Hindu texts Prior to the start of the common era, the Hindu texts were composed orally, then memorized and transmitted orally, from one generation to next, for more than a millennia before they were written down into manuscripts. This verbal tradition of preserving and transmitting Hindu texts, from one generation to next, continued into the modern era. The Vedas are a large body of Hindu texts originating in ancient India, with its Samhita and Brahmanas complete before about 800 BCE. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit hymns, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Hindus consider
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament it assembled some of the most significant Ancient Near Eastern texts in authoritative, generously annotated English translations based on the accumulated insight of several generations of scholarship scattered". It is conventional to cite the work as ANET. ANEP refers to a companion volume "Ancient Near Eastern Pictures Relating to the Old Testament" (1st ed. 1954, 2nd ed. 1969), featuring 882 black and white designs and photos. An additional volume of supplementary texts and pictures was published in 1969 as ""The Ancient Near East: Supplementary Texts and Pictures Relating to the Old Testament"". An abridgement of ANET and ANEP was published