The Veda and European Scholarship

The handling of the Vedic hymns by the bold & ingenious scholarship of the Europeans has had at any rate one striking outcome,—it has converted the once admired, august & mysterious sacred books of the Hindus into a mass of incoherent rubbish. An Indian freethinker recently gave it as his opinion that the quickest & most effective way to make an end [to] the Hindu religion would be to translate the Vedas, its foundation, into the vernaculars & distribute them cheaply by the thousand throughout the peninsula.I have no doubt the method would be fairly effective, if not in destroying Hinduism, at least in driving it more exclusively into its stronghold of Vedanta. For, if the translation adopted were based on the work of European scholars, I can well imagine the idea that the mind of the coming generations would form about these ancient writings. I think there would be a general agreement that a more gross, meaningless & confused collection of balderdash had never been composed or penned. If this description should be thought too violent I would only ask the objector to read for himself Max Muller’s translation of the hymn by Kanwa son of Ghora to the Maruts, the 39th of the 1st Mandala and ask himself honestly what sense worth having he can make out of it—even leaving aside the language & images, looking beyond them to the thing the poet is trying to say. For my part all I can make out, [is]that some primitive savage named Kanwa with a hopelessly confused brain and chaotic imagination is greatly terrified by some idea, sight or imagination of ghost, fiend or devil and calls upon the storm-gods to get rid of the cause of his fear. The language in which he expresses his appeal, is as barbarous & confused as the thought. In one verse he leaps from one thought to another which has no visible connection with its predecessor. The similes & metaphors are grotesque & inappropriate, eg “you cast

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forwards your measure like a blast of fire”, “Come to us with your favours as lightnings go in quest of rain.” Half the verse presents, when sounded, no intelligible sense, but there is a good deal of half-insane sound & fury.

The European scholar will reply that he cannot help it—he deals with the Vedas according to his philology & his ideas of what the text ought to mean, & this is the result given by his scholarship & his philology. He is even well satisfied, for his theory, founded on Western Science, is that men writing so long ago must have been undeveloped semi-savages and their writing very likely to be the stuff of a barbarous imagination which to the modern mind makes neither good sense nor good poetry. The European is not at fault; he translates according to his knowledge.

But the Hindu who knows the depth & sublimity of the Upanishads, who has in his spiritual experience tested, realised & established Vedantic truth by a sure & unfailing experience as surely as the scientist has tested & established his laws of gravitation & the indestructibility of matter,—the Hindu perceiving many truths of Veda surviving in Purana & Tantra & Itihasa, already present in the deeper passages of the Brahmanas,—will not easily believe that the European scholars’ is the last word & that in this modern rubbish of Nature-worship & incoherent semi-savage poetry we have the secret of that Veda from which Vedanta, Purana, Tantra, Itihasa, Yoga&Brahmana spring, that Veda which was so admirable to the greatest minds of antiquity. He will ask whether no other interpretation can arise from the text,—whether the philology of the Europeans is so perfect & infallible as to forbid us to review & question their results.

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The Hymns of Madhuchchhandas

[A]

Chapter I

In a work devoted to the formulation of the early Vedantic philosophy of the Upanishads—and especially to that philosophy as we find it massively concentrated into some of its greatest principles in the Isha Upanishad, I hazarded the theory that the Vedas were not a collection of sacrificial hymns to material Nature-gods, as supposed by the Europeans, but something more profound and noble, that they were indeed, I thought, the true substance & foundation of the Upanishads, if not of all “Hindu” religion & spirituality. Certain considerations were added which, it seemed to me, delivered me from the intellectual necessity of implicit submission to European standards and modern theories. Modern Science might not be infallible; some suggestions there are that lead us to the possibility of a fundamental error in her way of narrating the progress of human civilisation and her account of the origin and growth of our religious notions and practices. Western philology is admittedly imperfect and as applied to the Veda boldly conjectural & in the absence of a more perfect science of language we are not bound by its conclusions.We might even go so far as to assert the presence in the Vedas not only of a strong moral & spiritual element in its conceptions & the symbolism of sacrifice, but a conscious & elaborate psychological rationale for the assignment of their various functions to the Vedic deities.

This was the substance of the argument, an argument then only suggested, not pursued. The present work proposes some opening spadework with the object of rescuing this profounder significance from the ancient obscurity of the Veda. Like the labours of the European scholars, my work must be, from the

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intellectual standpoint, inductive and conjectural;—it is a large suggestion that I am offering to the religious consciousness of India, a suggestion time & human knowledge may confirm, if it is true & fortunately supported, but will reject, if it turns out to be an error or a premature discovery. It would be highly out of place in such a tentative to be positive or dogmatic. For although the position I take, that the Veda contains the foundations of Brahmavidya, is old & hoary in Indian tradition, it is an audacious novelty to the modern intellect. Sayana does not establish it for us. Shankara acknowledges only to turn away from it and take refuge in the trenchant division of Karmakanda from Jnanakanda. The Europeans believe themselves to have shattered it for ever & buried it away among the numerous delusions of the unscientific & superstitious past. What does this ancient ghost here, many may ask, revisiting the glimpses of the moon; we thought it had received its quietus; we had repeated Credos & Aves for its peaceful repose and sealed its tomb by sprinkling on it the holy waters of Science. Where a man presumes thus to differ from all the enlightenment & all the orthodoxy of his time, it behoves him to walk carefully, to content himself with the tone of suggestion only, and, however firm his own convictions, assert them to others with modesty & some hesitance.

My method in this book will be to separate from the first Mandala the eleven hymns of Madhuchchhanda Vaiswamitra & his son Jeta with which the Rigveda opens and selecting from them the verses which seem to me to give a clear indication and a firm foundation for my theory, explain adequately the meaning I attach to them, coordinating as I proceed other verses from various hymns of this small group which set forth the same psychological notion. From this basis I shall ascend to the interpretation of the shlokas which are of an inferior clarity & modernity of language or are already in the firm possession of the ceremonial interpretation and construct from them whatever rendering of the hymns seems to me their true and ancient sense. I have selected the Madhuchchhanda group because, in my opinion, he troubles himself less than many other Rishis,

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less for instance than Medhatithi Kanwa who follows him in the received order of the Veda, with the external symbols of sacrifice & ceremony & is more clearly & singlemindedly occupied with moral & spiritual ideas & aspirations. He presents, therefore, a favourable ground for the testing of my theory.

I have already explained in the work, God & the World, the main ideas of the psychological system which I suppose to be discoverable in the Veda. I shall not therefore take up any space with a fresh formulation of its principles, but simply expose their application in the different & more antique language of the Veda. Nor shall I trouble myself, more than is necessary for clearing the ground, either with Sayana or the Germans. My process being constructive and synthetic, its defence against other theories must necessarily be left aside until the construction is complete and the synthesis appreciable in its entirety.

[B]

Chapter I
Surya, Sarasvati and Mahi.

Who are they, the gods of the Rigveda? Ancient and yet ever youthful powers, full of joy, help and light, shining ones with whose presence the regions of earth and the hearts of men were illuminated, Angels and Deputies of the mysterious unknown God, worshipped in India, worshipped in Mesopotamia & Central Asia fifteen hundred years before the Christian era, worshipped by the wild Scythians,—for the name of Bhaga is still the Russian name for God,—worshipped in Iran before Ahuramazda replaced them,—for Ahriman, the dark spirit of the Persians, preserves the name of the strong Vedic deity,—worshipped at some time by Greek & Roman & Celt and Scandinavian, they have long given way even in India to the direct adoration of their Master whom they revealed, the Deva Adhiyajna whom through them the ancient masters of the sacrifice so

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persistently sought and finally attained.What were they, then?—vain imaginations of men? personifications of material realities? the idea of God behind phenomena? or even—for we know too little of the worlds, are still, as Newton was, children picking up pebbles on the shore of the infinite ocean of knowledge,—were there and are there—behind the names men give them—real personalities who stand in spirit behind the functions of man and of Nature, hidden masters, now unworshipped gods? If they were nothing, wherefore did the fire of the sacrifice flame up to them so persistently from the hearts and the hearths of men?—from what vague primeval terror and need of propitiation or supernatural assistance,—or if something, from what higher knowledge of the secrets of force that lie behind these outward movements of the machinery of the world? Wherefore did they yoke the bright flaming coursers to their chariots of bliss and hasten down so swiftly to rejoice in the fires of the Aryan altar and drain the outpourings of the Soma-wine?

The Europeans believe that these Vedic gods were personifications of the material powers of Nature; Sky, Rain, Sun, Moon, Wind, Fire, Dawn and the Ocean are the gods of the Aryans. The names, they think, carry with them their own interpretation, and the language of the hymns, as translated by them, consents to this modern insight. Vayu blows, Agni burns, Indra opens the cloud and hurls the thunderbolt. There are passages that do not agree with this theory, do not, at least, permit us to accept it as an all-sufficing explanation, but we can account for them by a progressive moralising of the old naturalistic religion destined [to] culminate in the idea of the universal God and open the way for Vedanta. In the sacrifice we see the systemisation of the old savage sense of dread and weakness, having as its result according to temperament or culture the propitiation of terrible and maleficent powers or the invocation of bright and helpful deities. These shadows of our own terror or yearning were given their share of meat and wine,—because primitive men were naturally anthropomorphic in their conceptions of deity,—and imagined their gods to resemble their own chiefs & rulers. And if so much stress was laid on the Soma wine, was it not because

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the Vedic Rishis loved to get frequently drunk and naturally thought their gods would have the same robust inclination? For, it seems, heaven is only a magnified shadow of our own vain aspiration towards perfect strength, beauty & happiness and, if God did not make us in His image, we at least atone for His failure by making Him in ours!

The Indian Pundits, with Sayana at their head, give us little help against these ideas which attack so fatally the ancient bedrock of our religion; servant & passive minds, they make no inquiry of their own, but preserve for us the traditions of Puranic mythology, which, themselves symbols, cannot, unless themselves first explained, help us to explain more ancient images. Consequently, these European notions have had a sweeping victory, until at last an Indian hater of India’s past, brought up in their school of thought, was able to say, not without some plausibility, that the best way to destroy popular faith in the Hindu religion would be to print and publish broadcast cheap translations of the Veda,—of course, as they are now, by those foreign minds, understood and interpreted. But the method might be partially effective, without the effect being just. The European theory of the Vedas well supported though it seems may not be the true theory or even the only rational theory now available. A past race of men, great thinkers, whose writings are the source and fountainhead of some of the sublimest philosophies in the world, much nearer to the Vedic Rishis in time, more capable of understanding and entering into their mentality, did not hold this view of the ancient deities. They considered them to be divine beings whose nature was vital, moral and spiritual, not simply material; they thought sacrifice to be a helpful and even a necessary symbolism. Throughout the Brahmanas & Upanishads we see this constant idea and the great pains taken to penetrate into the meaning not only of Vedic language but of Vedic ritual. We have therefore two different clues to the inner sense of these ancient words and obsolete practices. The European clue has been followed for many decades; the Vedantic clue perhaps might also be not unprofitably pursued. We know what European scholars understand by the Vedas; it may not be

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labour lost to know what the Vedantic sages understood by the Vedas.

In this book I intend to make the attempt even with such limited qualifications as I possess—for it seems to me of importance to our religion and future culture that the attempt should be made even if it should prove unsuccessful. In order to avoid the danger of a merely futile industry, I must first make myself sure that the Rigveda is not plainly & entirely a naturalistic document, but contains utterances inconsistent with the naturalistic, consistent with the Vedantic explanation.

I open then the Rigveda,—open it at its commencement and cast my glance over the eleven hymns ascribed to Madhuchchhanda Vaiswamitra and his son Jeta. In the very first hymn, a hymn to Agni, I am struck with certain expressions which do not agree very well with the naturalistic conception of Agni. A divine personification of Fire may be described poetically as the Purohit, Ritwik and Hota of the sacrifice (purohitam Yajnasya devam ritwijam hotaram ratnadhatamam), though it is curious—the old clear & rigid ideas on these subjects being given—to find these different functions heaped pell-mell together without any clear appropriateness; for granting Agni to be in his place as Purohit, how is he the Ritwik, how is [he] the Hota? Agni is adorable to the sages of the past & of the future because he carries the gods to the sacrifice, sa devan eha vakshati. There seems to be no clear and firm idea in this talk of Fire carrying or bringing the gods—for what are we to think of Fire carrying thunder, rain, wind, moon and sun to the sacrifice? We will suppose however that the ideas of these early savages were not, could not have been clear and firm and, for want of this lucidity, they confused the idea of Fire carrying the sacrifice to the Gods with the contrary idea of Fire carrying the Gods to the sacrifice. We read next that by Agni one gets substance and increase or plenty day by day; by him one gets puissant fame. It may pass;—for were not the Vedic Rishis carpenters, greengrocers, chariot-makers? and perhaps the poet was a renowned blacksmith or a primitive iron-master or even, like Draupadi, a successful & famous cook. But when we find that Agni is said to exist encompassing the

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adhwara Yajna on every side, the expressions already strike us as strange and almost unintelligible in their form if there is no supra-naturalistic suggestion. Adhwara yajna stands in need of explanation (for both words in more modern Sanscrit mean sacrifice), unless indeed we are to take it as a parallel expression to Homer’s theleiai gunaikes which scholars long persisted in understanding as “female women”. Visvatah paribhur asi has a singularly Vedantic ring. Nevertheless I will refrain from pressing any of these points for fear of being misled by my own associations. I will put by these expressions as vague poetical tropes, the result of a loose imaginative diction. But when I read in the next line Agni described as kavikratuh satyash chitrasravastamah, the strong in wisdom, the true, the rich in various knowledge, I reach the limit of my powers of complaisance, I shake off the yoke of the materialist. The naturalistic interpretation sinks under the triple blows of these epithets and from my mind at least passes away never to return. Fire, material fire, has nothing to do with wisdom, truth and various knowledge—except indeed to burn them when it gets the chance from Holy Office or enthroned bigotry. Agni, of whom wisdom, truth and various knowledge are the attributes, cannot be the personification of fire or the god of the material flame, but must be & is something greater. The Rishi of the Veda is raising his hymn to a mighty god, moral and intellectual, a god before whom sages can bow down, not to a savage & materialistic conception. He is not thinking of the burning fire, he is thinking of the helper of man who fortifies his character & purifies his intellect, vaisvanara, pavaka, jatavedas.

Many objections can be urged against so rapid a conclusion. Originally it may be argued Agni was the personification of fire, and although in the present hymn Vedic religious conceptions have reached a stage of ennoblement and moral progress in which the primitive idea could no longer satisfy, we must even here take account of the original conception. But I am concerned with the ideas of the gods as conceived by Vedic men and not with the far-off origins of these ideas in the minds of their unknown ancestors. For the one question about the Veda that is not only of interest, but vital to us in India, is not what some remote

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savages who may or may not have existed, thought about fire & the sun,—a matter on which we have no real evidence,—but what our Vedic ancestors thought about fire & the sun and their relations to the Godhead My conclusion touches this question alone. Anthropologists may be interested in hunting in the dark for undiscoverable origins—my purpose, more practical and immediate, need only take into account the actual facts of the Veda. But there are passages in which Agni is clearly the material flame; these, it may be contended, bring us back to the European theory. But so is the Agni of the Vedanta the material flame and yet preeminently a moral and spiritual deity. The question we have put to ourselves is whether it is worth while following the clue given us by the Upanishads,—whether, relying only on the plain meaning of the words, we can find Vedanta implied or explicit in the terms & notions of the Veda. The occasional materiality of Agni is not inconsistent with the Vedanticity of Veda; it is his essential materiality, if established, that would convict the Vedantic hypothesis of unreality. For to the Vedantist also the material flame is not only so much carbon & oxygen. It is the manifestation of a force; it is also the expression of a Personality & not only a God, but God Himself. For when he sees the flames of Agni burning up towards heaven, it is God whom the Vedantist watches burning up towards Go.The Vedantic explanation of Veda does not therefore suffer, it gains by the occasional materiality of Agni. And from this single hymn we have it established that his materiality in the physical flame was only one circumstance in the personality of the Vedic Agni; we find the conception of him in this hymn identical in important respects with the fiery god of the Vedanta. In the Vedanta we already know him to be Agni Vaisvanara, an universal might filling the worlds, jatavedas, one to whom the highest knowledge has appeared, visvani vayunani vidvan, he who has known all phenomena, who in his might & his knowledge attacks the crooked attractions of the world, asmaj juhuranam eno. And here, in the very opening hymn of the Veda, we find him visvatah paribhuh, universally encompassing—the word used being the very one employed to describe Virat Vaisvanara, the Master of

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the physical universe—we find him to be satya, serving the fundamental law of the world (satyadharmanam adhware), opposed to all deviation & crookedness—chitrasravas, he, shall we not say, who has detailed knowledge of the Sruti,—jatavedas Agni—kavikratu, the mighty in divine knowledge, well fitted therefore to be our helper & saviour, to “lead us by the good path to felicity.” When the Rishi proceeds to describe Agni as the guardian of immortality, a brilliant splendour increasing in its home, and appeals to him to be as accessible as a father to his child and to cleave to us for our weal, we may say with some confidence that the home is not the altar of sacrifice, that in the appeal for accessibility there is no mere request to the god not to give us too much trouble when the pieces of tinder are struck together to produce him; that the Sage is surely not entreating the fire of his hearth or of his altar to cling to him for his weal! Whatever else may be in store for me in my inquiry, I can feel that I have made at the very beginning a great stride forward. For we are rid of that pervading character of barbarous childishness which the modern scholars have stamped upon the Vedas; we have thus opened the doors of rational interpretation to admit deeper ideas and a subtler psychology.

No doubt the gain is only negative until we can determine precisely what sense to attach to these notions about Agni. For it may be argued that these Vedic terms have not as yet the developed Vedantic significance, but are merely the vague beginnings to which Vedanta afterwards gave shape & brought into a state of precision & philosophic lucidity.We need therefore before we can go very far with our Vedantic hypothesis, passages in which the thoughts of Veda & Vedanta coincide exactly & clearly in the more subtle & precise ideas of the later Transcendentalism. But meanwhile we have perfectly established that to one of the Rishis, to the son of Visvamitra,—surely no late or modern voice,—the character of Agni as a mere personification of fire does not exist. Here at least we have him as a greater type of deity; we have moral notions of a high order, religious emotions of great depth and sweetness underlying the thought & diction. The religious ideas of the fatherhood of God, of a divine friend &

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lover, a recompenser of virtue, a Master of Truth and Knowledge are already present to this early Indian consciousness. The idea of Zeus pater or Jupiter existed in European antiquity but it evoked in the Greeks & Latins no such emotions as break out in the piteva sunave of Madhuchchhandas & are paralleled by the intimacy of his claim, later on, of special & dear comradeship with Indra, the master of the thunderbolt. The Fatherhood of Zeus was the distant fatherhood of the Prajapati, general & remote, not this near & moving personal relationship. But we have done more than ascertain the religious ideas & temperament of this single Rishi. We have established the right to look for similar ideas in other hymns, if not in the whole strain of the Veda;—we cannot do otherwise for we must surely suppose that Madhuchchhandas was no solitary mind, alien to the surrounding conceptions, a single flower of advanced spirituality in a desert of naturalistic barbarism. These thoughts must, to some extent, have been current; this attitude must have been partly created for him by his environment.

All this will be admitted. It may be suggested at the same time, that it does not carry us very far on our journey. Some of the hymns, it is said, are frankly naturalistic; others moralistic & religious as modern minds have understood religion.Madhuchchhanda, [who] was a Rishi of the second and later order, naturally brings with him this accent of a moralised and partly spiritual worship into the opening hymns of the first Mandala.For as the old Nature-worshippers progressed in civilisation, they would naturally come to attach deeper ideas to godhead. Without rising to the exalted level of Semitic monotheism,—for they kept their gods of the flame & the lightning-stroke and the storm-blast,—they would seem to have yielded to an universalising tendency—they did not, indeed, roll up all their gods into one, but they expanded each into the whole. Thus they established an universality of godhead which did the same elevating work as the Semitic monotheism and through which the Indian mind, released from materialistic religion, travelled towards the Vedanta. By following this line the Hindus missed monotheism; but they found henotheism and made it a halfway

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house to their destined Pantheistic development.

The theory has a plausible ring—the question for us, is whether it is as true as it is plausible. From some of its suggestions we must guard ourselves carefully—for example, from the vulgar error that Vedanta is Pantheism. It is not that, but a Transcendentalism of which Theism, Pantheism, polytheism are all single circumstances & carefully harmonised factors. It is doubtful whether pure Pantheism can be discovered anywhere in Indian thought or Indian religion—for even when the Vedantist sees the flame as God, he is able to do so because he regards the flame not as a flame but as intrinsically something else, a supra-material presence which has the appearance of a material fiery tongue. We must remember too that the henotheism discovered by MaxMuller in the Veda, is no obsolete eccentricity of the human mind but the still existent Indian theory of the ishta devata which sees God in many forms & names but chooses one name & figure in preference to all others as the centre of its spiritual experiences and emotions. Henotheism is merely a permanent circumstance in Indian transcendentalism for the sake of a more intimate relation with Him. It is not a useful aberration from which it rose to Pantheism but itself a result of the transcendental view of the Universe. Neither should we lend ourselves to the view of some European scholars who see in the Visve devah of the Veda a movement towards the idea of universality in godhead. The description of the Visve devah in the hymns does not support that view. It does not go beyond a special application of the idea that all activities in the world have behind them hosts of divine personages whose function it is to support & maintain the inert forgetfulness of matter with the secret consciousness of spirit. Pantheism, Henotheism, Vaisvadevism (taken as a self-sufficient religious synthesis) are European notions imported into Veda & Vedanta.The Vedic data from which they seem to arise, are more perfectly explained by ideas which are still persistent actualities of the Indian religious consciousness.

We are left, therefore, still in ignorance as to the means and possibility of this extraordinary rapid stride from a superstitious poetical materialism to profound moral and spiritual

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conceptions and even to the Transcendentalism which alone makes henotheism possible to the Indian intellect. We will suppose, however, that the Vedic worshippers, even when they saw Agni flaming before them on the altar, were able without the aid of any transcendentalism, to forget his material aspects, to regard him only as a god, and not as the particular god of fire, and therefore clothe him with the general attributes of godhead. But are we then to suppose that such an expression as gopamritasya didivim, vardhamanam swe dame, guardian of immortality, a splendour increasing in its home, has no special meaning, that it is in vain that Varuna & Mitra are continually referred to as kavi ritavridhav ritasprisha, as seers, as increasing by law & truth, as desiring or enjoying that always & finding in it their strength and fullness? In the henotheistic theory, the theory which differentiates only the material aspects of Varuna, Agni, Indra and confounds their moral aspects in the general notion of universal deity—a half-fledged Pantheism roughly doing duty for monotheism,—these and a host of other powerful expressions become vague & almost meaningless; or at any rate without distinct meaning,—the terms of a vague and fluid poetry which catches at ideas & images without mastering them. This is possible, though with the concrete, clear-thinking ancients improbable. But it is also possible and more probable that we have here religious notions of another order than the modern, but quite as firm and clear—a religion which knew its own ideas and its own psychology. If we can find out what precisely are these ideas, what notions of God and the world are covered by these images of Indra, Agni, Vayu, the Aswins, Varuna, we may find out the real secret which the lapse of ages keeps concealed from us in the hymns. We may even find that our opening conjecture was justified and we were only speaking an ancient truth when we hazarded the use of the phrase, the Vedanticity of the Veda.

Still, whatever the precise nature of these higher religious concepts & emotions, their development from the alleged primitive & materialistic naturalism has to be explained.The safest

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course is to get away from these terms, henotheism, pantheism, Nature worship and keep our eyes fixed firmly on the concrete facts supplied to us by Veda. There is a flame burning on the altar; that, say the Europeans, was personified to the Vedic consciousness as Agnidevata, fire the god; Agni had originally no other significance. But now we see Madhuchchhanda with his eyes on that flame beholding in it a vision of wisdom, truth, knowledge, fatherhood, moral force, spiritual helpfulness. How has this psychological miracle been effected? By the anthropomorphic tendency in man, say the Europeans,—Fire the god, given in imagination the shape of a man, he of the tongue of flame, came to be regarded as a personality independent of the fire—a personality first with the qualities of fire, speed, brightness, destructiveness, helpfulness,—but afterwards with the general qualities of godhead,—whatever qualities the developing Aryan consciousness came to attribute to godhead. Agni is wise, true, beneficent not because he is fire, but because he is a god—that is to say an idealised man. He keeps his peculiar material qualities, but morally he may not be very different from Indra or Varuna. All three, with whatever slight variations, are shaped on common lines by a common religious & moral mentality.They must differ if this theory is true, only as the thunder, fire & sky, not as moral forces. The wisdom of Agni is also the wisdom of Indra, it is the common divine wisdom; the moral helpfulness of Agni is also the moral helpfulness of Varuna, it is the common divine helpfulness. This is the reason why sometimes Agni, sometimes Varuna, sometimes Indra appear as the supreme god, because the poet has no reason to distinguish, he has about them all different physical images but the same moral conceptions.

These ideas give us a better explanation than the other fancy of a naturalistic henotheism. On the surface it explains the Veda; it explains at least the Vedas as they are interpreted in Europe. If I find that the actual terminology & ideas of the Vedic hymns coincide with this theory, I am bound unhesitatingly to accept it. But if, on the other hand, I find that there are clear, precise & firm psychological and moral conceptions attached to the

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Vedic deities, that though they belong to one moral family, they have strong personal differences, I shall then be free to follow, undisturbed, my original Vedantic hypothesis.

What is the actual meaning, the precise force we are to attach to Vedic language and terminology? If the European theory is to stand, we must suppose that the expressions applied to Agni, Gopamritasya didivim vardhamanam swe dame, have no clear & settled significance—there is the shapeless idea of ahelpful immortal godhead coupled confusedly with the physical image of a domestic or sacrificial flame increasing upon altar or hearth. There is no appropriateness in swe dame—we are not to gather from it that Agni could not increase quite as well elsewhere! And when, proceeding to the second hymn, we read the striking lines about Mitra & Varuna, when we find them continually described with a peculiar emphasis on ritam, a noble reiteration of the conception of truth & law, ritavridhav ritasprisha, increasing by law & truth, desiring and enjoying it always, finding in law & truth their strength & fullness, we must here too suppose that these powerful & stirring expressions have no definite force & application,—though they may have been suggested originally by the majesty & fixity of the sky & the regular & regularising movements in it of the sun. They are the terms of a vague & fluid poetry, reaching out through half forgotten physical impressions to moral ideas & images which they have not mastered, in which as yet there is no fixity. Yet the moral ideas of other ancient races,—Aryan races—seem to have been otherwise clear, concrete & definite. The Greeks knew well what they meant by Fate, Necessity,Ate, Themis, Dike, Koros,Hubris; we are in no danger of confusing morally Zeus with Ares, or Ares with Hephaistos, Aphrodite with Pallas or Pallas with Artemis! We will suppose, however, that the higher spiritual development of the Indians, their urge towards universality, prevented them from arriving at this clearness of individual conception. Or else that they were arrested by this tendency at an early & fluid stage of the mythological imagination, when material distinctions were clear & unblurred, the moral ideas which were to obscure or hide them not yet sifted and organised.

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What then is the desideratum, if we are to have clear authority to proceed with the Vedantic hypothesis—for it is not yet a theory.We must have, obviously, some clear & indubitable passage to start with, assigning definite & minute psychological, moral or intellectual functions to a particular Vedic deity, in a sense which shall be identical with or closely related to the ideas & the psychology of the Upanishads. If I can find one such passage, & if it is of a nature to shed light upon others of a less indubitable clarity I shall have firm hold of our clue. I shall be in a position to build up my hypothesis, & to posit & test, as I go, by means of a number of particular indications this truth so dim to us, but which to our forefathers was so clear, the Vedanticity of the Veda.

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The Colloquy of Agastya and Indra

[word] - Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to themanuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

But we are not limited to the evidence [of] isolated passages or collected inferences for the symbolic, spiritual and psychological character of the Vedic sacrifice. There are entire hymns in which this character is brought out with a remarkable consistency & vividness.We will take first the brief & striking colloquy between the Rishi Agastya and the great god Indra which forms the five verses of Hymn 170 in the first Mandala. It opens with a verse spoken, it would seem, by Indra, one of the most remarkable riks in the whole Veda. “It is not now nor tomorrow; who knoweth that which is utterly wonderful? its movement has for its field the knowledge of another, but when it is approached, it disappears.” To this allocution which might have come straight out of the deepest passages of the Upanishads Agastya replies by a complaint, “Why, O Indra, wouldst thou slay us; the Maruts are thy brothers,—with them do thou work for our perfection; smite us not in our struggle.” Indra defends himself, justifies the blows he has struck: “Wherefore, O my brother Agastya, dost thou, though our comrade, think beyond us; verily we know of thee how to us thou willest not to give the offering of thy mind. Let them make the altar ready; let them kindle utterly Agni in front;—there is the awakening to immortality; let us two extend thy sacrifice.” Agastya yields & consents: “Thou art the master, O lord of substance among the Vasus, thou utterly disposest, O lord of love among theMitras. Indra, do thou hold talk with the Maruts, taste in the truth the offerings.” It seems to me that the sense of this little hymn, so beautiful, simple & profound in its expression & substance, is perfectly straightforward, perfectly lucid & only a preconceived theory or a perverse ingenuity can lead us astray. That which is neither now nor tomorrow, but beyond all Time, the wonderful thing which no man can know, that which reveals itself by its activity in the consciousness of

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another, in ourselves, in Indra, in the Maruts, in every living being or active force, but if we seek to approach, study & seize it vanishes from our ken, is the Brahman. No other conception of Indian thought fits this profound & subtle description. What sublime & numerous echoes wake in our memory as we repeat this mantra. There comes to us the solemn stanza of the Gita, Ascharyavat pashyati kaschid enam...; there come the words of the Mandukya Upanishad, yachchanyat trikalatitam; the solemn assertion of the Kena, na tatra vag gacchati no manah; its subtle distinction avijnatam vijanatam vijnatam avijanatam; vividly there comes the great fable of the mighty Yaksha who stood before the gods, the advance of this very Indra to know him, the vanishing of the Brahman as soon as approached, utadhitam vi nashyati. The whole of Vedanta might be described as one vast commentary on the four words, anyasya chittam abhi sancharenyam.

But why does Indra cast this assertion of the unknowability of Brahman at Agastya in their quarrel? His self-justification in the third rik explains the motive. Agastya has been seeking to go beyond Indra in his thought consciousness; he has been seeking to exceed mind & arrive straight at Brahman, to place his mind and its activities not on the altar of the Lord of Mind, but on the altar of the unknown God.Vidma hi te yatha mano asmabhyam na ditsasi. Not so, says Indra, shalt thou attain. Through me, through the mind, through thy mental consciousness, thou shalt aspire to That which is wonderful; for all its actions & movements are not in its pure self-being but in the field of another’s consciousness, there it must be sought; approached directly it vanishes. Agastya seeks to pacify Indra. He perceives that through the hostility of Indra his mind refuses to work towards perfection, towards siddhi in the Yoga; in his strenuous struggling upward, samarane, it no longer helps but resists him; there is a divorce between his mental energies presided over by the Maruts & their great presiding and fulfilling devata; confusion, failure of thought, error, backsliding is the result. “Why wouldst thou slay me,” he cries, “I am but moving towards my goal; the Maruts are thy brothers, why art thou in disagreement

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with them? Rather with them as thy allies & helpers do thy work of thinking in me in a way effective of my perfection (kalpasva sadhuya) and strike me not down in the difficult & arduous struggle of my ascent.” The sense of Indra’s reply is perfectly clear, “We are brothers, O Agastya, sons of the same Immortal Being; we are friends & comrades, we have fought together the great Aryan battle against the fiends & giants & Titans, the battle of the soul struggling towards immortality; but now you regard us as too little for you & seek to shoot beyond us. We have seen how you are no longer willing to give the offering of your mind & its activities to us as of old, asmabhyam id, you are directing them elsewhere. This cannot be. You must not become the adashush & cease from the sacrifice decreed. Make ready the altar of the body & mind; kindle the fire of the divine force upon it in front of you, let Agni stand as your purohita. This is the way decreed; in the sacrifice to the right devatas & not otherwise the soul of man awakens out of this death into that immortality. Seek not to stand apart from me, take my aid & let us two together extend thy increasing sacrifice to its last fulfilment and culmination. Through mind fulfilled, go beyond mind to Brahman.” Agastya, taught by experience, sees his error; he accepts the law of the sacrifice. “Yea,” he cries, “I seek widened being, thou among the lords of being art the chief master; thou art master to give or deny; I seek infinite joy & love, thou among the masters of love & joy art its most potent & liberal disposer. Come then into agreement with the Maruts & create the harmony of my thoughts and take thy joy of my activities according to the law of the ideal of Truth of things, exalting mind into supermind.” The hymn throws a flood of light on the persistent tales of the Purana & Itihasa in which Indra appears as the enemy of the Yogin, fearing to be overpassed, seeking to keep him by any means from conquering Swar and becoming too mighty for Indra himself. It is the Powers of mind that seek to preserve their activity in the human being, & do not wish him, stilling these activities, to pass into the silent Brahman. In the Vedic ideal Indra does not need to be an enemy, he is the best friend of the seeker, because the ideal of the Vedic Rishi

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is fulfilment & not cessation; but still a time comes when the average Vedic Yogin seeks to shoot by a short cut beyond, to dispense with tapasya & sacrifice & leap straight to the heights where all things are still. He is in danger of using the wrong means, following the wrong ideal. It is such a moment in his soul experience that Agastya records; the attempt, the resistance of Indra, the strife, the salutary failure, the perception of failure, the reconciliation, submission & recovered harmony.

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The Gods of the Veda

Prefatory

The beliefs and conclusions of today are, in these rapid and unsettled times, seldom the beliefs and conclusions of tomorrow. In religion, in thought, in science, in literature we march daily over the bodies of dead theories to enthrone fresh syntheses and worship new illuminations. The realms of scholarship are hardly more quiet and secure than these troubled kingdoms; and in that realm nowhere is the soil so boggy, nowhere does scholastic ingenuity disport itself with such light fantastic footsteps over such a quaking morass of hardy conjecture and hasty generalisation as in the Sanscrit scholarship of the last century. But the Vedic question at least seemed to have been settled. It was agreed—firmly enough, it seemed—that the Vedas were the sacred chants of a rude, primitive race of agriculturists sacrificing to very material gods for very material benefits with an elaborate but wholly meaningless & arbitrary ritual; the gods themselves were merely poetical personifications of cloud & rain & wind, lightning & dawn and the sky & fire to which the semi-savage Vedic mind attributed by crude personal analogy a personality and a presiding form, the Rishis were sacrificing priests of an invading Aryan race dwelling on the banks of the Panjab rivers, men without deep philosophical or exalted moral ideas, a race of frank cheerful Pagans seeking the good things of life, afraid of drought & night & various kinds of devils, sacrificing persistently & drinking vigorously, fighting the black Dravidians whom they called the Dasyus or robbers,—crude prototypes these of Homeric Greek and Scandinavian Viking.All this with many details of the early civilisation were supposed to be supplied by a philological—and therefore scientific—examination of the ancient text yielding as certain results as the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyph and Persian inscription. If there are hymns of a high

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moral fervour, of a remarkable philosophical depth & elevation, these are later compositions of a more sophisticated age. In the earlier hymns, the vocabulary, archaic and almost unintelligible, allows an adroit & industrious scholarship waving in its hand the magic wand of philology to conjure into it whatever meaning may be most suitable to modern beliefs or preferable to the European temperament. As for Vedanta, it can be no clue to the meaning of the mantras, because the Upanishads represent a spiritual revolt against Vedic naturalism & ceremonialism and not, as has been vainly imagined for some thousands of years, the fulfilment of Vedic truth. Since then, some of these positions have been severely shaken. European Science has rudely scouted the claims of Comparative Philology to rank as a Science; European Ethnology has dismissed the Aryo-Dravidian theory of the philologist & tends to see in the Indian people a single homogeneous race; it has been trenchantly suggested and plausibly upheld that the Vedas themselves offer no evidence that the Indian races were ever outside India but even prove the contrary—an advance from the south and not from the north. These theories have not only been suggested & widely approved but are gaining upon the general mind. Alone in all this overthrow the European account of Vedic religion & Vedic civilisation remains as yet intact & unchallenged by any serious questioning. Even in the minds of the Indian people, with their ancient reverence for Veda, the Europeans have effected an entire divorce between Veda & Vedanta. The consistent religious development of India has been theosophic, mystical, Vedantic. Its beginnings are now supposed to have been naturalistic, materialistic, Pagan, almost Graeco-Roman. No satisfactory explanation has been given of this strange transformation in the soul of a people, and it is not surprising that theories should have been started attributing to Vedanta & Brahmavada a Dravidian origin. Brahmavada was, some have confidently asserted, part of the intellectual property taken over by the Aryan conquerors from the more civilised races they dispossessed. The next step in this scholars’ progress might well be some counterpart of Sergi’s Mediterranean theory,—an original dark, pacific, philosophic & civilised race overwhelmed

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by a fairskinned & warlike horde of Aryan savages.

The object of this book is to suggest a prior possibility,—that the whole European theory may be from beginning to end a prodigious error. The confident presumption that religion started in fairly recent times with the terrors of the savage, passed through stages of Animism & Nature worship & resulted variously in Paganism, monotheism or the Vedanta has stood in the way of any extension of scepticism to this province of Vedic enquiry. I dispute the presumption and deny the conclusions drawn from it. Before I admit it, I must be satisfied that a system of pure Nature worship ever existed. I cannot accept as evidence Sun & Star myth theories which, as a play of ingenious scholastic fancy, may attract the imagination, but are too haphazard, too easily self-contented, too ill-combined & inconsequent to satisfy the scientific reason. No other religion of which there is any undisputed record or sure observation, can be defined as a system of pure Nature worship. Even the savage-races have had the conception of gods & spirits who are other than personified natural phenomena. At the lowest they have Animism & the worship of spirits, ghosts & devils. Ancestor-worship & the cult of snake & four-footed animal seem to have been quite as old as any Nature-gods with whom research has made us acquainted. In all probability the Python was worshipped long before Apollo. It is therefore evident that even in the lowest religious strata the impulse to personify Nature-phenomena is not the ruling cult-idea of humanity. It is exceedingly unlikely that at any time this element should have so far prevailed as to cast out all the others so as to create a type of cult confined within a pure & rigid naturalism. Man has always seen in the universe the replica of himself. Unless therefore the Vedic Rishis had no thought of their subjective being, no perception of intellectual and moral forces within themselves, it is a psychological impossibility that they should have detected divine forces behind the objective world but none behind the subjective.

These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and

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seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attributes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilence—in Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God—but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. The question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?

The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The

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Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they “touched” him,—nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is

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also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.

When we go back to the Veda itself, we find in the hymns which are to us most easily intelligible by the modernity of their language, similar & decisive indications. The moralistic conception of Varuna, for example, is admitted even by the Europeans. We even find the sense of sin, usually supposed to be an advanced religious conception, much more profoundly developed in prehistoric India than it was in any other old Aryan nation even in historic times. Surely, this is in itself a significant indication. Surely, this conception cannot have become so clear & strong without a previous history in the earlier hymns. Nor is it psychologically possible that a cult capable of so advanced an idea, should have been ignorant of all other moral & intellectual conceptions reverencing only natural forces & seeking only material ends. Neither can there have been a sudden leap filled up only by a very doubtful “henotheism”, a huge hiatus between the naturalism of early Veda and the transcendentalism of the Vedic Brahmavada admittedly present in the later hymns. The European interpretation in the face of such conflicting facts threatens to become a brilliant but shapeless monstrosity. And is there no symbolism in the details of the Vedic sacrifice? It seems to me that the peculiar language of the Veda has never been properly studied or appreciated in this connection. What are we to say of the Vedic anxiety to increase Indra by the Soma wine? Of the description of Soma as the amritam, the wine of immortality, & of its forces as the indavah or moon powers? Of the constant sense of the attacks delivered by the powers of evil on the sacrifice? Of the extraordinary powers already attributed to the mantra & the sacrifice? Have the neshtram potram, hotram of the Veda no symbolic significance? Is there no reason for the multiplication of functions at the sacrifice or for the subtle distinctions between Gayatrins, Arkins, Brahmas? These are questions that demand a careful consideration which

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has never yet been given for the problems they raise.

