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Where are the original versions of the Vedas? Are our oldest scriptures lost in the history of time? Some say that they were lost due to the religious war which happened in the earlier days and some say that due to the emergence of other religions they were stolen part by part and were lost completely.

And other thing is that who wrote these scriptures?

I know that they are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti ("what is heard"), distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what is remembered")

I have gotten a few answers like this one.

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  • The 4 Vedas are NOT lost. They were sold by the one who was translating the Vedas from Sanskrit to English. He was employed by Patna University, in Bihar, where copies of these 4 Vedas are still available.
    – user949
    Commented Oct 18, 2014 at 20:19
  • I may be wrong but I had heard that the original manuscripts whatever saved are in Pune. So I googled and found this link which I am sharing here: bori.ac.in/manuscript_department.html I hope you get the answer to your question
    – user2660
    Commented Mar 21, 2015 at 10:44
  • It is true that Vedas were transmitted through memory and hearing, but they were written down during Adi Shankaracharya's time. This version is the "untampered" one and is either with Germany (taken away by Hitler's army), the Britishers or the U.S.A. Most of the "translated" version has lies inserted and many things omitted.
    – Henry
    Commented Jun 26, 2016 at 21:16
  • Some Brahmanas were lost but Samhita (the core part of Veda) is not lost
    – Pandya ♦
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 5:01

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If you want to know the origin of the Vedas, they are Shruti, which means "that which is heard" (what Christians would call "revelation"). Hindus believe that from time immemorial, sages known as Dhrishtas (literally "seers") have, during a state of Tapasya (deep meditation), heard sacred verses directly from the gods. In the Dwapara Yuga (the age before the one we're currently living in), these verses were compiled by a sage named Krishna Dwaipayana Veda Vyasa (or Vyasa for short) into a set of four books we call the Vedas. (Technically Vyasa only compiled the first three books - Rig, Yajur, and Sama - while the Atharvana Veda is attributed to the sages Angiras and Atharvan.) As the words of the Vedas are believed to be divine in origin, they are held to be the foremost authority of the Hindu religion. As Rama says in the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana, the Vedas "have the foundation in Truth [and] one should thoroughly surrender to truth."

I should add that each of the four Vedas is divided into four portions: Samhitas, the core part of the Vedas which consist of hymns to various gods; Brahmanas, which provide instructions on the proper conducting of important rituals; Aranyakas, which provide a guide to rituals meant for forest-dwellers and hermits; and Upanishads, which consist of conversations between teachers and students which clarify the philosophical message of the Vedas. In any case, when someone says "I read the Rig Veda" without qualification, they usually mean the Samhita of the Rig Veda, because the Samhita is the core part of the Veda which came directly from the gods.

(Note: the above is excerpted from my answer here.)

As to your assertion that the Sanskrit version of the Vedas has been lost, that is simply not true. Here are the original Sanskrit versions of the Rig Veda Samhita, the Krishna version of the Yajur Veda Samhita, the Shukla Version of the Yajur Veda Samhita, the Sama Veda Samhita, and the Atharvana Veda Samhita. (And if you want to read English translations, see the links in the bottom of my answer here.)

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    This was not the answer which I expected I wanted something like an Egyptian tablet, a real book or scripture which is original from its beginning, not altered not tampered with. Due to these reasons I asked such question, and as from this link it witten that it is "This is an experimental Sanskrit version of the Rig Veda" the first line.
    – Questioner
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 9:28
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    @Questioner As far as stone tablets and the like dating to the beginning of the composition of the Vedas, there's no such thing, because the Vedas are older than the advent of writing, and for most of their history they were passed down by oral tradition, not in manuscript form. The oral tradition process, by the way, was extremely rigorous, and arduous steps were taken to ensure that not a single syllable would be altered.
    – Keshav Srinivasan ♦
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 15:36
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    @Questioner It's completely incorrect to say that the manuscripts at Pune constitute the "original" Vedas. The Vedas existed for thousands of years before those manuscripts.
    – Keshav Srinivasan ♦
    Commented Aug 8, 2014 at 15:20
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    @Questioner And I'm telling you that it's wrong to call them "original".
    – Keshav Srinivasan ♦
    Commented Aug 9, 2014 at 6:20
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    @Questioner I am well-acquainted with the manuscripts at Pune. It is completely incorrect to say that these are original. There is no such thing as "an original manuscript of the Vedas", because the Vedas did not originate in manuscript form. Any manuscripts that exist are just copies of texts that existed long before then in oral form, so there's no sense in which any manuscript can be called original.
    – Keshav Srinivasan ♦
    Commented Aug 9, 2014 at 10:50

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