In plain words
To describe the feelings of God is very hard to achieve. A close bond and kinship between this level and the level of those Vedas is very hard. That is why, because the study of the Veda has gradually dwindled from ancient times, today we are unable to keep the form it should have.
That Veda had many branches. The chief branches of the Ṛg Veda were 21. Then there were many sub-branches. But if we look in our Bhārata today, in this Ṛg Veda only two branches remain. Nineteen branches are not seen anywhere. They have sunk into the womb of time. The Yajur Veda had 86 chief branches. Today only 4 branches remain. The Sāma Veda had 1,000 branches, chief ones. But in the Sāma Veda too only three survive today. In the same way the Atharvaṇa Veda also had 9 chief branches. But only two have survived.
When the Vedas that are left, so few in number, teach a meaning that is infinite, had all the branches of the infinite Vedas remained, how sacred a thing they would have taught! But even the two, three, four branches that remain today, no one can say how long we shall keep them. People who study the Veda have become very rare today. Today even the study of the Veda has turned into a field of trade. So even the branches that remain will gradually have to be lost. These people go on forgetting the truth that the Vedas are the life-breath of the world. They go on forgetting the principle of Gāyatrī, the mother of all the Vedas. Gāyatrī they called chandhasomātaḥ. That is, Gāyatrī is like a mother to all of chandas.
Today the people who have studied the Veda hold back from teaching it, whether to their own children or to their fellow men. In this way the Vedas, which have come down the line of the family, stop today without spreading, and that alone is why the Veda goes on declining. A small example. A great devotee, named Ghaṇḍikoṭa Subrahmaṇya Śāstri. He could be called the very Veda-puruṣa. The meanings of the Veda were as easy for him as drinking water. He understood them, and he lived by them. But the moment he passed away, this whole Veda vanished. In his house there is not a single person left who chants the Veda. Because all his descendants became slaves to English education, they have gradually been forgetting this Veda. Because we keep the earning of wealth as the chief aim, we are losing this sacred wealth of the Veda. However great a Veda scholar he was, not even one of his sons learnt the Veda. His grandsons are people who do not know Telugu. In the same way, the Vedas would ring like a bell in Kāmāvadhāni's mouth.