The present essays are merely intended to raise the subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis, perfectly consistent in itself and proved in hymn after hymn without any hiatus or fatal objection. Such a substantiation I shall one day place before the public. The problem of Vedic interpretation depends, in my view, on three different tests, philological, historic and psychological. If the results of these three coincide, then only can we be sure that we have understood the Veda. But to erect this Delphic tripod of interpretation is no facile undertaking. It is easy to misuse philology. I hold no philology to be sound & valid which has only discovered one or two byelaws of sound modification and for the rest depends upon imagination & licentious conjecture,—identifies for instance ethos with swadha, derives uloka from urvaloka or prachetasa from prachi and on the other [hand] ignores the numerous but definitely ascertainable caprices of Pracritic detrition between the European & Sanscrit tongues or considers a number of word-identities sufficient to justify inclusion in a single group of languages. By a scientific philology I mean a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech. Such a system of comparative philology could alone deserve to stand as a science side by side with the physical sciences and claim to speak with authority on the significance of doubtful words in the Vedic vocabulary. The development of such a science must always be a work of time & gigantic labour.

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But even such a science, when completed, could not, owing to the paucity of our records be, by itself, a perfect guide. It would be necessary to discover, fix & take always into account the actual ideas, experiences and thought-atmosphere of the Vedic Rishis; for it is these things that give colour to the words of men and determine their use. The European translations represent the Vedic Rishis as cheerful semi-savages full of material ideas & longings, ceremonialists, naturalistic Pagans, poets endowed with an often gorgeous but always incoherent imagination, a rambling style and an inability either to think in connected fashion or to link their verses by that natural logic which all except children and the most rudimentary intellects observe. In the light of this conception they interpret Vedic words & evolve a meaning out of the verses. Sayana and the Indian scholars perceive in the Vedic Rishis ceremonialists & Puranists like themselves with an occasional scholastic & Vedantic bent; they interpret Vedic words and Vedic mantras accordingly. Wherever they can get words to mean priest, prayer, sacrifice, speech, rice, butter, milk, etc, they do so redundantly and decisively. It would be at least interesting to test the results of another hypothesis,—that the Vedic thinkers were clear-thinking men with at least as clear an expression as ordinary poets have and at least as high ideas and as connected and logical a way of expressing themselves—allowing for the succinctness of poetical forms—as is found in other religious poetry, say the Psalms or the Book of Job or St Paul’s Epistles. But there is a better psychological test than any mere hypothesis. If it be found, as I hold it will be found, that a scientific & rational philological dealing with the text reveals to us poems not of mere ritual or Nature worship, but hymns full of psychological & philosophical religion expressed in relation to fixed practices & symbolic ceremonies, if we find that the common & persistent words of Veda, words such as vaja, vani, tuvi, ritam, radhas, rati, raya, rayi, uti, vahni etc,—an almost endless list,—are used so persistently because they expressed shades of meaning & fine psychological distinctions of great practical importance to the Vedic religion, that the Vedic gods were intelligently worshipped

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& the hymns intelligently constructed to express not incoherent poetical ideas but well-connected spiritual experiences,—then the interpreter of Veda may test his rendering by repeating the Vedic experiences through Yoga & by testing & confirming them as a scientist tests and confirms the results of his predecessors. He may discover whether there are the same shades & distinctions, the same connections in his own psychological & spiritual experiences. If there are, he will have the psychological confirmation of his philological results.

Even this confirmation may not be sufficient. For although the new version may have the immense superiority of a clear depth & simplicity supported & confirmed by a minute & consistent scientific experimentation, although it may explain rationally & simply most or all of the passages which have baffled the older & the newer, the Eastern & the Western scholars, still the confirmation may be discounted as a personal test applied in the light of a previous conclusion. If, however, there is a historical confirmation as well, if it is found that Veda has exactly the same psychology & philosophy as Vedanta, Purana, Tantra & ancient & modern Yoga & all of them indicate the same Vedic results which we ourselves have discovered in our experience, then we may possess our souls in peace & say to ourselves that we have discovered the meaning of Veda; its true meaning if not all its significance. Nor need we be discouraged, if we have to disagree with Sayana & Yaska in the actual rendering of the hymns no less than with the Europeans. Neither of these great authorities can be held to be infallible. Yaska is an authority for the interpretation of Vedic words in his own age, but that age was already far subsequent to the Vedic & the sacred language of the hymns was already to him an ancient tongue. The Vedas are much more ancient than we usually suppose. Sayana represents the scholarship & traditions of a period not much anterior to our own. There is therefore no authoritative rendering of the hymns. The Veda remains its own best authority.

But all this triple labour is a work of great responsibility, minute research and an immense & meticulous industry. Meanwhile I hold myself justified in opening the way by a purely

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hypothetical entrance into the subject, suggesting possibilities for the present rather than seeking to enforce a settled opinion. There is a possible theory that may be proposed, certain provisional details of it that may be formulated. A few initial stones may be laid down to help in crossing by a convenient ford this great stream of the Veda.

The statement of a few principal details of the Vedic system according to the theory I wish to suggest, a simple enumeration without comments, may help the reader to find his way through the following pages.

(1) Vedic religion is based on an elaborate psychology & cosmology of which the keyword is the great Vedic formula OM, Bhur Bhuvah Swah; the three vyahritis and the Pranava. The three Vyahritis are the three lower principles ofMatter, Life & Mind, Annam, Prana & Manas of the Vedanta. OM is Brahman or Sacchidananda of whom these three are the expressions in the phenomenal world. OM & the vyahritis are connected by an intermediate principle, Mahas, Vijnanam of the Vedanta, ideal Truth which has arranged the lower worlds & on which amidst all their confusions they rest.

(2) Corresponding roughly to the vyahritis are three worlds, Bhurloka (Prana-Annam, the material world), Bhuvarloka (Prana-Manas, the lower subjective world), Swarloka (Manas- Buddhi, the higher subjective world). These are the tribhuvana of Hinduism.

(3) Corresponding to Mahas is Maharloka or Mahi Dyaus, the great heavens (pure Buddhi or Vijnana, the ideal world). The Pranava in its three essentialities rules over the three supreme worlds, the Satyaloka (divine being), Tapoloka (divine Awareness & Force), Anandaloka (divine Bliss) of the Puranas, which constitute Amritam, immortality or the true kingdom of heaven of the Vedic religion. These are the Vedic sapta dhamani & the seven different movements of consciousness to which they correspond are the sapta sindhu of the hymns.

(4) According to the Vedanta, man has five koshas or sheaths of existence, the material (Annamaya), vital (Pranamaya), mental (Manomaya) which together make up the aparardha or

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lower half of our conscious-being; the ideal (vijnanamaya) which links the lower to the parardha or higher half; the divine or Anandamaya in which the divine existence (Amrita) is concentrated for communion with our lower human being. These are the pancha kshitis, five earths or rather dwelling places of the Veda. But in Yoga we speak usually of the five koshas but the sapta bhumis, seven not five. The Veda also speaks of sapta dhamani.

(5) In each of the seven strata of consciousness all the other six work under the law of the stratum which houses them. This means seven sub-strata in each; in the three vyahritis there are therefore thrice seven, trih saptani.

(6) Man, although living here in Bhu, belongs to Swar & Bhuvar. He is manu, the Thinker,—the soul in him is the manomayah pranasarira neta of the Upanishad, “the mental captain & guide of life & body”. He has to become vijnanamaya (mahan) and anandamaya, to become in a word immortal, divine in all his laws of being (vrata & dharman). By rising to Mahas in himself he enters into direct touch with ideal Truth, gets truth of knowledge by drishti, sruti & smriti, the three grand ideal processes, and by that knowledge truth of being, truth of action (satyadharma), truth of bliss (satyaradhas) constituting amritam, swarajyam & samrajyam, immortality, self-rule & mastery of the world. It is this evolution which the Vedic hymns are intended to assist.

(7) In his progress man is helped by the gods, resisted by the Asuras & Rakshasas. For the worlds behind have their own inhabitants, who, the whole universe being inextricably one, affect & are affected by the activities of mankind. The Bhuvar is the great place of struggle in which forces work behind the visible movements we see here and determine all our actions & fortunes. Swar is man’s resting place but not his final or highest habitation which is Vishnu’s highest footing, Vishnoh paramam padam, high in the supreme parardha.

(8) The 33 great gods belong to the higher worlds but rest in Swar & work at once in all the strata of consciousness, for the world is always one in its complexity. They are masters of the

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mental functions, masters also of the vital & material. Agni, for instance, governs the actions of the fiery elements in Nature & in man, but is also the vehicle of pure tapas, tu, tuvis or divine force. They are therefore mankind’s greatest helpers.

(9) But in order that they may help, it is necessary to reinforce them in these lower worlds, which are not their own, by self-surrender, by sacrifice, by a share in all man’s action, strength, being & bliss, and by this mutual help man’s being physical, vital, mental, spiritual is kept in a state of perfect & ever increasing force, energy & joy favourable to the development of immortality. This is the process of Yajna, called often Yoga when applied exclusively to the subjective movements & adhwara when applied to the objective. The Vritras, Panis etc of the Bhuvarloka who are constantly preventing man’s growth & throwing back his development, have to be attacked and slain by the gods, for they are not entirely immortal. The sacrifice is largely a battle between evolutionary & reactionary powers.

(10) A symbolic system of external sacrifice in which every movement is carefully designed & coordinated to signify the subjective facts of the internal Yajna, aids the spiritual aspirant by moulding his material sheath into harmony with his internal life & by mastering his external surroundings so that there too the conditions & forces may be all favourable to his growth.

(11) The Yajna has two parts, mantra & tantra—subjective & objective; in the outer sacrifice the mantra is the Vedic hymn and the tantra the oblation; in the inner the mantra is the meditation or the sacred formula, the tantra the putting forth of the power generated by mantra to bring about some successful spiritual, intellectual, vital or mental activity of which the gods have their share.

(12) The mantra consists of gayatra, brahma and arka, the formulation of thought into rhythmic speech to bring about a spiritual force or result, the filling of the soul (brahma) with the idea & name of the god of the mantra, the use of the mantra for effectuation of the external object or the activity desired.

(13) The tantra is composed of neshtra, savanam, potra & hotra, the intensifying of the vasu or material (internal or

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external) so as to prepare it for activity, the production of it in a of it to the god or for action.

(14) The Veda proper is karmakanda, not jnanakanda; its aim is not moksha, but divine fulfilment in this life & the next. Therefore the Vedic Rishis accepted plenty & fullness of physical, vital & mental being, power & joy as the pratistha or foundation of immortality & did not reject it as an obstacle to salvation.¹

(15) The world being one in all its parts every being in it contains the universe in himself. Especially do the great gods contain all the others & their activities in themselves, so that Agni, Varuna, Indra, all of them are in reality one sole-existent deity in many forms. Man too is He, but he has to fulfil himself here as man, yet divine (that being his vrata & dharma) through the puissant means provided for him [by] the Veda.

Chapter I
Saraswati and the Great ocean

One of the greatest deities of the Vedic Pantheon is a woman, Gna,—a feminine power whether of material or moral nature,—whether her functions work in the subjective or the objective. The Hindu religion has always laid an overpowering stress on this idea of the woman in Nature. It is not only in the Purana that the Woman looms so large, not only in the Shakta cult that she becomes a supreme Name. In the Upanishads it is only when Indra, in his search for the mysterious and ill-understood Mastering Brahman, meets with the Woman in the heaven of things—tasminn evakashe striyam ajagama UmamHaimavatim, “In that same sky he came to the Woman, Uma, daughter of Himavan”,—that he is able to learn the thing which he seeks. The Stri,

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the Aja or unborn Female Energy, is the executive Divinity of the universe, the womb, the mother, the bride, the mould & instrument of all joy & being. The Veda also speaks of the gnah, the Women,—feminine powers without whom the masculine are not effective for work & formation; for when the gods are to be satisfied who support the sacrifice & effect it, vahnayah, yajatrah, then Medhatithi of the Kanwas calls on Agni to yoke them with female mates, patnivatas kridhi, in their activity and enjoyment. In one of his greatest hymns, the twenty-second of the first Mandala, he speaks expressly of the patnir devanam, the brides of the Strong Ones, who are to be called to extend protection, to breathe a mighty peace, to have their share the joy of the Soma wine. Indrani, Varunani, Agnayi,—we can recognise these goddesses and their mastering gods; but there are three—in addition to Mother Earth—who seem to stand on a different level and are mentioned without the names of their mates if they have any and seem to enjoy an independent power and activity. They are Ila,Mahi&Saraswati, the three goddesses born of Love or born of Bliss, Tisro devir mayobhuvah.

Saraswati is known to us in the Purana,—the Muse with her feet on the thousand leaved lotus of the mind, the goddess of thought, learning, poetry, of all that is high in mind and its knowledge. But, so far as we can understand from the Purana, she is the goddess of mind only, of intellect & imagination and their perceptions & inspirations. Things spiritual & the mightier supra-mental energies & illuminations belong not to her, but to other powers. Well, we meet Saraswati in the Vedas;—and if she is the same goddess as our Puranic & modern protectress of learning & the arts, the Personality of the Intellect, then we have a starting point—we know that the Vedic Rishis had other than naturalistic conceptions & could call to higher powers than the thunder-flash & the storm-wind. But there is a difficulty—Saraswati is the name of a river, of several rivers in India, for the very name means flowing, gliding or streaming,—and the Europeans identify it with a river in the Punjab. We must be careful therefore, whenever we come across the name, to be sure which of these two is mentioned or invoked, the sweet-streaming

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Muse or the material river.

The first passage in which Saraswati is mentioned, is the third hymn of the first Mandala, the hymn of Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra, in which the Aswins, Indra, the Visve devah and Saraswati are successively invoked—apparently in order to conduct an ordinary material sacrifice? That is the thing that has to be seen,—to be understood. What is Saraswati, whether as a Muse or a river, doing at the Soma-offering? Or is she there as the architect of the hymn, the weaver of the Riks?

The passage devoted to her occupies the three final & culminating verses of the sacred poem. Pavaka nah Saraswati vajebhir vajinivati Yajnam vashtu dhiyavasuh. Chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam Yajnam dadhe Saraswati. Maho arnas Saraswati prachetayati ketuna Dhiyo visva vi rajati. Now there is here mention in the last verse of a flowing water, arnas, whether sea or river, but this can be no material stream, since plainly the rest of the passage can only refer to a goddess whose functions are subjective. She is dhiyavasuh, stored or rich with understanding, she is the impelling power of truths, she is the awakener of or to right thoughts. She awakens something or brings it forward into consciousness (pra-chetayati) by the perceptive intelligence and she governs or shines through all the movements of the fixing & discerning mind. There are too many words here that do ordinarily & ought here to bear a purely subjective sense for any avoidance of the clear import of the passage. We start then with the conception of Saraswati as a goddess of mind, if not the goddess of mind and we have then to determine what are her functions or activities as indicated in this important passage and for what purpose she has been summoned by the son of Visvamitra to this sacrifice.

What exact sense are we to apply to vajebhir vajinivati when it is spoken of a subjective Power? It is a suggestion I shall make and work out hereafter by application to all the hundreds of passages in which the word occurs that vaja in the Veda means a substantial, firm & copious condition of being, well-grounded & sufficient plenty in anything material, mental or spiritual, any substance, wealth, chattels, qualities, psychological conditions.

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Saraswati has the power of firm plenty, vajini, by means of or consisting in many kinds of plenty, copious stores of mental material for any mental activity or sacrifice. But first of all she is purifying, pavaka. Therefore she is not merely or not essentially a goddess of mental force, but of enlightenment; for enlightenment is the mental force that purifies. And she is dhiyavasu, richly stored with understanding, buddhi, the discerning intellect, which holds firmly in their place, fixes, establishes all mental conceptions. First, therefore she has the purifying power of enlightenment, secondly, she has plenty of mental material, great wealth of mental being; thirdly, she is powerful in intellect, in that which holds, discerns, places. Therefore she is asked, as I take it, to control the Yajna—vashtu from Root vash, which bore the idea of control as is evident from its derivatives vasha,vashya & vashin.

But greater capacities, mightier functions are demanded of Saraswati.Mind and discerning intelligence, however active and well-stored, may give false interpretation and mistaken counsel. But Saraswati at the sacrifice is chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam. It is she who gives the impulsion to the truths that appear in the mind, it is she who, herself conscious of right thoughts and just processes of thinking, awakens to them the mental faculties. Therefore, because she is the impelling force behind intellectual Truth, and our awakener to right thinking, she is present at the sacrifice; she has established and upholds it, yajnam dadhe. This sacrifice, whatever else it may be, is controlled by mental enlightenment and rich understanding and confirmed in & by truth and right-thinking. Therefore is Saraswati its directing power & presiding goddess.

But by what power of Saraswati’s are falsehood & error excluded and the mind and discerning reason held to truth & right-thinking? This, if I mistake not, is what the Rishi Madhuchchhanda, the drashta of Veda has seen for us in his last and culminating verse. I have said that arnas is a flowing water whether river or sea; for the word expresses either a flowing continuity or a flowing expanse. We may translate it then as “the river of Mah or Mahas”, and place arnas in apposition

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with Saraswati. This goddess will then be in our subjective being some principle to which the Vedic thinkers gave the names of Mah and Mahas for it is clear, if the rest of our interpretation is at all correct, that there can be no question of a material stream & arnas must refer to some stream or storehouse of subjective faculty. But there are strong objections to such a collocation. We shall find later that the goddess Mahi and not Saraswati is the objectivising feminine power and divine representative of this Vedic principle Mahas; prachetayati besides demands an object and maho arnas is the only object which the structure of the sentence and the rhythm of the verse will allow. I translate therefore “Saraswati awakens by the perceptive intelligence the ocean (or, flowing expanse) of Mahas and governs diversely all the movements (or, all the faculties) of the understanding.”

What is Mah or Mahas?The word means great, embracing, full, comprehensive. The Earth, also, because of its wideness & containing faculty is called mahi,—just as it is called prithivi, dhara, medini, dharani, etc. In various forms, the root itself, mahi, mahitwam, maha, magha, etc, it recurs with remarkable profusion and persistence throughout the Veda. Evidently it expressed some leading thought of the Rishis, was some term of the highest importance in their system of psychology. Turning to the Purana we find the term mahat applied to some comprehensive principle which is supposed itself to be near to the unmanifest, avyaktam but to supply the material of all that is manifest and always to surround, embrace and uphold it. Mahat seems here to be an objective principle; but this need not trouble us; for in the old Hindu system all that is objective had something subjective corresponding to it and constituting its real nature. We find it explicitly declared in the Vishnu Purana that all things here are manifestations of vijnana, pure ideal knowledge, sarvani vijnanavijrimbhitani—ideal knowledge vibrating out into intensity of various phenomenal existences each with its subjective reason for existence and objective case & form of existence. Is ideal knowledge then the subjective principle of mahat? If so, vijnanam and the Vedic mahas are likely to be terms identical in

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their philosophical content and psychological significance. We turn to the Upanishads and find mention made more than once of a certain subjective state of the soul, which is called Mahan Atma, a state into which the mind and senses have to be drawn up as we rise by samadhi of the instruments of knowledge into the supreme state of Brahman and which is superior therefore to these instruments. The Mahan Atma is the state of the pure Brahman out of which the vijnana or ideal truth (sattwa or beness of things) emerges and it is higher than the vijnana but nearer us than the Unmanifest or Avyaktam (Katha: III.10, 11,13 & VI.7). If we understand by the Mahan Atma that status of soul existence (Purusha) which is the basis of the objective mahat or mahati prakriti and which develops the vijnanam or ideal knowledge as its subjective instrument, then we shall have farther light on the nature of Mahas in the ancient conceptions. We shall see that it is ideal knowledge, vijnanam, or is connected with ideal knowledge.

But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,—the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manas—either in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhi—predominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic

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worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,—not unknown to the Veda—constitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyakta—lost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.

We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knows—as it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free

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from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,—to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions,—and then too always with some reserve of doubt,—about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure

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knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kant’s pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason

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& intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & senses—until man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.

It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,—therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,—the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihat—Sacchidananda objectivised—is the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feel—as Wordsworth felt it—when we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it “Sukritam”, What I have made, is good. Whoever

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enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smriti—sees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memory—just as we say of a friend “This is he” and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselves—though we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,—he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,—is in all things “true”. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefathers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept

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mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.

We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, “dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati”, has prepared for the service of the Master of the sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinking—visva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.

For we perceive at once that the yajna here can be no material sacrifice, no mere pouring out of the Soma-wine on the sacred flame to the gods of rain & cloud, star & sunshine.

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Saraswati is not even here the goddess of speech whose sole function is to inspire & guide the singer in his hymn. In other passages she may be merely Bharati,—theMuse. But here there are greater depths of thought & soul-experience. She has to do things which mere speech cannot do. And even if we were to take her here as the divine Muse, still the functions asked of her are too great, there is too little need of all these high intellectual motions, for a mere invitation to Rain&Star Gods to share in a pouring of the Soma-wine. She could do that without all this high intellectual & spiritual labour. Even, therefore, if it be a material sacrifice whichMadhuchchhanda is offering, its material aspects can be no more than symbolical. Unless indeed the rest of the hymn contradicts the intellectual & spiritual purport which we have discovered in these closing verses, full—on the face of them & accepting the plainest & most ordinary meaning for each single word in them—of deep psychological knowledge, moral & spiritual aspiration & a supreme poetical art.

I do not propose to study the earlier verses of the hymn with the same care as we have expended on the closing dedication to Saraswati,—that would lead me beyond my immediate purpose. A rapid glance through them to see whether they confirm or contradict our first results will be sufficient. There are three passages, also of three verses each, consecrated successively to the Aswins, Indra & the Visve Devah. I shall give briefly my own view of these three passages and the gods they invoke.

The master word of the address to the Aswins is the verb chanasyatam, take your delight. The Aswins, as I understand them, are the masters of strength, youth, joy, swiftness, pleasure, rapture, the pride and glory of existence, and may almost be described as the twin gods of youth and joy. All the epithets applied to them here support this view. They are dravatpani subhaspati, the swift-footed masters of weal, of happiness and good fortune; they are purubhuja, much enjoying; their office is to take and give delight, chanasyatam. So runs the first verse, Aswin yajwaririsho dravatpani subhaspati, Purubhuja chanasyatam. O Aswins, cries Madhuchchhanda, I am in the full rush, the full ecstasy of the sacrificial action, O swift-footed, much-enjoying

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masters of happiness, take in me your delight. Again they are purudansasa, wide-distributing, nara, strong. “O strong wide-distributing Aswins,” continues the singer, “with your bright-flashing (or brilliantly-forceful) understanding take pleasure in the words (of the mantra) which are now firmly settled (in the mind)”. Aswina purudansasa nara shaviraya dhiya, Dhishnya vanatam girah. Again we have the stress on things subjective, intellectual and spiritual. The extreme importance of the mantra, the inspired & potent word in the old Vedic religion is known nor has it diminished in later Hinduism. The mantra in Yoga is only effective when it has settled into the mind, is asina, has taken its seat there and become spontaneous; it is then that divine power enters into, takes possession of it and the mantra itself becomes one with the god of the mantra and does his works in the soul and body. This, as every Yogin knows, is one of the fundamental ideas not only in the Rajayogic practice but in almost all paths of spiritual discipline. Here we have the very word that can most appropriately express this settling in of the mantra, dhishnya, combined with the word girah. And we know that the gods in the Veda are called girvanah, those who delight in the mantra; Indra, the god of mental force, is girvahas, he who supports or bears the mantra. Why should Nature gods delight in speech or the god of thunder & rain be the supporter or bearer of any kind of speech? The hymns? But what is meant by bearing the hymns? We have to give unnatural meanings to vanas & vahas, if we wish to avoid this plain indication. In the next verse the epithets are dasra, bountiful, which, like wide-distributing is again an epithet appropriate to the givers of happiness, weal and youth, rudravartani, fierce & impetuous in all their ways, and Nasatya, a word of doubtful meaning which, for philological reasons, I take to mean gods of movement.As the movement indicated by this and kindred words nâ, (natare), especially meant a gliding, floating, swimming movement, the Aswins came to be especially the protectors of ships & sailors, and it is in this capacity that we find Castor & Polydeuces (Purudansas) acting, their Western counterparts, the brothers of Helen (Sarama), the swift riders of the Roman legend. “O

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givers, O lords of free movement,” runs the closing verse of this invocation, “come to the outpourings of my nectar, be ye fierce in action;—I feel full of youthful vigour, I have prepared the sacred grass,”—if that indeed be the true & early meaning of barhis. Dasra yuvakavah suta nasatya vriktabarhishah, Ayatam rudravartani. It is an intense rapture of the soul (rudravartani) which Madhuchchhandas asks first from the gods.Therefore his first call is to the Aswins.

Next, it is to Indra that he turns. I have already said that in my view Indra is the master of mental force. Let us see whether there is anything here to contradict the hypothesis. Indra yahi chitrabhano suta ime tu ayavah, Anwibhis tana putasah. Indrayahi dhiyeshito viprajutah sutavatah Upa brahmani vaghatah. Indrayahi tutujana upa brahmani harivah Sute dadhishwa nas chanah. There are several important words here that are doubtful in their sense, anwi, tana, vaghatah, brahmani; but none of them are of importance for our present purpose except brahmani. For reasons I shall give in the proper place I do not accept Brahma in the Veda as meaning speech of any kind, but as either soul or a mantra of the kind afterwards called dhyana, the object of which was meditation and formation in the soul of the divine Power meditated on whether in an image or in his qualities. It is immaterial which sense we take here. “Indra,” sings the Rishi, “arrive, O thou of rich and varied light, here are these life-streams poured forth, purified, with vital powers, with substance. Arrive, O Indra, controlled by the understanding, impelled forward in various directions to my soul faculties, I who am now full of strength and flourishing increase. Arrive, O Indra, with protection to my soul faculties, O dweller in the brilliance, confirm our delight in the nectar poured.” It seems to me that the remarkable descriptions dhiyeshito viprajutah are absolutely conclusive, that they prove the presence of a subjective Nature Power, not a god of rain & tempest, & prove especially a mind-god. What is it but mental force which comes controlled by the understanding and is impelled forward by it in various directions? What else is it that at the same time protects by its might the growing & increasing soul faculties

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from impairing & corrupting attack and confirms, keeps safe & continuous the delight which the Aswins have brought with them? The epithets chitrabhano, harivas become at once intelligible and appropriate; the god of mental force has indeed a rich and varied light, is indeed a dweller in the brilliance. The progress of the thought is clear. Madhuchchhanda, as a result of Yogic practice, is in a state of spiritual & physical exaltation; he has poured out the nectar of vitality; he is full of strength & ecstasy This is the sacrifice he has prepared for the gods. He wishes it to be prolonged, perhaps to be made, if it may now be, permanent. The Aswins are called to give & take the delight, Indra to supply & preserve that mental force which will sustain the delight otherwise in danger of being exhausted & sinking by its own fierceness rapidly consuming its material in the soul faculties. The state and the movement are one of which every Yogin knows.

But he is not content with the inner sacrifice. He wishes to pour out this strength & joy in action on the world, on his fellows, on the peoples, therefore he calls to the Visve Devah to come, A gata!—all the gods in general who help man and busy themselves in supporting his multitudinous & manifold action. They are kindly, omasas, they are charshanidhrito, holders or supporters of all our actions, especially actions that require effort, (it is in this sense that I take charshani, again on good philological grounds), they are to distribute this nectar to all or to divide it among themselves for the action,—dasvanso may have either force,—for Madhuchchhanda wishes not only to possess, but to give, to distribute, he is dashush. Omasas charshanidhrito visve devasa a gata, daswanso dashushah sutam. He goes on, Visve devaso apturah sutam a ganta turnayah Usra iva swasarani. Visve devaso asridha ehimayaso adruhah, Medham jushanta vahnayah. “O you all-gods who are energetic in works, come to the nectar distilled, ye swift ones, (or, come swiftly), like calves to their own stalls,—(so at least we must translate this last phrase, till we can get the real meaning, for I do not believe this is the real or, at any rate, the only meaning). O you all-gods unfaltering, with wide capacity of strength, ye who harm not,

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attach yourselves to the offering as its supporters.” And then come the lines about Saraswati. For although Indra can sustain for a moment or for a time he is at present a mental, not an ideal force; it is Saraswati full of the vijnana, of mahas, guiding by it the understanding in all its ways who can give to all these gods the supporting knowledge, light and truth which will confirm and uphold the delight, the mental strength & supply inexhaustibly from the Ocean of Mahas the beneficent & joy-giving action,—Saraswati, goddess of inspiration, the flowing goddess who is the intermediary & channel by which divine truth, divine joy, divine being descend through the door of knowledge into this human receptacle. In a word, she is our inspirer, our awakener, our lurer towards Immortality. It is immortality that Madhuchchhandas prepares for himself & the people who do sacrifice to Heaven, devayantah. The Soma-streams he speaks of are evidently no intoxicating vegetable juices; he calls them ayavah, life-forces; & elsewhere amritam, nectar of immortality; somasah, wine-draughts of bliss & internal well being. It is the clear Yogic idea of the amritam, the divine nectar which flows into the system at a certain stage of Yogic practice & gives pure health, pure strength & pure physical joy to the body as a basis for a pure mental & spiritual vigour and activity.

We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the

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most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme Scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle—the real root of God’s purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.

II.
Varuna and the Law

The characteristics of Varuna in the Veda have given pause even to its naturalistic interpreters and compelled them to admit the presence of moral ideas and a subjective element in the Rishis’ conception of their divinities. They admit it grudgingly and attempt to give it as crude and primitive an appearance as possible, but the moral & supernatural functions of Varuna are undeniable. Yet Varuna is the Greek Ouranos, which is simply & plainly the sky, Akasha. Ouranos in Greek myth is a colourless presence, parent by his union with Earth, Akasha with Prithivi, of all beings but especially of Kronos & the Titans, the elder gods, the first masters of heaven. There is no resemblance here to Varuna. Farther to complicate the task of the modern mythologists, Varuna in later Sanscrit has fallen from his skies & become the god of the Ocean. By what extraordinary chemical process of the imagination was the god of the sky converted into the god of the Ocean? Because both are blue, one is driven to suppose! That would be material enough and crude enough to satisfy the firmest believer in the intellectual crudity & semi-savagery of the Vedic Rishis. But let us leave aside the shadowy Greek Ouranos and look a little from our own standpoint at this mighty Vedic Varuna.

We get our first mention of Varuna at the end of the second hymn in the Rigveda, the hymn of Madhuchchhandas in which he calls, as in the third, on several gods, first to Vayu, then to Vayu and Indra together, last, Varuna and Mitra. “Arrive,” he

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says, “O Vayu, O beautiful one, lo these Soma-powers in their array (is it not a battle-array?), protect them, hear their call! O Vayu, strongly thy lovers woo thee with prayers (or, desires), they have distilled the nectar, they have found their strength (or, they know the day?). O Vayu, thy abounding stream moves for the giver, it is wide for the drinking of the Soma-juice. O Indra & Vayu, here are the outpourings, come to them with outputtings of strength, the powers of delight desire you both. Thou, O Vayu, awake, and Indra, to the outpourings of the Soma, you who are rich in power of your plenty; so (that is, rich in power) come to me, for the foe has attacked. Come O Vayu, and Indra, to the distiller of the nectar, expel the foe, swiftly hither strong by the understanding.” And then comes the closing call to Mitra & Varuna. “I call Mitra of purified discernment and Varuna who destroys the foe, they who effect a bright and gracious understanding. By Law of Truth, Mitra and Varuna, who by the Truth increase and to the Truth attain, enjoy a mighty strength. Mitra and Varuna, the seers, born in Force, dwellers in the Vast, uphold Daksha (the discerning intelligence) at his work.”

There are here a number of words whose exact meaning is exceedingly important for any fruitful enquiry into the religious significance of the Vedas. The most important, the decisive & capital word in the passage is Ritam. Whatever it may be held to mean, it will decide for us the essential character of Varuna & his constant comradeMitra. I have already suggested in my first chapter the sense in which I understand Ritam. It is its ordinary sense in Sanscrit. Ritam is Truth, Law, that which is straight, upright, direct, rectum; it is that which gives everything its place & its motion (ritu), that which constitutes reason (ratio) in mind and rectitude in morals,—it is the rightness or righteousness which makes the stars move in their orbits, the seasons occur in their order, thought & speech move towards truth, trees grow according to their seed, animals act according to their species & nature, & man walk in the paths which God has prescribed for him. It is that in the Akasha—the Akasha where Varuna is lord—which develops arrangement & order, it is the element of law in Nature. But not only in material Nature, not only in

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the moral akasha even,the akasha of the heart of which the Rishis spoke, but on higher levels also. I have pointed out that Ritam is the law of the Truth, of vijnana. It is this ideal Truth, the Truth of being, by which everything animate or inanimate knows in its fibres of being & serves in action & feeling the truth of itself, in which Law is born. This Law which belongs to Satyam, to the Mahas, is Ritam. Neither of the English words,Law & Truth, gives the idea; they have to be combined in order to be equivalent to ritam. Well, then Varuna is represented to us as increasing in his nature by this Truth & Law, attaining to it or possessing it; Law & Truth are the source of his strength, the means by which he has arrived at his present force & mightiness.

But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,—called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject

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that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purpose—yathatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah—and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of

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the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.

Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek δεξɩóς. We may also compare the Greek δóξα, meaning judgment, opinion etc & δοᵪέω, I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,—by virtue of his purified discernment.

So much Varuna does but what is he actually?We cannot tell with accuracy until we have separated him from his companion Mitra. We come across him next no longer in company withMitra, but still not by himself, accompanied this time by Indra and helping him in his work, in the seventeenth sukta of the first Mandala, a hymn of Medhatithi Kanwa, a hymn whose burden is joy, calm, purity & fulfilment. “Of Indra & Varuna, the high rulers, I choose the protection, may they be gracious to us in this our state (of attainment). For ye are they who come to the call of the enlightened soul that can contain you; you are they who are upbearers of his actions. Take ye your pleasure to your hearts’ content in the felicity, O Indra, O Varuna; so we desire you utterly near to us. May we gain the full pitch of the powers, the full vigour of the right thoughts that give men the assured

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plenty.Indra is the desirable Strength of all that gives force, Varuna of all that is ample & noble. By their protection may we remain in safety and meditate, may there be indeed an utter purification. Indra and Varuna, I call you for rich and varied ecstasy, do ye render us victorious. Indra and Varuna, now may our understandings be entirely obedient to you, that in them you may give to us peace. May the good praise be grateful to you, O Indra & Varuna, which I call aloud to you, the fulfilling praise which you bring to prosperity.”

We are no longer with Madhuchchhanda Vaiswamitra. It is Medhatithi of the Kanwas who has taken the word, a soul of great clearness & calmness who is full of a sort of vibrating peace. Yet we find the same strain, the same fixed ideas, the same subjective purpose & spiritual aspiration. A few words here & there in my translation may be challenged and given a different meaning. Throughout the Veda there are words like radhas etc to which I have given a sense based on reasons of context & philology but which must be allowed to remain conjectural till I am able to take up publicly the detailed examination of the language & substance of the Rigveda. But we have sumati again and the ever recurring vaja, the dhartara charshaninam, holders of actions, & rayah which certainly meant felicity in the Veda. It is clear from the third verse that Varuna and Indra are called to share in the felicity of the poet’s soul,—that felicity is his material of sacrifice,—“anukamam tarpayetham,” he says, Delight in it to your heart’s content; and again in the seventh shloka he tells them, Vam aham huve chitraya radhase, a phrase which, in view of verse 3, I can only translate “I call you for rich and varied ecstasy”; for it is evidently meant to describe that felicity, that heart-filling satisfaction which he has already offered in the third sloka. In return he asks them to give victory. Always in the Veda there is the idea of the spiritual battle as well as the outer struggles of life, the battle with the jealous forces of Nature, with Vala, the grudging guardian of light, with the great obscuring dragon Vritra & his hosts, with the thieving Panis, with all the many forces that oppose man’s evolution & support limitation and evil. A great many of the words for sacrifice, mean also war

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and battle, in Sanscrit or in its kindred tongues.

Indra and Varuna are called to give victory, because both of them are samrat. The words samrat & swarat have in Veda an ascertained philosophical sense.One is swarat when, having self-mastery & self-knowledge, & being king over his whole system, physical, vital, mental & spiritual, free in his being, [one] is able to guide entirely the harmonious action of that being. Swarajya is spiritual Freedom. One is Samrat when one is master of the laws of being, ritam, rituh, vratani, and can therefore control all forces & creatures. Samrajya is divine Rule resembling the power of God over his world. Varuna especially is Samrat, master of the Law which he follows, governor of the heavens & all they contain, Raja Varuna, Varuna the King as he is often styled by Sunahshepa and other Rishis. He too, like Indra & Agni & the Visvadevas, is an upholder & supporter of men’s actions, dharta charshaninam. Finally in the fifth sloka a distinction is drawn between Indra and Varuna of great importance for our purpose. The Rishi wishes, by their protection, to rise to the height of the inner Energies (yuvaku shachinam) and have the full vigour of right thoughts (yuvaku sumatinam) because they give then that fullness of inner plenty (vajadavnam) which is the first condition of enduring calm & perfection & then he says, Indrah sahasradavnam, Varunah shansyanam kratur bhavati ukthyah. Indra is the master-strength, desirable indeed, (ukthya, an object of prayer, of longing and aspiration) of one class of those boons (vara, varyani) for which the Rishis praise him, Varuna is the master-strength, equally desirable, of another class of these Vedic blessings. Those which Indra brings, give force, sahasram, the forceful being that is strong to endure & strong to overcome; those that attend the grace of Varuna are of a loftier & more ample description, they are shansya. The word shansa is frequently used; it is one of the fixed terms of Veda. Shall we translate it praise, the sense most suitable to the ritual explanation, the sense which the finally dominant ritualistic school gave to so many of the fixed terms of Veda? In that case Varuna must be urushansa, because he is widely praised, Agni narashansa because he is strongly praised or praised by men,

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—ought not a wicked or cruel man to be nrishansa because he is praised by men?—the Rishis call repeatedly on the gods to protect their praise, & Varuna here must be master of things that are praiseworthy. But these renderings can only be accepted, if we consent to the theory of the Rishis as semi-savage poets, feeble of brain, vague in speech, pointless in their style, using language for barbaric ornament rather than to express ideas. Here for instance there is a very powerful indicated contrast, indicated by the grammatical structure, the order & the rhythm, by the singular kratur bhavati, by the separation of Indra & Varuna who have hitherto been coupled, by the assignment of each governing nominative to its governed genitive and a careful balanced order of words, first giving the master Indra then his province sahasradavnam, exactly balancing them in the second half of the first line the master Varuna & then his province shansyanam, and the contrast thus pointed, in the closing pada of the Gayatri all the words that in their application are common at once to all these four separated & contrasted words in the first line. Here is no careless writer, but a style careful, full of economy, reserve, point, force, and the thought must surely correspond. But what is the contrast forced on us with such a marshalling of the stylist’s resources? That Indra’s boons are force-giving, Varuna’s praiseworthy, excellent, auspicious, what you will? There is not only a pointless contrast, but no contrast at all. No, shansa & shansya must be important, definite, pregnant Vedic terms expressing some prominent idea of the Vedic system. I shall show elsewhere that shansa is in its essential meaning “self-expression”, the bringing out of our sat or being that which is latent in it and manifesting it in our nature, in speech, in our general impulse & action. It has the connotation of self-expression, aspiration, temperament, expression of our ideas in speech; then divulgation, publication, praise—or in another direction, cursing. Varuna is urushansa because he is the master of wide self-expression, wide aspirations, a wide, calm & spacious temperament, Agni narashansa because he is master of strong self-expression, strong aspirations, a prevailing, forceful & masterful temperament;—nrishansa had originally

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the same sense, but was afterwards diverted to express the fault to which such a temper is prone,—tyranny, wrath & cruelty; the Rishis call to the gods to protect their shansa, that which by their yoga & yajna they have been able to bring out in themselves of being, faculty, power, joy,—their self-expression. Similarly, shansya here means all that belongs to self-expression, all that is wide, noble, ample in the growth of a soul. It will follow from this rendering that Indra is a god of force, Varuna rather a god of being and as it appears from other epithets, of being when it is calm, noble, wide, self-knowing, self-mastering, moving freely in harmony with the Law of things because it is aware of that Law and accepts it. In that acceptance is his mighty strength; therefore is he even more than the gods of force the king, the giver of internal & external victory, rule, empire, samrajya to his votaries. This is Varuna.

