Originally posted by: Chiillii
Rig Veda is the first spiritual and religious text of Hindus.
It is a compilation of short poems (also called hymns because of its devotional nature or mantra in sanskrit). It consists of 10 books with 1028 poems/hymns/mantras.
All the mantras are addressed to 33 forces of nature, called 33 type of devas (triyodasham koti deva) which some idiot mistranslated. koti means type. That idiot translated it as crore. And making the famous quote Hindus have 33 crore gods.
The first one amongst this 33 forces of nature is twin pair of Mithra (Dawn)- Varuna(twilight) who are God of water bodies from pond to oceans. Second is Indra (lightning thunder) who is God of rain and then rest who are either different aspects of Sun (called Adithyas) or Air (wind, thunder, cyclone etc called Rudras) or elemental forces ( vasus).
Now come back to the poems. These were composed by different rishi schools each led by one of the seven famous Rishis whom we call Saptarishi.
Two of these were Bhrigu and Angiras.
Bhrigu's wife was Usana and they had son named Kavya. He is also famously known as Usaana after his mother, Bhargava after his father and Shukracharya representing the group who prayed only in the mornings facing the planet Venus.
Angiras son was Brihaspati, calleD Angirasa after his father, he represented the group who prayed only in evenings facing the planet jupiter.
Now around the time of battle of ten kings, battle of brahmanas also broke out and they divided into two camps. One camp led by shukracharya said Mithra Varuna are the best and the other group led by Brihaspati said Indra is best.
After the battle of ten kings. Tribes settled into either side of river indus. Bhrigus camp rishis moved that side. And their compilation of poems was called Avesta/ Aveda. They prayed to Mithra Varuna now known unified as Mazda. And became known as Asura / Ahura , one who go against the sura drinkers or popularly known as Devas/ Daeva
We know them today as Parsis / Iranians / Zoroastrians.
Brihaspati camp rishis named their compilation of poems as Veda. They prayed to Indra known as Deva, one who go against Asura. The Hindus living beyond the Sindhus.
Kavya Usana or Shukracharya is the lead poet or guru of the Ahuras. Or as we call them Asura
Brihaspati is the lead poet or guru of Devas as we call Indra and his brothers.
When Islam came like christians took the pagan festival of saturnalia and made it christmas. Muslims took the important day of persians Friday as their own also to go against the jews who venerated Sunday