Five groups of texts—the Veda, Upaveda, Vedanga, Purana, and Darsana—lay the foundation for the knowledge and wisdom of our heritage. There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. Each Veda further subdivides into four sections: Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad. There are at least 108 of these Upanishads.
Upavedas (upa, or ‘secondary’ to the Vedas) are bodies of ‘secular’ or worldly (laukika) knowledge concerning mainly artha (material comforts) and kama (desires). The Upavedas consist of:
Ayurveda is a medical and surgical science.
Arthaveda concerns itself with economics, political science, law, ethics, constitutional studies, defence, management, sociology, trade and commerce, and civil and military engineering.
Sthapatyaveda forms the wisdom of engineering, which includes the basic sciences of physics, mathematics, and chemistry and their applied forms like mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, hydraulics, mechanics, and dynamics.
Gandharvaveda is the wisdom of arts and crafts. This includes the famous Kamasutra and Naṭyasastra.
Vedangas are the limbs (angas) of knowledge (veda). They are the six auxiliary disciplines essential to the study of the Vedas: phonetics (Siksa), grammar (Vyakarana), prosody (Chandas), etymology (Nirukta), astrology/astronomy (Jyotisa), and ritual (Kalpas). There is again a huge corpus of texts and commentaries in each group. Kalpas has again four main sub-groups of texts: Dharmasutras (rituals, duties, and responsibilities at a societal level); Grhyasutras (household rituals and duties); Srautasutras (rituals and worship of the Vedas); and Sulbasutras (construction of the altar for Vedic fire ritual).
A consolidation and further expansion of the Dharmasutras and Grhyasutras of Kalpa are a group of eighteen primary texts called Smrtis (Manu is one of them) and eighteen secondary texts called Upasmrtis. Agamas are the consolidation and further expansion of the Srautasutras and Sulbasutras of Kalpa. They include numerous and voluminous texts dealing with the temple tradition—construction, art and architecture, iconography of the images, as well as the daily, fortnightly, monthly, and annual rituals and festivals observed in the temples.
The Puranas have five characteristic topics (pancalaksana): the creation of the universe; its destruction and renovation; the genealogy of gods and patriarchs; the reigns of the Manus, forming the periods called Manvantaras; and the history of the Solar and Lunar races of kings. There are eighteen Mahapuranas and eighteen Upapuranas. The Itihasas are the famous epics of India: the Ramayana of Valmiki and the Mahabharata of Vyasa. The Gita is a smaller part of the Mahabharata.
Darsana, or ‘point of view,’ is the English equivalent of philosophy, though with different connotations. There are six classical schools of Indian philosophy, coming in three pairs (Nyaya-Vaisesika; Sankhya-Yoga; Purva Mimansa-Uttara Mimansa) and three atheistic schools (Jaina, Bauddha, Lokayata/Carvaka). Each of the darshanas has a huge number of treatises and authors.
The knowledge base of Indian scriptures and texts is accessible to everyone. Knowledge is always the supreme divine in Indian traditions, and the story of villainous Brahmins withholding this knowledge is simply a colonial narrative that we internalised. Anyway, in this extraordinary corpus of literature dealing with hundreds and thousands of topics, what comes to represent the frozen nature of ‘Hinduism’? A corrupted interpretation of the Purusasukta hymn and some selected passages from Manusmrti. Except for the Vedas to some extent, none of the smrtis have the status of a wide-ranging, powerful truth, normative and prescriptive, across time and space. No political, secular, or religious power enforced these on entire populations. But, as scholars have pointed out across centuries, including Dr. SN Balagangadhara, is there a ‘core book’ as the foundational basis for Hinduism? The answer is a resounding no.
(Excerpted from: https://pingaligopi.wordpress.com/2020/12/16/spiritual-philosophical-or-science-indian-texts-and-scriptures/)
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