We see the results & the conditions of the action ofVaruna in the four remaining verses. “By their protection we have safety from attack”, sanema, safety for our shansa, our rayah, our radhas, by the force of Indra, by the protecting greatness of Varuna against which passion & disturbance cast themselves in vain, only to be destroyed. This safety & this settled ananda or delight, we use for deep meditation, ni dhimahi, we go deep into ourselves and the object we have in view in our meditation is prarechanam, the Greek katharsis, the cleansing of the system mental, bodily, vital, of all that is impure, defective, disturbing, inharmonious. Syad uta prarechanam! In this work of purification we are sure to be obstructed by the powers that oppose all healthful change; but Indra & Varuna are to give us victory, jigyushas kritam. The final result of the successful purification is described in the eighth sloka. The powers of the understanding, its various faculties & movements, dhiyah, delivered from self-will & rebellion, become obedient to Indra & Varuna; obedient to Varuna, they move according to the truth & law, the ritam; obedient to Indra they fulfil with that passivity in activity, which we seek by Yoga, all the works to which mental force can apply itself when it is in harmony with Varuna & the ritam. The result is sharma, peace. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than

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the exactness with which hymn after hymn describes with a marvellous simplicity & lucidity the physical & psychological processes through which Indian Yoga proceeds. The process, the progression, the successive movements of the soul here described are exactly what the Yogin experiences today so many thousands of years after the Veda was revealed. No wonder, it is regarded as eternal truth, not the expression of any particular mind, not paurusheya but impersonal, divine & revealed.

This hymn differs greatly, interestingly & instructively, from the hymn in which Varuna first appears. There the object is to ensure the ananda, the rayah & radhas spoken of in this hymn by the advent of the gods of Vitality & Mind-Force, Indra & Vayu, to protect from the attack of disintegrating forces the Soma or Amrita, the juice of immortality expressed in the Yogin’s system. Varuna & Mitra are then called for a particular & restricted purpose to perfect the discernment & to uphold it in its works by the sustaining force of a calm, wide, comprehensive self-expression full of peace & love. The Rishi of that sukta is using the amrita to feed the activity of a sattwic state of mind for acquiring added knowledge. The present hymn belongs to a more advanced state of the Yoga. It is sadhastuti, a hymn of fulfilment or for fulfilment, in which peace & a calm, assured, untroubled activity of the soul are very near. Varuna here leads. He is here for Indra’s purposes, but his activity predominates; it is his spirit that pervades the action and purpose of the hymn.

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Ritam

[word] - Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to themanuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

[A]

We find again the expression ऋतावृधो, increasers of Truth, in the fourteenth hymn of this Mandala, in a noteworthy passage. It is a hymn really to Agni,—although in the text assigned to the Visvadevas.Medhatithi Kanwa, addressing the strong god Agni, speaks of the gods who are his vahnayah, those who support or bear him up in his sacrificial activity

Ghritaprishthá manoyujo ye twá vahanti vahnayah
   Á devántsomapítaye
Tán yajatr án ritávridho agne patnívatas kridhi
   Madhvah sujihva páyaya

“Bring for the drinking of the Soma the gods, who, bright of surface, yoked to the mind, as thy bearers, bear thee along; them in their sacrificial place do thou, O Agni, make to increase in truth and join to them their female powers; O sweet-tongued, make them to drink of the sweetness.”

Who are these upbearing powers? They are apparently the visvadevas, the gods taken generally & in their collective activity. They are described as ghritaprishthá manoyujah, richly bright of surface and yoked to mind, which immediately recalls the dhiyam ghritáchím sádhantá of the second hymn. In both passages mental activity & a rich luminosity of mind are suggested as the preliminary necessity of the sacrifice; in both we find the progression from this idea to the expression ritávridho. This luminous mental activity perfected, it is to be used for the increase of Truth, of ritam, of the ideal self-revealing knowledge. There is in addition an idea to which we shall have to return, the idea of the male gods & their female powers whose joint godhead is necessary for the effective perfection of the sacrifice. At present

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we have to observe only the recurrence of the psychological note in the description of the sacrifice, this reiteration of the idea of bright & purified mental activity as its condition & increase of ideal Truth as a large & important part of its method or object.

In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the cognate word rituná—pibartuná, Medhatithi cries to each of the gods in turn,—rituná yajnam ásháthe .. ritubhir ishyata, pibatam rituná yajnaváhasá, rituná yajnanír asi. Ritu is supposed to have here & elsewhere its classical & modern significance, a season of the year; the ritwik is the priest who sacrifices in the right season; the gods are invited to drink the soma according to the season! It may be so, but the rendering seems to me to make all the phrases of this hymn strangely awkward & improbable. Medhatithi invites Indra to drink Soma by the season, Mitra & Varuna are to taste the sacrifice, this single sacrifice offered by this son of Kanwa, by the season; in the same single sacrifice the priests or the gods are to be impelled by the seasons, by many seasons on a single sacrificial occasion! the Aswins are to drink the Soma by the sacrifice-supporting season! To Agni it is said, “by the season thou art leader of the sacrifice”. Are such expressions at all probable or even possible in the mouth of a poet using freely the natural language of his age? Are they not rather the clumsy constructions of the scholar drawn to misinterpret his text by the false clue of a later & inapplicable meaning of the central word ritu? But if we suppose the sacrifice to be symbolic &, as ritam means ideal truth in general, so ritu to mean that truth in its ordered application, the ideal law of thought, feeling or action, then this impossible awkwardness vanishes & gives place to a natural construction & a lucid & profound significance. Indra is to drink the wine of immortality according to or by the force of the ideal law, by that ideal law Varuna &Mitra are to enjoy the offering of Ananda of the human mind & the human activity, the gods are to be impelled in their functioning ritubhih, by the ideal laws of the truth,—the plural used, in the ordinary manner of the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports

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the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, rituná yajnaváhasá; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the sacrifice to its goal.

In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism we again come across Daksha in close connection with Mitra, Varuna & the Truth.

Yuvam daksham dhritavrata Mitrávaruna dúdabham
   Rituná yajnam ásháthe.

“O Mitra who upholdest rule of action&Varuna, enjoy Daksha in his unconquerable force, enjoy by the ideal law the sacrifice.”

Daksha we have supposed to be the viveka, the intuitive discriminating reason which once active is hard to overcome by the powers of ignorance & error; it is again his activity which here also constitutes the essence or the essential condition of the successful sacrifice; for it is evidently meant that by enjoying or stimulating the activity of Daksha, Daksham dúdabham, daksham apasam, Mitra & Varuna are enabled to enjoy the effective activities of men under the law of truth, ritena kratum brihantam, rituná yajnam ásháthe, activities of right knowledge, right action, right emotion, free from crookedness & ignorance & sin. For it is viveka that helps us to distinguish truth from error, right-doing from wrong-doing, just feeling from false & selfish emotions. Once again it is Mitra & Varuna who preside over & take the enjoyment of Daksha’s functioning. The same psychological intention perseveres, the same simple & profound ideas & expressions recur in the same natural association, with the same harmony & fixed relation founded on the eternal truth of human nature & a fine & subtle observation of its psychological faculties & functionings.

The next reference to Ritam meets us in the twenty-third hymn of the Mandala, the last hymn of the series assigned to Medhatithi Kanwa, and once again it occurs in connection with the great twin powers, Mitra & Varuna.

Mitram vayam havámahe, Varunam somapítaye
   jajnáná pútadakshasá

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Ritena yáv ritávridhau, ritasya jyotishaspatí
   tá Mitrávaruná huve

“Mitra we call & Varuna for the Soma-drinking—they who appear pure in discernment. They who by the Truth grow in truth and are masters of the splendour of the truth, that Mitra & Varuna I call.”

We find here both Varuna & Mitra described as pútadakshas; in both the viveka acts pure from all lower & error-haunted functionings and when they manifest themselves in man, jajnáná, the intuitive power can work with a faultless justness of discrimination; therefore by truth, by this truth-revealing action of the ideal faculty they increase in us the Truth, raising our thought, action & feeling into a spontaneous conformity with the divine law, devánám vrata. Mitra & Varuna are the lords, possessors & keepers of the ritam jyotih, the true light, and impart it to the man who gives himself to them in the sacrifice. I shall return to this expression, ritam jyotih in connection with the god Surya and his functions; its sense, found in this context, is sufficiently clear for our present purpose.

We do not find the word ritam in the hymns that follow and are ascribed to Sunahshepa Ajigarti and Hiranyastupa Angirasa, but the first two hymns of Sunahshepa are addressed mainly or entirely to the god Varuna and we glean from them certain indications which are of considerable interest & importance in connection with Varuna & the Truth. He is hymned by Sunahshepa as the master of wide vision, uruchakshasam, the god of august, boundless & universal knowledge. He has made a wide path for Surya,—the Vedic god of ideal knowledge, as I shall suggest,—to follow in his journeyings; he has made places for him to set his feet in the unfooted vasts of the infinite. He is hymned also as the punisher of sin and the deliverer from sin—Kritam chid enah pra mumugdhi asmat. “And loose from us the sin we have done”. Kshayann asmabhyam Asura prachetá rájann enánsi sisrathah kritáni, “Dwelling in us, O Mighty One, O King, in conscious knowledge, cleave from us the sins of our doing.”

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Now in the 18th hymn, a hymn of Medhatithi to Brahmanaspati, I have passed over designedly a verse in which we have a direct reference to that goddess Dakshina whom I suppose to be the female energy of Daksha, the divine master of the viveka—

Twam tam Brahmanaspate Soma Indrascha martyam
   Dakshiná pátu anhasah

“Do thou, O Brahmanaspati, & may Soma & Indra and Dakshina protect that mortal from evil.”

If we suppose evil in this rik to connote or include moral evil we find Dakshina to have a share, the active energy of the viveka to take its part in the function of protection from sin which is one of the principal attributes of Varuna. It is part of the ideas of Vedanta that sin is in reality a form of ignorance and is purified out of the system by the illumination of divine knowledge. We begin to find by this sin-effacing attribute of Varuna, prachetá, uruchakshas, pùtadaksha, ritasya jyotishas pati, by this sin-repelling attribute of Dakshina, the energy of ideal discrimination, the same profound idea already anticipated in the Rigveda. The Veda abounds with confirmatory passages, of which I will quote at present one only from the hymn of Kanwa to Agni, the thirty-sixth of thisMandala. “High-uplifted protect us from evil by the perception, burn utterly every devourer,” páhi anhaso ni ketun´ a. All evil is a deviation from the right & truth, from the ritam, a deviation from the self-existent truth & right of the divine or immortal nature; the lords of knowledge dwelling in the human consciousness as the prachetasah, informing its acts of consciousness which include in the ancient psychology action & feeling no less than thought & attuning them to follow spontaneously the just rhythm of the divine right & truth, deliver effectually this human & mortal nature from evil & sin. The place of Daksha & Dakshina in that action is evident; it is primary & indispensable; for the mortal nature being full of wrong perceptions, warped impulses, evil & mixed & confused states of feeling, it is the business of the viveka to sort out the confusion & accustom the mind & heart of man to

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a juster, truer & purer working. The action of the other faculties of the Truth may be said to come after that of Daksha, of the viveka. In these hymns of Sunahshepa the clear physiognomy of Varuna begins to dawn upon us. He is evidently the master of right knowledge, wide, self-luminous & all-containing in the world-consciousness & in human consciousness. His physical connection with the all-containing ether,—for Varuna is Uranus, the Greek Akasha, & wideness is constantly associated with him in the Veda,—leads us to surmise that he may also be the master in the ideal faculty, ritam brihat, where he dwells, urukshaya, of pure infinite conscious-being out of which knowledge manifests & with which it is, ultimately, one entity

The hymns of Kanwa follow the hymns of Sunahshepa and Hiranyastupa in the order of the first Mandala. In the hymns of Kanwa we find three or four times the mention, more or less extended in sense, of the Ritam. In his first reference to it he connects it not with Varuna, Mitra or Daksha, but with Agni. “That Agni whom Kanwa Medhyatithi has kindled from the truth above (or it may equally mean upon the truth as a basis or in the field of the truth)” and again “Thee, O Agni, the Manu has set as a light for the eternal birth; thou hast shone forth in Kanwa born from the Truth.” This passage is of great importance in fixing the character & psychological functions of Agni; for our present purpose it will be sufficient to notice the expression jyotir janáya shashwate which may well have an intimate connection with the ritam jyotih of an earlier hymn, & the description in connection with this puissant phrase of Agni as born from the Truth, and again [of the Truth] as a sort of field in which or from which Kanwa has drawn the light of Agni.

Ritam is connected by Kanwa with Mitra, Varuna & Aryama in the forty-first hymn written in praise of these three deities; but this hymn is of so great an importance to our enquiry that I prefer to consider it separately in another chapter and to pass on to Kanwa’s last mention of the Ritam in the forty-third hymn of the Mandala. We may note, however, already the expression ritam yate, journeying to the Truth, in which the Ritam is regarded as a sort of place, seat or goal, a dháma or pada, in

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the common Vedic phrase, towards which humanity journeys & in which it seeks to dwell, & we may remember at the same time the description of Varuna, ritasya jyotishas pati, as dwelling in the vast, the uru or brihat, urukshaya, which we have supposed to be the Mahas or home of the Ritam,—satyam ritam brihat. In the forty-third hymn we find indeed the actual expression, parasmin dhámann ritasya, the most high seat of the Truth.

The forty-third hymn is addressed to Rudra & Soma,Mitra & Varuna are mentioned casually only in a single verse along with Rudra. It is in the last of the three closing riks devoted to Soma that we come across this great & illuminating expression and it meets us in a passage where the vivid psychological purport is too convincingly clear, too immediately patent for any ritualistic interpretation to interfere with our understanding or obscure the truth from our eyes.

Yás te prajá amritasya, parasmin dhámann ritasya,
Múrdhá nábhá Soma venah, ábhúshantíh Soma vedah.

“They who are thy children of immortality, in the most high seat of the truth, them, O Soma, head & navel, enjoy, thou, O Soma, know when they grow to thee in their being.”

Soma is the lord of the immortalising nectar, he is the god of Ananda, the divine bliss which belongs to the Amrita or divine nature of Sacchidananda and is its foundation. The most high seat of the truth, Mahas, the pure ideal principle which links the kingdom of Immortality to our mortal worlds, is peopled with the children of Immortality—we recall at once the phrase of the Upanishad, visve amritasya putráh, all ye children of immortality— & the lord of Ananda is to take them into his being through knowledge, the head, through enjoyment, the navel. By Ritam, the ideal Truth, the Rishi ascends through the gates [of] Ananda, divine beatitude, out of this death into the kingdom of Immortality, mrityum tírtwá amritam asnute.

And then, to complete this preliminary foundation of our knowledge of the Ritam, we can go back to a neglected passage of the thirteenth hymn, to a couple of riks in which the secret of the Veda, the true symbolic nature of Vedic ritual & Vedic

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sacrifice, start out clearly before the eyes.

Striníta barhir ánushag, ghritaprishtham maníshinah,
   Yatrámritasya chakshanam
Vi srayantám ritávridho, dwáro devír asaschatah,
   Adyá núnam cha yashtave.

“Strew the sacrificial seat without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface, O ye thinkers, where is the tasting of immortality. Let the divine doors swing wide apart for him who increases in the Truth, who is free from attachment, today & now for the sacrifice.”

We find once more, so fixed are the terms & associations, so persistently coherent is the language of the Veda, ghritaprishtha in connection with mental activity, ghritaprishtham placed designedly before maníshinah, just as we find elsewhere ghritaprishthá manoyujah, just as we find in the passage from which we started dhiyam ghritáchím sádhantá. Have we not, then, a right considering this remarkable persistence & considering the rest of the context to suggest & even to infer that the sacrificial seat anointed with the shining ghee is in symbol the fullness of the mind clarified & purified, continuously bright & just in its activity, without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface & therefore receiving without distortion the messages of the ideal faculty? It is in this clear, pure & rightly ordered state of his thinking & emotional mind that man gets the first taste of the immortal life to which he aspires, yatr ámritasya chakshanam, through the joy of the self-fulfilling activity of God’s Truth in him. The condition of his entry into the kingdom of immortality, the kingdom of heaven is that he shall increase ideal truth in him and the condition again of increasing ideal truth is that he shall be unattached, rit ávridho asaschatah. For so long as the mind is attached either by wish or predilection, passion or impulse, pre-judgment or impatience, so long as it clings to anything & limits its pure & all-comprehensive wideness of potential knowledge, the wideness of Varuna in it, it cannot attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth, it can only grope after & grasp portions of Truth, not Truth in itself & in its nature. And so long as it clings

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to any one thing in wish & enjoyment, it must by the very act shut out others & cannot then embrace the divine vast & all-comprehending love & bliss of the immortal nature which it is, as I shall suggest, the function of Mitra to establish in the human temperament. But when these conditions are fulfilled, the bright-surfaced purified mind widely extended without flaw or crevice as the seat of the gods in their sacrificial activity, the taste of the wine of immortality, the freedom from attachment, the increasing force of ideal Truth in the human being, then it is impossible for the great divine Powers to fling wide open for us the doors of the higher Heavens, the gates of Ananda, the portals of our immortal life. They start wide open on their hinges to receive before the throne of God the sacrifice & the sacrificer.

Truth & purity the Road, divine bliss the gate, the immortal nature the seat & kingdom, this is the formula of Vedic aspiration. Truth the road—Praskanwa the Kánwa makes it clear enough in his hymn to the Aswins, the 46th of the Mandala—“Made was the road of Truth for our going to that other effectively fulfilling shore, seen was the wide-flowing stream of Heaven.” It is the heaven of the pure mind of which he speaks; beyond, on its other shore, are the gates divine, the higher heaven, the realms of immortality.

[B]
Chapter III

Varuna & Mitra, the two great Vedic Twins, meet us in their united activity in the first crucial passage of the Veda informed with the clear & unmistakable idea of the Ritam which so largely dominates the thinking of the Vedic sages. Varuna & Mitra again, but this time helped by their companion Aryaman, govern a second passage which we shall find of equal importance in forming our conceptions of the Truth towards which our ancestors lifted so strenuous an aspiration of prayer and sacrifice. It occurs in the forty-first hymn of the Mandala, a hymn of the

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Rishi Kanwa son of Ghora to the three children of Aditi, & covers six out of the nine slokas of the hymn. It is fortunately a sufficiently clear & easy hymn, except precisely in the three closing riks with which we are not now concerned; we have to pause only for a moment [at] the word avakhádah, over which Sayana gives himself very unnecessary trouble,—for it means clearly a pitfall or an abrupt descent, and the sense of dhítaye, taken by Sayana in the ritualistic significance, “for your eating”, and by myself, following my hypothesis, in the psychological sense conceded by Sayana in a number of other passages; dhíti means literally holding & usually holding in the mind, thinking; it expresses then the fixed action of dhí, the thought faculty. Otherwise the only difficulty is in the word toka which the ritualistic commentators interpret invariably in the sense of son, putra.

Yam rakshanti prachetaso Varuno Mitra Aryamá
    Nú chit sa dabhyate janah.
Yam báhuteva piprati, pánti martyam rishah
   Arishtah sarva edhate.
Vi durgá vi dwishah puro ghnanti rájána eshám
   Nayanti duritá tirah.
Sugah panthá anrikshara, Ádityása ritam yate
   Nátrávakhádo asti vah.
Yam yajnam nayathá nara, Áditya´ rijuná pathá
   Pra vah sa dhítaye nashat.
Sa ratnam martyo vasu, visvam tokam uta tmaná
   Acchá gacchati astritah.

I translate, “He whom Varuna, Mitra & Aryaman guard, they who see with the conscious mind, can that man at all be crushed? The mortal whom they like a multitude of arms fill with his desires and protect from his hurter, he unhurt grows to completeness in being (or prospers in all his being). In front of these the Kings smite apart their obstacles & smite apart their haters and lead them beyond all sin. Easy to travel & thornless is your path, O sons of Aditi, for him who travels to the Truth; here there is no pitfall in your way. That sacrifice which you lead, O strong sons of Aditi, (or O Purushas sons of Aditi,) by the

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straight path, that goes forward to its place in the thought. That mortal moves unoverthrown towards delightful being, yea & to all kind of creation by the self.” The rest of the hymn is taken up by certain conditions necessary for the effectivity of the praise of the three great deities whose protection assures this safe & prosperous movement to their worshipper.

We must consider first whether any valid objection can be offered to this translation; and, if not, what are the precise ideas conveyed by the words & expressions which they render. The word prachetas is one of the fixed recurrent terms of the Veda; & we have corresponding to it another term vichetas. Both terms are rendered by the commentators wise or intelligent. Is prachetas then merely an ornamental or otiose word in this verse? Is it only a partially dispensable & superfluous compliment to the gods of the hymn? Our hypothesis is that the Vedic Rishis were masters of a perfectly well managed literary style founded upon a tradition of sound economy in language & coherence in thought; all of every word in Veda is in its place & is justified by its value in the significance. If so, prachetasah gives the reason why the protection of these gods is so perfectly efficacious. I suppose,—as my hypothesis entitles me to suppose,—that the Vedic ideas of prachetas & vichetas correspond to the Vedantic idea of prajnana & vijnana to which as words they are exactly equivalent in composition & sense. Prajnana is that knowledge which is aware of, knows & works upon the objects placed before it. Vijnana is the knowledge which comprehends & knows thoroughly in itself all objects of knowledge. The one is the highest faculty of mind, the other is in mind the door to and beyond it the nature of the direct supra-intellectual knowledge, the Ritam & Brihat of the Veda. It is because Varuna, Mitra & Aryama protect the human being with the perfect knowledge of that through which he has to pass, his path, his dangers, his foes, that their protégé , however fiercely & by whatever powers assailed, cannot be crushed. At once, it begins to become clear that the protection in that case must, in all probability, be a spiritual protection against spiritual dangers & spiritual foes.

The second verse neither confirms as yet nor contradicts

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this initial suggestion. These three great gods, it says, are to the mortal as a multitude of arms which bring to him his desires & fill him with an abundant fullness and protect him from any who may will to do him hurt, rishah; fed with that fullness he grows until he is sarvah, complete in every part of his being—(that is to say, if we admit the sense of a spiritual protection and a spiritual activity, in knowledge, in power, in joy, in mental, vital & bodily fullness)—and by the efficacy of that protection he enjoys all this fullness & completeness unhurt. No part of it is maimed by the enemies of man, whose activities do him hurt, the Vritras, Atris, Vrikas, the Coverer on the heights, the devourer in the night, the tearer on the path.We may note in passing how important [it] is to render every Vedic word by its exact value; rish & dwish both mean enemy; but if we render them by one word, we lose the fine shade of meaning to which the poet himself calls our attention by the collocation pánti rishah—arishta edhate. We see also the same care of style in the collocation sarva edhate, where, as it seems to me, it is clearly suggested that the completeness is the result of the prosperous growth, we have again the fine care & balance with which the causes piprati—pánti are answered by the effects arishtah—edhate. There is even a good literary reason of great subtlety & yet perfect force for the order of the words & the exact place of each word in the order. In this simple, easy & yet faultless balance & symmetry a great number of the Vedic hymns represent exactly in poetry the same spirit & style as the Greek temple or the Greek design in architecture & painting. Nor can anyone who neglects to notice it & give full value to it, catch rightly, fully & with precision the sense of the Vedic writings.

In the third verse we come across the first confirmation of the spiritual purport of the hymn. The protected of Varuna, Mitra & Aryama—the plural is now used to generalise the idea more decisively—are travellers to a moral & spiritual goal, nayanti duritá tirah. It follows that the durgáni, the obstacles in the path are moral & spiritual obstacles, not material impediments. It follows equally that the dwishah, the haters, are spiritual enemies, not human; for there would be no sense or

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appropriateness in the scattering of human enemies by Varuna as a condition of the seeker after Truth & Right’s reaching a state of sinlessness. It is the spiritual, moral & mental obstacles, the spiritual beings & forces who are opposed to the soul’s perfection, Brahmadwishah, whom Varuna, Mitra & Aryama remove from the path of their worshippers. They smite them & scatter them utterly, vi durgá vi dwishah,—the particle twice repeated in order to emphasise the entire clearance of the path; they scatter them in front,—not allowing even the least struggle to be engaged before their intervention, but going in front of the worshippers & maintaining a clear way, suga anrikshara, in which they can pass not only without hurt, but without battle. The image of the sins, the duritá is that of an army besetting the way which is scattered to all sides by the divine vanguard & is compelled beyond striking distance. The armed pilgrims of the Right pass on & through & not an arrow falls across their road. The three great Kings of heaven & their hosts, rájánah, have passed before & secured the great passage for the favoured mortal.

The sense is completed & the spiritual character of the journey explicitly & unmistakably brought out in the next, the fourth rik of the Sukta. The traveller is one who is journeying towards the Truth, the ritam. We have already hazarded the conception of the Ritam as the principle of Mahas, the spontaneous, self-existent, self-efficient nature of the infinite & divine consciousness, satyam ritam brihat, to which right action, right emotion, right knowledge, right enjoyment belong inalienably & result naturally & without effort or stumble. In its moral aspect, that conception is now entirely justified. The path of Truth, ritasya panthá sádhuyá, is suga anrikshara; there are no pitfalls or precipices in that road; for it is the road of the Adityas, the children of Light & Infinity, sons of Aditi, the Infinite Nature, brothers of Surya to whom belongs the revealed knowledge & the divine illumination. It is as we shall see in the next line the straight road rijuná pathá. Sugah panthá anrikshara ádityása ritam yate. Nátrávakhádo asti vah.

So far the image has been a double image of a journey &

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a battle,—the goal of the ritam, the journey of the sin-afflicted human being towards the Truth of the divine nature; the thorns, the pitfall, the enemy ambushed in the path; the great divine helpers whose divine knowledge, for they are prachetasah, becomes active in the human mind and conducts us unerringly & unfalteringly on that sublime journey. In the next rik the image of the path is preserved, but another image is associated with it, the universal Vedic image of the sacrifice. We get here our first clear & compelling indication of the truth which is the very foundation of our hypothesis that the Vedic sacrifice is only a material symbol of a great psychological or spiritual process. The divine children of Infinity lead¹ the sacrifice on the straight path to the goal of the ritam; under their guidance it progresses to their goal & reaches the gods in their home, pravah sa dhítaye nashat.What is sacrifice which is itself a traveller, which has a motion in a straight path, a goal in the highest seat of Truth, parasmin dhámann ritasya? If it is not the activities of the human being in us offered as a sacrifice to the higher & divine being so that human activities may be led up to the divine nature & be established in the divine consciousness, then there is either no meaning in human language or no sense or coherence in the Veda. The Vedic sacrificer is devayu,—devakámah,—one who desires the god or the godhead, the divine nature; or devayan, one who is in the process of divinising his human life & being; the sacrifice itself is essentially devavítih & devatátih, manifestation of the divine & the extension of the divine in man. We see also the force of dhítaye. The havya or offering of human faculty, human having, human action, reaches its goal when it is taken up in the divine thought, the divine consciousness & there enjoyed by the gods.

In return for his offering the gods give to the sacrificer the results of the divine nature. The mortal favoured by them moves forward unstumbling & unoverthrown, acch´a gacchati astrita,

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—towards or to what? Ratnam vasu visvam tokam uta tmaná. This is his goal; but we have seen too that the goal is the ritam. Therefore the expressions ratnam vasu, visvam tokam tmaná must describe either the nature of the ritam or the results of successful reaching & habitation in the ritam. Toka means son, says the ritualist. I fail to see how the birth of a son can be the supreme result of a man’s perfecting his nature & reaching the divine Truth; I fail to see also what is meant by a man marching unoverthrown beyond sin & falsehood towards pleasant wealth & a son. In a great number of passages in the Veda, the sense of son for toka or of either son or grandson for tanaya is wholly inadmissible except by doing gross violence to sense, context & coherence & convicting the Vedic Rishis of an advanced stage of incoherent dementia. Toka, from the root tuch, to cut, form, create (cf tach & twach, in takta, tashta, twashta, Gr. tikto, etekon, tokos, a child) may mean anything produced or created. We shall see, hereafter, that prajá, apatyam, even putra are used in the Veda as symbolic expressions for action & its results as children of the soul. This is undoubtedly the sense here. There are two results of life in the ritam, in the vijnana, in the principle of divine consciousness & its basis of divine truth; first ratnam vasu, a state of being the nature of which is delight, for vijnana or ritam is the basis of divine ananda; secondly, visvam tokam uta tmaná,—this state of Ananda is not the actionless Brahmananda of the Sannyasin, but the free creative joy of the Divine Nature, universal creative action by the force of the self. The action of the liberated humanity is not to be like that of the mortal bound, struggling & stumbling through ignorance & sin towards purity & light, originating & bound by his action, but the activity spontaneously starting out of self-existence & creating its results without evil reactions or bondage.

To complete our idea of the hymn & its significance, I shall give my rendering of its last three slokas,—the justification of that rendering or comment on it would lead me far from the confines of my present subject. “How, O friends,” cries Kanwa to his fellow-worshippers, “may we perfect (or enrich) the establishment in ourselves (by the mantra of praise) of Mitra &

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Aryaman or how the wide form of Varuna? May I not resist with speech him of you who smites & rebukes me while he yet leads me to the godhead; through the things of peace alone may I establish you in all my being. Let a man fear the god even when he is giving him all the four states of being (Mahas, Swar, Bhuvah, Bhuh), until the perfect settling in the Truth: let him not yearn towards evil expression.” In other words, perfect adoration & submission to the gods who are leading us in the path, those who are yajnaníh, leaders of the sacrifice, is the condition of the full wideness of Varuna’s being in us & the full indwelling ofMitra & Aryaman in the principles of the Ananda & the Ritam.

In this simple, noble & striking hymn we arrive at a number of certainties about the ideas of the Vedic Rishis & usual images of their poetry which are of the last importance to our inquiry. First we see that the ascension or the journey of the human soul to a state of divine Truth is among the chief objects of the prayers & sacrifices of the Veda. Secondly, we see that this Truth is not merely the simple primitive conception of truth-speaking, but a condition of consciousness consisting in delight & resulting in a perfect spontaneous & free activity in which there is no falsehood or error; it is a state of divine nature, the Vedantic amritam. Thirdly, we see that this activity of self-perfection, the sadhana of modern Yoga, is represented in the Veda under the image of a journey or of a battle or both in one image. It is a struggle to advance beset by pitfalls & difficult passages, assailed & beset by hostile spiritual forces, the enemies, hurters or destroyers. Whenever therefore we have the image of a battle or a journey, we have henceforth the right to enquire whether it is not in every case the symbol of this great spiritual & psychological process. Fourthly we see that the Vedic sacrifice is in some hymns & may be in all a symbol of the same purport. It is an activity offered to the gods, led by them in this path, directed towards the attainment of the divine Truth-Consciousness & Truth-Life &, presumably, assailed by the same spiritual enemies. Fifthly, we find that words like vasu & tokam, representing the result of the sacrifice, & usually understood as material wealth &

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children, are used here, must presumably be used in passages & may, possibly, be used in all in a symbolic sense to express by a concrete figure psychological conceptions like Christ’s treasure laid up in heaven or the common image of the children of one’s brain or of one’s works. We have in fact, provided always our conclusions are confirmed by the evidence of other hymns, the decisive clue to the Secret of the Veda.

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A Chapter for a Work on the Veda

Chapter I.

Since our earliest ages the Veda has been, in the invincible tradition of our race, the bedrock of all our creeds; in this our goddess of veiled and ancient speech we have always persisted in seeing the fruitful mother of all our lndian spirituality. For it is nothing but the simple truth, evident whenever we look below the surface & beyond the details, that every creed, sect, school of philosophy which has had any roots in our Indian temperament or any vitality of survival in our Indian surroundings has been in its secret nature, if not in its open features, a child of the eternal Vedic inspiration. All the outbursts of religious life that have helped to maintain or renew through the course of several millenniums the vitality of our race, the eternal richness and fruitfulness of our ancient culture, the fineness and profound sincerity of our undying spiritual attainment and endeavour, were derived, if we trace them to their remote sources, from the word or the substance of the Veda. All our religious innovators, restorers, systematisers, wittingly or unwittingly, of good will or against their grain, have been stirred to their task by some vibration that reached them from those far-off ages. Our Darshana, Tantra and Purana, our Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism, our orthodoxy, heresy and heterodoxy, even when they have been the most perfect misunderstandings of each other, have always been imperfect understandings of one Vedic truth. Shankara clasped the head of Vedic truth, Ramanuja embraced its heart; but both the great disputants were dazzled by their adoration of the body of one veiled deity. Our greatest modern minds are mere tributaries of the old Rishis. This very Shankara who seems to us a giant, had only a fragment of their knowledge. Buddha wandered away on a bypath of their universal kingdom. In our own day Ramakrishna lived in his being and concretised

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in his talk, Vivekananda threw out into brilliance of many-sided thought and eloquent speech the essence of ancient Veda. The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of the eternal Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have all been fed.

Yet, of these our mighty origins, how much do we really understand? The four Vedas, written in a language which has ceased to be intelligible to us, couched in a vocabulary which, by its resemblance to classical Sanscrit as much as by its difference, offers an unequalled vantage-ground no less for natural misunderstanding than for the deliberate ingenuities of the scholar, using for their expression of deep religious and psychological truths a scheme of terms and symbols of which the key has long been withdrawn from us, remain to us even now a sacred but a sealed volume. Imperfectly understanding their secret even in our more ancient epochs, we have allowed them, as the current of time carried us farther away from our beginnings, to fall into a sacred neglect and almost into a revered oblivion. Only those whom a strong and unquestioning orthodoxy dispenses from the obligations of the critical spirit, can for a moment imagine that Sayana holds for us the key to their meaning. The advent and labours of European scholarship have rescued these divine hymns from a long secrecy and neglect, but have thrown no trustworthy illumination on their secret. Rather, if Indians hardly understand the Vedas at all, the Europeans have systematised a radical misunderstanding of them. Their materialistic interpretation, now dominant in cultivated minds, translated into our modern tongues, taught in our universities, diffused unquestioningly by pen and tongue, has been more fatal to Vedic truth than our reverential ignorance. For, passed through a mentality at once modern and alien, these ancient writings present themselves to us in a strange and disillusioning garb, no longer obscure, indeed, to our fancy, but to our understanding crude, shallow and barbarous. They appear to us as the work, incoherent in utterance, arbitrary in fancy & void of intellectual content, of early savages,—savages with a singularly warped

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and insincere mind and a gaudy and incompetent imagination. In reality, these strange trappings are a modern masquerade. The scholars of Europe have constructed for themselves by a study from outside of degenerate humanity at the point of lapsing back into the animal, a fanciful psychology of prehistoric humanity; they have read into this psychology the most ingenious Alexandrian conceits possible to the richly stored and rapidly creative modern scholastic imagination, and this compound they have presented to us as the ascertained meaning of the Veda. They base their version on the inchoate sciences, so-styled, but not so admitted by serious scientists, of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology and Archaeology,—branches of conjectural learning which may well be the obscure dawn of a great and illuminative knowledge, but, as yet and in themselves, are so inchoate, so imperfect, so devoid of sure fundamental laws that they can be no more authoritative to future enquiry than the early gropings of Paracelsus and his contemporaries to the modern chemical analyst. And if they are not to be authoritative to future enquiry, neither can they be binding on the living seeker after knowledge. Anyone of Indian birth who wishes to occupy his life or his leisure with Vedic enquiry as it is at present conducted, may enjoy the pleasures of an interesting and liberal branch of speculative research, in which he will find ample sport for his imagination and a delightful satisfaction and freedom for the most extravagant gambols of his ingenuity; but more serious results need not be expected from his labour. After the ingenious toils of Roth & Max Muller, as after the erudite diligence of Yaska & Sayana, the Vedic mantras remain for us what they have been for some thousands of years, a darkness of lost light and a sealed mystery.

Driven from its ancient reverence for the mystic Veda, Indian spirituality under the stress of that modern scientific materialism which takes the savage for its basis and for its culmination the perfectly-equipped human ant or bee, felt the need of some ancient retreat in which it could cherish a profounder knowledge and a more delicate ideal, some anchor by which it could still fix itself, even in this invading flood, to its immemorial past.

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It found what it sought in the Upanishads. For the Europeans, our modern authorities without whose sanction we cannot trust ourselves to believe anything, know anything or so much as initiate a fruitful experiment, have admitted the subtlety, depth and sublimity of the Upanishads. Therefore we feel ourselves safe in honouring the Vedanta, even if we have to renounce the Veda. Moreover, we have here the comfort of being able to assert truthfully that Indian & European authorities agree. The Upanishads, accepted by Schopenhauer, have been explained by Shankara; they have shaped the Particularism of Ramanujam and influenced the transcendentalism of Emerson. Great philosophies have been born of them, which, as Europeans have noted with an admiring or patronising wonder and Indians with a sort of obsequious pride, are on a level or almost on a level with the metaphysical ideas of Kant and Hegel! Apart, even, from these baser concessions of the subjugated Indian mind, it has been with a feeling of sincere relief and consolation that truly spiritual Indians, distressed by the clamorous pressure of Occidental scepticism, have found in the Upanishads a rock of refuge on which they can await securely the inevitable subsidence of these devastating waters. They find here an authority of which even European rationalism has been compelled to speak with some respect and a light which even this wild Western wind has been unable to extinguish.

But these are secondary and transient considerations. When we put them aside and look face to face, using the critical reason and without prejudgment, at these sacred writings, when we have perused carefully & thoughtfully the twelve great Upanishads from end to end, how much have we understood of them? I think if we are honest with ourselves, we shall have to say, “Of half of what I have read, nothing at all; of the other half I understand uncertainly and at second hand a large portion, and, certainly and perfectly, a lesser portion more or less considerable.” If we dwell a little upon the eighteen verses of the Isha Upanishad,—one of the briefest, simplest and plainest of these Scriptures,—we shall soon realise how little we have really understood. We understand of the first three slokas what Shankara

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has explained to us about them, with the addition possibly of a few associations from the Gita awakened by such expressions as kurvanneveha karmáni and na karma lipyate nare. We acquire from the next two verses a vague idea of the supreme universality of the Brahman without however attaching any very exact significance to the powerful and striking expressions of the Upanishad. We understand clearly enough, if a little superficially, the great idea of the sixth and seventh verses because of the exact consonance of the expressions with familiar lines in the Gita and the prominence which this particular discipline has received in the life and practice of the famous saints and Yogins of mediaeval and modern India. From the eighth verse we get again a vague idea of God and the Brahman. In the six slokas that follow we wander in the half darkness created by the strange perversions of Shankara and the commentators. In the remainder of the Upanishad we understand, again with sufficient clearness, the central Vedantic idea conveyed in the phrase, Yo asau purushah so’ham asmi, but, for the rest, nothing. We can attach no clear idea to the golden vessel by which the face of Truth is hid, to the marshalling and drawing together of the rays of the Sun or to the revelation of its “most auspicious shape of all”. We have no key in our own ideas or experience to the association of Agni, the lord of fire, with the removal of sin and with the travelling of the good path to felicity. For these are Vedic figures and the European misinterpretation of the Vedas, which alone we know or accept, offers us no clue to these ancient ideas and their associations. Throughout the simpler and, as we suppose, the later Upanishads, we shall have the same experience; we shall find that we understand clearly only so much as has entered into the more prominent tenets of the later Vedantic philosophies or is familiarised to our minds by the lives of our great saints and teachers or intertwined with the associations of comparatively modern scriptures like the Gita; that we understand less clearly and certainly so much of the less familiar ideas as Shankara has chosen or been able to explain to us; but that there is always a residuum of which we have not the slightest comprehension.

