hosting guests who visit one's residence.  In a different level of understanding, yagna creates everything in this universe....life is a yagna.....every karma is a yagna..... Through yagna life and creation is understood. And ved is the medium through which this understanding occurs. ved contains the current known science....current known science is only a small fraction of ved....so also says a famous Indian scientist....Please read about science in ved by clicking on the next line......

VEDIK LIFESTYLE WAS BASED ON SCIENCE  Dr. Subhash Kak, a prominent Indian scientist suggests that  ancient Vedic scholars were able to intuit mathematical facts like the speed of light    from www.beliefnet.com as a link Dr. Subhash Kak, an authority on ancient Indian science and technology, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Louisiana State University. Originally from Kashmir, Dr. Kak has authored ten books and over three hundred journal articles in areas as varied as neural networks, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy and history of science. This article is excerpted from a longer interview by Rajeev Srinivasan posted on the web site www.beliefnet.com as a link to the posting. This is what Dr. Kak says about ved:  My discovery that the organization of the Rigveda was according to an astronomical plan was a truly 'Eureka' experience. It came upon me rather suddenly, but once everything fell into place it was clear that I had been led to it by the many direct and indirect references in the Vedic texts.  The 'Eureka' of it was the realization that I had the key to unlock the ancient mystery of the Veda. Ritual and mythology made sense! And it opened up a hidden chapter of Indian science with the greatest implications for our understanding of India and the rest of the ancient world.  Vedic Indians were scientific. They believed in laws of nature. They represented their astronomy in terms of the altar constructions. One problem they considered was that of the synchronization of the lunar and the solar years: the lunar year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year and if we add a round number of days every few years to make up for the discrepancy, we find we cannot do it elegantly unless we have a correction cycle of 95 years or its multiples. This 95-year cycle is described in the earliest Vedic prose books.  The altars were to be built to slightly larger dimensions each year of the cycle to represent the corrections. There were other symbolic constructions. Like building a square altar (representing the sky) with the same area as a circular altar (representing the earth), which is the problem of squaring the circle. This led to the discovery of the earliest geometry. They were aware that the sun and the moon were at 108 times their own diameters from the earth.  It is a great pity that we are letting our cultural and civilizational treasures die right before our eyes. We must do whatever we can to preserve and celebrate this heritage.  A central Vedic belief was that there are connections between the outer and the inner. The rishis declared that it was due to these connections that we are enabled to know the world. One dramatic aspect of these connections are the biological cycles which run the same periods as various astronomical cycles. For example, the Purusha Hymn of the Rigveda says that the mind is born of the moon. Just recently, by research on volunteers, who stayed in underground caves for months without any watches or other cues about time, it was found that the natural cycle for the mind is 24 hours and 50 minutes. The period of the moon is also 24 hours and 50 minutes. Our clock is reset every day by daylight!  The connections between the outer and the inner were also represented by other symbols. The 108 sun diameters from the earth of the sun were paralleled by the 108 beads of the rosary for a symbolic spiritual journey from the normal state to one of illumination.  The binary number system, hashing, various codes, mathematical logic (Navya Nyaya), or a formal framework that is equivalent to programming all arose in ancient India. This is all well known and it is acknowledged by scholars all over the world. I shouldn't forget to tell you that a most advanced calculus, math and astronomy arose in Kerala several centuries before Newton.  In particular, I am amazed, as a layman, by the evidence that Sayana, circa 1300 CE, who was prime minister at the court of the Vijayanagar Emperor Bukka I, calculated the speed of light to be 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha, which does come to 186,536 miles per second.  Truly mind-boggling! The speed of light was first measured in the West only in the late 17th century. So how could the Indians have known it? If you are a skeptic, then you will say it is a coincidence that somehow dropped out of the assumptions regarding the solar system. If you are a believer in the powers of the mind, you would say that it is possible to intuit (in terms of categories that you have experienced before) outer knowledge. This latter view is the old Indian knowledge paradigm. If it were generally accepted it would mean an evolution in science much greater than the revolution of modern physics.  It is also well known that the Vedic or Puranic idea of the age of the universe is some 8 billion years, which is of the order of magnitude of what has been estimated by modern astrophysicists. Is this also a mere coincidence?  Again, either a coincidence, or the rishis were capable of supernormal wisdom. Don't forget that the Indian texts also speak about things that no other civilization thought of until this century. I am speaking of air and space travel, embryo transplantation, multiple births from the same embryo, weapons of mass destruction (all in the Mahabharata), travel through domains where time is slowed, other galaxies and universes, potentials very much like quantum potential (Puranas). If nothing else, we must salute the rishis for the most astonishing and uncanny imagination.

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