The Sama Veda, or Veda of Holy Songs, third in the usual order of enumeration of the three Vedas, ranks next in sanctity and liturgical importance to the Rig Veda, or the Veda of Recited Praise. Its Sanhita, or metrical portion, consists chiefly of hymns to be chanted by the Udgatar priests at the performance […]

An ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts known as the Vedas. There are just over one thousand hymns in the Rig Veda, made up of more than ten thousand verses.

Read a story, posted at Beliefnet.com, about how Hindus in America celebrate Diwali.

Michelle Nunn is president and CEO of the Points of Light Institute, which mobilizes millions of volunteers to help solve social problems in thousands of communities.

Subhash Kak is Regents Professor and Head of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He studies and has written extensively on Hinduism, and his research interests include computational intelligence, archaeology of the mind and the history of science.

V.V. Raman, emeritus professor of physics and humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., writes and speaks about Hinduism, ethics and altruism.

B. Alan Wallace, president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies in California, trained as a monk in Buddhist monasteries. He teaches Buddhist theory and practice in Europe and the United States and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars. His academic training is in religious studies, physics and philosophy of science. He can be […]

Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University in New York, wrote “Human Rights and Responsibilities: Buddhist Views on Individualism and Altruism” in Religious Diversity and Human Rights. Thurman is also the author of The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism.

 Read a Feb. 8, 2006, Washington Times article about how images of Muhammad have long been shown in museums and libraries without controversy.