In the lesser Upanishads, however, with the exception of the

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Prasna, the residuum is not large enough in quantity or strange enough in character to produce any impression of bewilderment. But in those great & profound Upanishads built on a larger plan, which form the bulk of the early Vedanta, the Chandogya, the Brihad Aranyaka, the Kaushitaki, the Taittiriya, even the Aitareya, this unintelligible residuum becomes the major portion, sometimes almost the great mass of the writing. Often we feel ourselves to be in a mighty tropical jungle of strange intellectual flora and fauna, a jungle through which there is no road or bypath, in which indeed there are fortunate clearings and brilliant & familiar stars shine down upon us, but everywhere else only a luxuriant wilderness of foliage, deepscented unknown flowers, strangely-brilliant fruits and labyrinths of festooned roots and interlacing branches in which we are caught or over which we stumble. There is here a depth and strangeness of symbolism, a luxuriance of ancient and unfamiliar expression, a richness of elusive psychological experience inexpressible in less figurative and concrete language, which baffles our facile and active but shallower and more superficial modern experience. We have a right to suppose that this forest is worth entering, that it is no wilderness of flowery brambles, but full of profitable riches; for where we can understand, we find ourselves confronted by some of the deepest and most suggestive ideas that mankind has ever had about the mysteries of existence. Which of us can entirely enter into and identify himself with the ideas and images of the second chapter in the Brihad Aranyaka? Yet there are few profounder thoughts in philosophical literature than its great central idea of Ashanaya Mrityu, Hunger who is Death, as the builder of this material world. But who will be our guide in this forest? who can illuminate for us that which is dark in these Upanishads or, conquering the rapid and deafening surge of modern thought, plunge deep into the remoter, silent depths of our human experience and recover for us the divinations, perceptions, experiences of the early Rishis?

Not certainly our European guides, on whom we rely so implicitly for the sense of the Vedas. For they have a very summary method of dealing with whatever in Oriental thought they

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cannot appreciate or cannot understand. These portions are to them a mass of rubbish; they are, a great admirer of Vedanta has said, “the babblings of humanity’s nonage”. It is easy to get rid of the difficulty by a brilliant literary antithesis between the unexampled sublimity & wisdom of the higher speculations of the early Vedantic thinkers and the childish and savage stupidity of the bulk of their thinking. This method saves the trouble of farther inquiry; but apart from the danger to truth and to patient and impartial thinking involved in the rash and arrogant supposition that what we cannot understand or believe, must necessarily be rubbish, it involves also a psychological difficulty which cannot be lightly accepted. If indeed the admittedly valuable parts of the Upanishads were merely brilliant intellectual speculations, we might suppose that the human mind, emerging from its first barbaric inefficiency, rose above itself in a series of brilliant flashes, without being able to get rid of the smoke & obscurity in which it was still for the most part enveloped, and in this way we might explain the apparent intermixture of sublime wisdom with futile niaiserie in the Upanishads. But what we have is something much more solid, profound and durable. We find ourselves in the presence not of intellectual speculations which do not lead beyond themselves, but of an enduring system of permanent & always verifiable spiritual experiences. The system is not only deep, but carefully developed, not only surprisingly penetrative but regular and well-ordered; the experiences depend on a perfectly grasped and long-established science of practical psychology, which may or may not be justified by modern psychological investigation, itself as yet only in its infancy, but has at any rate stood the test of thousands of years of practical experiment by men passionately in search not merely of speculative truth, but of actual, vital, verifiable experiences, to them of a more than life-and-death importance. Wherever it has been tested, this ancient system has always been justified by its results. In any field of scientific research such constant justification would be held conclusive of the validity of the system. But, in any case, it is the truth that the writers of the Upanishad were not infantile thinkers making happy

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uncoordinated guesses; they were, rather, careful inquirers in possession of a great system of thought, intuitional, no doubt, rather than logical, but still reposing for its material verity on a method of strenuous experiment & searching observation. This aspect of Vedantic thinking is not likely to be grasped by the European mind to which our Indian experiences seem foreign, fantastic and inadmissible; but to those of us in India who know anything of the ancient practice and experiment upon which the truths preserved in the Upanishads have been erected, this character of the old Vedanta is real, patent and undeniable. It is the contemptuous pseudo-rationalistic dismissal of the foundation, while admitting respectfully the superstructure, which seems to us fantastic and inadmissible. The Upanishads, being what they are, cannot be a mixture of perfect wisdom and childish babble; such an unusual & bizarre combination becomes, under the circumstances, not only a paradox [but] a psychological impossibility. Only this is true that they are expressed in an imagery the key to which is lost and contain a great number of important ideas of which later metaphysical speculation has allowed itself to lose hold. If the Vedas are dark to us except in their outer ceremonial, the Upanishads are clear to us only in their central ideas and larger suggestions.

But how then can writings so obscure or at any rate so imperfectly understood have exercised over the thought of millenniums the vast and pervasive influence of which we know, so pervasive that all positive Indian thought, even Buddhism, can be described as Vedic in origin and shaping spirit when not Vedic or even when anti-Vedic in its garb and formed character? Thought has other means of survival and reproduction than its ordinary overt and physical instruments. After it has been deprived of propagation by speech and writing, even after it has disappeared out of the conscious mentality, it can return and recover itself not only in the individual,—that is common enough,—but, by a very similar act of memory, in the race. The workings of our psychology are as yet ill understood and we do not know precisely by what means or forces the subconscious operations of mentality are conducted; but some of the processes used by the

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great Universal in His more secret works are becoming apparent. Physical heredity is certainly one of them. It is true that thought is not inherited; but types of mentality and mental tendencies are, apparently, handed down with the physical plasm, and out of a persistent type of mentality there is always a possibility of the emergence from age to age of a recurrent type of thought. The Vedic mental type was fixed in the Indian race at an early period of its formation and throughout all external variations has never really changed. There is, therefore, in the Indian mind a predisposition to the recovery of the fundamental Vedic ideas; those directions of mentality which are most natural to the Vedic mental type, easily recur and a slight suggestion is all that is needed to set thought spinning in the old grooves.

But the physical inheritance is not sufficient in itself, nor is it even the only subconscious instrument in the persistence of human and national mentality. As psychology progresses, I think it will be more and more clearly recognised that just as men live in one physical atmosphere and are affected in their physical conditions by its state, currents and contents and by the physical condition of others near to them, so also and even to a greater extent we live in one mental atmosphere and are affected in our mental condition and activities by its state, current and contents and by the mental condition and activities of others similarly affected in our near vicinity. The dynamic action of the mental atmosphere is evident enough in the psychology of crowds, in the rapidity of development of great thought-movements & general tendencies of corporate action and in their contemporaneous efflorescence in widely divided countries. These phenomena have given rise to a vague idea of thought-waves resembling the waves of electricity in the physical parts of Nature. But if, instead of confining ourselves to these superficial and striking phenomena, we go deeper down into the normal and obscurer action, we shall find in addition to the dynamic movements a constant static condition and pressure of the mental atmosphere which varies but seems hardly to change substantially from age to age. For waves and currents presuppose a constant sea out of which they rise and into which they again sink to rest. It is the

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pressure of this atmospheric sea that more permanently determines the constant mentality of a continent or a nation. Into it, after all revolutions and dynamic activities, humanity tends to sink back with whatever riches it has gained and often long periods are necessary for their absorption and assimilation. The mind-atmosphere has its needs and its conditions; it alters into its own image whatever is new and foreign and assimilates even when it seems to be assimilated; it rejects everything that would too radically disintegrate its enduring composition. It is at once infinitely yielding & plastic and infinitely persistent in its general character. It casts essential Buddhism out of India and replaces it by a huge phantasmagorical complex Hinduised Buddhism; it constantly purges mysticism out of Europe and replaces essential Christianity with its sublimely tender and delicate Oriental psychology by a strenuous, external, dogmatic, materialistic and practical creed. Individual men and even men in the mass are ready enough to change under a comparatively slight impulsion; it is the compelling pressure of the mental atmosphere which prevents them from changing too radically so that when we think we have effected a revolution, we find that we have only effected an external readjustment or new dress of an old reality. The soul of things in us tends to remain the same. For steadfastness in mobility is the sound law of our being & the condition of healthy survival; Nature keeps us to it on peril of prolonged disorder, deterioration or fatal decay. Into this circumambient mental atmosphere in which we live & by which we draw our mental inspiration and respiration, all the old thoughts have entered, are lying obscure, many of them disaggregated, but none entirely lost. Under the proper conditions they may, they even tend to reconstitute themselves, to reappear.

In India such returns upon our past are more common than in any other country, partly from certain external causes, from the persistence of certain external suggestions, but much more because of the constant practice of Yoga by a large number of typical and central souls who act, overtly or silently, upon the general mass of Indian humanity. The discipline of Yoga renders a man much more sensible to the surrounding mental

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atmosphere, than in his ordinary state. He becomes consciously aware of it, feels intelligently its impacts, stirs more quickly to its deep buried secrets and obscure suggestions. And as he becomes more quick to receive, so also he becomes more powerful to impart. Practising forms of the old Vedantic disciplines, he recovers also forms of the old Vedantic thought and mentality and, modifying them in expression but not in essence by his own present personality, he pours them out on his surroundings. This has been the secret of the persistent Vedism of Indian thought & spirituality from the earliest ages to those modern movements of which we are ourselves the witnesses or the partakers.

Outward aids have powerfully confirmed the effect of these inward processes,—the reign of Vedic philosophies, the dominance of religions rich with the sap of the old Vedic spirit, the traditional teachings of particular Yogic schools, the theory & practice of the Guru-parampara. It would be as great a mistake to exaggerate as to belittle the importance of any of these aids in themselves. Vedic knowledge was rich, many-sided, elastic, flexible; but the metaphysical philosophies are limited by the very law of their logical structure. They are compelled to select and reject, to systematise only what can be harmonised in a single logical formula; and a logical formula, however wide, is always too narrow to contain God’s truth which is universal, complex and many-faceted. The dominance of particular metaphysical systems has tended to preserve fragments of the old Vedic truth, but to disfigure and dissolve it as a whole in its comprehensiveness and catholicity. Moreover, a metaphysical system by itself can never lay powerful hold on a people. We of the present age, who are excessively intellectualised, are apt to attach too great an importance and power to the works of the pure intellect. Systems of pure metaphysics which have no connection with the constant psychological experience and practice of men, are apt to become, like the modern philosophies of Europe and unlike the old Greek philosophies, merely noble pastimes for the intellectual few. They influence the generality of men, but by a slight and indirect process, not profoundly, not puissantly, not permanently. The Indian metaphysical systems have influenced

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the whole mentality of the Indian people profoundly, puissantly, permanently, not because of their logical subtleties, not even so much by the force & loftiness of their general ideas, but by their close dependence on powerful and widely-practised systems of psychological discipline,—systems, as we say in India, of Yoga.

The influence of religion has been yet more dynamical; it is always indeed more dynamical than the influence of philosophy, because religion appeals to the higher, secret, unattainable parts of our nature through the emotions and sensations which are better developed in humanity than the pure intellect. But even he religious emotions & sensations, though strong, swift and tenacious of a satisfaction once given, yet eventually tire and change; for this reason religions tend after a time to decay and perish. But in India the Vedic religions do not decay and perish; they change and are reborn. And they have this good fortune precisely because of the Vedic element in them. Their ritual, forms, worship, ceremonies, high days are not Vedic; even if they enshrine old Vedic ideas, they do it ignorantly and under a disguise; but all these religions have in their recesses some core of constant psychological practice and discipline, in a word, some form of Yoga by which they live; and always it is, in essence, a Vedic practice and a Vedic discipline. Religions think that they live by their dogmas, their sacred books, their ceremonies, but these are all aids and trappings; they live really by the men who practise them, by their clergy and mystics and much more by their mystics than by their clergy. So long as a religion has in its fold a sufficient number of souls who can retire within themselves and live there with God, so long it cannot help enduring, even though all the rest of the world is against it; once it loses this core of life, no amount of temporal power and prestige, of attractive ceremonial, of passionate belief & stiff dogmatism or even of wise & supple flexibility, savoir-faire & self-adaptation can save it from its inevitable disappearance. The great Vedic religions in India have always had this nucleus of mystics; they have always been rich in men capable of living with God; but they have not left the preservation of the indispensable nucleus to chance, they have attempted to secure it by a traditional

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practice and discipline, usually of what is known in India as Bhaktiyoga. By this Yoga and the experience of the saints and Sadhus who have practised it, much more than by Puranic legend and outward devotion,—though these also have helped,—our religious systems have done much to preserve the thoughts and experiences of the early Rishis to their distant posterity.

This vitalising core of philosophy, this saving essence of religion, Yoga, has itself an inner reality and an outer body. It has organised and variously summarised its different parts of experience and various methods of experiment in a great number of schools; and it preserves in all its schools a common fund of essential experience which goes back to the ancient Vedic sources. In these days, when the natural ignorance of Europeans about this characteristic Indian discipline has been successfully acquired as a part of their enlightenment by educated Indians, there is a tendency to identify Yoga with the Rajayogic system of Patanjali, because that alone is known to the European scholar. But Yoga cannot be confined to a single school or a single system. Patanjali’s Yogashastra is concerned only with Rajayoga and only with one system of Rajayoga; there are a hundred others of which a few have their written rules, practices or aphorisms, but the rest, among them some of the most ancient and august, like the school of Dattatreya, have been handed down from an early era by the long linked generations of its Guru-parampara. This profuse ramification of Yogic systems, like the inexhaustible fertility of religious sects and orders, is a sign and an unfailing accompaniment of the richness, power and freedom of spiritual life in this country. It is not only an accompaniment, but a necessary condition. If, for instance, Yoga had allowed itself to formalise into the strict tenets and stereotyped methods of a single school, even a sound and great school like Patanjali’s, it would long ago have perished or become, like much of our religious observance, a soulless body. The Infinite within us demands an infinite freedom, of various experience, of various self-expression, of various self-realisation. It loves order and arrangement, but will not long brook a confined immobility. It is only the material, the inert that depends for its stability on

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blind obedience to iron and immutable processes, the stability of inner things rests rather on a regulated, but still free and variable activity. Therefore, whatever in the mental world formalises too rigidly, is preparing its own decadence; the movement towards rigidity too long persisted in, is usually a sign that the infinite Life is about to withdraw from the body it has been informing. India has not been exempt from the immobilising tendency even in that Yoga which has been its hidden wellspring of life and the secret of its perennial vitality; there has been a disposition to formalise into one school or another and repeat from generation to generation its methods & experiences. But the Indian mental atmosphere tends always, by a return upon that which is most vital in it, to bring out great souls who, like Buddha, like Chaitanya, like Nanak, like Ramdas, like Ramakrishna, belong to no school, owe their knowledge to no spiritual preceptor, but go back to the Source of all within themselves and emerge from it with some perfectly realised truth of the eternal and universal Veda. As their source is universal, so too they tend to cast out their gains universally upon mankind, so far at least as their surroundings & times are able to bear the truth and live,—thus they revivify and preserve the spirituality in our mental environment. Great are the Yogins who, faithful to some long-established school of spiritual discipline, renew perfectly in themselves its perfect results and hand down their sacred gains as in a sealed and jealously guarded vase to the most worthy disciple; but those have a greater effect on the world who break the vase before they depart and pour out its content of life-giving sweetness on the world around them. Here too, as in philosophy, as in religion, the outer & systematised forms have done much to preserve the ancient truth, in its parts, if not in its fullness; they have served the purpose of flasks for keeping a little of the Soma wine of the Veda. But it is to those who have gone back most freely to the inner source that is due the perpetual reflooding of the Indian mind with Vedic truth and its immortal permanence and unfailing reappearance in philosophy, in religious teaching and observance and in personal spiritual experience and discipline.

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None of these puissant exterior aids to the permanence of the Veda would have been entirely effective without another, yet more characteristic of our Indian organisation, the guruparampara or unbroken succession of the human vessels of divine knowledge. This Indian institution, ill-understood by the mechanical rationalistic temper of our modern times, is founded upon a perfectly correct appreciation of the essential conditions indispensable for the transmission of a difficult knowledge. All human knowledge consists of three necessary elements, the thing itself which is known, the word or form in which it is expressed and the sense of the word or form which is the link between the thing and its expression. The thing itself, existing always, is always and at any given time capable of being known; the word or form can also be constantly preserved and may, then, always and at any given time yield up its secret; but that secret lies in the right sense to be attached to the symbol and needs for its preservation an intermediary, a vessel, a fourth element. The existence of the thing to be known is not sufficient for knowledge; the existence of the perfect symbol is not sufficient; we need in addition as a receptacle of its sense the competent knower who is termed technically in the language of our philosophy, the aptajana, the expert and adept. The aptajana transmitting his knowledge to a fit disciple is our Indian guru. To take a simple scientific instance, it has always been true and will always remain true that the mixture of oxygen and hydrogen results in water; the chemical formula expressing the truth, may, having been once settled, remain permanently written; but unless there is also the competent knower who understands the sense of the formula, has submitted it to the test of realisation by experience and is able to hand on his knowledge and his method to his successors, the existence of the formula would not save the knowledge from disappearing for a time from the grasp of humanity. The formula would then come to be regarded only as an incomprehensible superstitious jargon & abracadabra, as the mantras of our religious & Yogic schools are now regarded by many modernised Indians. In the things of the spirit this necessity of the human intermediary is a hundred times more

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keenly felt than in any material process; for the thing itself is more remote from daily experience, the methods which bring it into the range of intelligent realisation are much more difficult and delicate and the formulas in which it is couched, are necessarily elusive and with difficulty intelligible. Therefore India, supremely sensitive to the importance of spiritual knowledge and experience, unequalled in its instinct for the right spiritual method, has organised the institution of the guruparampara as an essential instrument for the survival of Veda. The truth of Brahman is the thing to be known, the Veda and Vedanta are the word-symbol and formal expression of the Brahman,—shabdam Brahma, the guru is the human receptacle of the knowledge who transmits it to his worthiest disciples. Thus the guruparampara forms the succession of spiritual torchbearers, who, as in the ancient Greek festival, hand on the light of truth from generation to generation so that the sacred knowledge received in the morning of our national daytime may last, even though with diminutions and obscurations, not only into its evening but on through whatever night of time is intended, to the dawn of another golden age of spirituality. Who shall say out of what distant twilight of time the Veda was first revealed to mankind? Who shall say to what pre-cataclysmal undreamed consummation of our present humanity it shall endure? But we Hindus believe it to be an eternal message which God will have preserved by his chosen vessels as the secret thing out of which all human activity dumbly emerges and to which it is destined by a conscious fulfilment to return.

It is this wise and necessary institution of our forefathers to which we owe the preservation of Vedic truth in our midst even after the actual words of the written Vedas have ceased to bear to us their original significance.Without its aid the abstruse and difficult generalisations of metaphysics could not have prolonged their vitality nor so powerfully propagated themselves that even the beggar in the streets and the peasant in his fields are permeated with some portion of their truth; the living truths of religion could not have maintained so persistent and so puissant a vitality; the schools of Yoga could not have transmitted the

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essence of their knowledge, methods and experiences from early Vedic times onward into the darkness of our own era. But like all external forms the guruparampara is liable to vicissitudes, to formalisation, to loss of its perfect original virtue. The orthodox formalist supposes that by the mere mechanical act of transmission the unimpaired vitality of the truth is automatically secured. But there are many accidents to which that security is liable. The guru may not always find a perfect disciple; he still imparts his knowledge, but the vessel can only hold according to its capacity: then the truth is obscured, if not permanently, then for one or more generations. There are also more general mishaps incidental to the general law of periodicity & decay which governs many parts of Nature. As the mental & vital atmosphere in which we dwell becomes thickened with obscurations, the general capacity of men diminishes and a time comes when the essential office of the guru is only fulfilled in the exceptions and the name becomes ordinarily prostituted to the mercenary priest or the unworthy physical heir of ancient Masters and knowers who either hands on the formula without any knowledge of its sense or is unable even to preserve the formula itself in its purity,—as if the scientific formula for the mixture of oxygen & hydrogen were to be mumbled faithfully from generation to generation without any slightest knowledge or practice of the actual experiment which constitutes its value. Even when this extreme degeneracy does not happen, the transmission is subject to the play of individuality & the varying tendencies of thought from century to century and under that influence this part of the truth may be overstressed, that deprived of its emphasis, much may be sacrificed as no longer useful to the actual practice of the new generations or too high for its attainment and what is preserved may be manipulated, extended, diverted by the enthusiasms of individual thought and experience. What is thus lost or blurred, may not be recovered or restored to its purity for long ages. Nevertheless the institution always preserves something of its value. Much of the body of the truth tends to survive even the worst vicissitudes, and in the body something must always remain of the spirit; even a formula long unintelligently repeated

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may, by passing into the possession of an alert & curious mind or an ardent & sincere nature, be a suggestion or a starting-point for the recovery of the old lost experience which it keeps as its secret.Here again, as with the other external aids, we come back to the perennial source of the truth, the experience of the strong souls who passing beyond the school, the formula, the belief, the aid, the letter, go back into themselves for the light, respond to those buried suggestions ever lying in ambush for us in the mental atmosphere from which we draw our inner sustenance, and are strong enough to emerge with something of the ancient truth which gave so ineffable a vastness and profundity to the spiritual life of our forefathers. Behind and beyond all human gurus there dwells within us all theWorld-Teacher, the universal jagadguru of whom human teachers are only the masks and nominal representatives. He keeps for us the complete book of the Veda written in our secret being, nihitam guháyám; veiled, but accessible, He awaits our reverential approach and our questioning and, sincerely & constantly questioned, lights the fire of Agni in our hearts and makes Surya to rise upon our darkness.

From these considerations there arise two apparently conflicting, but really complementary truths,—first, that in spite of powerful external aids, by the inexorable vicissitudes of Time, we have lost the sense of Veda and do not possess the full sense of Vedanta, secondly, that both these capital losses can, though with difficulty, by the methods of Yoga & the revelatory experience of great souls, be repaired. We possess intellectually the general truths of Vedanta, the transcendental unity of things and the universal unity, ekam adwitíyam Brahma and so’ham asmi, the secret of divine renunciation of the Ascetic and the secret of divine joy of the Vaishnava, with much else that is sovereign, vital, a priceless heritage. We possess many symbolic forms of religious application by which we enter into possession of the eternal truth through the emotions, through the intellect or through active experience in our inner life & outward relations. We possess numerous methods & forms of psychological discipline by which we repeat old profound experience and do even actually possess many apparently lost details of Vedic truth

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preserved in another form and couched in more modern symbols. All this is much; it has kept us alive through the centuries. But it is only in its totality that the Truth can work its utter miracles. Otherwise, if we live on her broken meats we tend either to lose ourselves in the outer formulae or concentrate dogmatically on fragments & sides of the living truth; when great spirits arise to give us their deep & vast experience, we prove ourselves limited and shallow vessels and are unable to receive more of the truth than is in harmony with our confined intellects and narrow natures; and, if powerful floods of materialism invade us, as in the present European era of humanity, we have not the strength to resist, to hold fast to that which is difficult but enduring; we are overborne, lose our footing and are carried away in the vehement but shallow currents.

Perfection of knowledge is the right condition for perfection of nature and efficiency of life. The perfect truth of the Veda is the fundamental knowledge, the right relations with the Truth of things, on which alone according to our ideas, all other knowledge can receive the true orientation needed by humanity. The recovery of the perfect truth of the Veda is therefore not merely a desideratum for our modern intellectual curiosity, but a practical necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return and is actually at the present dawn, in the impulses of its vanguard, tending more and more, but vaguely and blindly, to return. If we can set our feet on the path, not vaguely and blindly, but in the full light that streamed so brilliantly and grandiosely on the inner sight of our distant forefathers, our speed will be more rapid and our arrival more triumphant.

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Note on the Word ‘Go’

गो

सुरूपकृत्नुमूतये सुदुघामिव गोदुहे । जुहूमसि द्यवि द्यवि ।। 4.1. (Indra)

पिब गोदा इद्रेवतो मदः ।। 4.2.

एवा ह्यस्य सूनृता विरप्शी गोमती मही । पक्वा शाखा न दाशुषे ।। 8.8. (Indra)

सं गोमदिन्द्र वाजवदस्मे पृथु श्रवो बृहत् । विश्वायुर्घेहि अक्षितं ।। 9.7.

त्वं वलस्य गोमतो अपावरद्रिवो बिलं । त्वां देवा अबिभ्युषस्तुज्यमानास आविशुः ।। 11.5. (Indra)

इन्द्रो दीर्घाय चक्षस आ सूर्य रोहयद्दिवि । वि गोभिरद्रिमैरयत् ।। 7.3.

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Note

The word Go in the Vedas appears to bear two ordinary meanings, first, cow, secondly, ray, light or lustre. In the hymns of Madhuchchhanda it occurs 6 times, in five hymns. It occurs twice in the fourth hymn addressed to Indra in the first three verses which are all of them important for the discovery of the proper sense of the word as it is used in this passage. In the third verse which is the key to the passage, we find the prayer “Then may we know (of) thy ultimate good thoughts”. Then may we know. When? as a consequence to what? Obviously as a consequence to the result of the second verse, which I translate “Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savana), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured” or in better English bringing out the sense & association of the words, “Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine & be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not by—O come!” Id lays emphasis on goda as the capacity in which,

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the purpose for which Indra is to drink. Revato and madah give the conditions under which Indra becomes a giver of illumination, the rushing & impetuous ecstasy produced by the Soma wine. It is then that men know the ultimate perceptions of mind, the highest realisations that can be given by the intellect when Indra, lord of mental force & power, is full of the ecstasy of the immortalising juice. This clear & easy sense being fixed for these two verses, we can return to the first & discover its connection with what follows. From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays. Undoubtedly, sudugham goduhe may be translated, a good milch cow to the milker of the cows; undoubtedly the poet had this idea in his mind when he wrote. The goddess is in the simile a milch cow, Indra is the milker. In each of the skies (the lower, middle & higher) he calls to her & makes her bring out the beautiful forms which she reveals to the drinker of the Soma. But it is impossible, when we take the connection with the two following verses, to avoid seeing that he is taking advantage of the double sense of go, and that while in the simile Indra is goduh the cow-milker, in the subject of the comparison he is goduh, the bringer out of the illumination, the flashes of higher light which produce the beautiful forms by the power of the goddess. The goddess herself must be one who is habitually associated with illumination, either Ila or Mahi. To anyone acquainted with the processes of Yoga, the whole passage at once becomes perfectly clear & true. The forms are those beautiful & myriad images of things in all the three worlds, the three akashas, dyavi dyavi, which appear to the eye of the Yogin when mental force in the Yoga is at its height, the impetuous & joyous activity (revato madah) of the mingled Ananda and Mahas fills the brain with Ojas and the highest intellectual perceptions, those akin to the supra-rational revelation, become not only possible, but easy,

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common & multitudinous. The passage describes the condition in which the mind, whether by drinking the material wine, the Karanajal of the Tantrics, or, as I hold, by feeding on the internal amrita, is raised to its highest exalted condition, before it is taken up into mahas or karanam, (whether in the state of Samadhi or in the waking state of the man who has realised his mahan atma, his ideal self), a state in which it is full of revealing thoughts & revealing visions which descend to it from the supra-rational level of the mahat, luminous & unerring, sunrita gomati mahi, where all is Truth & Light. Uti is the state of manifestation in Sat, in being, when that conscious existence which we are is stimulated into intensity & produces easily to the waking consciousness states of existence, movements of knowledge, outpourings of bliss which ordinarily it holds guha, in the secret parts of being.

The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression सूनृता गोमती मही, a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false—for in the early Aryan speech su and sû would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhi—originally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswar—traces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,—a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,—for to write âgni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from

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the idea “good or beneficent in its regular action”. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root नृ, to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have नृत् to dance, नृ & नर strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between “auspicious” and “true”. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate “the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver.” This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsa’s hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspicious—a phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat?

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Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line “For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giver”—or, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,—it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light,

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illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictory—as in Max Muller’s translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwa’s to the Maruts,—never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,—if they are primitive,—crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. “I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, don’t hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortable”—this is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.

I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here ‘fame’. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xλέoҫ

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(originally xλέFoҫ); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate “Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired.” I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. “A herded & fooded or wealthy fame” to express “a fame for wealth of cattle & food” is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hair’s breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning “illuminated, full of illumination”. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayah—it means by etymology extended being in force, va or vâ to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,—although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means “full of substance”, just as “gomad” full of luminousness,—not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological

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connotation. I translate then, “O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired.” Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhanda’s experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Sruti—not Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondhand glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.

The combination of go & vaja occurs again in the eleventh hymn where the seer writes Purvir Indrasya ratayo na vi dasyanti utayah, yadi vajasya gomatah stotribhyo manhate magham. “The former delights of Indra, those first established his (new &larger) expansions of being do not destroy or scatter, when to his praisers he enlarges the mass of their illuminated substance or strength of being.” Here again we have Madhuchchhanda’s deep experience & his fine & subtle knowledge. It is a common experience in Yoga that the ananda and siddhi first established, is destroyed in the effort or movement towards a larger fullness of being, knowledge or delight, and a period of crisis intervenes in which there is a rending & scattering of joy & light, a period of darkness, confusion & trouble painful to all & dangerous except to the strongest. Can these crises, difficulties, perilous conditions

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of soul be avoided? Yes, says Madhuchchhandas in effect, when you deliver yourself with devotion into the care of Indra, he comes to your help, he removes that limitation, that concentration in detail, in the alpam, the little, that consequent necessity of losing hold of one thing in order to give yourself to another, he increases the magha, the vijnanamay state of mahattwa or relative non-limitation in the finite which shows itself by an increase of fundamental force of being filled with higher illumination. That support of vaja prevents us from falling from what we have gained; there is sufficient substance of being expressed in us to provide for the new utayah without sacrificing the joys already established; there is sufficient luminousness of mind to prevent darkness, obscuration & misery supervening. Thus we see still the same symbolic sense, the same depth, the same experience as true to the Yogin today as to Madhuchchhandas thousands of years ago.

Now that we have thus substantially fixed the meaning of go and gomat, we can go back to a passage already to some extent discussed, the third verse of the seventh hymn. Indro dirghaya chakshasa a suryam rohayad divi, vi gobhir adrim airayat; Indra for far vision ascended to the sun in heaven; he sent him abroad over all the mountain with his rays. This is so plainly the meaning of the verse that I cannot understand, once it is perceived & understood, how we can accept any other rendering. I have already discussed the relations of Indra, Surya & the Mountain of our graded ascent in being—Sri Ramakrishna’s staircase to the Sad Brahman. The far vision is the unlimited knowledge acquired in Mahas, in the wide supra-rational movement of our consciousness as opposed to the contracted rational or infrarational vision which works only on details or from & by details, the alpam; for that Mind has to ascend to the Sun in Heaven, the principle of Mahas on the higher levels of mind itself, not on the supra-rational level, not swe dame. Because it is not swe dame, the full illumination is not possible, we cannot become practically omniscient; all Indra can do is to send down the sun, not in itself, but in its rays to various parts of the mountain of being, all over it, it is true, but still revealing only the higher

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truth in its parts, not in its full sum of knowledge. The language is so precise, once we understand the Vedic terminology, that I do not think we can be mistaken in this interpretation, which, moreover, agrees perfectly with Yogic experience and the constant theme of Madhuchchhandas. He is describing the first dawn & development of the higher knowledge in the mind, still liable to attack & obstruction, (yujam vritreshu vajrinam), still uncertain in quantity (Indram vayam mahadhane indram arbhe havamahe). Irayat is naturally transitive, bears the meaning it has in prerana, prerita, and can have no object but Surya, unless we suppose, which is less natural, that it is Surya who sends Indra to the mountain accompanied by his rays.

There is only one other passage we have now left for examination but it is of considerable importance & interest. It is in the hymn ascribed to the son of Madhuchchhanda, though very probably it isMadhuchchhanda’s own, the eleventh hymn and the fifth verse. Twam Valasya gomato apavar adrivo bilam, Twam deva abibhyushas tujyamanasa avishuh. “Thou, O dweller on the mountain, didst uncover the lair of Vala the luminous, Thee the gods entered unfearing & protected.” Indra, the dweller on the mountain of being, he who established in Swarga looks ever upward, has, to assist the strivings of man, uncovered the lair of Vala the luminous. Who is Vala the luminous? Does gomat mean the fellow who has the cows & is Vala a demon of cloud or darkness afflicted with the cow-stealing propensities, the Titanic bovi-kleptomania attributed by tradition to the Panis? He is, I suggest, one of the Titans who deny a higher ascent to man, a Titan who possesses but withholds & hides the luminous realms of ideal truth from man,—interposing the hiranmayam patram of the Isha Upanishad, the golden cover or lid, by which the face of truth is concealed, satyasyapihitam mukham. “Tat twam Pushan apavrinu”, cries the Vedantic sage, using the same word apavri, but he calls to Surya, not to Indra, because he seeks the possession of the Vedanta, the sight of the rupam kalyanatamam which belongs to those who can meet Surya in his own home. The Vedic seer, at an earlier stage of the struggle, is satisfied with the minor conquests of Indra. He does

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not yet rise to those heights where Indra working in the mind is no longer a supreme helper, but may even be, as the Puranas tell us, an obstacle and an opponent—because activity of mind even the highest, so long as it is not abandoned and overpassed, interferes with a yet higher attainment. It is only by rejecting Indra that we can dwell with Surya in his luminous halls, Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. Nevertheless the conquest over Bala is for humanity in its present stage a great conquest, and when & because it is accomplished the other gods can enter safely into the mental force & work in it, fearless because protected by Indra’s victorious might. For he is now Balabhid; he has pierced Bala & is no longer liable to that fear which overtook him when Vritra only had been overthrown—a fear due to his perceiving the immensity of the task that still remained & the more formidable enemies beyond. We shall come again to Bala & the Titans & the meaning of these divine battles,—viryani yani chakara prathamani vajri.

All the passages I have quoted proceed from the hymns of Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra, the opening eleven hymns of the Rigveda. This seer is one of the deepest & profoundest of the spirits chosen as vessels & channels of the divine knowledge of the Veda, one of those who least loses the thing symbolised in the material symbol, but who tends rather to let the symbol disappear in that which it symbolises. The comparison of the maker of beautiful images to the milch cow & Indra to the milker is an example of his constant tendency—the word gavam is avoided with sudugham, so that the idea of milking or pressing forth may be suggested without insisting on the material image of the cow, & in goduhe, the symbol of the cow melts away into the thing symbolised, knowledge, light, illumination. A comparison with Medhatithi son of Kanwa brings out the difference. In Madhuchchhanda’s hymns the materialist rendering is often inapplicable & even when applicable yields a much poorer sense than the symbolic rendering—because the seer is little concerned with the symbol except as the recognised means of suggesting things supramaterial. But Medhatithi is much concerned with the symbol & not indifferent to the outer life; in his hymns the

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materialist rendering gives us a good sense without excluding the symbolic, but often the symbolic has to be sought for & if we did not know the true Vedic tradition from Madhuchchhanda we could not gather it unaided from Medhatithi. The son of Viswamitra is deeply concerned with knowledge & with immortality & rapture as its attendant circumstances & conditions, the son of Kanwa, though not indifferent to knowledge, with the intoxication of the wine of immortality & its outpouring in mortal life & action. To use Vedic symbolism, one is a herder of kine, the other a herder of horses; Madhuchchhanda’s totem is the meditative cow, Medhatithi’s the rapid & bounding horse. There is a great calm, depth & nobility in the first eleven hymns, a great verve, joy, energy & vibrant force in the twelve that follow.

There is only one passage in which Medhatithi uses the word go and that passage is characteristic. There are only three main ideas in the hymn, the drinking of the Soma by Indra, the increase of his rapture & force by the drinking of the Soma, & the result of that increase, Semam nah kamam a prina gobhir aswaih shatakrato, Then do thou fill full this desire of ours with horses & with kine, O Shatakratu. Read apart from his other & deeper hymns, we should not venture to put any symbolic sense into these horses & kine; but from other passages it is evident that Medhatithi was not dispossessed of the tradition of Vedic symbolism, & it would be an injustice to him to suppose that he was lusting merely for a material wealth, that this was his desire and not the illumination of knowledge & the inner joy & vigour which is denoted by the symbol of the steed.

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The Gods of the Veda / The Secret of the Veda

[word] - Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to themanuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

[A]

The Gods of the Veda—
An enquiry into the true significance of the hymns of the Rigveda.

The Vedas are the roots of Indian civilisation and the supreme authority in Indian religion. For three thousand years, by the calculation of European scholars, for a great deal more, in all probability, the faith of this nation, certainly one of the most profound, acute and intellectual in the world, has not left its hold on this cardinal point of belief. Its greatest and most rationalistic minds have never swerved from the national faith. Kapila held to it no less than Shankara. The two great revolted intellects, Buddha and Brihaspati, could not dethrone the Veda or destroy India’s spiritual allegiance. India by an inevitable law of her being casts out, sooner or later, everything that is not Vedic. The Dhammapada has become a Scripture for foreign peoples. Brihaspati’s strictures are only remembered as a curiosity of our intellectual history. Religious movements & revolutions have come & gone or left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation.

Yet the most fundamental and important part of this imperishable Scripture, the actual hymns and mantras of the Sanhitas, has long been a sealed book to the Indian mind, learned or unlearned. The other Vedic books are of minor authority or a secondary formation. The Brahmanas are ritual, grammatical & historical treatises on the traditions & ceremonies of Vedic times whose only value—apart from interesting glimpses of ancient life & Vedantic philosophy—lies in their attempt to fix and to interpret symbolically the ritual of Vedic sacrifice. The

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Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. Or if they have been understood, if Sayana holds for us their secret, the reverence of the Indian mind for them becomes a baseless superstition and the idea that the modern Indian religions are Vedic in their substance is convicted of egregious error. For the Vedas Sayana gives us are the mythology of the Adityas, Rudras,Maruts, Vasus,—but these gods of the Veda have long ceased to be worshipped,—or they are a collection of ritual & sacrificial hymns, but the ritual is dead & the sacrifices are no longer offered.

Are we then to conclude that the reverence for the Vedas & the belief in the continued authority of the Vedas is really no more than an ancient superstition or a tradition which has survived its truth? Those who know the working of the human mind, will be loth to hasten to that conclusion. Great masses of men, great nations, great civilisations have an instinct in these matters which seldom misleads them. In spite of forgetfulness, through every misstatement, surviving all cessation of precise understanding, something in them still remembers their origin and holds fast to the vital truth of their being. According to the Europeans, there is a historical truth at the basis of the old persistent tradition, but a historical truth only, a truth of origin, not of present actuality. The Vedas are the early roots of Indian religion, of Indian civilisation; but they have for a long time past ceased to be their present foundation or their intellectual substance. It is rather the Upanishads & the Puranas that are the living Scriptures of mediaeval and modern Hinduism. But if, as we contend, the Upanishads & the Puranas only give us in other language, later symbols, altered forms of thought the same religious truths that we find differently stated in the Rigveda, this shifting of the immediate point of derivation will make no real difference. The waters we drink are the same whether drawn at their clear mountain sources or on their banks in the anchorite’s forest or from ghats among the faery temples and

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fantastic domes of some sacred city.The Hindu’s belief remains to him unshaken.

But in the last century a new scholarship has invaded the country, the scholarship of aggressive & victorious Europe, which for the first time denies the intimate connection and the substantial identity of the Vedas & the later Scriptures. We ourselves have made distinctions of Jnanakanda & Karmakanda, Sruti & Smriti, but we have never doubted that all these are branches of a single stock. But our new Western Pandits & authorities tell us that we are in error. All of us from ancient Yajnavalkya to the modern Vaidika have been making a huge millennial mistake. European scholarship applying for the first time the test of a correct philology to these obscure writings has corrected the mistake. It has discovered that the Vedas are of an entirely different character from the rest of our Hindu development. For our development has been Pantheistic or transcendental, philosophical, mystic, devotional, sombre, secretive, centred in the giant names of the Indian Trinity, disengaging itself from sacrifice, moving towards asceticism. The Vedas are naturalistic, realistic, ritualistic, semi-barbarous, a sacrificial worship of material Nature-powers, henotheistic at their highest, Pagan, joyous and self-indulgent. Brahma & Shiva do not exist for the Veda; Vishnu & Rudra are minor, younger & unimportant deities. Many more discoveries of a startling nature, but now familiar to the most ignorant, have been successfully imposed on our intellects. The Vedas, it seems, were not revealed to great & ancient Rishis, but composed by the priests of a small invading Aryan race of agriculturists & warriors, akin to the Greeks & Persians, who encamped, some fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the Panjab.

