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V

VALUES. See AXIOLOGY.

VEDANTA. Sanskrit, “the end of the
Ve d a.” One of the six schools of orthodox
Hinduism, Vedanta privileges the Upani-
shads, which come at the end of the Veda.
There are three main schools of thought
within Vedanta: Advaita Vedanta, Vish-
ishtadvaita, and Dvaita.

VEDAS. Sanskrit, “knowledge” or “sacred
love.” The Vedas are the earliest Hindu
sacred texts and date back to the Vedic
period (c. 1500–700 BCE). Combined,
they contain over 10,000 verses in total.
Along with the Brahmanas, they are con-
sidered shruti, which means “that which is
heard,” i.e., revelation, as opposed to other
sacred texts, which are smriti (“that which
is remembered”). They were originally
transmitted orally using elaborate memo-
rization techniques, and there is no
scholarly consensus as to when they
were first written down. The emergence
of curses around the fifth century CE for
those who use the written Vedas suggests

that there must have been written copies

of at least parts of the Vedas by that time.

They were codified by at least the eighth

century BCE (although whether in

written or oral form is debated), so that,

remarkably, no textual variants exist

today. The Vedas are made up of four

main collections: the Rig-Veda (book of

hymns and prayers), the Ya j u r - Ve d a

(book of sacrificial procedures), the

Sama-Veda (book of chants to accom-

pany sacrifices), and the Athar-Veda

(book of magic and philosophical lore

and musings). The Vedas are considered

timeless and made up of wisdom that

neither God nor humans created.

VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE. In the

mid-twentieth century, philosophers in

the Vienna Circle proposed that if a prop-

osition is meaningful it has to be about

either formal, conceptual relations (e.g.,

a square has four right angles) or it had to

be verifiable in principle empirically. This

principle was used to expose as meaning-

less propositions in metaphysics (such as

the Absolute is timeless), ethics (lying is