With the acceptance of these modern opinions Hinduism ought by this time to have been as dead among educated men as the religion of the Greeks & Romans. It should at best have become a religio Pagana, a superstition of ignorant villagers. Itis, on the contrary, stronger & more alive, fecund & creative than it had been for the previous three centuries. To a certain extent this unexpected result may be traced to the high opinion

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in which even European opinion has been compelled to hold the Vedanta philosophy, the Bhagavat Gita and some of the speculations—as the Europeans think them—or, as we hold, the revealed truths of the Upanishads. But although intellectually we are accustomed in obedience to Western criticism to base ourselves on the Upanishads & Gita and put aside Purana and Veda as mere mythology & mere ritual, yet in practice we live by the religion of the Puranas & Tantras even more profoundly & intimately than we live by & realise the truths of the Upanishads. In heart & soul we still worship Krishna and Kali and believe in the truth of their existence. Nevertheless this divorce between the heart & the intellect, this illicit compromise between faith & reason cannot be enduring. If Purana & Veda cannot be rehabilitated, it is yet possible that our religion driven out of the soul into the intellect may wither away into the dry intellectuality of European philosophy or the dead formality & lifeless clarity of European Theism. It behoves us therefore to test our faith by a careful examination into the meaning of Purana & Veda and into the foundation of that truth which our intellect seeks to deny [but] our living spiritual experience continues to find in their conceptions. We must discover why it is that while our intellects accept only the truth of Vedanta, our spiritual experiences confirm equally or even more powerfully the truth of Purana. A revival of Hindu intellectual faith in the totality of the spiritual aspects of our religion, whether Vedic, Vedantic, Tantric or Puranic, I believe to be an inevitable movement of the near future.

There has already been, indeed, a local movement towards the rehabilitation of the Veda. Swami Dayananda, the founder of the Arya Samaj, preached a monotheistic religion founded on a new interpretation of the sacred hymns. But this important attempt, successful & vigorous in the Panjab, is not likely to command acceptance among the more subtle races of the south & east. It was based like the European rendering on a system of philology,—the Nirukta of Yaska used by the scholastic ingenuity & robust faith of Dayananda to justify conclusions far-reaching & even extravagant, to which it is difficult to assent

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unless we are offered stronger foundations.Moreover, by rejecting the authority of all later Scriptures and scouting even the Upanishads because they transcend the severity of his monotheistic teaching, Dayananda cut asunder the unity of Hindu religion even more fatally than the Europeans & by the slenderness of vision & the poverty of spiritual contents, the excessive simplicity of doctrine farther weakened the authority of this version for the Indian intellect. He created a sect & a rendering, but failed to rehabilitate to the educated mind in India the authority of the Vedas. Nevertheless, he put his finger on the real clue, the true principle by which Veda can yet be made to render up its long-guarded secret. A Nirukta, based on a wider knowledge of the Aryan tongues than Dayananda possessed, more scientific than the conjectural philology of the Europeans, is the first condition of this great recovery. The second is a sympathy & flexibility of intelligence capable of accepting passively & moulding itself to the mentality of the men of this remote epoch.

If indeed the philology of the Europeans were an exact science or its conclusions inevitable results from indisputable premises, there would be no room for any reopening of the subject. But the failure of comparative philology to develop a sound scientific basis & to create a true science of language has been one of the conspicuous intellectual disappointments of the nineteenth century. There can be no denial of that failure. This so-called science is scouted by scientific minds and even the possibility of an etymological science has been disputed. The extravagances of the philological sun myth weavers have been checked by a later method which prefers the evidence of facts to the evidence of nouns & adjectives. The later ethnological theories ignore the conclusions & arguments of the philologists. The old theory of Aryan, Semite, Dravidian & Turanian races has everywhere been challenged and is everywhere breached or rejected. The philologists have indeed established some useful identities and established a few rules of phonetical modification and detrition. But the rest is hypothesis and plausible conjecture. The capacity of brilliant conjecture, volatile inference and an ingenious imagination have been more useful to the modern

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Sanscrit scholar than rigorous research, scientific deduction or patient and careful generalisation. We are therefore at liberty even on the ground of European science & knowledge to hesitate before the conclusions of philological scholarship.

But for my own part I do not hold myself bound by European research&European theories.My scepticism of nineteenth century results goes farther than is possible to any European scepticism. The Science of comparative religion in Europe seems to me to be based on a blunder. The sun & star theory of comparative mythology with its extravagant scholastic fancies & lawless inferences carries no conviction to my reason. I find in the Aryan & Dravidian tongues, the Aryan and Dravidian races not separate & unconnected families but two branches of a single stock. The legend of the Aryan invasion & settlement in the Panjab in Vedic times is, to me, a philological myth. The naturalistic interpretation of theVedas I accept only as a transference or adhyaropa of European ideas into the Veda foreign to the mentality of the Vedic Rishis & Max Muller’s discovery of Vedic henotheism as a brilliant & ingenious error. Whatever is sound & indisputable in European ideas & discoveries, I am bound to admit & shall use, but these large generalisations & assumptions ought, I think, no longer to pass current as unchallengeable truth or the final knowledge about the Vedas. My method is rather to make a tabula rasa of all previous theories European or Indian & come back to the actual text of the Veda for enlightenment, the fundamental structure & development of the old Sanscrit tongue for a standard of interpretation and the connection of thought in the hymns for a guide to their meaning. I have arrived as a result at a theory of the Vedic religion, of which this book is intended to give some initial indications.

I put aside at the beginning the common assumption that since religion started from the fears & desires of savages a record of religion as ancient as the Vedas must necessarily contain a barbarous or semi-barbarous mythology empty of any profound or subtle spiritual & moral ideas or, if it contains them at all, that it must be only in the latest documents. We have no more right to assume that the Vedic Rishis were a race of simple &

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frank barbarians than to assume that they were a class of deep and acute philosophers. What they were is the thing we have to discover and we may arrive at either conclusion or neither, but we must not start from our goal or begin our argument on the basis of our conclusion. We know nothing of the history & thought of the times, we know nothing of the state of their intellectual & social culture except what we can gather from the Vedic hymns themselves. Indications from other sources may be useful as clues but the hymns are our sole authority.

The indications from external sources are few and inconclusive, but they are by no means favourable to the theory of a materialistic worship of Nature-Powers. The Europeans start with their knowledge of the old Pagan worship, their idea of the crudity of early Greek & German myth & practice and their minds naturally expect to find & even insist on finding an even greater crudity in the Vedas. But it must not be forgotten that in no written record of Greek or Scandinavian do the old religions appear as mere materialistic ideas or the old gods as mere Nature forces; they have also a moral significance, and show a substratum of moral and an admixture even of psychological & philosophical ideas. If in their origin, they were material and barbarous, they had already been moralised & intellectualised. Already even in Homer Pallas Athene is not the Dawn or any natural phenomenon, but a great preterhuman power of wisdom, force & intelligence; Apollo is not the Sun—who is represented by another deity, Helios—but a moral or moralised deity. In the Veda, even in the European rendering, Varuna has a similar moral character and represents ethical & religious ideas far in advance of any that we find in the Homeric cult & ethics. We cannot rule out of court the possibility that others of the gods shared this Vedic distinction or that, even perhaps in their oldest hymns, the Indians had gone at least as far as the Greeks in the moralising of their religion.

Moreover, even their moralised gods were only the superficial & exterior aspect of the Greek religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus, Bacchus, the Eleusinian mysteries which were deeply symbolic and remind us in some of

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their ideas & circumstances of certain aspects of Indian Yoga. The mysticism & symbolism were not an entirely modern development. Orpheus, Bacchus & Demeter are the centre of an antique and prehistoric, even preliterary mind-movement. The element may have been native to Greek religious sentiment; it may have been imported from the East through the Aryan races or cultures of Asia Minor; but it may also have been common to the ancient systems of Greece & India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic religion. Is it entirely without significance that to the Vedic mind men were essentially manu, thinkers, the original father of the race was the first Thinker, and the Vedic poets in the idea of their contemporaries not merely priests or sacred singers or wise bards but much more characteristically manishis & rishis, thinkers & sages?We can conceive with difficulty such ideas as belonging to that undeveloped psychological condition of the semi-savage to which sacrifices of propitiation & Nature-Gods helpful only for material life, safety & comfort were all-sufficient. Certainly, also, the earliest Indian writings subsequent to Vedic times bear out these indications. To the writers of the Brahmanas the sacrificial ritual enshrined an elaborate symbolism. The seers of the Upanishad worshipped Surya & Agni as great spiritual & moral forces and believed the Vedic hymns to be effective only because they contained a deep knowledge & a potent spirituality. They may have been in error—may have been misled by a later tradition or themselves have read mystic refinements into a naturalistic text. But also & equally, they may have had access to an unbroken line of knowledge or they may have been in direct touch or in closer touch than the moderns with the mentality of the Vedic singers.

The decision of these questions will determine our whole view of Vedic religions and decide the claim of the Veda to be a living Scripture of Hinduism. It is of primary importance to know what in their nature and functions were the gods of the Veda. I have therefore made this fundamental question form the sole subject matter of the present volume. I make no attempt

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here to present a complete or even a sufficient justification of the conclusions which I have been led to. Nor do I present my readers with a complete enquiry into the nature & functions of the Vedic pantheon. Such a justification, such an enquiry can only be effected by a careful philological analysis & rendering of the Vedic hymns and an exhaustive study of the origins of the Sanscrit language. That is a labour of very serious proportions & burdened with numerous difficulties which I have begun and hope one day to complete myself or to leave to others ready for completion. But in the present volume I can only attempt to establish a prima facie [case] for a reconsideration of the whole question. I offer the suggestion that the Vedic creed & thought were not a simple, but a complex, not a barbarous but a subtle & advanced, not a naturalistic but a mystic & Vedantic system.

It is necessary, in order that the reader may follow my arguments with a better understanding, to sketch briefly the important lines of that system as it reveals itself in the ten mandalas of the Rigveda. Its fundamental conception was the unity in complexity of the apparent universe. The Vedic mind, looking out on the great movement of material forces around it, aware of their regularity, law, universality, saw in them symbols and expressions of a diviner life behind. Everywhere they felt the presence of intelligence, of life, of a soul. But they did not make the common distinction between soul and matter. Matter was to them itself a term and expression of the life and soul they had discovered. It was this peculiarity of thought which constituted the essential characteristic of the Vedic outlook and has stood at the root and basis of all Indian thought and religion then & subsequently.

Nevertheless existence is not simple in its infinite oneness. Matter is prithivi, tanu or tanva (terra), a wide yet formal extension of being; but behind matter and containing it is a term of being, not formal though instrumentally creative of form, measuring & containing it, mind, mati or manas. Mind itself is biune in movement, modified mind working in direct relation to material life (anu, the Vedantic prana) and moulding itself to its requirements in order to seize and enjoy it, and pure mind above

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and controlling it. For each of these three subjective principles there must exist in the nature of things an objective world in which it fulfils its tendencies and in which beings of that particular order of consciousness can live and manifest themselves. The three worlds, tribhuvana, trailokya are called in Vedic terminology, Bhu, the material world, Bhuvar, the intermediate world and Swar, the pure blissful mental world,—Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, earth, the lower heavens and paradise, are the three sacred & mighty vyahritis of the Veda, and the great Vedic formula OM Bhur Bhuvah Swah expressive of our manifest existence triply founded in matter, mind-in-sense & vital movement and pure mind, still resounds in the Indian consciousness & comes with a solemnity, ill-understood but felt, to the descendants of the ancient Rishis. They persist in later belief as three inferior worlds of the Purana, constituents of the aparardha, or lower hemisphere of conscious existence, in which the Vedantic principles of matter, life & mind, anna, prana and manas severally predominate and determine the conditions of existence. Bhuvar & Swar are the two heavens, the double firmament, ubhe rodasi so frequently mentioned in the sacred verses.

But why, it might be asked, should each subjective order or stratum of consciousness necessarily involve the co-existence of a corresponding order of beings & objective world-stratum? For the modern mind, speculative & introspective like the Vedic, is yet speculative within the limits of sensational experience and therefore unable to believe in, even if it can conceive of existence, least of all of an objective existence under conditions different from those [with] which we are familiar and of which our senses assure us. We may therefore admit the profundity & subtlety of the subjective distinction, but we shall be apt to regard the belief in objective worlds & beings unseen by our senses as either an early poetic fancy or a crude superstition of savages. But the Vedic mentality, although perfectly rational, stood at the opposite pole of ideas from the modern and its subjective consciousness admitted a class of experiences which we reject and cut short the moment they begin to present themselves by condemning them as hallucinations. The idea of

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modern men that the ancients evolved their gods by a process of poetic imagination, is an error due to inability to understand an alien mentality & unwillingness to investigate from within those survivals of it which still subsist though with difficulty under modern conditions. Encouraging this order of phenomena, fostering & developing carefully the states of mind in which they were possible and the movements of mind & sense by which they were effected, the Vedic Rishis saw and communed with the gods and threw themselves into the worlds of which they had the conception. They believed in them for the same reason that Joan of Arc believed in her saints & her voices, Socrates in his daemon or Swedenborg in his spirits, because they had constant experience of them and of the validity both of the experiences and of the instruments of mind & sense by which they were maintained in operation. They would have answered a modern objector that they had as good a proof of them as the scientist has of the worlds & the different orders of life revealed to his optical nerve by microscope & telescope. Some of them might even question whether these scientific discoveries were not optical illusions due to the excitation of the nerve by the instruments utilised! We may, similarly, get rid of the Vedic experiences, disbelieve and discount them, saying that they missed one essential instrument of truth, the sceptical distrust of their instruments,—but we cannot argue from them in the minds that received them a childish irrationality or a savage superstition. They trusted, like us, their experience, believed their mind & senses and argued logically from their premisses.

It is true that apart from these experiences the existence of various worlds & different orders of beings was a logical necessity of the Vedic conception of existence. Existence being a life, a soul expressing itself in forms, every distinct order of consciousness, every stratum or sea of conscious-being (samudra, sindhu, apah as the Vedic thinkers preferred to call them) demanded its own order of objective experiences (lokas, worlds), tended inevitably to throw itself into forms of individualised being (vishah, ganah, prajah). Moreover, in a world so conceived, nothing could happen in this world without relation

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to some force or being in the worlds behind; nor could there be any material, vital or mental movement except as the expression of a life & a soul behind it. Everything here must be supported from the worlds of mind or it could not maintain its existence. From this idea to the peopling of the world with innumerable mental & vital existences,—existences essentially vital like the Naiads, Dryads, Nereids, Genii, Lares & Penates of the Greeks and Romans, the wood-gods, river-gods, house-gods, tree-deities, snake-deities of the Indians, or mental like the intermediate gods of our old Pantheon, would be a natural and inevitable step. This Animism is a remarkably universal feature in the religious culture of the ancient world. I cannot accept the modern view that its survival in a crude form among the savages, those waifs & strays of human progress, is a proof of their low & savage origin—any more than the peculiarly crude ideas of Christianity that exist in uneducated negro minds [and] would survive in a still more degraded form if they were long isolated from civilised life, would be a proof to future research that Christianity originated from a cannibal tribe on the African continent. The idea is essentially a civilised conception proceeding from keen susceptibility & only possible after a meditative dwelling upon Nature—not different indeed in rank & order from Wordsworth’s experience of Nature which no one, I suppose, would consider an atavistic recrudescence of old savage mentality,—and impossible to the animal man. The dog & crow who reason from their senses, do not stand in awe of inanimate objects, or of dawn & rain & shine or expect from them favours.

But the great gods of the Veda belong to a higher order than these beings who attach themselves to the individual object and the particular movement. They are great world-powers; they support the wide laws & universal functions of the world. Their dwelling-place is in Swar, the world of pure mind, and they only enter into and are not native to or bound by life & matter.

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[B]

The Secret of the Veda.
Chapter II
Saraswati and the Great Water.

If the Veda is a great religious and psychological document and not an early hymnal of savage ceremonies, there must be in the long procession of the sacred chants passages which preserve, in spite of the unavoidable difficulties of an archaic language, their ancient truth on their surface. The totality of the Veda is so closely knit in its mentality, constant in its ideas and unchanging in its terms that we may hope from even one such text a help considerably beyond the measure of its actual length & scope in fixing the nature of theVedic outlook and helping us to some clue to the secret of its characteristic expressions. Our desideratum is a passage in which the god of the Riks must be a mental or moral Power, the thoughts religious, intellectual or psychological in their substance, the expressions insistent in their clear superphysical intention.We will begin with a striking passage in a hymn, put by Vyasa very early in the order of his collection.It is the third sukta of the first Mandala. Madhuchchhanda, son of the famous Visvamitra, is the seer; Saraswati is the goddess; the three closing riks of the hymn are the indicative passage

Saraswati, a name familiar to the religious conceptions of the race from our earliest eras, & of incessant occurrence in poetic phraseology and image, is worshipped yearly even at the present day in all provinces of the peninsula no less than those many millenniums ago in the prehistoric dawn of our religion and literature. Consistently, subsequent to the Vedic times, she has been worshipped everywhere & is named in all passages as a goddess of speech, poetry, learning and eloquence. Epic, Purana and the popular imagination know her solely as this deity of speech & knowledge. She ranks therefore in the order of religious ideas with the old Hellenic conceptions of Pallas, Aphrodite or the Muses; nor does any least shadow of the material Nature-power linger to lower the clear intellectuality of

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her powers and functions. But there is also a river Saraswati or several rivers of that name. Therefore, the doubt suggests itself: In any given passage may it not be the Aryan river, Saraswati, which the bards are chanting? even if they sing of her or cry to her as a goddess, may it not still be the River, so dear, sacred & beneficent to them, that they worship? Or even where she is clearly a goddess of speech and thought, may it not be that the Aryans, having had originally no intellectual or moral conceptions and therefore no gods of the mind and heart, converted, when they did feel the need, this sacred flowing River into a goddess of sacred flowing song? In that case we are likely to find in her epithets & activities the traces of this double capacity.

For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswati’s etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayana’s distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, púrve nútaná uta, are guides worthy of trust—whether they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,—whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen intuition

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of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account—the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.

Madhuchchhanda turns to Saraswati at the close of his hymn after successively calling to the Aswins, Indra & the Visvadevas. To each of these deities he has addressed three riks of praise & invocation; the last three of the twelve reiterate in each verse the name, epithets & functions of Saraswati. The Sukta falls therefore into four equal parts of which the last alone immediately concerns us.

Pávaká nah Saraswatí, vájebhir vájinívatí,
    Yajnam vashtu dhiyávasuh.
Chodayitrí súnritánám, chetantí sumatínám,
    Yajnam dadhe Saraswatí.
Maho arnah Saraswatí, prachetayati ketuná,
    Dhiyo viśvá virájati.¹

On the strength of Sayana’s commentary these lines would have to bear in English the following astounding significance. “Let the purifying goddess of Speech, equipped by means of food offerings with a ritual full of food, desire (that is to say, up-bear) the sacrifice, she who is the cause of wealth as a result of the ritual. Sender of pleasant & true sayings and explainer (of this sacrifice) to the performers of the ritual who have a good intelligence, the goddess of Speech upholds the sacrifice. The river Saraswati makes known by her action (that is, her stream) much water, she (the Muse) illumines all the ideas of the sacrificer.” Truly, whatever Saraswati may do for the sacrificer,—who does not appear at all in the lines except to the second sight of Sayana,—the great scholar does not succeed in illumining our ideas about the sense of the Sukta. The astonishing transition from the Muse to the river & the river to the Muse

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in a single rik is flagrantly impossible. How does Saraswati’s thoughtful provision of much water lead to her illumination of the sacrificer’s evidently confused intellect?Why should dhiyá in dhiyávasu mean ritual act, and dhiyo in dhiyo vísvá ideas? How can desire mean upbear, ritual act mean wealth or action mean a stream of water? What sense can we extract from arnah prachetayati in Sayana’s extraordinary combination? If s únritánám expresses speech or thought, why should the parallel expression sumatínám in defiance of rhythm of sound & rhythm of sense, refer to the sacrificers? I have offered these criticisms not for any pleasure in carping at the great Southern scholar, but to establish by a clear, decisive & typical instance the defects which justify my total rejection of his once supreme authority in Vedic scholarship. Sayana is learned in ritualism, loaded with grammatical lore, a scholar of vast diligence and enormous erudition, but in his mentality literary perception & taste seem either to have been non-existent or else oppressed under the heavy weight of his learning. This and other defects common enough in men of vast learning whose very curiosity of erudition only lead them to prefer a strained to a simple explanation, the isolated suggestions of single words to a regard for the total form & coherence, & recondite, antiquarian or ceremonial allusions to a plain meaning, render his guidance less than useful in the higher matters of interpretation and far from safe in questions of verbal rendering.

The effectual motive for Sayana’s admission of Saraswati’s double rôle in this Sukta is the expression maho arnas, the great water, of the third rik. Only in her capacity as a river-goddess has Saraswati anything to do with material water; an abundance of liquid matter is entirely irrelevant to her intellectual functions. If therefore we accept arnah in a material sense, the entrance of the river into the total physiognomy of Saraswati is imposed upon us by hard necessity in spite of the resultant incoherence. But if on the other hand, arnah can be shown to bear other than a material significance or intention, then no other necessity exists for the introduction of a deified Aryan river. On the contrary, there is an extraordinary accumulation of expressions clearly intellectual

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in sense. Pávaká, dhiyávasuh, chodayitrí súnritánám, chetantí sumatínám, prachetayati ketuná, dhiyo vísvá vi rájati are all expressions of this stamp; for they mean respectively purifying, rich in understanding, impeller of truths, awakening to good thoughts, perceives or makes conscious by perception, governs variously all the ideas or mental activities. Even yajnam vashtu and yajnam dadhe refer, plainly, to a figurative moral upholding,—if, indeed, upholding be at all the Rishi’s intention in vashtu. What is left? Only the name Saraswati thrice repeated, the pronoun nah, and the two expressions vájebhir vájinívatí and maho arnah. The rest is clearly the substance of a passage full of strong intellectual and moral conceptions. I shall suggest that these two expressions vájebhir vájiní vatí and maho arnah are no exception to the intellectuality of the rest of the passage. They, too, are words expressing moral or intellectual qualities or entities.

The word vája, usually rendered by Sayana, food or ghee,—a sense which he is swift to foist upon any word which will at all admit that construction, as well as on some which will not admit it,—has in other passages another sense assigned to it, strength, bala. It is the latter significance or its basis of substance & solidity which I propose to attach to vája in every line of the Rigveda where it occurs—and it occurs with an abundant frequency. There are a number of words in the Veda which have to be rendered by the English strength,—bala, taras, vája, sahas, śavas, to mention only the most common expressions. Can it be supposed that all these vocables rejoice in one identical connotation as commentators and lexicographers would lead us to conclude, and are used in the Veda promiscuously & indifferently to express the same idea of strength? The psychology of human language is more rich and delicate. In English the words strength, force, vigour, robustness differ in their mental values; force can be used in offices of expression to which strength and vigour are ineligible. In Vedic Sanscrit, as in every living tongue, the same law holds and a literary and thoughtful appreciation of its documents, whatever may be the way of the schools, must take account of these distinctions. In the brief list I have given, bala answers to the English strength, taras gives a shade of

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speed and impetuosity, sahas of violence or force, śavas of flame and brilliance, vája of substance and solidity. In the philological appendix to this work there will be found detailed reasons for concluding that strength is in the history of the word vája only a secondary sense, like its other meanings, wealth and food; the basic idea is a strong sufficiency of substance or substantial energy. Vája is one of the great standing terms of the Vedic psychology. All states of being, whether matter, mind or life and all material, mental & vital activities depend upon an original flowing mass of Energy which is in the vivid phraseology of the Vedas called a flood or sea, samudra, sindhu or arnas. Our power or activity in any direction depends first on the amount & substantiality of this stream as it flows into, through or within our own limits of consciousness, secondly, on our largeness of being constituted by the wideness of those limits, thirdly, on our power of holding the divine flow and fourthly on the force and delight which enter into the use of our available Energy. The result is the self-expression, śansa or vyakti, which is the objective of Vedic Yoga. In the language of the Rishis whatever we can make permanently ours is called our holding or wealth, dhanam or in the plural dhanáni; the powers which assist us in the getting, keeping or increasing of our dhanáni, the yoga, s áti & vriddhi, are the gods; the powers which oppose & labour to rob us of this wealth are our enemies & plunderers, dasyus, and appear under various names, Vritras, Panis, Daityas, Rakshasas, Yatudhanas. The wealth itself may be the substance of mental light and knowledge or of vital health, delight & longevity or of material strength & beauty or it may be external possessions, cattle, progeny, empire, women. A close, symbolic and to modern ideas mystic parallelism stood established in the Vedic mind between the external & the internal wealth, as between the outer sacrifice which earned from the gods the external wealth & the inner sacrifice which brought by the aid of the gods the internal riches. In this system the word vája represents that amount & substantial energy of the stuff of force in the dhanam brought to the service of the sacrificer for the great Jivayaja, our daily & continual life-sacrifice. It is a substantial wealth, vájavad

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dhanam that the gods are asked to bring with them. We see then in what sense Saraswati, a goddess purely mental in her functions of speech and knowledge, can be vájebhir vájinívatí. Vájiní is that which is composed of vája, substantial energy; the plural váj áh or váj áni the particular substantialities of various composed. For the rest, to no other purpose can a deity of speech & knowledge be vájebhir vájinívatí. In what appropriateness or coherent conceivable sense can the goddess of knowledge be possessed of material wealth or full-stored with material food, ghee & butter, beef & mutton? If it be suggested that Speech of the mantras was believed by these old superstitious barbarians to bring them their ghee & butter, beef & mutton, the answer is that this is not what the language of the hymns expresses. Saraswati herself is said to be vájinívatí, possessed of substance of food; she is not spoken of as being the cause of fullness of food or wealth to others.

This explanation of vájebhir vájinívatí leads at once to the figurative sense of maho arnas. Arnas or samudra is the image of the sea, flood or stream in which the Vedic seers saw the substance of being and its different states. Sometimes one great sea, sometimes seven streams of being are spoken of by the Rishis; they are the origin of the seven seas of the Purana. It cannot be doubted that the minds of the old thinkers were possessed with this image of ocean or water as the very type & nature of the flux of existence, for it occurs with a constant insistence in the Upanishads. The sole doubt is whether the image was already present to the minds of the primitive Vedic Rishis. The Europeans hold that these were the workings of a later imagination transfiguring the straightforward material expressions & physical ideas of the Veda; they admit no real parentage of Vedantic ideas in the preexistent Vedic notions, but only a fictitious derivation. I hold, on the contrary, that Vedantic ideas have a direct & true origin & even a previous existence in the religion & psychology of the Vedas. If, indeed, there were no stuff of high thinking or moral sensibility in the hymns of the Vedic sages, then I should have no foundation to stand upon

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and no right to see this figure in the Vedic arnas or samudra. But when these early minds,—early to us, but not perhaps really so primitive in human history as we imagine,—were capable of such high thoughts & perceptions as these three Riks bear on their surface, it would be ridiculous to deny them the capacity of conceiving these great philosophical images & symbols. A rich poetic imagery expressing a clear, direct & virgin perception of the facts of mind and being, is not by any means impossible, but rather natural in these bright-eyed sons of the morning not yet dominated in their vision by the dry light of the intellect or in their speech & thought by the abstractions & formalities of metaphysical thinking. Water was to them, let us hold in our hypothesis, the symbol of unformed substance of being, earth of the formed substance. They even saw a mystic identity between the thing symbolised & the symbol.

What then is maho arnas? Is it the great sea of general being, substance of general existence out of which the substance of thought & speech are formed? It is possible; but such an interpretation is not entirely in consonance with the context of this passage. The suggestion I shall advance will therefore be different. Mahas, as a neuter adjective, means great,maho arnas, the great water; but mahas may be equally a noun and then maho arnas will mean Mahas the sea. In some passages again, mahas is genitive singular or accusative plural of a noun mah; maho arnas may well be the flowing stream or flood of Mah, as in the expression vasvo arnavam, the sea of substance, in a later Sukta.We are therefore likely to remain in doubt unless we can find an actual symbolic use of either word Mah or Mahas in a psychological sense which would justify us in supposing this Maho Arnas to be a sea of substance of knowledge rather than vaguely the sea of general substance of being. For this is the significance which alone entirely suits the actual phraseology of the last Rik of the Sukta. We find our clue in the Taittiriya Upanishad. It is said there that there are three recognised vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swah, but the Rishi Mahachamasya affirmed a fourth. The name of this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words

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expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment of our actual human consciousness that it is hardly considered in Vedic thought a vyahriti, whatever one or two thinkers may have held to the contrary. What do we know of this Mahas from Vedantic or later sources? Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swar of the Veda rest substantially upon the Annam, Prana, Manas, matter, life & mind of the Upanishads. But the Upanishads speak of a fourth state of being immediately aboveManas, preceding it therefore & containing it, Vijnanam, ideal knowledge, and a fifth immediately above Vijnanam, Ananda or Bliss. Physically, these five are the pancha kshitayah, five earths or dwelling-places, of the Rig Veda and they are the pancha koshas, five sheaths or bodies of the Upanishads. But in our later Yogic systems we recognise seven earths, seven standing grounds of the soul on which it experiences phenomenal existence. The Purana gives us their names [the names of the two beyond the five already mentioned], Tapas and Satya, Energy&Truth. They are the outward expressions of the two psychological principles, Self-Awareness &Self-Being (Chit&Sat) which with Ananda, Self-Bliss, are the triune appearance in the soul of the supreme Existence which the Vedanta calls Brahman. Sat, Chit & Ananda constitute to Vedantic thought the parardha or spiritual higher half [of] our existence; in less imaginative language, we are in our supreme existence self-existence, self-awareness & self-delight. Annam, Prana & Manas constitute to Vedantic thought the aparardha or lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes mahat, the great, wide or extended state of phenomenal being,—called also brihat,

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likewise signifying vast or great,—into which says the Gita, the Self or Lord casts his seed as into a womb in order to engender all these objects & creatures. The Self, standing in vijnanam or mahat, is called the Mahan Atma, the great Self; so that, if we apply the significance [of] these terms to the Vedic words mah, mahas, mahi, mahán, then, even accepting mahas as an adjective and maho arnas in the sense of the great Ocean, it may very well be the ocean of the ideal or pure ideative state of existence in true knowledge which is intended, the great ocean slumbering in our humanity and awakened by the divine inspiration of Saraswati. But have we at all the right to read these high, strange & subtle ideas of a later mysticism into the primitive accents of the Veda? Let us at least support for a while that hypothesis. We may very well ask, if not from the Vedic forefathers, whence did the Aryan thinkers get these striking images, this rich & concrete expression of the most abstract ideas and persist in them even after the Indian mind had rarefied & lifted its capacity to the height of the most difficult severities & abstractions known to any metaphysical thinking? Our hypothesis of a Vedic origin remains not only a possible suggestion but the one hypothesis in lawful possession of the field, unless a foreign source or a later mixed ideation can be proved. At present this later ideation may be assumed, it has not been & cannot be proved. The agelong tradition of India assigns the Veda as the source & substance of our theosophies; Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad & Purana as only the interpretation & later expression; the burden of disproof rests on those who negative the tradition.

Vájebhir vájinívatí and maho arnas are therefore fixed in their significance. The word vashtu in the tenth Rik offers a difficulty. It is equivalent to vahatu, says the Brahmana; to kámayatu, says Sayana; but, deferring to the opinion of the Brahmana, he adds that it means really “kámayitwá vahatu”. Undoubtedly the root vaś means in classical Sanscrit to desire; but from the evidence of the classical Sanscrit we have it established that in more ancient times its ordinary meaning must have been to subdue or control; for although the verb has lost this sense in the later language, almost all its derivatives bear that meaning

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& the sense of wish, will or desire only persists in a few of them, vaśá, wish and possibly vaśá, a woman. It is this sense which agrees best with the context of the tenth rik and is concealed in the vahatu of the Brahmanas. There is no other difficulty of interpretation in the passage.

What then is it that Madhuchchhanda, son of Viswamitra, has to say in this Sukta of the goddess of inspiration, speech and knowledge? He does not directly address her, but he assigns to this deity the general control, support and illumination of the sacrifice he is performing. “Let Saraswati” he says “control our Yajna.” The epithets which fill the Rik must express either the permanent & characteristic qualities in her which fit her for this high office of control or the possible & suitable qualities with which he wishes her to be equipped in the performance of that office. First, pávaká. She is the great purifier. It is as we shall see not a literary inspiration he invokes, but a divine inspiration, an inspiration of truths and right thoughts and, it may be, right feelings. Saraswati by this inspiration, by this inspired truth & knowledge & right feeling, is asked to purify, first, the mental state of the Yogin; for a mind unpurified cannot hold the light from on high. Knowledge purifies, says the Gita, meaning the higher spiritual knowledge which comes by śruti, divine inspiration; there is nothing in the whole world so pure as knowledge: Saraswati who purifies, Pávaká Saraswatí. Vájebhir vájiní vatí. She is full of substantial energy, stored with a great variety in substance of knowledge, chitraśravastama, as is said in another hymn of the strong god Agni. The inspiration & resultant knowledge prayed for is not that of any isolated truth or slight awakening, but a great substance of knowledge & a high plenty of inspiration; the mental state has to be filled with this strong & copious substance of Saraswati.Dhiyávasuh. She is rich in understanding. Dhí in the Veda is the buddhi, the faculty of reason that understands, discerns & holds knowledge. This inspiration has to be based on a great intellectual capacity which supports & holds the flood of the inspiration. Thus rich, thus strong & plenteous, thus purifying the divine inspiration has to hold & govern the Sacrifice.

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The thought passes on in the eleventh Rik from the prayer to the fulfilment. Yajnam dadhe Saraswatí. Saraswati upholds the Yajna; she has accepted the office of governance & already upbears in her strength the action of the sacrifice. In that action she is Chodayitrí śunritánám, chetantí sumatínám. That great luminous impulse of inspiration in which the truths of being start to light of themselves and are captured and possessed by the mind, that spiritual enlightenment and awakening in which right thoughts & right seeing become spontaneously the substance of our purified mental state, proceed from Saraswati & are already being poured by her into the system, like the Aryan stream into the Indus. Mati means any activity of the mind; right thoughts in the intellect, right feelings in the heart, right perceptions in the sensational mind, sumati may embrace any or all of these associations; in another context, by a different turn of the prefix, it may express kindly thoughts, friendly feelings, happy perceptions.

In the last Rik the source of this great illumination is indicated. Spiritual knowledge is not natural to the mind; it is in us a higher faculty concealed & sleeping, not active to our consciousness. It is only when the inspiration of a divine enlightenment,—Saraswatí ketuná, in the concrete Vedic language,—seizes on that self-luminous faculty & directs a ray of it into our understanding that we receive the high truths, the great illuminations which raise us above our normal humanity. But it is not an isolated illumination with which this son of Viswamitra intends to be satisfied. The position for him is that the human perception & reason, but asleep, sushupta, achetana, on the level of the pure ideal knowledge. He wishes it to awake to the divine knowledge & his whole mental state to be illumined by it. The divine Inspiration has to awaken to conscious activity this great water now lying still & veiled in our humanity. This great awakening Saraswati now in the action of the Sacrifice effects for Madhuchchhandas—Maho arnah prachetayati. The instrument is ketu, enlightening perception. With the knowledge that now streams into the mind from the ocean of divine knowledge

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all the ideas of the understanding in their various & many-branching activity are possessed and illumined. Dhiyo viśvá vi rájati. She illumines variously or in various directions, or, less probably, she entirely illumines, all the activities of the understanding. This invasion & illumination of his whole mental state by the state of divine knowledge, with its spontaneous manifestation of high truths, right thoughts, right feelings, the ritam jyotih, is the culmination of this sacrifice of Madhuchchhandas.

Shall we suppose that a sacrifice with such a governance, such circumstances & such a crowning experience is the material offering of the Soma wine into a material fire on a material altar? Every expression in the text cries out against such an impossibility. This sacrifice must be a mental, moral subjective activity of which the Soma-offering is only a material symbol. We see at once that the Gita was not reading a later gloss into the Vedic idea in its description of the many kinds of Yajna in its [fourth] chapter. The modern Yoga and the ancient Yajna are one idea; there is only this difference that the Vedic Rishis regarded all the material & internal riches that came by Yoga as the gift of the gods to be offered to them again so that they may again increase them & supremely enrich our lives with all the boons that they, our friends, helpers, masters of world-evolution are so eager to shower upon us, the vessels & instruments of that evolution. The whole Vedic theory is succinctly stated in two slokas of the Gita. (III.10, 11)

Sahayajnáh prajáh srishtwá purovácha Prajápatih,
Anena prasavishyadhwam esha vo’stwishtakámadhuk.
Deván bhávayatánena te devá bhávayantu vah,
Parasparam bhávayantah śreyah param avápsyatha.

The Father created of old these peoples with sacrifice as their companion birth; “By this” he said, “ye shall bring forth; let this be your milker of all chosen desires. Nourish the gods in their being with this; let the gods nourish you in your being. Thus nourishing each other ye shall gain the highest good.” We see, nat the same time, the Vedic origin of the central idea in the Gita, the offering of our lives & actions in a perfect sacrifice to God.

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Greatly has this short passage helped us. It has shown us the true physiognomy of Saraswati as the goddess of inspiration & inspired knowledge & the true nature of the Vedic Yajna; it has fixed the great Vedic terms, vája, dhí & ketu; but above all it has given us a firm foundation for a religious & spiritual interpretation of Veda, a brilliant starting point for an inquiry into its truth & its ancient secret. We can now hope to be delivered from the obscuration of Veda by the ritualists & its modern degradation into the document of a primitive & barbarous religion. Its higher & truer sense shows itself in this brief passage like the dim line of land seen on the far horizon.

[C]

[Revised opening of the preceding chapter]

Saraswati and the Great Water.

If the Vedas have a deep religious and psychological significance such as I have attributed to them, if they are not, as the disciples of the Europeans suppose, an early hymnal of savage ceremonies, there must be in the long procession of the sacred chants, in the fixed formulae and individual variations of these voluminous songs to a small number of strongly characterised deities, some individual riks, some occasional passages, some entire hymns, even, which, in spite of the difficulties of an archaic diction & the concealing veil of a changed vocabulary, still bear the ancient truth on their very surface. The totality of the Rig Veda is so closely knit in its mentality, so constant in its common terms, so fixed & unchanging in its principal ideas that even one such rik, passage or hymn ought to exceed the limits of its single text & shed a wide light over the whole surface of Vedic thought & phraseology. Is there any such passage easily discoverable? There is one, I think, which occurs very early in the collection and by the nature of its presiding deity, its strongly subjective purport & its clear and striking language seems to fulfil our desideratum. It occurs in the third sukta of the first

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Mandala. Madhuchchhandas, son of the famous Visvamitra, is the seer; Saraswati is the goddess; the last three riks of the hymn constitute the indicative passage.

In Saraswati we have a deity with subjective functions—the first desideratum in our enquiry. Still, there is a doubt, a difficulty. Saraswati of the Epics & Puranas, Saraswati, as she is worshipped today throughout India is, no doubt, a purely subjective goddess and presides only over intellectual and immaterial functions. She is our Lady of Speech, the Muse, the goddess of Poetry, Art and Learning. Saraswati, the flowing, is also the name of more than one river in modern India, but especially of the sacred stream in upper India supposed to join secretly in their confluence the waters of theGanges and Yamuna and form with them the holy Triveni or triple braid of waters in which the ceremonial ablution of the devotee is more potent than at almost any other Indian place of pilgrimage and gives the richest spiritual fruit to the believing pilgrim. But in our modern religious ideas there is no real connexion, except of name, between the goddess and the river. In the Veda also there is a Saraswati who is the goddess of speech; in the Veda also there seems to be an ancient river Saraswati, although this stream is placed by Vedic scholars in the Panjab and not in the vicinity of Prayaga and Ayodhya. Were these two deities,—for every river and indeed every natural object was to the Vedic Rishis a divine being,—the same goddess Saraswati? Sayana accepts, even in this passage, their identity; she is, he tells us, [    ].² If this identity were accepted, we would have to ask ourselves by what process of subjective metamorphosis a material Panjab river came to be the deity of Speech, the female power of Brahma, the Muse and tutelar goddess of scholar and poet. Or was not rather the goddess of speech eponymous of the river and subsequently imaged in it by the Vedic symbolists? But before we descend to these ulterior questions, we must first know for certain whether Sayana is right in his identification of the river

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and the Muse. First of all, are they the same in this passage? secondly, are they the same in any passage of the Veda? It is to the first question alone that we need address ourselves for the present; for on its solution depends the whole purport, value and helpfulness of these three Riks for the purposes of our enquiry into the sense and secret of the Vedas.

[D]

Chapter III.
Indira, the Visvadevas, the Aswins.

If we are right, as we must now assume, in our interpretation of these three riks, then the conclusion is irresistible that the whole of this third Sukta in the Veda, & not only its closing verses, relates to an activity of moral & mental sacrifice and the other gods invoked by Madhuchchhandas are equally with Saraswati Powers of subjectiveNature, Indra not the god of rain, but a mental deity, the Aswins not twin stars, or, if stars, then lights of a sublimer heaven, the Visvadevas, gods not of general physical Nature, but supraphysical and in charge of our general subjective or subjective-objective activity. The supposition is inadmissible that the hymn is purely ritual in its body and only in-grafted with a spiritual tail. The physical functions of the gods in the Veda need not be denied; but they must be alien to the thought of Madhuchchhandas in this Sukta,—unless as in some hymns of the Veda, there is the slesha or double application to subjective & objective activities. But this is improbable; for in the lines of which Saraswati is the goddess, we have found no reference either open or covert to any material form or function. She is purely the Muse and not at all the material river.

We must examine, then, the rest of the hymn and by an impartial scrutiny discover whether it yields naturally, without forcing or straining, a subjective significance. If we find that no such subjective significance exists & it is the gods of rain & of stars & of material activities who are invoked, a serious if not a fatal doubt will be cast on the validity of the first step we

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have gained in our second chapter. Here, too, we must follow the clue by which we arrived at the subjective physiognomy of Saraswati. We must see what is the evidence of the epithets & activities assigned to the several deities of the Sukta.

The first three riks are devoted to the Aswins & run in this strain:—

Aświná yajwarír isho, dravatpání śubhaspatí,
    Purubhujá chanasyatam.
Aświná purudansasá , nará śavírayá dhiyá ,
    Dhishnyá vanatam girah.
Dasrá yuvákavah sutá, násatyá vriktabarhishah,
    Áyátam rudravartaní.

In Sayana’s interpretation we find that isho is taken in the sense of food; yuvákavah sutá vriktabarhishah in the sense of Soma-offerings poured out, which are mixed with other liquid and for which the strewn grasses where they have been placed, are deprived of their roots. If these interpretations stand, the material nature of the sacrifice is established. But can they stand? And if they can, are they imperative? The word isho, in the first place, is not bound to this sense of foods; for it cannot in all the passages in which it occurs in the Veda, bear that sense. A single instance is decisive. We find in a hymn of Praskanwa Kanwa to the Aswins, this rik, the sixth in the forty-sixth Sukta of the first mandala:

Yá nah píparad Aświná, jyotishmatí tamas tirah,
    Tám asme rásáthám isham.

Now a brilliant or luminous food, jyotishmatí ish, is an absurdity which we certainly shall not accept; nor is there any reason for taking jyotih in any other than its ordinary sense of radiance, lustre. We must, therefore, seek some other significance for ish. It is the nature of the root ish, as of its lengthened form, ísh, and the family to which it belongs, to suggest intensity of motion or impulsion physical or subjective and the state or results of such intensity. It means impulse, wish, impulsion; sending, casting, (as in ishu, an arrow or missile), strength, force, mastery; in the

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verb, it signifies also striving, entreating, favour, assent, liking; in the noun, increase, affluence, or, as applied by the ritualists in the Veda, drink or food. We see, then, that impellent force or strength is the fundamental significance, the idea [of] food only a distant, isolated & late step in the sense-evolution. If we apply this fundamental sense in the rik we have quoted from Praskanwa’s hymn to the Aswins, we get at once the following clear, straightforward & lucid meaning, “The luminous force (force of the Mahas, or vijnana, the true light, ritam jyotih of [I.23.5]) which has carried us, O Aswins, through the darkness to its other shore, in that in us take delight” or else “that force give to us.” Apply the same key-meaning to this first rik of Madhuchchhandas’ lines to the same deities, we get a result equally clear, straightforward&lucid, “O Aswins, swift-footed, much-enjoying lords of bliss, take your pleasure in the forces of the sacrifice.” We have in Praskanwa & Madhuchchhandas the same idea, the same deities, the same prayer, the same subjective function of the gods & subjective purport of the words. We feel firm soil under our feet; a flood of light illumines our steps in these dim fields of Vedic interpretation.

What is this subjective function of the Aswins? We get it, I think, in the key words chanasyatam, rásáthám. Whatever else may be the character of the Aswins, we get from the consonance of the two Rishis this strong suggestion that they are essentially gods of delight. Is there any other confirmation of the suggestion? Every epithet in this first rik testifies strongly to its correctness. The Aswins are purubhujá, much-enjoying; they are śubhaspatí, lords of weal or bliss, or else of beauty—for śubh may have any of these senses as well as the sense of light; they are dravatpání, their hands dropping gifts, says Sayana, and that agrees well with the nature of gods of delight who pour from full hands the roses of rapture upon mortals, manibus lilia plenis. But dravat usually means in the Veda, swift, running, and páni, although confined to the hands in classical Sanscrit, meant, as I shall suggest, in the old Aryan tongue any organ of action, hand, foot or, as in the Latin penis, the sexual organ. Even so, we have the nature of the Aswins as gods of delight, fully established;

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but we get in addition a fresh characteristic, the quality of impetuous speed, which is reinforced by their other epithets. For the Aswins are nará, the Strong ones; rudravartaní,—they put a fierce energy into all their activities; they accept the mantras of the hymn śavíray ádhiyá, with a bright-flaming strength of intelligence in the understanding. The idea of bounteous giving, suggested by Sayana in dravatpání and certainly present in that word if we accept páni in its ordinary sense, appears in the dasr´a of the third rik, “O you bounteous ones.” Sayana indeed takes dasrá in the sense of destroyers; he gives the root das in this word the same force as in dasyu, an enemy or robber; but das can also mean to give, dasma is sometimes interpreted by the scholiasts sacrificer and this sense of bounteous giving seems to be fixed on the kindred word dasra also, at least when it is applied to the Aswins, by the seventeenth rik of the thirtieth Sukta, Śunahśepa’s hymn to Indra & the Aswins,—

Áświná, aśvávatyá, ishá yátam śavírayá,
    gomad dasrá hiranyavat.

“O Aswins, arrive with energetic force of a bright-flaming strength, givers of that which is radiant and brilliant” or, if we take the interpretation of the ritualists, “of wealth of cows & wealth of gold.” We see that here too we have ish with two epithets denoting strength and force; here also we meet the words dasrá and śavírayá in connection with the Aswins; here also they are connected with light or radiance, go, rays or diffused light which we shall find to be the standing symbol-word in the Vedas for the diffusion of the light of the vijnana or mahas, for that ritam jyotih or light of ideal Truth which constitutes the luminous force hymned in connection with the Aswins by Praskanwa Kanwa, jyotishmatím isham. These fixed ideas, this constant relation of epithets, this order in the divine functions, points to a settled system large in idea & minute in detail accepted by all the Vedic Rishis throughout the long period covered by the ensemble of the hymns of the Rigveda. In the ritualistic and naturalistic interpretations we get an artificial sense, an incoherent connection of ideas, a vague, purposeless

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& merely ornamental use of figures & epithets, one Rishi apparently reproducing stupidly the decorative ideas, images & words of his predecessors. In the subjective interpretation of the Vedas we shall find always a simple, lucid & straightforward sense perfectly connected & coherent, arising spontaneously from the text, in which there is a reason for the constant recurrence of ideas & terms, a complete appropriateness & fullness of meaning for every word that is used and an absolutely satisfying logical reason for the connection of each word with its predecessor & successor. According to our idea of the mentality of the Rishis we shall accept either the one interpretation which results in a confused barbaric intelligence or the other which reveals the culture & contents of a deep & splendid intellectuality. But there can be no doubt, which gives the best & most satisfying sense to the language of the Veda.

There are two epithets yet left which we have to fix to their right significance, before we sum up the evidence of this passage and determine the subjective physiognomy of the Aswins,—purudansasá & násatyá. Sayana interprets dansas as active,—the Aswins are gods of a great activity; I suggest fashioning or forming activity,—they are “abundant fashioners”. Sayana’s interpretation suits better with the idea of the Aswins as gods full of strength, speed and delight, purudansasá, full of a rich activity. But the sense of fashioning is also possible; we have in I.30.16 the expression sa no hiranyaratham dansanáván sa nah sanitá sanaye sa no adát, where the meaning may be “he gave a car”, but would run better “he fashioned for us a brilliant car”, unless with Sayana we are to disregard the whole structure & rhythmic movement of Śunahśepa’s sentence. The other epithet Násatyá has long been a puzzle for the grammarians; for the ingenious traditional rendering of Yaska & Sayana, na asatyá, not untruthful, is too evidently a desperate shift of entire ignorance. The word by its formation must be either a patronymic, “Sons of Nasata”, or an adjective formed by the termination tya from the old Aryan noun Nása, which still exists in the Greek νῆσoҫ, an island. The physical significance of ná in the Aryan tongues is a gliding or floating motion; we find it in the

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Latin, nare, to swim or float, the Greek Nais, a river goddess, nama, a stream, nêxis, swimming, floating, naros, water, (S. nára, water), necho, I swim, float or sail; but in Sanscrit, except in nára, water, and nága, a snake, elephant, this signification of the long root ná, shared by it originally with na, ni, ní, nu & nú, has disappeared. Nevertheless, the word Nása, in some sense of motion, floating, gliding, sailing, voyaging, must have existed among the more ancient Sanscrit vocables. But in what sense can it be applied to the Aswins? It seems to me that we get the clue in the seventh sloka of Praskanwa’s Hymn to the Aswins which I have already quoted. For immediately after he has spoken of the jyotishmatí ish, the luminous force which has carried him over to the other shore of the Ignorance, Praskanwa proceeds,—

Á no nává matínám, yátam páráya gantave,
    Yunjáthám Aświná ratham.

“O ye who are the ships of our thoughts, come to us for our passing to the other shore; O Aswins, yoke your car.” It is as the ships that carry human mentality to the other shore of this darkness of ignorance, píparat tamas tirah, as the masters or helpers of their voyage that the Aswins are addressed as Násatyá. Nása in Násatya would then be fixed in the sense of voyage, passage or transit. Is it not from the transference of this lofty idea to a more material plane that Castor & Pollux of the Romans, Kashtri & Purudansha, are the helpers of the distressed mariner when storm howls upon the darkened seas?

The Aswins, then, are the gods of youthful delight & youthful strength, yuváná pitará, always young yet fathers of men, (purudansasá, abundantly creating), as they are described in another sukta. They have a brilliant strength mental & physical, nará, a bright, strong & eager understanding, śavírayá dhiyá, full hands of bounty and strong fertility of creation, dasrá, purudansasá; an insatiable enjoyment, purubhujá; a swift speed and fiery energy in action, dravatpání rudravartaní; they are the lords of bliss who give physical, vital & mental well-being to men and that inferior ease, pleasure and delight they lift into the high regions of the original & luminous Ananda supported on

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the ritam jyotih of Mahas of which all these things are but pallid & broken rays penetrating into this lower play of subjective light & shade which is called the triple world. Because of this double aspect of delight and the force for action & knowledge which is given by delight, of force and the delight in action & enjoyment which is sustained by force, they are twin gods and not one; it may be that Castor is more essentially the lord of delight, Polydeuces of force, but they are too like each other not to share in each other’s qualities. Eternal youth is the essence of their character & the bestowal, maintenance, & increase in men of the gifts which attend youth, is their function. This, if I do not err, was the subjective aspect of the great Twin Brethren to the sages of the Veda.

For what functions are they called to the Sacrifice by Madhuchchhanda? First, they have to take delight in the spiritual forces generated in him by the action of the internal Yajna. These they have to accept, to enter into them and use them for delight, their delight and the sacrificer’s, yajwarír isho .. chanasyatam; a wide enjoyment, a mastery of joy & all pleasant things, a swiftness in action like theirs is what their advent should bring & therefore these epithets are attached to this action. Then they are to accept the words of the mantra, vanatam girah. In fact, vanatam means more than acceptance, it is a pleased, joyous almost loving acceptance; for vanas is the Latin venus, which means charm, beauty, gratification, and the Sanscrit vanitá means woman or wife, she who charms, in whom one takes delight or for whom one has desire. Therefore vanatam takes up the idea of chanasyatam, enlarges it & applies it to a particular part of the Yajna, the mantras, the hymn or sacred words of the stoma. The immense effectiveness assigned to rhythmic Speech & the meaning & function of the mantra in the Veda & in later Yoga is a question of great interest & importance which must be separately considered; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to specify its two chief functions, the first, to settle, fix, establish the god & his qualities & activities in the Sacrificer,—this is the true meaning of the word stoma, and, secondly, to effectualise them in action & creation

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subjective or objective,—this is the true meaning of the words rik and arka. The later senses, praise and hymn were the creation of actual ceremonial practice, and not the root intention of these terms of Veda. Therefore the Aswins, the lords of force & joy, are asked to take up the forces of the sacrifice, yajwarír isho, fill them with their joy & activity and carry that joy & activity into the understanding so that it becomes śavíra, full of a bright and rapid strength.With that strong, impetuously rapid working they are to take up the words of the mantra into the understanding and by their joy & activity make them effective for action or creation. For this reason the epithet purudansasá is attached to this action, abundantly active or, rather, abundantly creative of forms into which the action of the yajwarír ishah is to be thrown. But this can only be done as the Sacrificer wishes if they are in the acceptance of the mantra dhishnyá, firm and steady.Sayana suggests wise or intelligent as the sense of dhishnya, but although dhishaná, like dhí, can mean the understanding & dhishnya therefore intelligent, yet the fundamental sense is firm or steadily holding & the understanding is dhí or dhishaná because it takes up perceptions, thoughts & feelings & holds them firmly in their places.Vehemence & rapidity may be the causes of disorder & confusion, therefore even in their utmost rapidity & rapture of action & formation the Aswins are to be dhishnya, firm & steady. This discipline of a mighty, inalienable calm supporting & embracing the greatest fierceness of action & intensity of joy, the combination of dhishnyá & rudravartaní , is one of the grandest secrets of the old Vedic discipline. For by this secret men can enjoy the world as God enjoys it, with unstinted joy, with unbridled power, with undarkened knowledge.

Therefore the prayer to the Aswins concludes: “The Soma is outpoured; come with your full bounty, dasrá & your fierce intensity, rudravartaní.” But what Soma? Is it the material juice of a material plant, the bitter Homa which the Parsi priests use today in the ceremonies enjoined by the Zendavesta? Does Sayana’s interpretation give us the correct rendering? Is it by a material intoxication that this great joy & activity & glancing brilliance of the mind joined to a great steadfastness is to be

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obtained? Yuvákavah, says Sayana, means mixed & refers to the mixing of other ingredients in the Soma wine. Let us apply again our usual test. We come to the next passage in which the word yuváku occurs, the fourth rik of the seventeenth Sukta, Medhatithi Kanwa’s hymn to Indra & Varuna.

Yuváku hi śachínám, yuváku sumatínám,
    Bhúyáma vájadávnám.

Sayana’s interpretation there is a miracle of ritualism & impossibility which it is best to ignore. śachí means in the Veda power, sumati, right thought or right feeling, as we have seen, vájadávan, strength-giving,—strength in the sense of steadfast substance whether of moral state or quality or physical state or quality. Yuváku in such a connection & construction cannot mean mixed. The word is in formation the root yu and the adjectival áku connected by the euphonic v. It is akin therefore to yuvá, youth, & yavas, energy, plenty or luxuriance; the common idea is energy & luxuriance. The adjective yuváku, if this connection be correct, would mean full of energy or particularly of the energy of youth. We get, therefore, a subjective sense for yuváku which suits well with śachí, sumati & vájadávan and falls naturally into the structure & thought of Medhatithi’s rik. Bhúyáma may mean “become” in the state of being or like the Greek ϕύω (bhú) it may admit a transitive sense, to bring about in oneself or attain; yuváku śachínám will mean the full energy of the powers & we get this sense forMedhatithi’s thought: “Let us become” or “For we would effect in ourselves the full energy of the powers, the full energy of the right thoughts which give substance” to our inner state or faculties.

We have reached a subjective sense for yuváku. But what of vriktabarhishah? Does not barhih always mean in the Veda the sacred grass strewn as a seat for the gods? In the Brahmanas is it not so understood and have [we] not continually the expression Á barhishi sídata? I have no objection; barhis is certainly the seat of the Gods in the sacrifice, stritam ánushak, strewn without a break. But barhis cannot originally have meant Kusha grass; for in that case the singular could only be used to indicate a single

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grass and for the seat of the Gods the plural barhínshi would have to be used,—barhihshu sídata and not barhishi sídata.We have the right to go behind the Brahmanas and enquire what was the original sense of barhis and how it came to mean kusha grass. The root barh is a modified formation from the root brih, to grow, increase or expand, which we have in brihat. From the sense of spreading we may get the original sense of seat, and because the material spread was usually the Kusha grass, the word by a secondary application came to bear also that significance. Is this the only possible sense of barhis? No, for we find it interpreted also as sacrifice, as fire, as light or splendour, as water, as ether. We find barhana & barhas in the sense of strength or power and barhah or barham used for a leaf or for a peacock’s tail. The base meaning is evidently fullness, greatness, expansion, power, splendour or anything having these attributes, an outspread seat, spreading foliage, the outspread or splendid peacock’s tail, the shining flame, the wide expanse of ether, the wide flow of water. If there were no other current sense of barhis, we should be bound to the ritualistic explanation. Even as it is, in other passages the ritualistic explanation may be found to stand or be binding; but is it obligatory here? I do not think it is even admissible. For observe the awkwardness of the expression, sutá vriktabarhishah, wine of which the grass is stripped of its roots. Anything, indeed, is possible in the more artificial styles of poetry, but the rest of this hymn, though subtle & deep in thought, is sufficiently lucid and straightforward in expression. In such a style this strained & awkward expression is an alien intruder. Moreover, since every other expression in these lines is subjective, only dire necessity can compel us to admit so material a rendering of this single epithet. There is no such necessity. Barhis means fundamentally fullness, splendour, expansion or strength & power, & this sense suits well with the meaning we have found for yuvákavah. The sense of vrikta is very doubtful. Purified (cleared, separated) is a very remote sense of vrij or vrich & improbable. They can both mean divided, distributed, strewn, outspread, but although it is possible that vriktabarhishah means “their fullness outspread through the system or distributed in the

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outpouring”, this sense too is not convincing. Again vrijana in the Veda means strong, or as a noun, strength, energy, even a battle or fight. Vrikta may therefore [mean] brought to its highest strength. We will accept this sense as a provisional conjecture, to be confirmed or corrected by farther enquiry, and render the line “The Soma distillings are replete with energy and brought to their highest fullness.”

But to what kind of distillings can such terms be applied? The meaning of Soma & the Vedic ideas about this symbolic wine must be examined by themselves & with a greater amplitude. All we need ask here [is], is there any indication in this hymn itself, that the Soma like everything else in the Sukta is subjective & symbolic? For, if so, our rendering, which at present is clouded with doubt & built on a wide but imperfectly solid foundation, will become firm & established. We have the clear suggestion in the next rik, the first of the three addressed to Indra. Sutá ime twá áyavah. Our question is answered. What has been distilled? Ime áyavah. These life-forces, these vitalities. We shall find throughout the Veda this insistence on the life, vitality,áyu or jíva; we shall find that the Soma was regarded as a life-giving juice, a sort of elixir of life, or nectar of immortality, something at least that gave increased vitality, established health, prolonged youth. Of such an elixir it may well be said that it is yuváku, full of the force of youth in which the Aswins must specially delight, vriktabarhish, raised to its highest strength & fullness so that the gods who drink of it, become in the man in whom they enter and are seated, increased, vriddha, to the full height of their function and activity,—the Aswins to their utmost richness of bounty, their intensest fiery activity. Nectarjuices, they are called, indavah, pourings of delight, áyavah, life forces, amritásah, elixirs of immortality.

Thus we see that when we take words in their first & plain sense, the meaning of the riks builds itself up before our eyes, everything agrees, a coherent sense is obtained, idea links itself to idea, every noun, epithet & verb falls into its right place & has a clear & perfect appropriateness. May we not then say at every step, “Is not this the right sense of the Veda, this rather than

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the forced ritualistic interpretation with its strainings, violences, incoherences, inconsistencies, or the difficult, laboured and artificial naturalistic interpretation of the European scholars with its result of garish image, tawdry ornament, emptiness of idea & ill-related sense?” At least the possibility has been established; we have a beginning & a foundation.

[E]

Chapter IV
Indra, the Luminous.

From the Aswins Madhuchchhanda passes to Indra. Three verses are given to this great deity.

Indráyáhi chitrabháno, sutá ime twá áyavah,
    Anwíbhis taná pútásah.
Indráyáhi dhiyeshito, viprajútah sutávatah,
    Upa brahmáni vághatah.
Indráyáhi tútujánah, upa brahmáni harivas,
    Sute dadhishwa naś chanah.

The modern naturalistic account of Indra is that he is the god of rain, the wielder of lightning, the master of the thunderbolt. It is as the lightning, we presume, that he is addressed as harivas and chitrabháno, brilliant and of a richly varied effulgence. He comes to the brahmáni, the hymnal utterances of the Rishis, in the sense of being called by the prayer to the sacrifice, and he comes for the sole purpose of drinking the physical Soma wine, by which he is immediately increased,—sadyo vriddho ajáyatháh, says another Sukta,—that is, as soon as the Soma offering is poured out, the rains of the monsoon suddenly increase in force. So at least we must understand, if these hymns are to have any precise naturalistic sense. Otherwise we should have to assume that the Rishis sang without attaching any meaning to their words. If, however, we suppose the hymns to Indra to be sung at monsoon offerings, in the rainy months of the year only, we get ideas, imbecile enough, but still making some attempt at sense. On

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another hypothesis, we may suppose Indra to be one of the gods of light or day slaying Vritra the lord of night & darkness, and also a god of lightning slaying Vritra the lord of the drought. Stated generally, these hypotheses seem plausible enough; systematically stated & supported by Comparative Mythology and some Puranic details their easy acceptance & great vogue is readily intelligible. It is only when we look carefully at the actual expressions used by the Rishis, that they no longer seem to fit in perfectly and great gulfs of no-sense have to be perfunctorily bridged by empirical guesses. A perfect system of naturalistic Veda fails to evolve.

When we look carefully at the passage before us, we find an expression which strikes one as a very extraordinary phrase in reference to a god of lightning and rain. Indráyáhi, says Madhuchchhanda, dhiyeshito viprajútah. On any ordinary acceptance of the meaning of words, we have to render this line, “Come, O Indra, impelled by the understanding, driven by the Wise One.” Sayana thinks that vipra means Brahmin and the idea is that Indra is moved to come by the intelligent sacrificing priests and he explains dhiyeshito, moved to come by our understanding, that is to say, by our devotion. But understanding does not mean devotion and the artificiality of the interpretation is apparent.We will, as usual, put aside the ritualistic & naturalistic traditions and see to what the natural sense of the words themselves leads us. I question the traditional acceptance of viprajúta as a compound of vipra & júta; it seems tome clearly to be vi prajútah, driven forward variously or in various directions. I am content to accept the primary sense of impelled for ishita, although, whether we read dhiyá ishito with the Padapatha, or dhiyá íshito, it may equally well mean, controlled by the understanding; but of themselves the expressions “impelled & driven forward in various paths” imply a perfect control.We have then, “Come, O Indra, impelled” (or “controlled, governed”) “by the understanding and driven forward in various paths.” What is so driven forward? Obviously not the storm, not the lightning, not any force of material Nature, but a subjective force, and, as one can see at a glance, a force of mind. Now Indra is the king

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of Swar and Swar in the symbolical interpretation of the Vedic terms current in after times is the mental heaven corresponding to the principle of Manas, mind. His name means the Strong. In the Puranas he is that which the Rishis have to conquer in order to attain their goal, that which sends the Apsaras, the lower delights & temptations of the senses to bewilder the sage and the hero; and, as is well known, in the Indian system of Yoga it is the Mind with its snares, sensuous temptations & intellectual delusions which is the enemy that has to be overcome & the strong kingdom that has to be conquered. In this passage Indra is not thought of in his human form, but as embodied in the principle of light or tejas; he is harivas, “substance of brightness”; he is chitrabhánu, of a rich & various effulgence, epithets not easily applicable to a face or figure, but precisely applicable to the principle of mind which has always been supposed in India to be in its material element made of tejas or pure light.We may conclude, therefore, that in Indra, master of Swarga, we have the divine lord of mental force & power. It is as this mental power that he comes sutávatah upa brahmáni vághatah, to the soul-movements of the chanter of the sacred song, of the holder of the nectar-wine. He is asked to come, impelled or controlled by the understanding and driven forward by it in the various paths of sumati & súnritá, right thinking & truth. We remember the image in the Kathopanishad in which the mind & senses are compared to reins & horses and the understanding to the driver. We look back & see at once the connection with the function demanded of the Aswins in the preceding verses; we look forward & see easily the connection with the activity of Saraswati in the closing riks. The thought of the whole Sukta begins to outline itself, a strong, coherent and luminous progression of psychological images begins to emerge.

Brahmáni, says Sayana, means the hymnal chants; vághatah is the ritwik, the sacrificial priest. These ritual senses belong to the words—but we must always inquire how they came to bear them. As to vághat, we have little clue or evidence, but on the system I have developed in another work (the Origins of Aryan Speech), it may be safely concluded that the lost roots vagh &

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vágh, must have conveyed the sense of motion evident in the Latin vagus & vagari, wandering & to wander & the sense of crying out, calling apparent in the Latin vagire, to cry, & the Sanscrit vangh, to abuse, censure. Vághat may mean the sacrificial priest because he is the one who calls to the deity in the chant of the brahma, the sacred hymn. It may also mean one who increases in being, in his brahma, his soul, who is getting vája or substance.

The word Brahma is a great word in Indian thought, the greatest of all the words in which Indian spirituality has expressed itself; it means in the Upanishads, in all later literature, the Brahman, the Supreme & the All, the Spirit of Things & the sole reality. We need not ask ourselves, as yet, whether this crowning conception has any place in the Vedic hymns; all we need ask is whether Brahman in the Rigveda means hymn & only hymn or whether it has some sense by which it could pass naturally into the great Vedantic conception of the supreme Spirit. My suggestion is that Brahma in the Rigveda means often the soul, the psuche of the Greeks, animus of the Romans, as distinguished from the manas, mens or ϕρήν . This sense it must have borne at some period of Indian thought antecedent to the Upanishads; otherwise we cannot explain the selection of a word meaning hymn or speech as the great fundamental word of Vedanta, the name of the supreme spiritual Reality. The root brih, from which it comes, means, as we have seen in connection with barhis, to be full, great, to expand. Because Brahman is like the ether extending itself in all being, because it fills the body & whole system with its presence, therefore the word brahma can be applied to the soul or to the supreme Spirit, according as the idea is that of the individual spirit or the supreme Existence. It is possible also that the Greek phren, mind, phronis, etc may have derived from this root brih (the aspirate being thrown back on the initial consonant),& may have conveyed originally the same association of ideas. But are we justified in supposing that this use of Brahma in the sense of soul dates back to the Rigveda? May it not have originated in the intermediate period between the period of the Vedic hymns and the final emergence of the

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Upanishads? In most passages brahma can mean either hymn or soul; in some it seems to demand the sole sense of hymn. Without going wholly into the question, I shall only refer the reader to the hymn ofMedhatithi Kanwa, to Brahmanaspati, the eighteenth of the first Mandala, and the epithets and functions there attributed to the Master of the Brahman. My suggestion is that in the Rigveda Brahmanaspati is the master of the soul, primarily, the master of speech, secondarily, as the expression of the soul. The immense importance attached to Speech, the high place given to it by the Vedic Rishis not only as the expression of the soul, but that which best increases & expands its substance & power in our life & being, is one of the most characteristic features of Vedic thought. The soul expresses itself through conscious knowledge & in thought; speech stands behind thought & connects knowledge with its expression in idea. It is through Vak that the Lord creates the world.

Brahmáni therefore may mean either the soul-activities, as dhiyas means the mental activities, or it may mean the words of the mantra which express the soul. If we take it in the latter sense, we must refer it to the girah of the second rik, the mantras taken up by the Aswins into the understanding in order to prepare for action & creation. Indra is to come to these mantras and support them by the brilliant substance of a mental force richly varied in its effulgent manifestation, controlled by the understanding and driven forward to its task in various ways. But it seems to me that the rendering is not quite satisfactory. The main point in this hymn is not the mantras, but the Soma wine and the power that it generates. It is in the forces of the Soma that the Aswins are to rejoice, in that strength they are to take up the girah, in that strength they are to rise to their fiercest intensity of strength & delight. Indra, as mental power, arrives in his richly varied lustre; áyáhi chitrabháno. “Here” says the Rishi “are these life-forces in the nectar-wine; they are purified in their minute parts & in their whole extent”, for so I understand anwíbhis taná pútásah; that is to say the distillings of Ananda or divine delight whether in the body as nectar, [or] in the subjective system as streams of life-giving delight are purified of all that impairs & weakens the

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life forces, purified both in their little several movements & in the whole extent of their stream. These are phenomena that can easily be experienced & understood in Yoga, and the whole hymn like many in the Veda reads to those who have experience like a practical account of a great Yogic internal movement accurate in its every detail. Strengthened, like the Aswins, by the nectar, Indra is to prepare the many-sided activity supported by the Visve devah; therefore he has to come not only controlled by the understanding, dhishnya, like the Aswins, but driven forward in various paths. For an energetic & many-sided activity is the object & for this there must be an energetic and many-sided but well-ordered action of the mental power. He has to come, thus manifold, thus controlled, to the spiritual activities generated by the Soma & the Aswins in the increasing soul (vághatah) full of the life-giving nectar, the immortalising Ananda, sutávatah. He has to come to those soul-activities, in this substance of mental brilliancy, áyáhi upa brahmáni harivas. He has to come, tútujána, with a protective force, or else with a rapidly striving force & uphold by mind the joy of the Sacrificer in the nectar-offering, the offering of this Ananda to the gods of life & action & thought, sute dadhishwa naś chanah. Protecting is, here, the best sense for tútujána. For Indra is not only to support swift & energetic action; that has already been provided for; he has also to uphold or bear in mind and by the power of mind the great & rapid delight which the Sacrificer is about to pour out into life & action, jívayája. The divine delight must not fail us in our activity; hostile shocks must not be allowed to disturb our established pleasure in the great offering. Therefore Indra must be there in his light & power to uphold and to protect.

We have gained, therefore, another great step in the understanding of the Veda. The figure of the mighty Indra, in his most essential quality & function, begins to appear to us as in a half-luminous silhouette full of suggestions. We have much yet to learn about him, especially his war with Vritra, his thunderbolt & his dealings with the seven rivers. But the central or root idea is fixed. The rest is the outgrowth, foliage & branchings.

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[F]

Chapter V
The Visvadevas.

We have now arrived, in the thought of the Sukta, at a stage when the strength & delight supported by the Soma, taken up through the mantras into the understanding, poured into a strong & many-sided mental activity can be utilised for action and poured out on the world. Therefore the next invocation is to the Visve Devah, to whom also three riks are devoted:

Omásaś charshanídhrito, viśve devásah ágata,
    Dáśvánso dáśushah sutam.
Viśve devásah apturah sutam áganta túrnayah
    Usrá iva swasaráni.
Viśve devásah asridha ehimáyáso adruhah
    Medham jushanta vahnayah.

We are accustomed to speak of the Visvadevas as if they were a separate class of deities, like the Adityas, Maruts or Rudras; but the Veda uses the expression Viśve devásah, which in the absence of any other meaning for viśva, we must render simply “All gods”. We shall suppose for the present that when the expression is used, the gods generally and in the mass, whether apart from the great Thirty-three or including them, are invoked,—the gods in their general character as supporters and agents of all internal & external activity, charshanidhritah, without distinction of names or special faculty. A rich and many-sided activity is contemplated; the mass of the divine forces that support the world action in man are summoned to their functions.

The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. The gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called viśvacharshani. Can this expression mean the

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Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaiśvánara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaiśvánara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viśvá-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshaniprá?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the history of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like káru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartárá charshanínám to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; viśvacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshaniprá will mean “filling the actions”. That Indra in this sense is viśvacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,—I.9.2 in Madhuchchhanda’s hymn to Indra, mandim Indráya mandine chakrim viśváni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where viśváni chakri is a perfect equivalent to viśvacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro viśvasya karmano dhartá, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshanídhrit, viśvacharshani

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& dhartárá charshanínám. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.

In the eighth rik, usrá iva swasaráni offers us an almost insoluble difficulty. Usrá means, ordinarily, either rays or cows or mornings; swasaram is a Vedic word of unfixed significance. Sayana renders, “hastening like sunbeams to the days”, a rendering which has neither sense nor appropriateness; emending it slightly we get “hastening like dawns or mornings to the days”, a beautiful & picturesque, though difficult image but one, unhappily, which has no appropriateness to the context. If we can suppose the lost root swas to have meant, to lie, sleep, rest, like the simpler form sas (cf sanj to cling & swanj to embrace), we may translate, “hastening like kine to their stalls”; but this also is not appropriate to the Visvadevas hastening to the Soma offering not for rest, but for enjoyment & action. I believe the real meaning to be, “hastening like lovers to their paramours”; but the philological reasoning by which I arrive at these meanings for usra & swasaram is so remote & conjectural, that I cannot lay any stress on the suggestion. Aptur is a less difficult word. If it is a compound, ap+tur, it must mean swift or forceful in effecting or producing; but it may also be formed by the addition of a suffix tur in an adjectival sense to the root ap, to do, bring about, effect, produce or obtain.

In the ninth rik, I take vahnayah in its natural sense, “those who bear or support”; it is the application of the general function, charshanidhrit to the particular activity of the sacrifice, medham jushanta vahnayah. I cannot accept the sense of priest for vahni; it may have this meaning in some passages, but the ordinary significance is clearly fixed by Medhatithi’s collocation, vahanti vahnayah, in the [fourteenth] sukta; for to suppose such a collocation to have been made without any reference to the common significance of the two words, is to do violence to common sense & to language. In the same rik we have the word asridhah rendered by Sayana, “undecaying or unwithering”, and ehimáyásah, in which he takes ehi to be á-íha, “pervading activity” & máyá in the sense of prajná, intelligence. We have no difficulty in rejecting these constructions. Ehi is a modified

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form, by gunation, from the root íh, and must mean like íh, wish, attempt, effort or activity; máyá from má, to contain or measure (mátá, mána) or mí, to contain, embrace, comprehend, know, may mean either capacity, wideness, greatness or comprehending knowledge. The sense, therefore, is either that the Visvadevas put knowledge into all their activities or else that they have a full capacity, whether in knowledge or in any other quality, for all activities. The latter sense strikes me as the more natural & appropriate in the context. Sridhah, again, means enemies in the Veda, and asridhah may well mean, not hostile, friendly. It will then be complementary to adruhah,—asridhah adruhah, unhostile, unharmful,—and the two epithets will form an amplification of omásas, kindly, the first of the characteristics applied to these deities. Yet such a purposeless negative amplification of a strong positive & sufficient epithet is not in the style of the Sukta, of Madhuchchhanda’s hymns generally or of any Vedic Rishi; nor does it go well with the word ehimáyásah which inappropriately divides the two companion epithets. Sridh has the sense of enemy from the idea of the shock of assault. The root sri means to move, rush, or assail; sridh gives the additional idea of moving or rushing against some object or obstacle. I suggest then that asridhah means unstumbling, unfailing (cf the English to slide). The sense will then be that the Visvadevas are unstumbling & unfaltering in the effectuation of their activities because they have a full capacity for all activities, and for the same reason they cause no hurt to the work or the human worker. We have a coherent meaning & progression of related ideas and a good reason for the insertion of ehimáyásah between the two negative epithets asridhah & adruhah.

We can now examine the functioning of the Visvadevas as they are revealed to us in these three riks of the ancient Veda: “Come,” says the Rishi, “O Visvadevas who in your benignity uphold the activities of men, come, distributing the nectar-offering of the giver. O Visvadevas, swift to effect, come to the nectar-offering, hastening like mornings to the days (or, like lovers to their paramours). O Visvadevas, who stumble not in your work, for you are mighty for all activity and do no hurt,

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cleave in heart to the sacrifice & be its upbearers.” The sense is clear & simple. The kindly gods who support man in his action & development, are to arrive; they are to give abroad the nectar-offering which is now given to them, to pour it out on the world in joy-giving activities of mind or body, for that is the relation of gods & men, as we see in the Gita, giving out whatever is given to them in an abundant mutual helpfulness. Swiftly have they to effect the many-sided action prepared for them, hastening to the joy of the offering of Ananda as a lover hastens to the joy of his mistress. They will not stumble or fail in any action entrusted to them, for they have full capacity for their great world-functions, nor, for the like reason, will they impair the force of the joy or the strength in the activity by misuse, therefore let them put their hearts into the sacrifice of action and upbear it by this unfaltering strength. Swiftness, variety, intensity, even a fierce intensity of joy & thought & action is the note throughout, but yet a faultless activity, fixed in its variety, unstumbling in its swiftness, not hurting the strength, light & joy by its fierceness or violent expenditure of energy—dhishnya, asridhah, adruhah. That which ensures this steadiness & unfaltering gait, is the control of the mental power which is the agent of the action & the holder of the joy by the understanding. Indra is dhiyeshita. But what will ensure the understanding itself from error & swerving? It is the divine inspiration, Saraswati, rich with mental substance & clearness, who will keep the system purified, uphold sovereignly the Yajna, & illumine all the actions of the understanding, by awakening with the high divine perception, daivyena ketuná, the great sea of ideal knowledge above. For this ideal knowledge, as we shall see, is the satyam, ritam, brihat; it is wide expansion of being & therefore utmost capacity of power, bliss & knowledge; it is the unobscured light of direct & unerring truth, and it is the unstumbling, unswerving fixity of spontaneous Right & Law.

We have gathered much from this brief hymn, one of the deepest in thought in the Veda. If our construction is correct, then this at least appears that the Veda is no loose, empty & tawdry collection of vague images & shallow superstitions, but there are some portions of it at least which present a clear,

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well-knit writing full of meaning & stored with ideas. We have the work of sages & thinkers, rishayah, kavayah, maníshinah, subtle practical psychologists & great Yogins, not the work of savage medicine-men evolving out of primitive barbarism the first glimpses of an embryonic culture in the half-coherent fumble, the meaningless ritual of a worship of personified rain, wind, fire, sun & constellations. The gods of the Veda have a clear & fixed personality & functions & its conceptions are founded on a fairly advanced knowledge & theory at least of our subjective nature. Nor when we look at the clearness, fixity & frequently psychological nature of the functions of the Greek gods, Apollo, Hermes, Pallas, Aphrodite, [have we] the right to expect anything less from the ancestors of the far more subtle-minded, philosophical & spiritual Indian nation.

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A System of Vedic Psychology

[A]

Prefatory

The successes of European science have cast the shadow of their authority & prestige over the speculations of European scholarship; for European thought is, in appearance, a serried army marching to world-conquest and we who undergo the yoke of its tyranny, we, who paralysed by that fascination and overborne by that domination, have almost lost the faculty of thinking for ourselves, receive without distinction all its camp followers or irregular volunteers as authorities to whom we must needs submit.We reflect in our secondhand opinions the weak parts of European thought equally with the strong; we do not distinguish between those of its ideas which eternal Truth has ratified and those which have merely by their ingenuity and probability captivated for a short season the human imagination. The greater part of the discoveries of European Science (its discoveries, not its intellectual generalisations) belong to the first category; the greater part of the conclusions of European scholarship to the second. The best European thought has itself no illusions on this score. One of the greatest of European scholars & foremost of European thinkers, Ernest Renan, after commencing his researches in Comparative Philology with the most golden & extravagant hopes, was compelled at the close of a life of earnest & serious labour, to sum up the chief preoccupation of his days in a formula of measured disparagement,—“petty conjectural sciences”. In other words, no sciences at all; for a science built upon conjectures is as much an impossibility & a contradiction in terms as a house built upon water. Renan’s own writings bear eloquent testimony to the truth of his final verdict; those which sum up his scholastic research, read now like a mass of learned

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crudity, even the best of them no longer authoritative or valid; those which express the substance or shades of his life’s thinking are of an imperishable beauty & value. The general sentiment of European Science agrees with the experience of Renan and even shoots beyond it; in the vocabulary of German scientists the word “Philologe”, philologist, bears a sadly disparaging and contemptuous significance & so great is the sense among serious thinkers of the bankruptcy of Comparative Philology that many deny even the possibility of an etymological Science. There is no doubt an element of exaggeration in some of these views; but it is true that Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, ethnology, anthropology and their kindred “sciences” are largely a mass of conjectures,—shifting intellectual quagmires in which we can find no sure treading. Only the airy wings of an ingenious imagination can bear us up on that shimmering surface and delude us with the idea that it is the soil which supports our movement & not the wings. There is a meagre but sound substratum of truth which will disengage itself some day from the conjectural rubbish; but the present stage of these conjectural sciences is no better but rather worse than the state of European chemistry in the days of Paracelsus.But we in India are under the spell of European philology; we are taken by its ingenuity, audacity & self-confidence, an ingenuity which is capable of giving a plausibility to the absurd and an appearance of body to the unsubstantial, an audacity which does not hesitate to erect the most imposing theories on a few tags of disconnected facts, a confidence which even the constant change of its own opinions cannot disconcert. Moreover, our natural disposition is to the intellectuality of the scholar; verbal ingenuities, recondite explanations, far-fetched glosses have long had a weight with us which the discontinuity of our old scientific activities and disciplined experimental methods of reaching subjective truth has exaggerated and our excessive addiction to mere verbal metaphysics strongly confirmed. It is not surprising that educated India should have tacitly or expressly accepted even in subjects of such supreme importance to us as the real significance of the Vedas and Upanishads, the half patronising,

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half contemptuous views of the European scholar.

What are those views? They represent the Veda to us as a mass of naturalistic, ritualistic & astrological conceits, allegories & metaphors, crude & savage in the substance of its thought but more artificial & ingenious in its particular ideas & fancies than the most artificial, allegorical or Alexandrian poetry to be found in the world’s literature—a strange incoherent & gaudy jumble unparalleled by the early literature of any other nation,—the result of a queer psychological mixture of an early savage with a modern astronomer & comparative mythologist.

[B]

Is there or can there be a system of Vedic psychology? To us who are dominated today by the prestige of European thought and scholarship, the Vedas are a document of primitive barbarism, the ancient Vedanta a mass of sublime but indisciplined speculations. We may admit the existence of many deep psychological intuitions in the Upanishads; we do not easily allow to an age which we have been taught to regard as great but primitive and undeveloped the possibility of a profound and reasoned system in a subject in which Europe with all her modern knowledge has been unable to develop a real science. I believe that this current view of our Vedic forefathers is entirely erroneous and arises from our application to them of a false system of psychological and intellectual values. Europe has formed certain views about the Veda & the Vedanta, and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intellect. The ease with which this subjugation has been effected, is not surprising; for the mere mass of labour of Vedic scholarship has been imposing, its ingenuity of philological speculation is well calculated to dazzle the uncritical mind and the audacity & self-confidence with which it constructs its theories conceals the conjectural uncertainty of their foundations. When a hundred world famous scholars cry out, “This is so,” it is hard indeed for the average mind and even minds above the average, but inexpert in these special subjects, not to acquiesce. Nor has there been in India itself any corresponding labour of

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scholarship, diligence & sound enquiry which could confront the brilliant and hazardous generalisations of modern Sanscrit scholarship with the results of a more perfect system and a more penetrating vision. The only attempt in that direction—the attempt of Swami Dayananda—has not been of a kind to generate confidence in the dispassionate judgment of posterity which must be the final arbiter of these disputes; for not only was that great Pundit and vigorous disputant unequipped with the wide linguistic & philological scholarship necessary for his work, but his method was rapid, impatient, polemical, subservient to certain fixed religious ideas rather than executed in the calm, disinterested freedom of the careful and impartial thinker and scholar. Judgment has passed on the Veda & Vedanta by default in favour of the scholastic criticism of Europe which has alone been represented in the court of modern opinion.

Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the paralysis that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second & third hand & reassert its right to judge and inquire with a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes, we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or lasting than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial & unreal distinction of Aryan & Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a “henotheistic” Vedic naturalism; the ingenious & brilliant extravagances of the modern sun & star myth weavers, and many another hasty & attractive generalisation which, after a brief period of unquestioning acceptance by the easily-persuaded intellect of mankind, is bound to depart into the limbo of forgotten theories. We attach an undue importance & value to the ephemeral conclusions of European philology, because it is systematic in its errors and claims to be a science.We forget or do not know that the claims of philology

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to a scientific value & authority are scouted by European scientists; the very word, Philologe, is a byword of scorn to serious scientific writers in Germany, the temple of philology. One of the greatest of modern philologists & modern thinkers, Ernest Renan, was finally obliged after a lifetime of hope & earnest labour to class the chief preoccupation of his life as one of the “petty conjectural sciences”—in other words no science at all, but a system of probabilities & guesses. Beyond one or two generalisations of the mutations followed by words in their progress through the various Aryan languages and a certain number of grammatical rectifications & rearrangements, resulting in a less arbitrary view of linguistic relations, modern philology has discovered no really binding law or rule for its own guidance. It has fixed one or two sure signposts; the rest is speculation and conjecture.We are not therefore bound to worship at the shrines of Comparative Science & Comparative Mythology & offer up on these dubious altars the Veda & Vedanta. The question of Vedic truth & the meaning of Veda still lies open. If Sayana’s interpretation of Vedic texts is largely conjectural and likely often to be mistaken & unsound, the European interpretation can lay claim to no better certainty. The more lively ingenuity and imposing orderliness of the European method of conjecture may be admitted; but ingenuity & orderliness, though good helps to an enquiry, are in themselves no guarantee of truth and a conjecture does not cease to be a conjecture, because its probability or possibility is laboriously justified or brilliantly supported. It is on the basis of a purely conjectural translation of the Vedas that Europe presents us with these brilliant pictures of Vedic religion, Vedic society, Vedic civilisation which we so eagerly accept and unquestioningly reproduce. For we take them as the form of an unquestionable truth; in reality, they are no more than brilliantly coloured hypotheses,—works of imagination, not drawings from the life.

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The Secret of Veda

Introduction

The history of the Veda is one of the most remarkable & paradoxical phenomena of human experience. In the belief of the ancient Indians the three Vedas, books believed to be inspired directly from the source of all Truth, books at any rate of an incalculable antiquity and of a time-honoured sanctity, were believed to be the repositories of a divine knowledge. The man who was a Veda knower, Vedavid, had access to the deepest knowledge about God and existence. He knew the one thing that was eternally true, the one thing thoroughly worth knowing. The right possession of the ancient hymns was not supposed to be possible by a superficial reading, not supposed to result directly even from a mastery of the scholastic aids to a right understanding,—grammar, language, prosody, astronomy, ritual, pronunciation,—but depended finally and essentially on explanation by a fit spiritual teacher who understood the inner sense that was couched in the linguistic forms & figures of the Scriptures. The Veda so understood was held to be the fountain, the bedrock, the master-volume of all true Hinduism; that which accepted not the Veda, was and must be instantly departure from the right path, the true truth. Even when the material & ritualistic sense of the Veda had so much dominated & hidden in men’s ideas of it its higher parts that to go beyond it seemed imperative, the reverence for this ancient Scripture remained intact. At the time when the Gita in its modern form was composed, we find this double attitude dominant. There is a strong censure of the formalists, the ritualists, who constantly dispute about the Veda and hold it as a creed that there is no other truth and who apply it only for the acquisition of worldly mastery and enjoyments, but at the same time the great store of spiritual truth in the old sacred writings and their high value are

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never doubted or depreciated. There is in all the Vedas as much utility to the Brahma-knower as to one who would drink there is utility in a well flooded with water on all its sides. Krishna speaking as God Himself declares “I alone am He who is to be known by all the Vedas; I am He who made Vedanta and who know the Veda.” The sanctity and spiritual value of the Vedas could not receive a more solemn seal of confirmation. It is evident also from this last passage that the more modern distinction which grew upon the Hindu mind with the fading of Vedic knowledge, the distinction by which the old Rigveda and Sama and Yajur are put aside as ritualistic writings, possessing a value only for ceremonial of sacrifice, and all search for spiritual knowledge is confined to the Vedanta, was unrecognised & even unknown to the writer of the Gita. To him the Vedas are writings full of spiritual truth; the language of the line Vedaish cha sarvair aham eva vedyo, the significance of the double emphasis in the etymological sense of “knowledge” in Vedavid, “the knower of the book of knowledge” as well as in vedair vedyo are unmistakable. Other means of knowledge even more powerful than study of the Vedas the Gita recognises; but in its epoch the Veda even as apart from the Upanishads still held its place of honour as the repository of the high and divine knowledge; it still bore upon it the triple seal of the Brahmavidya.

When was this traditional honour first lost or at least tarnished and the ancient Scripture relegated to the inferior position it occupies in the thought of Shankaracharya? I presume there can be little doubt that the chief agent in this work of destruction was the power of Buddhism. The preachings of Gautama and his followers worked against Vedic knowledge by a double process. First, by entirely denying the authority of the Veda, laying a violent stress on its ritualistic character and destroying the general practice of formal sacrifice, it brought the study of the Veda into disrepute as a means of attaining the highest good while at the same time it destroyed the necessity of that study for ritualistic purposes which had hitherto kept alive the old Vedic studies; secondly, in a less direct fashion, by substituting for a time at least the vernacular tongues for the old simple

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Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism,

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a Scripture of ritual and of animal sacrifice, persisted in the popular mind even after the decline of Buddhism and the revival of great philosophies ostensibly based on Vedic authority. It was under the dominance of this ritualistic conception that Sayana wrote his great commentary which has ever since been to the Indian Pundit the one decisive authority on the sense of Veda. The four Vedas have definitely taken a subordinate place as karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier Scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda.

But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered

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with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefathers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,—though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,—but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, the anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.

Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or, and this is the idea I write to suggest, is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing & ever progressing error? The theory this book is written to enunciate & support is simply this, that our forefathers of early Vedantic times understood the Veda, to which they were after all much nearer than ourselves, far better than Sayana, far better than Roth & Max Muller, that they were, to a great extent, in possession of the real truth about the Veda,

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that that truth was indeed a deep spiritual truth, karmakanda as well as jnanakanda of the Veda contains an ancient knowledge, a profound, complex & well-ordered psychology & philosophy, strange indeed to our modern conception, expressed indeed in language still stranger & remoter from our modern use of language, but not therefore either untrue or unintelligible, and that this knowledge is the real foundation of our later religious developments, & Veda, not only by historical continuity, but in real truth & substance is the parent & bedrock of all later Hinduism, of Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga, of Vaishnavism & Shaivism&Shaktism, of Tantra&Purana, even, in a remoter fashion, of Buddhism & the later unorthodox religions. From this quarry all have hewn their materials or from this far-off source drawn unknowingly their waters; from some hidden seed in the Veda they have burgeoned into their wealth of branchings & foliage. The ritualism of Sayana is an error based on a false preconception popularised by the Buddhists & strengthened by the writers of the Darshanas,—on the theory that the karma of the Veda was only an outward ritual & ceremony; the naturalism of the modern scholars is an error based on a false preconception encouraged by the previous misconceptions of Sayana,—on the theory of the Vedas [as] not only an ancient but a primitive document, the production of semi-barbarians. The Vedantic writers of the Upanishads had alone the real key to the secret of the Vedas; not indeed that they possessed the full knowledge of a dialect even then too ancient to be well understood, but they had the knowledge of the Vedic Rishis, possessed their psychology, & many of their general ideas, even many of their particular terms & symbols. That key, less & less available to their successors owing to the difficulty of the knowledge itself & of the language in which it was couched and to the immense growth of outward ritualism, was finally lost to the schools in the great debacle of Vedism induced by the intellectual revolutions of the centuries which immediately preceded the Christian era.

It is therefore a Vedantic or even what would nowadays be termed a theosophic interpretation of the Veda which in this book I propose to establish. My suggestion is that the

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gods of the Rigveda were indeed, as the European scholars have seen, masters of the Nature-Powers, but not, as they erroneously theorise, either exclusively or even mainly masters of the visible & physical Nature-Powers. They presided over and in their nature & movement were also & more predominantly mental Nature-Powers, vital Nature-Powers, even supra-mental Nature-Powers. The religion of the Vedic Rishis I suppose on this hypothesis to have been a sort of practical & concrete Brahmavada founded on the three principles of complex existence, isotheism of the gods and parallelism of their functions on all the planes of that complex existence; the secret of their ideas, language & ritual I suppose to rest in an elaborate habit of symbolism & double meaning which tends to phrase & typify all mental phenomena in physical and concrete figures. While the European scholars suppose the Rishis to have been simple-minded barbarians capable only of a gross & obvious personification of forces, only of a confused, barbarous and primitive system of astronomical allegories and animistic metaphors, I suppose them to have been men of daring and observant minds, using a bold and vigorous if sometimes fanciful system of images to express an elaborate practical psychology and self-observation in which what we moderns regard as abstract experiences & ideas were rather perceived with the vividness of physical experiences & images & so expressed in the picturesque terms of a great primitive philosophy. Their outward sacrifice & ritual I suppose to have been partly the symbols & partly the means of material expression for certain psychological processes, the first foundations of our Hindu system of Yoga, by which they believed themselves able to attain inward & outward mastery, knowledge, joy and extended life & being.

This theory, although it starts really from a return to the point of view of the early Vedantic writers, appears at the present day doubly revolutionary, because it denies the two established systems of interpretation which have conquered and still hold the modern mind and determine for it the sense of the Veda. Sayana is for the orthodox Indian the decisive and infallible authority; for the heterodox or educated the opinions and apparent

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discoveries of European philologists are the one infallible and irrefutable pramána. Is it then really true that either from the point of view of orthodox Hindu faith or on the basis of a rational interpretation based on sound philology and criticism the door is closed to any radically new interpretation and the true sense of Veda has, in the main, been settled for us & to all future generations? If so, if Sayana’s authority is unquestionable, or if the system of the Europeans is sound and unimprovable in its essential features, then there is no room for the new theory of which I have briefly indicated the nature. The Veda then remains nothing more than a system of sacrificial ritual & mythology of the most primitive crudeness. I hope to show briefly that there is no such finality; the door is wide open, the field is still free for a better understanding and a deeper knowledge.

The modern world cares little for orthodox Hindu opinion, for the opinion of its Pandits or for the ancient authority of its received guides; putting these things aside as the heavy and now useless baggage of the dead past it moves on free and unhampered to its objective, seeking ever fresh vistas of undiscovered knowledge. But a Hindu writer, still holding the faith of his ancestors, owes a certain debt to the immediate past, not so much as to hamper his free enquiry and outlook upon truth, but enough to demand from him a certain respect for whatever in it is really respectworthy and some attempt to satisfy his coreligionists that in opening out a fresh outlook on ancient knowledge he is not uprooting truths that are essential to their common religion. Nothing in those truths compels us to accept the plenary authority of Sayana or the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas. The hymns of the Veda are, for us, inspired truth and therefore infallible; it follows that the only interpretative authority on them which can claim also to be infallible is one which itself works by the faculty of divine inspiration. The only works for which the ordinary tradition claims this equal authority are the Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads. Even among these authorities, if we accept them as all and equally inspired and authoritative,—and on this point Hindus are not in entire agreement,—the Brahmanas which deal with the ceremonial detail of

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Vedic sacrifice, are authoritative for the ritual only; for the inner sense the Upanishads are the fit authority. Sayana can lay claim to no such sanctity for his opinions. He is no ancient Rishi, nor even an inspired religious teacher, but a grammarian and scholar writing in the twelfth century after Christ several millenniums subsequent to the Rishis to whom Veda was revealed. By his virtues & defects as a scholar his interpretation must be judged. His erudition is vast, his industry colossal; he has so occupied the field that everyone who approaches the Veda must pass to it under his shadow; his commentary is a mine of knowledge about Vedic Sanscrit and full of useful hints for the interpretation of Veda. But there the tale of his merits ends. Other qualities are needed for a successful Vedic commentary which in Sayana are conspicuous by their absence; and his defects as a critic are almost as colossal as his industry and erudition. He is not a disinterested mind seeking impartially the truth of Veda but a professor of the ritualistic school of interpretation intent upon reading the traditional ceremonial sense into the sacred hymns; even so he is totally wanting in consistency, coherence and settled method. Not only is he frequently uncertain of himself, halts and qualifies his interpretation with an alternative or not having the full courage of his ritualistic rendering introduces it as a mere possibility,—these would be meritorious failings,—but he wavers in a much more extraordinary fashion, forcing the ritualistic sense of a word or passage where it cannot possibly hold, abandoning it unaccountably where it can well be sustained. The Vedas are masterpieces of flawless literary style and logical connection. But Sayana, like many great scholars, is guiltless of literary taste and has not the least sense of what is or is not possible to a good writer. His interpretation of any given term is seldom consistent even in similar passages of different hymns, but he will go yet farther and give two entirely different renderings to the same word though occurring in successive riks & in an obviously connected strain of thought. The rhythm and balance of a sentence is nothing to him, he will destroy it ruthlessly in order to get over a difficulty of interpretation; he will disturb the arrangement of a sentence sometimes in the most

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impossible manner, connecting absolutely disconnected words, breaking up inseparable connections, inserting a second and alien sentence in between the head & tail of the first, and creating a barbarous complexity & confusion where the symbolic movement of the Rishis, unequalled in its golden ease, lucidity and straightforwardness, demands an equal lucidity & straightforwardness in the commentator. A certain rough coherence of thought he attempts to keep, but his rendering makes oftenest a clumsy sense & not unoften no ascertainable sense at all; while he has no scruple in breaking up the coherence entirely in favour of his ritualism. These are, after all, faults common in a scholastic mentality, but even were they less prominent & persistent in him than I have found them to be, they liberate us from all necessity for an exaggerated deference to his authority as an interpreter. Nor, indeed, were Sayana an ideal commentator, could he possibly be relied upon to give us the true sense of Veda; for the language of these hymns, whatever the exact date of their Rishis, goes back to an immense antiquity and long before Sayana the right sense of many Vedic words and the right clue to many Vedic allusions and symbols were lost to the scholars of India. Much indeed survived in tradition, but more had been lost or disfigured, and the two master clues, intellectual & spiritual, on which we can yet rely for the recovery of these losses, a sound philology and the renewal in ourselves of the experiences which form the subject of the Vedic hymns, were the one entirely wanting, the other grown more & more inaccessible with time not only to the Pandit but to the philosopher. Even in our days the sound philology is yet wanting, though the seeds have been sown & even the first beginnings made; nor are the Vedic experiences any longer pursued in their entirety by the Indian Yogins who have learned to follow in this Kali Yuga less difficult paths and more modern systems.

But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharya’s rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of

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ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,—that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,—rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,—for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice,—and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Athá te antamánám vidyáma

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sumatínám, “Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings,” meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. “And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.”

In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agni’s power & glory is to burn, Vayu’s to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the gods and the

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senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,—itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,—we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the

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Eternal Ruler of the Universe.

Modern thought & scholarship stands on a different foundation. It proceeds by inference, imagination and conjecture to novel theories of old subjects and regards itself as rational, not traditional. It professes to rebuild lost worlds out of their disjected fragments. By reason, then, and without regard to ancient authority the modern account of the Veda should be judged. The European scholars suppose that the mysticism of the Upanishads was neither founded upon nor, in the main, developed from the substance of the Vedas, but came into being as part of a great movement away from the naturalistic materialism of the early half-savage hymns. Unable to accept a barbarous mummery of ritual and incantation as the highest truth & highest good, yet compelled by religious tradition to regard the ancient hymns as sacred, the early thinkers, it is thought, began to seek an escape from this impasse by reading mystic & esoteric meanings into the simple text of the sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the old Vedantic thinkers themselves knew and thought about the tradition of the Veda. From the Brahmanas as well as from the Upanishads it is evident that the Veda came down to the men of those days in a double aspect, as the heart of a great body of effective ritual, but also as the repository of a deep and sacred knowledge, Veda and not merely worship. This idea of a philosophic or theosophic purport in the hymns was not created by the early Hindu mystics, it was inherited by them. Their attitude to the ritual even when it was performed mechanically without the possession of this knowledge was far from hostile; but as ritual, they held it to be inferior in force and value, avaram karma, a lower kind of works and not the highest good; only when performed with possession of the knowledge could it lead to its ultimate results, to Vedanta. “By that,” says the Chhandogya Upanishad,

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“both perform karma, both he who knows this so and he who knows not. Yet the Ignorance and the Knowledge are different things and only what one does with the knowledge,—with faith, with the Upanishad,—that has the greater potency.” And in the closing section of its second chapter, a passage which sounds merely like ritualistic jargon when one has not the secret of Vedic symbolism but when that secret has once been revealed to us becomes full of meaning and interest, the Upanishad starts by saying “The Brahmavadins say, The morning offering to the Vasus, the afternoon offering to the Rudras and the evening offering to the Adityas and all the gods,—where then is the world of the Yajamana? (that is to say, what is the spiritual efficacy beyond this material life of the three different sacrifices & why, to what purpose, is the first offered to the Vasus, the second to the Rudras, the third to the Adityas?) He who knows this not, how should he perform (effectively) ,therefore knowing let him perform.” There was at any rate the tradition that these things, the sacrifice, the god of the sacrifice, the world or future state of the sacrificer had a deep significance and were not mere ritual arranged superstitiously for material ends. But this deeper significance, this inner Vedic knowledge was difficult and esoteric, not known easily in its profundity and subtlety even by the majority of the Brahmavadins themselves; hence the searching, the mutual questionings, the record of famous discussions that occupy so much space in the Upanishads—discussions which, we shall see, are not intellectual debates but comparisons of illuminated knowledge & spiritual experience.

If this tradition—let us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused word—was already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for old—as is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this

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spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankara’s passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya

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as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche¹ as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;—inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefathers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergi’s estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not “What hast thou thought out in this matter?” or “What are thy reasonings & conclusions?” but “What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself?” The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a

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drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times “I have experienced, my soul has seen”, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.

The distinction is of the greatest importance; for not only does it show that the substance of our religious mentality and discipline goes back to the prehistoric antiquity of the Upanishads, but it justifies the hypothesis that the Vedantins of the Upanishads themselves held it as an inheritance from their Vedic forefathers. If the Upanishads were only a record of intellectual speculations, the theory of a progression from Vedic materialism to new modes of thought would be entirely probable and no other hypothesis could hold the field without first destroying the rationalistic theory by new and unsuspected evidence. But the moment we perceive that the Upanishads are the result of this ancient & indigenous system of truth-finding, we are liberated from the burden of European examples. Evidently, we have here to deal with phenomena of thought which do not fall within the European scheme of a rapid transition from gross savage superstition to subtle metaphysical speculation. We have phenomena which are either sui generis or, if at any time common to humanity both within and outside India, then more ancient

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or at any rate earlier in the progression of mind than the modern intellectual methods first universalised by the Hellenic & Latin races; we have an intuitive and experiential method of truth finding, a fixed psychological theory and discipline, a system in which observation & comparison of subjective experiences forms the basis of fixed & verifiable psychological truth, just as nowadays in Europe observation & comparison of objective experiences forms the basis of fixed and verifiable physical truth. The difference between the speculative method and the experiential is that the speculative aims only at logical harmony and, due to the rigid abstract tendency, drives towards new blocks of thought and new mental attitudes; the experiential aims at verification by experience and drives towards the progressive discovery or restatement of eternal truths and their application to varying conditions. The indispensable basis of all Science is the invariability of the same result from the same experiment, given the same conditions; the same experiment with oxygen & hydrogen will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have one invariable result, the appearance of water. The indispensable basis of all Yoga is the same invariability in psychological experiments & their results. The same experiment with the limited waking or manifest consciousness and the unlimited unmanifest consciousness from which it is a selection and formation will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have the same result, the dissolution, gradual or rapid, complete or partial according to the instruments and conditions of the experiment, of the waking ego into the cosmic consciousness. In each method, physical Science or psychological Science, different Scientists or different teachers may differ as to some of the final generalisations to be drawn from the facts & the most appropriate terms to be used, or invent different instruments in the hope of arriving at a more rapid or a more delicate process, but the facts and the fundamental truths remain common to all, even if stated in different terms, because they are the subjects of a common experience. Now the facts discovered by the Indian method, the duality of Purusha and Prakriti, the triple states of conscious being, the relation between the macrocosm & the microcosm,

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the fivefold and sevenfold principles of consciousness, the existence of more than one bodily case in which, simultaneously, we dwell, these and a number of other fixed ideas which the modern Yogins hold not as speculative propositions but as observable and verifiable facts of experience, are to be found in the Upanishads already enounced in more ancient formulae and in a slightly different language. The question arises, when did they originate? If they are facts, when were they first discovered? If they are hallucinations, when were the methods of subjective experiment which result so persistently in these hallucinations, first evolved and fixed? Not at the time of the Upanishads, for the Upanishads professedly record the traditional knowledge of older Rishis which is still verifiable by the moderns, púrvebhir rishibhir ídyo nútanair uta.Then, some time before the composition of the Upanishads, either by the earlier or later Vedic Rishis or by predecessors of the Vedic Rishis or in the interval between the Vedic hymns and the first Vedantic compositions. But for the period between Veda & Vedanta we have no documents, no direct & plain evidence. The question therefore can only be decided by an examination of the Vedic hymns themselves. Only by settling the meaning of Veda can we decide whether the early Vedantins were right in supposing that they were merely restating in more modern terms the substantial ideas & experiences of Vedic Rishis or whether this grand assumption of the Upanishads must take its rank among those pious fictions or willing & half honest errors which have often been immensely helpful to the advance of human knowledge but are none the less impostures upon posterity.

European scholars believe that they have fixed finally the meaning of Veda. Using as their tools the “Sciences” of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology, itself a part of the strangely termed Science of Comparative Religion, they have excavated for us out of the ancient Veda a buried world, a forgotten civilisation, lost names of kings and nations, wars & battles, institutions, social habits & cultural ideas which the men of Vedantic times & their forerunners never dreamed were lying concealed in the revered & sacred words used daily by

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them in their worship and the fount and authority for their richest spiritual experiences deepest illuminated musings. The picture these discoveries constitute is a remarkable composition, imposing in its mass, brilliant and attractive in its details. The one lingering objection to them is a possible doubt of the truth of these discoveries, the soundness of the methods used to arrive at them. Are the conclusions of Vedic scholarship so undoubtedly true or so finally authoritative as to preclude a totally different hypothesis even though it may lead possibly to an interpretation which will wash out every colour & negative every detail of this great recovery? We must determine, first, whether the foundations of the European theory of Veda are solid & certain fact or whether it has been reared upon a basis of doubtful inference and conjecture. If the former, the question of the Veda is closed, its problem solved; if the latter, the European results may even then be true, but equally they may be false and replaceable by a more acceptable theory and riper conclusions.

We ought at least to free our minds of one misconception which has a very strong hold of the average Indian mind and blocks up the way for free investigation & the formation of a strong & original school of Indian scholars better circumstanced than the Europeans for determining the truth about our past and divining its difficult secrets. The triumphant & rapid march of the physical sciences in Europe has so mastered our intellects and dazzled our eyes, that we are apt to extend the unquestioned finality which we are accustomed to attach to the discoveries & theories of modern Science, to all the results of European research & intellectual activity. Even in Europe itself, we should remember, there is no such implicit acceptance. The theories of today are there continually being combated and overthrown by the theories of tomorrow. Outside the range of the physical sciences & even in some portions of that splendid domain the whole of European knowledge is felt more & more to be a mass of uncertain results ephemeral in their superstructure, shifting in their very foundations. For the Europeans have that valuable gift of intellectual restlessness which, while it often stands in the way of man’s holding on to abiding truth, helps him to emerge swiftly

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out of momentarily triumphant error. In India on the other hand we have fallen during the last few centuries into a fixed habit of unquestioning deference to authority. We used to hold it, & some still hold it almost an impiety to question Shankara’s interpretation of the Upanishads, or Sayana’s interpretation of the Veda, and now that we are being torn out of this bondage, we fall into yet more absurd error by according, if not an equal reverence, yet an almost equal sense of finality to the opinions of Roth & Max Muller. We are ready to accept all European theories, the theory of an “Aryan” colonisation of a Dravidian India, the theory of the Nature-worship and henotheism of the Vedic Rishis, the theory of the Upanishads as a speculative revolt against Vedic materialism & ritualism, as if these hazardous speculations were on a par in authority & certainty with the law of gravitation and the theory of evolution. We are most of us unaware that in Europe it is disputed and very reasonably disputed whether, for instance, any such entity as an Aryan race ever existed. The travail of dispute & uncertainty in which the questions of Vedic scholarship & ethnology are enveloped is hidden from us; only the over-confident statement of doubtful discoveries and ephemeral theories reaches our knowledge.

We should realise that these so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology on which the European interpretation of Veda is founded are not true Sciences at all. They are, rather, if Sciences at all, then pseudo-Sciences. All the European mental sciences, not excluding Psychology, though that is now proceeding within certain narrow limits by a sounder method, belong to a doubtful class of branches of research which have absorbed the outward method of Science, without its inward spirit. The true scientists in Germany, the home of both Science & Philology, accustomed to sound methods, certain results, patient inquiry, slow generalisations, have nothing but contempt for the methods of Philology, its patchiness, its haste, its guesswork, and profess no confidence in its results; the word Philologe is even, in their mouths, a slighting & discourteous expression. This contempt, itself no doubt excessive, is practically admitted to be just by the great

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French thinker, Renan, who spent the best part of his life in philological & kindred researches, when he described apologetically his favourite pursuits as “petty conjectural sciences”. Now, a Science that is conjectural, a Science that proceeds not by fixed laws and certain methods, but by ingenious inference & conjecture,— & this is in truth the nature of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology,—is no science at all; it is a branch of research, a field of inquiry & conjecture in which useful discoveries may be made; it may even contain in itself the germs of a future science, but it is not yet itself worthy of that name & its results have no right to cloak themselves falsely in the robe of authority which belongs only to the results of the true Sciences. So long as a “science” is conjectural, its results are also conjectural, can at any moment be challenged and ought at all times even in its most brilliant & confident results to be carefully and sceptically scrutinised.

Among such branches of research which can even now be used in spite of new & hostile conclusions as a sort of side support to the modern theory of the Veda stand in a curious twilit corner of their own the researches of the ethnologists. There is no more glaring instance of the conjectural and unsubstantial nature of these pseudo-Sciences than the results of Ethnology which yet claims to deduce its results from fixed and certain physical tests and data. We find the philological discovery of the Aryan invasion supported by the conclusions of ethnologists like Sir Herbert Risley, who make an ethnological map of India coloured in with all shades of mixed raciality, Dravidian,Scytho-Dravidian, Mongolo-Dravidian, Scytho-Aryan. More modern schools of ethnology assert positively on the strength of [the] same laws & the same tests that there is but one homogeneous Indo-Afghan race inhabiting the whole peninsula from theHimalayas to Cape Comorin. What are we to think of a science of which the tests are so pliant and the primary results so irreconcilable? Or how, if the more modern theory is correct, if a distinct homogeneous race inhabits India, can we fail to doubt strongly as a philological myth the whole story of the Aryan invasion & colonisation of Northern India, which has been so

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long one of the most successful & loudly proclaimed results of the new philology? As a result perhaps of these later conclusions we find a tendency even in philological scholarship towards the rise of new theories which dispute the whole legend of an Aryan invasion, assert an indigenous or even a southern origin for the peoples of the Vedic times and suppose Aryanism to have been a cult and not a racial distinction. These new theories destroy all fixed confidence in the old without themselves revealing any surer foundations for their own guesses; both start from conjectural philology & end in an imaginatively conjectural nation-building or culture-building. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the Vedic terms Aryan & unAryan at all refer to racial or cultural differences; they may have an entirely different and wholly religious & spiritual significance & refer to the good and evil powers & mortals influenced by them. If this prove to be the truth, and the close contiguity & probable historical connection between the Vedic Indians & the Zoroastrian Persians gives it a great likelihood, then the whole elaborate edifice built up by the scholars of an Aryan invasion and an Aryan culture begins to totter & seek the ground, there to lie in the dust amid the wrecks of other once confident beliefs and triumphant errors.

The substance of modern philological discovery about the Vedas consists, first, in the picture of an Aryan civilisation introduced by northern invaders and, secondly, in the interpretation of the Vedic religion as a worship of Nature-powers & Vedic myths as allegorical legends of sun & moon & star & the visible phenomena of Nature. The latter generalisation rests partly on new philological renderings of Vedic words, partly on the Science of Comparative Mythology. The method of this “Science” can be judged from one or two examples. The Greek story of the demigod Heracles is supposed to be an evident sun myth. The two scientific proofs offered for this discovery are first that Hercules performed twelve labours and the solar year is divided into twelve months and, secondly, that Hercules burnt himself on a pyre on Mount Oeta and the sun also sets in a glory of flame behind the mountains. Such proofs seem hardly substantial enough for so strong a conclusion. By the same reasoning

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one could prove the emperor Napoleon a sun myth, because he was beaten & shorn of his glory by the forces of winter and because his brilliant career set in the western ocean and he passed there a long night of captivity. With the same light confidence the siege of Troy is turned by the scholars into a sun myth because the name of the Greek Helena, sister of the two Greek Aswins, Castor & Pollux, is philologically identical with the Vedic Sarama and that of her abductor Paris is not so very different from the Vedic Pani. It may be noted that in the Vedic story Sarama is not the sister of the Aswins and is not abducted by the Panis and that there is no other resemblance between the Vedic legend & the Greek tradition. So by more recent speculation even Yudhishthira and his brothers and the famous dog of theMahabharat are raised into the skies & vanish in a starry apotheosis,—one knows not well upon what grounds except that sometimes the Dog Star rages in heaven. It is evident that these combinations are merely an ingenious play of fancy & prove absolutely nothing. Hercules may be the Sun but it is not proved. Helen & Paris may be Sarama & one of the Panis, but itis not proved. Yudhishthira & his brothers may be an astronomical myth, but it is not proved. For the rest, the unsubstantiality & rash presumption of the Sun myth theory has not failed to give rise in Europe to a hostile school of Comparative Mythologists who adopt other methods & seek the origins of early religious legend & tradition in a more careful and flexible study of the mentality, customs, traditions & symbolisms of primitive races. The theory of Vedic Nature-worship is better founded than these astronomical fancies. Agni is plainly the God of Fire, Surya of the Sun, Usha of the Dawn, Vayu of the Wind; Indra for Sayana is obviously the god of rain; Varuna seems to be the sky, the Greek Ouranos,—et cetera. But when we have accepted these identities, the question of Vedic interpretation & the sense of Vedic worship is not settled. In the Greek religion Apollo was the god of the sun, but he was also the god of poetry & prophecy; Athene is identified with Ahana, a Vedic name of the Dawn, but for the Greeks she is the goddess of purity & wisdom; Artemis is the divinity of the moon, but also the goddess of free life &

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of chastity. It is therefore evident that in early Greek religion, previous to the historic or even the literary period, at an epoch therefore that might conceivably correspond with the Vedic period, many of the deities of the Greek heavens had a double character, the aspect of physical Nature-powers and the aspect of moral Nature-powers. The indications, therefore,—for they are not proofs,—even of Comparative Mythology would justify us in inquiring whether a similar double character did not attach to the Vedic gods in the Vedic hymns.

The real basis of both the Aryan theory of Vedic civilisation and the astronomical theory of Aryan myth is the new interpretation given to a host of Vedic vocables by the comparative philologists. The Aryan theory rests on the ingenious assumption that anarya, dasyu or dasa in the Veda refer to the unfortunate indigenous races who by a familiar modern device were dubbed robbers & dacoits because they were guilty of defending their country against the invaders & Arya is a national term for the invaders who called themselves, according to Max Muller, the Ploughmen, and according to others, the Noble Race. The elaborate picture of an early culture & history that accompanies and supports this theory rests equally on new interpretations of Vedic words and riks in which with the progress of scholarship the authority of Sayana and Yaska has been more & more set at nought and discredited. My contention is that anarya, dasa and dasyu do not for a moment refer to the Dravidian races,—I am, indeed, disposed to doubt whether there was ever any such entity in India as a separate Aryan or a separate Dravidian race,—but always to Vritra, Vala & the Panis and other, primarily non-human, opponents of the gods and their worshippers. The new interpretations given to Vedic words & riks seem to me sometimes right & well grounded, often arbitrary & unfounded, but always conjectural. The whole European theory & European interpretation of the Vedas may be [not] unjustly described as a huge conjectural & uncertain generalisation built on an inadequate & shifting mass of conjectural particulars.

Nor does the philological reasoning on which the astronomical interpretation of Vedic hymns is supported, inspire, when

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examined, or deserve any more certain confidence. To identify the Aswins with the two sons of the Greek Dyaus, Kastor and Polydeuces, and again these two pairs conjecturally with two stars of the constellation Gemini is easy & carries with it a great air of likelihood; but an air of likelihood is not proof. We need more for anything like rational conviction or certainty. In the Veda there are a certain number of hymns to the Aswins & a fair number also of passages in which they are described and invoked; if indeed the purport of their worship is astronomical and the sense of their personality in the Veda merely a fiction about the stars and if they really bore that aspect to the Vedic Rishis, all these passages, & all their epithets, actions, functions & the prayers offered to them ought to be entirely explicable on that theory; or if other ideas have crept in, we must be shown what are these ideas, how they have crept in, in what way these are in the minds of the ancient Rishis superimposed on the original astronomical conception and reconciled with it. Then only can we accept it as a proved probability, if not a proved certainty, that the Aswins are the constellation Gemini and, in that known character, worshipped in the sacred chants. For we must remember that the Aswins might easily have been the constellation Gemini in an original creed & yet be worshipped in a quite different character at the time of the Vedic Rishis. In the Vedic hymns as they are at present rendered whether by Sayana or by Roth, there is no clear statement of this character of the Aswins; the whole theory rests on metaphor and parable, and it is easy to see how dangerous, how open to the flights of mere ingenuity is the system of interpretation by metaphor. There ought to be at least a kernel of direct statement in the loose & uncertain mass of metaphor. We are told that the Aswins are lords of light, śubhaspatí, and certainly the starry Twins are luminous; they are rudravartaní, which interpreted “of the red path”, may very well apply to stars moving through heaven; they are somewhere described as vrisharathá, bull-charioted, & Gemini is next in order & vicinity to Taurus, the constellation of the bull; Súryá, daughter of the Sun, mounts on their chariot & Súryá is very possibly such & such a star whose motion may

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be described by this figurative ascension; the Aswins get honey from the bees and there is a constellation near Gemini called by the Greeks the Bees whose light falls on the Twins. All this is brilliant, attractive, captivating; it does immense credit to the ingenuity of the human intellect. But if we examine sceptically the proofs that are offered us, we find ourselves face to face with amass of ingenious & hazardous guesses; it is not explained why the Aswins particularly more than other gods, should have this distinctive epithet of śubhaspatí, as peculiar to them in the Veda as is sahasaspati to Agni; rudra in the sense of red is a novel & conjectural significance; vrisharatha interpreted consistently as bull-charioted in connection with Taurus, would make hopeless ravages in the sense of other passages of the Veda; the identification of Súryá, daughter of the Sun is unproved, it is an airy conjecture depending on the proof of the identity of the Aswins not itself proving it; madhu in the passage about the Bees need not mean honey and much more probably means the honeyed wine of Soma, the rendering “bees” is one of the novel, conjectural & highly doubtful suggestions of European scholarship. All the other proofs that are heaped on us are of a like nature & brilliantly flimsy ingenuity, & we end our sceptical scrutiny admiring, but still sceptical. We feel after all that an accumulation of conjectures does not constitute proof and that a single clear & direct substantial statement in one sense or the other would outweigh all these ingenious inferences, these brilliant imaginings. To begin with a hypothesis is always permissible,—it is the usual mode of scientific discovery; but a hypothesis must be supported by facts. To support it by a mass of other hypotheses is to abuse & exceed the permissibility of conjecture in scientific research.

I have thus dwelt on the fragility of the European theory in this introduction because I wish to avoid in the body of the volume the burden of adverse discussion with other theories & rival interpretations. I propose to myself an entirely positive method,—the development of a constructive rival hypothesis, not the disproof of those which hold the field. But, since they do hold the field, I am bound to specify before starting those

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general deficiencies in them which disqualify them at least from prohibiting fresh discussion and shutting out an entirely new point of departure. Possibly Sayana is right and the Vedas are only the hymn-book of a barbarous & meaningless mythological ritual. Possibly, the European theory is more correct and the Vedic religion & myth was of the character of a materialistic Nature worship & the metaphorical, poetical & wholly fanciful personification of heavenly bodies & forces of physical Nature. But neither of these theories is so demonstrably right, that other hypotheses are debarred from appearing and demanding examination. Such a new hypothesis I wish to advance in the present volume. The gods of the Veda are in my view Nature Powers, but Powers at once of moral & of physical Nature, not of physical Nature only; moreover their moral aspect is the substantial part of their physiognomy, the physical though held to be perfectly real & effective, is put forward mainly as a veil, dress or physical type of their psychological being. The ritual of the Veda is a symbolic ritual supposed by those who used it to be by virtue of its symbolism practically effective of both inner & outer results in life & the world. The hymnology of the Veda rests on the ancient theory that speech is in itself both morally & physically creative & effective, the secret executive agent of the divine powers in manifesting & compelling mental & material phenomena. The substance of the Vedic hymns is the record of certain psychological experiences which are the natural results, still attainable & repeatable in our own experience, of an ancient type of Yoga practised certainly in India, practised probably in ancient Greece, Asia Minor & Egypt in prehistoric times. Finally, the language of the Vedas is an ambiguous tongue, with an ambiguity possible only to the looser fluidity belonging to the youth of human speech & deliberately used to veil the deeper psychological meaning of the Riks. I hold that it was the traditional knowledge of this deep religious & psychological character of the Vedas which justified in the eyes of the ancient Indians the high sanctity attached to them & the fixed idea that these were the repositories of an august, divine & hardly attainable truth.

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If this hypothesis were wholly at variance with the facts known to the students of Comparative Religion or the interpretation [on] which it is based not clearly justifiable by sound principles of Philology, it would be an act of gross presumption in the present state of our knowledge to advance it without a preliminary examination of the present results held as proved by modern Philology & by the Study of Comparative Religion. But my hypothesis is entirely consistent with the facts of religious history in this & other countries, entirely reconcilable with a sound method of Comparative Religion, entirely baseable on a strict and rational use of Philology. I have criticised & characterised these branches of research as pseudo-Sciences. But I do not for a moment intend to suggest that their results are to be entirely scouted or that they have not done a great work for the advancement of knowledge. Comparative Philology, for instance, has got rid of a great mass of preexistent rubbish and unsoundness and suggested partly the true scientific method of Philological research, though it seems to me that overingenuity, haste & impatience in following up exclusively certain insufficient clues have prevented an excellent beginning from being rightly & fruitfully pursued. If I cannot attach any real value to the “Science” of Comparative Mythology, yet the study,—not the Science, for we have not yet either the materials or the equipment for a true Science,—the comparative Study of Religions & of religious myths & ancient traditions as a subordinate part of that study is of the utmost use & importance.

The researches of Comparative Religion although they cannot yet constitute a science, should at least follow as far as possible the lines & methods adopted by the physical Sciences, especially of Biology; they should therefore consist mainly, apart from the mere collection of data, first, in the tracing of existing or later forms to their earlier history & origins, if possible, to their embryonic origins and, secondly, in the careful comparison both of the origins & later history of similar forms in different environments. In India [incomplete]

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A Fragment

[.....] - Word(s) lost through damage to the manuscript (at the beginning of a piece, sometimes indicates that a page or pages of the manuscript have been lost).

[.....] of the truth of the Veda.

It is a fact that modern thought—which is not necessarily the last word of human knowledge—has rejected the idea of a revealedWord or an infallible Scripture; but modern thought has rejected many things which a more modern thought is beginning to reaffirm. A Bengali writer of repute has even gone so far as to challenge Dayananda’s sincerity in the very basis and primary idea of all his teachings, apparently with the naive idea that what was to him and the generality of men unbelievable, could not possibly be anything else to a man of undoubted intellectual power. As if it were not precisely by challenging the received ideas of men, the ideas which are mechanically accepted because they are prevalent and have the stamp of a general currency that great and original minds open the door to new truths or restore truths that have been perverted or forgotten. And if the existence of God is once admitted, it surely needs no intellectual insincerity to believe that God can reveal the Truth to man and reveal it in a word of Truth and not in a word that is half truth and half falsehood. The denial rests on the idea that though God exists, He does not interfere in the evolution but allows man to develop the knowledge of the truth for himself and that the word expressing it must, being human speech or writing, be in its very nature fallible. This denial is the concession or rather the surrender which Religion in the present day has made to Science.

But let us leave aside the religious question and look only at the psychological fact.What after all do we mean by revelation? It seems to me that it can be nothing but this; there is to begin with an eternal Truth of things which man has to know and of which all particular truths are [incomplete]

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Mandala One

SUKTA 2

(1) O seeing Master of Life, come; ready are these pressings of the Wine; drink of them, hear our call.

(2) O Master of Life, thy adorers turn in the Words their adoration towards thee; they have pressed out the Wine, they are knower of the Days.

(3) O Master of Life, thy brimming streams move for the giver wide-flowing to the drinking of the Wine.

(4) O Indra and Vayu, here is wine pressed out, come to us with your delights; for you the moon-pourings desire.

(5) O Indra and Vayu, become conscious of our wine-pouring, you who are rich with the plenitude; so, running, come to us.

(6) O Indra and Vayu, come to the perfected offering of the presser of the Wine, swiftly, with right understanding, O Strong Ones.

(7) Mitra of purified discernment I call and Varuna who destroys the adversary, accomplishing together a clear light of the understanding.

(8) By the Truth, O Mitra and Varuna, growing by the Truth, in touch with the Truth you attain to a vast will-force.

(9) Seers, many in your births, dwellers in the wideness,O Mitra and Varuna, you establish for us a judgement effective in its works.

SUKTA 3

(1) O Aswins, drivers of galloping hooves, lords of happiness with your many joys, take delight in our forces of sacrifice.

(2) O Aswins, O Strong Ones, doers of your many deeds, wise of understanding, delight in our Words with your forceful thought.

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(3) O puissant and formidable in your ways, Lords of the journey, mixed are the wine-offerings and cut the sacred grass, come to us.

(4) Come, O Indra of the brilliant light; these wine-offerings are desirous of thee, they are purified in particles and mass.

(5) Come, O Indra, impelled by the thought, driven by the illumined seer, to the words of knowledge of the speaker of the word, the offerer of the Wine.

(6) Come, O Indra, hastening to the words of knowledge, O driver of strong steeds; uphold our delight in the wine offering.

(7) Benignant upholders of seeing man, O all gods, come, givers to the wine-offering of the giver.

(8) O all gods, doers of the work, come in your speed to the wine-offering, like the Cows of Brightness to the stalls of their repose.

(9) May the all gods, who cast not down nor harm, Bringers who have the movement of creative knowledge, accept our sacrifice.

(10) May purifying Saraswati, opulent with her plenitudes, rich in thought, desire our sacrifice.

(11) Impeller of true words, awakener to right thinkings, Saraswati upholds our sacrifice.

(12) Saraswati awakens us by the intuition conscious of theGreat Sea of the Light and illumines all our thoughts.

SUKTA 4

(1) We call day by day for our protection the Maker of perfect forms like a good milch-cow for the milker of the Cows of Light.

(2) Come to our wine-offerings; drink of the wine, O wined-rinker; thou art full of riches and thy ecstasy is a giver of Light.

(3) Then may we know thy most intimate right-thinkings; manifest not beyond us, come.

(4) Come over to Indra the vigorous, the unoverthrown, question

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the illumined in mind who has given to thy friends their desirable boon.

(5) And may the Binders say to us, “Go forth elsewhere also holding in Indra your work of worship.”

(6) And may the enemy peoples call us blessed, O Puissant; may we abide in Indra’s peace.

(7) Bring for the swift this swift glory of the sacrifice that intoxicates the Gods; may it set on his march him who gives rapture to his friends.

(8) Drinking of this, O thou of the hundred works, thou becamest a slayer of the Coverers and thou hast protected the man of plenitude in his plenty.

(9) So we replenish thee in the plenitude of thy plenitude of the plenty, O Indra of the hundred works, for the winning of the Riches.

(10) He who is a great continent of riches and takes us easily over, a friend of the offerer of the wine, to that Indra sing.

SUKTA 5

(1) Come, sit down, sing to Indra, O chant-bearers, friends!

(2) Together when the wine has been pressed, to Indra the multitudinous, master of many desirable things.

(3) He shall come into being in us in our joining to our desire. He for the felicitous treasure, he in the goddess who holds the city, shall come to us with his plenitudes.

(4) In his meeting and shock the enemy ring not in his two bright steeds in the battles; to that Indra sing.

(5) Pure the pressed offerings go to the drinker of the draught that he may quaff, nectar-juices of wine mingled with the curd.

(6) O Indra well-powered to the work, born to the wine-drinking wast thou and at once increased to be the greatest of all.

(7) O Indra who hast joy of speech, let the swift powers of wine enter into thee; let them be a bliss to the wisdom of thy heart.

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(8) Chant and utterance ever increased thee, O lord of a hundred active powers; then thee let our words increase.

(9) Indra has unwasting prosperities and shall get me this thousandfold plenty in which are all masculine strengths.

(10) O Indra who hast joy of speech, let not those who are mortal harm our bodies. Thou art the lord, ward off the stroke.

SUKTA 6

(1) The great bright horse they yoke and stand around him when he moves; the luminous regions are alight in heaven.

(2) His two desirable shining steeds they yoke and stand on two sides in the car, red, violent, bearers of the god.

(3) Thy fighters create the vision of thought for the visionless and form for the formless and with them in their dawning brightness thou wast born.

(4) O again they have come to birth in the womb by the fixed law of their nature holding the sacrificial Name.

(5) Breakers even of what is strong, bringers even of what is in the secret cave, O Indra, thou by them discoverest the trace of the shining ones.

(6) And they are like men that strive after the godhead and words that turn to the thought that discovers treasures and dawn to light in the wake of the great One whom we hear.

(7) Travelling with fearless Indra you desire sight, rapturous, equal in radiance.

(8) The fighter mightily sings the word of light by the faultless troops that lighten on him, the desirable bands of Indra.

(9) Thence come, O pervading divinity, from heaven, where thou art in the luminous world. Our words in him completely shine.

(10) Hence we desire our getting, or in the earth-region of heaven, Indra desire, or in the great mid-world.

SUKTA 7

(1) The chanters chant vastly Indra, Indra the singers of the

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Rik with songs of light; all our words of speech unto Indra dawn.

(2) Indra comes ever inseparably with the two bright steeds and the car yoked by the word, Indra of the thunderbolt is all a golden light.

(3) Indra for far vision made the sun to climb up into heaven when he parted the rock in the hill with the troop of the rays.

(4) O Indra, increase our weal in the plenitudes and the things of thousand fold wealth by thy bold strong fosterings, since thou art strong and bold.

(5) To Indra we call in the matter of the little and the great wealth, the hurler of the thunderbolt our ally against the covering hosts.

(6) Constant giver, Strong One, uncover the moving lid, come unshielded to us.

(7) In march after march rises to the thunderer Indra an ever higher hymn; but I avail not to compose his perfect praise.

(8) As a stately bull comes to the herds, he comes unveiled to the labouring peoples, lord of us in his might.

(9) Indra, one, rules over seeing men and the Gods, rules the five habitations and their peoples.

(10) Indra for men we call to be all around you; ours may he be and absolute.

SUKTA 8

(1) Bring to us, O Indra, for our increase a stable and victorious felicity ever forceful and fullest of lordship,

(2) by which we shall hold back all obstructing things with destruction of confining limit, strengthened (or protected) by thee as thou warrest.

(3) O Indra, by thee protected (or in that strength) we may make to blaze up thickly the force of the lightning and conquer utterly in the battle our enemies.

(4) We by thy armed heroes, we, O Indra, by thee yoked to us in the fight may put forth might in the battle.

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(5) Vast (now) is Indra and very high, may his vastness dwell with the lord of the lightnings and brilliant might like the heaven in its wide-extending.

(6) Those he beareth up who enjoy in their strength with safety of that which they have created or who are illumined and full of understanding.

(7) For he is a gulf that drinks in the Soma utterly even as the sea drinks in the wide waters that have descended from the mountaintops.

(8) So in him is the luminous Vastness rich in its truth and vigorous in its works like a ripe branch to the giver.

(9) So in thee, O Indra, all wide pervadings and increasings become at once full of perception to him who can hold them, to him who gives.

(10) So is the confirming of him and the expressing desirable and to be brought forth by speech,—for Indra to drink the Soma-wine.

SUKTA 9

(1) Come, O Indra, thou takest rapture by all the bodily parts of this Matter, full of the great, setting thyself to it by thy force.

(2) Increase thy strength, and do ye when the nectar is expressed create rapture for Indra the taker of joy, activity for the doer of all actions.

(3) Rejoice, O swift of mood, with praises that awake delight, O thou all-doer; attach thyself to these outpourings.

(4) When thou comest not to them, O Indra, thy voices laugh up to thee, seeking unfulfilled satisfaction to their lover and lord.

(5) Excite entirely,O Indra, that manifold highest ecstasy below,—that Is of thee which is universal being and supreme.

(6) Us too in that, O Indra, wholly excite to bliss; make us full of strong ecstasy and victorious strength, O thou brilliant in steadfast force.

(7) So do thou dispose to us, O Indra, wide knowledge full of

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light, full of substance, in nature of that greatness, enduring all our life unimpaired.

(8) Dispose to us knowledge of the large, a brilliance of utterly forceful steadfastness and, Indra, those rapturous masteries.

(9) Declare ye with your words Indra of the Substance, lord of substance, full of the rik (knowledge); as he goeth we call on him for expansion of our being.

(10) In every pouring of the nectar for capacity, of the large and increaser of the large, for Indra proceeds.

SUKTA 10

(1) Thee the Gayatrins (devatas of mind) chant, the Arkins (also devatas of mind) begin their action; the mind movements, O Shatakratu, strive up by thee as they that climb a trunk.

(2) When one climbeth from plateau to plateau, a rich activity expresses itself, then Indra bringeth the substance of thought into consciousness, he moves a lover (master) with his mate (or vibrates with the force and mastery of his action).¹

(3) Yoke thou thy maned steeds, covering with mastery fill the containing soul, then, O Indra, drinker of the nectar, respond with the Sruti to our words.

(4) Come, answer to our songs of praise, speak them out as they rise, cry out thy response; attach thyself to our mind, O King, O Indra, and increase in us the Yajna.

(5) I form fully the prayer I have to declare towards Indra, the prayer (ishita) that giveth increase, that potent Indra may have ecstasy in our nectar-yieldings and in our friendlinesses (acts of friendship).

(6) Him we desire in comradeship, him in delight, him in strong energy; therefore this puissant Indra in his kindliness hath power to give us his substance (or simply, hath power to distribute to us of his substance).

(7) O Indra, wide and untroubled (or undarkened) success has been won, remove the veil² over those rays, create delight,

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O dweller on the hill.

(8) Over thee the two obstructing firmaments have no power when thou goest stiffly upward (or when thou goest straight); victorious pour down for us on our earths the waters of heaven.

(9) Lend attentive ear and hear my call, now uphold (or heed) my words; O Indra, draw this my song of praise into thy innermost part of the state of Yoga.

(10) We know thee for most supreme in the substantial strengths of being, a hearer of our call; because thou art thus supreme we call to thee for expansion of being strong in stability.

(11) O Indra of the sheaths, drink then the Soma, be steadfast in delight, give us wholly a new being and create for us the Knowledge that preserveth utterly our force.

(12) O delighter in our words, may these our words be all around thee; may all increase follow the increase of our being and all love cling to it.

SUKTA 11

(1) Indra, cleaver of the ocean, all words increase; most rapturous of the blissful; master of being and lord of stable strengths.

(2) In thy friendship, who art stable and strong, we have no fear, O Indra lord of the various light, towards thee we move forward the conqueror unconquered.

(3) The first delights of Indra, his former expandings are not destroyed because for his praisers he collecteth fullness of luminous strength.

(4) He that breaketh the gate, the young, the seer, appeared immeasurable in force, Indra, that holdeth up all action, the thunderer wide-praised.

(5) Thou wert the uncoverer of luminous Vala’s lair, O dweller on the hill; into thee the gods without fear entered forcefully protected (or impelled).

(6) Voiceful with thy ecstasies, O mighty one, I went towards the sea; the doers of action approached (or resorted to me)

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in the knowledge of that delighter in my speech.

(7) By thy containing mights thou camest down to the mighty and containing [    ]; do thou in his revelation fulfilled in completeness lift up their inspirations.

(8) Towards Indra who ruleth in his force our praises yearned, he who hath a thousand delights, ay, they are even more.

SUKTA 13

(1) When thou hast been increased to thy height, bring for us the gods, O Agni, to me who hold ready the offering, O priest of the sacrifice, O purifier and apply thyself to thy work.

(2) O son of force, honey-sweet do thou make the yajna to the gods for us today, O seer, that manifestation may be.

(3) I call here in this yajna on the beloved, the strong expresser of things, the honey-tongued maker of the oblation.

(4) O Agni, bring, adored, the gods in a car of utter ease; thou art the thinker, the beneficent, the priest of the oblation.

(5) Strew the flame without a break, O ye wise of heart, the flame with shining back, where the vision of immortality has been seen.

(6) Let the doors swing apart, the goddesses that conceal the force that grows by Truth, today at least and for the sacrificial act.

(7) To night and dawn in this yajna I call, the clear of eye, I sit beside this our flame.

(8) On them, the bright of tongue I call, the priestesses, goddesses, seers; may they conduct this yajna of ours.

(9) May Ila, Saraswati and Mahi, the three goddesses born of the sphere of delight sit unfailingly beside our flame.

(10) I call here Twastha supreme whose shape is the world; may he be to us absolute and pure.

(11) Let down, O god master of the forest, the oblation for the gods; let the giver get his awakening of soul.

(12) Swaha (O Shakti), perform the yajna to Indra in the house of the master of the yajna. Thither I call the gods.

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SUKTA 15

(1) O Indra, drink according to the law of truth the Soma wine; let the nectar-sweetnesses enter into thee, rapturous, that have there their home.

(2) O Maruts, drink according to the truth, purify the yajna by the process of purification for ye are steadfast and very bold.

(3) About the yajna utter for us thy cry, active and exhilarated drink thou by the truth for thou art the disposer of delight.

(4) O Agni, bring hither the gods, make them to sit in the three wombs, surround all and drink by the truth.

(5) O Indra, drink thou the Soma of the soul’s bliss according to the truths of things, for it is thy friendship that never sinks.

(6) Do you, O Mitra and Varuna whose function it is to uphold Daksha [    ], enjoy the yajna by the truth.

(7) For the rich in substance the lord of substance laden-handed in the sacrifice propitiateth the god in the yajnas.

(8) May the lord of substance give to us the riches of which ’tis told; for these we desire in the gods.

(9) The lord of substance would drink, make the offering and stand forward, be ye subject to the laws of truth by the process of [incomplete]

SUKTA 18

(1) O Master of the Soul, make Kakshivan son of Usijas a sweet soul and a good fighter.

(2) May he who is bold and impetuous, who slayeth all unfriendly things, the knower of substance of being, the increaser of fullness cleave to us, he who is strong and swift.

(3) Let not the aspiration and the eagerness of mortal man in his struggle perish in us, O master of the soul, protect us (or let not slaughter and injury etc).

(4) That hero smiteth and is not hurt, whom Indra and Brahmanaspati and Soma befriend, a mortal man.

(5) Him mortal, O Brahmanaspati, let Soma protect from harm

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and Indra, both auspicious grown.

(6) I have laboured towards the wondrous master of the house, the beloved, the desired of Indra, for steadfastness in weal I have laboured and for capacity of soul.

(7) He without whom the yajna cometh not to fulfilment, even of the man of discerning heart, he hath power over the yoga of the movements of the understanding.

(8) He confirms the offering of the oblation, he carries forward the work of the sacrifice, by the priest of the offering he moves with the gods.

(9) I saw One strong of aspiration, utterly audacious, wide and expanding besieging as it were the seats of heaven.

SUKTA 24

(1) Of whom shall we meditate, of which of the immortals, the divine and delightful name; who shall give us back for our higher being in the vastness so that I may see my Father and see my Mother?

(2) Of Agni first of the Immortals let us meditate the divine and delightful name; he shall give us back for our higher being in the vastness and I shall see my Father and see my Mother.

(3) O God creator, around thee, the master of things supreme, we desire a perpetual enjoyment;

(4) for whatever enjoyment before thus near to thee, I was free from disliking, I held it in both my hands.

(5) May we enjoy by thee when thou takest thy joy and under thy protection, so I may reach the very head of felicity.

(6) Neither thy kingliness nor thy force nor thy passion nor thy wide manifestation could these attain though they exercise mastery, neither these waters that flow unsleeping nor they who measure the might of the stormblast.

(7) In the bottomless abyss Varuna the King, of purified discernment, set his lofty pillar of delight and the lowest depths of these were raised high above. May my perceptions be taken deep within.

(8) For King Varuna made for the Sun a wide path that he might

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follow him; there where there is no path, he made places for him at every step to set his feet and he forbade those who send their arrows into the heart.

(9) Thou hast a hundred messengers of healing, O King, yea, a thousand! Mayst thou have right understanding profound and wide. Fend off far from us by thy superior Powers all wasteful harm and loosen from us whatsoever sin has been done.

(10) Lo these stars that are set on high and become visible at night, whence do they shine out on us? The moon cometh at night declaring in his lustre the unbending laws of Varuna.

(11) Therefore I approach adoring thee with my soul, therefore he that doeth sacrifice, getteth him control by his offerings: disregard me not, O vast-aspiring Varuna, but here awake; steal not from us our life.

(12) This it was they told me by day and this it was they told me by night; lo, this my perceiving mind made it leap for my heart’s acceptance. May King Varuna release us, to whom Shunahshepa has called in his fear of the wrathful and violent Being.

(13) Shunahshepa in fear of the Being wrathful and violent and bound against the Sun (? O son of Aditi) to the three pillars of the sacrifice, him may Varuna the King release, may the Knower unvanquished loose from him his bonds.

(14) We deprecate thy disregard, O Varuna, by submissions and sacrifices and offerings; dwell thou in us, O strong God, be the awakener of our souls, and destroy from us the sins that have been done.

(15) Cleave and cast upward, O Varuna, the higher cord, cleave downward the middle, cleave to either side the lower; then shall we sinless in thy law, O son of the supreme Nature, abide in it for a higher existence.

SUKTA 25

(1) Whatsoever thy peoples, whatever their nature, thou,OGod Varuna, measurest out to them accordingly in sky and sky

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the law of their nature.

(2) Let not thy delight in us be for the mortal piercing of him who is heedless nor for wrath against him who is exultant.

(3) We with the words of the mantra, O Varuna, limit the mind in thee for gentleness, as the charioteer checks his horse in its gallop.

(4) For they who house with me are hastening up for the sacrifice, free from passions, like birds that fly to their nests.

(5) When shall we mould for gentleness—since wide is the vision in him—this strong Varuna in whom warlike strength is the force of his nature?

(6) Therefore do ye two enjoy his equal mood and like harpers tune yourselves in yoga to the Giver whose law of being is constancy,—

(7) he who knows the path of the birds as they wing through the air and he knows the ships that go down to the sea;

(8) he knows the twelve months with their offspring, because his nature is constancy to law, he knows him who is born into the world,

(9) knows the action of the vast rushing and mighty wind and knows those who are seated above.

(10) Varuna, because his nature is steadfastness, has taken his seat in all lordships and is very mighty for Empire.

(11) Therefore he sees with understanding all wonderful things; he looks with knowledge on the things that have been done and on those that are yet to be accomplished.

(12) The son of Aditi, the strong One who has all mightinesses set us on the good path, he carried our lives across safe to their goal.

(13) Varuna weareth his golden robe and hath taken upon him a form and many clearnesses have taken their seats around.

(14) Him the hurters cannot hurt, nor they who do injury to the peoples,—they are not able to measure with themselves the God.

(15) He that has established no incomplete success in mental beings, can well have established it in our deeper selves.

(16) Like cows that troop to their pastures, thoughts crowd to

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me desiring the wide-visioned Varuna.

(17) Ye two must now declare again where ye have stored for me the sweet wine, for as the offerer of Sacrifice thou, O Varuna, eatest of all pleasantness.

(18) O ye my words, do ye cling to the all-seeing and beautiful in his beautiful and spacious car.

(19) Even today, O Varuna, hear this my call and take me into thy grace, for to thee for protection I gaze.

(20) O thou who art able to contain the universe, thou art ruler over earth and heaven; therefore in thy mastery lend us thy ear.

(21) Loose upward the upper cord that binds us, cleave to either side the middle, downward cleave the lower cords that we may live.

SUKTA 28

(1) Where the stone wide-bottomed is upturned for the distilling, there may the mortar,O Indra, preserve of the distillings of the Pestle.

(2) Where, as it seemeth, two buttocks are made a support for the distilling, there may the mortar, O Indra, preserve of the distillings of the Pestle.

(3) Where a woman learns the fall to the stroke and the fall away from the stroke, may the mortar, O Indra, preserve of the distillings of the Pestle.

(4) [Not translated.]

(5) Whensoever thou, O Pestle, art put to thy work in house and house, speak here with deepest force like the drum of conquering hosts.

(6) Since for thee, O lord of the woodland (of delight), the wind blows in its ways before thee, then do thou distil for Indra’s drinking the Soma juice.

(7) She who was firmest in enduring strength was put to the action, for there were two that were high and wielded by one who had great vigour, they ranged like horses that feed in their pastures.

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(8) Today may these two lords of the woodland (of delight), impetuous and wielded by impetuous distillers, express for Indra the honeyed juice.

(9) Fill in here the Soma that is left from the dish; in thy purity pour it forth and fill us with light to the very skin.

SUKTA 29

(1) Thou who art True, who drinkest the Soma, whatsoever thou seemest as if thou wert not to express, do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who hast in Force thy fullness!

(2) O Shiprin(?), O master of plenties,O dweller in Power, thine is the giving; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who hast in Force thy fullness.

(3) Cast into sleep the two who are false seers, let them slumber without awaking; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who in Force hast thy fullness.

(4) Let these undelights fall into sleep, O hero, let delights be awakened; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who hast in Force thy fullness.

(5) Crush thou the Ass, O Indra, who urges us with this spirit of evil; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who in Force hast thy fullness.

(6) By that whirling one the wind speeds (falls) far from our place of delight; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who hast in Force thy fullness.

(7) Slay all that cries out around against us, smite down every breaker of our enjoying; do thou yet manifest for us, O Indra, in lustres, in swift enjoyings, in happinesses, in strengths, O thou who hast in Force thy fullness.

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SUKTA 30

(1) We foster for you, as one fattens a ram, Indra the strong slayer; sprinkle him with nectarous rain till he reaches his utmost fullness.

(2) He who is alike the tranquillity of the pure and the force of the strong enjoyers, comes upon us as if pouring from above.

(3) For his forceful delight thus in one’s inner being the sea maintaineth as it were its full expanse.

(4) He is here with thee, and thou comest straying back like a dove to the home of its young; that is the word which is given us for our mind’s comprehension.

(5) Master of ecstasies, strong one who upbearest the Word, may the hymn of praise to thee, since thou art even such, become a wide force of truth.

(6) Stand on high for the expansion of our being, in firm plenty of substance, O Shatakratu; may we express it also in other gods.

(7) O friends, we call for our expansions on Indra who grows fuller of force in every getting of fresh being and in every holding of substance gained.

(8) Surely he comes to us whenever he hears, with mighty expansions, with stores of substance to our call.

(9) I call to his ancient house the strong one who is first in force, to whom even of old, when master of thee, I call.

(10) Therefore we, blessed with all boons, pray to thee (or get control of thee), O widely called, O friend of men, O full of substance for thy lovers.

(11) O Thunderer, O friend, thou who drinkest the Soma of our loves when enraptured they have drunk!

(12) Even so may this be, drinker of Soma, friend, thunderer, so do thou as is done in the heat of thee for the sacrifice.

(13) May our ecstasied swiftnesses that intoxicate with fulfilment, be full of substance of force, that we may mount on the crests of the ecstasy and rejoice.

(14) [Not translated.]

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(15) [Not translated.]

(16) Ever hath Indra by his forces far spreading, high shouting, breathing passionately, won riches for us. He has given us a car of great brightness and he preserves, ’tis for secure enjoyment that he gives.

(17) O Aswins, lo she that is full of strong enjoying, by her in her brilliance do ye come, givers of that which is luminous and full of golden light.

(18) O bounteous givers, your car immortal that is equally yoked, moveth over the sea, O ye Aswins.

(19) Ye have driven, labouring, a wheel of your car over the head of the intangible, the other goeth through the heavens.

(20) O Usha, beloved of [    ] who is the mortal that has enjoyed thee, O deathless one? to whom journeyest thou, O wide-shining Dawn?

(21) For we have filled ourselves with the thought of thee from our last depths to our highest summits, O high-raptured, O richly hued, O rosy Dawn.

(22) Come to us with these plenties, O daughter of heaven, contain for us the energy (of the world).

SUKTA 51

(1) Take rapture by your chants in the Ram of the word of light, in the sea of treasure, rapture of Indra of the many callings; for in him the things of our humanity range freely like the heavens. That to enjoy, sing the word of light to this greatest seer.

(2) His prosperings take joy in him when he gets his fair access and fills the middle world and is surrounded by his strengths. The Ribhus, skilful minds, ascend into Indra when he pours the intoxication of his delight. The swift word of Truth climbs on to the hundred-powered God.

(3) To the Angiras seers thou hast uncovered the pen of the cows and wast to Atri the finder of the path amid the hundred doors and even in sleep thou broughtest to Vimada the treasure when thou madest dance thy adamant bolt in the

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battle while he shone with light.

(4) And thou hast uncovered the veiling lids of the waters and held on the mountain the bountiful treasure. O Indra, when thou slewest the Coverer, the Serpent by thy might, then thou madest the Sun to climb up into heaven for sight.

(5) And thou drovest out by thy powers of creative knowledge the makers of false knowledge who give their offerings into sleep. O strong god-mind, thou hast broken the cities of Pipru and made Rijiswan to advance in thy slayings of the Destroyers.

(6) And thou hast increased Kutsa in thy slayings of Sushna and put Shambara into the power of the King in whom the Ray is a guest, and trampled with thy foot Arbuda for all his hugeness. Yea, thou art born eternally for the slaying of the Destroyer.

(7) In thee all strength combined is housed and thy mind of joy exults for the drinking of the nectar-wine. The thunderbolt is now known to us and placed in thy arms; shear down all the strengths of the foe.

(8) Distinguish in thy knowledge the Aryans from the Destroyers, teach us, make subject to the strewer of thy seat of session those who do not thy works. Be mighty in power and an impeller of the doer of sacrifice. All those deeds of thine I desire in our drinkings together of the intoxication.

(9) Indra ranges subjecting to the follower after his works those who deviate from them, casting down by those who grow to him all who turn not to him in their being. Vamra, chanting of him increased and increasing and arriving to Heaven, smote asunder the limiting walls.

(10) When Ushanas carves into shape thy force by his force, then thy strength besieges with its might earth and heaven. O strong god-mind, thou growest filled, and the mind-yoked horses of the Breath of life bear thee to the inspired knowledge.

(11) When Indra takes rapture along with Ushanas son of the seer, he mounts behind a happy and still happier pair.Mightily he loosed out the waters to their movement in a flood

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and hurled asunder the fortified cities of Shushna.

(12) On thy car thou mountest up in the drinkings of the strong winegod offered to thee by the son of Sharyata in which thou hast rapture. O Indra, when thou hast thy desire [of] the wine we press for thee, then thou ascendest to a glory without enemies in heaven.

(13) To Kakshivan pressing the wine and seeking the word thou gavest Vrichaya, the little to the great one, and becamest the mare of the stallion, O strong in power to works. All those deeds of thine must find expression in our wine-offering.

(14) Indra is lodged in the purification of the man of good thoughts. He is a chant among the Pajras, a pillar at the gate of the house, Indra dwells with us as the giver of our felicity. He is a seeker of the horses and the kine and the chariots and the treasure.

(15) This is the word of adoration that has been made for the Bull, for the Self-King, for the Strong whose force is of the truth. O Indra, in this strength may we abide in thy bliss, all the heroes with us and the happy illumined seers.

SUKTA 52

(1) O greaten well this Ram who discovers the sun-world. His hundred powers perfect in birth speed together on the way. Indra may I set travelling to me for my increase by my clear cuttings of speech like a galloping horse of plenty and a swiftly arriving chariot.

(2) He is like a mountain and unfallen in his upholdings. He brings a hundredfold thriving and increases in his strengths, when he has slain Vitra the Coverer where he covers with his siege the Waters and forces downward the streams rejoicing in his nectar food.

(3) He is the gate in the gated house, in the teat of plenitude, a blissful foundation increased with the intoxication of their delight by the thinkers. To Indra of greatest lavish giving by

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my thought I call in my desire for perfect works. Now is he satisfied and full of my nectar food.

[Incomplete]

SUKTA 56

(1) Lo, he flings himself on the many bowls of that wine feasting on it, like a galloper that mounts its mate. One turns hither his chariot of golden light, of shaping knowledge, to which his two shining powers are yoked and one makes his vastness to drink of the all-discerning delight.

(2) The expressions of our thought led by guiding impulsions (or, submitting to him their impulsions) range all over this god-mind and seek to possess him as men in their wandering range an ocean. Even as men who would take delight ascend a hill, so climb by thy luminous energy on to this lord of discernment, this force of the knowledge.

(3) He is the mighty one who breaks through to the goal; in his virile action his force of light unclouded by the battle dust blazes out from very speed like a flame on a mountain, his force by which in those who cast their being into his he in his rapture of the wine, iron, hard to hold, binds back from working the evil strength in us with its illusions as if in a cord.

(4) When the divine strength that thou hast been increasing in thee embraces firmly the God-mind for its expansion as the Sun embraces the Dawn, then he who dispels with his violent light-force the darkness drives vast the dust of battle as he cries aloud in his warring.

(5) Thus he crosses the vital plane that now unmovingly supports the mental heavens and he stands widely exceeding it; rejoicing in the rapture, in the raining down on us of the world of Light, O God-Mind, thou slayest the Coverer, thou forcest out the flood of those waters.

(6) Thy vastness in the seats of our earth,OGod-Mind, upholds by its energy the vital world that upholds the heaven of

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mind. Thou in the rapture of the outpressed wine hast set the heavenly waters flowing, thou hast broken wholly the Coverer’s stony walls.

SUKTA 61

(1) To him, to him, to the strong, to the swift I send my chant like a pleasant offering to the mighty One, to Indra my sacred words of richest opulence, to the equal in the stanza of illumination, to the irresistible Ray.

(2) To him, to him I give like a pleasant offering and bring a song of power that is a clearness cut in the siege and encumbrance; my thoughts are rubbed bright for Indra their first and original spouse by my heart and sense and thinking mind.

(3) To him I bear in my mouth that highest song of power which wins the sun-world’s light, that I may increase this greatest seer by the pure utterances of my clear-cut thoughts.

(4) To him I send my song speeding to get me his strength as a wheel-wright sends a chariot he has made, I send my words, clear cuttings, to Indra who upholds man’s words, I send my all-pervading song to the Wise One.

(5) To him, to Indra I make my song of light to shine with the offering flame and make it like a horse for his chariot by my desire for inspired knowing, and to adore the hero who is a house of gifts, to adore the render of the sealed cities who brings out the inspired knowledge.

(6) For him Twastri the Maker shaped his thunderbolt that is of the sun-world and is mighty for works and gave it to him for battle. He found out by it the vital places even of the Coverer. Speed was of him and speed was of his weapon. He was master and illimitable in works.

(7) His, his, this great builder’s, was the sacrifice of the wine in which Vishnu drank the draught, the delicious food. Vishnu in his mighty violence took by force all that was made ready and shooting his arrows pierced the Boar across the mountain.

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(8) To him, to him, to Indra, the Women, the wives of the gods, have woven a song of light in the slaying of the Serpent. He put on for his robe the wide earth and heaven, but they could not encircle his greatness.

(9) His was the greatness that overflowed around the earth and the heaven and the world of air. Indra, self-king in the house who brings all things to expression, drove, a strong and splendid fighter, to the battle.

(10) His was the strength against which the strength of the Serpent fought, but Indra clove him with his thunder and he with the mind of knowledge let loose the rivers like imprisoned herds to come to us and give the inspired wisdom.

(11) His was the keen blaze with which the rivers played when he worked with his lightning bolt all about them. He who makes man a lord and king, giving to the giver, a swift striker through impediments, made a ford for Turviti, the swift traveller.

(12) Against him, against him the Coverer bring hastily thy thunderbolt, be a master of things and illimitable in work. Cleave open sideways the channels as if the joints of the shining Cow and send to range the floods of the waters.

(13) His deeds declare, the ancient deeds of the swift One, a new man with thy words, his acts when hurling his weapons for the battle, charging in the fight, he drives out the foemen.

(14) In fear of him, the fixed mountains and heaven and earth shake when he is about to be born. Nodha hymns the cherishing power of the happy god and grows at once in his being to puissance.

(15) To him that gift of these was given and he took joy, the one master of much riches. Indra carried forward on the way the White One giver of the Wine when he strove in rivalry with the Sun, Surya of the team of swift horses.

(16) Thus have the Gotamas made for thee, O Indra, a cut clearness, the sacred words that yoke thy bright horses. Place in them then the thought that gives shape to universal things. At dawn may he come soon rich with thought.

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SUKTA 62

(1) We are thinking a hymn of strength, a hymn of power to the great One when he puts forth his strength, to the lover of our words, even as did the Angiras seers. Praising him with clear cuttings of our speech we would sing a song of illumination to the master of the words of light, to the strong god whom on all sides we hear.

(2) Bring for the great One a great adoration, the Sama of power for the god when he puts forth his strength, by which our ancient fathers the Angirases knew the foothold tracks and singing the word of light found the herd of the rays.

(3) In the sacrifice of Indra and the Angirases Sarama discovered a foundation for the Son, Brihaspati broke the rock of the mountain and discovered the herd of the rays and the shining cattle lowed and the Strong Ones cried out with them.

(4) He of the sun-world by stanzaed hymn and perfect verse with the seven nine-rayed sages rent by his cry the mountain; O Indra, O Puissant, thou with the ten-rayed travellers of the path torest Vala into pieces by thy cry.

(5) Hymned by the Angirases, O potent god, thou laidst open the darkness by the Dawn and the Sun and the herd of the rays. O Indra, thou madest wide the tops of earth and proppedst up the upper shining world of heaven.

(6) This is the most worshipful and fairest work of the potent god that he increased in the crooked declivity the four rivers of the upper world whose streams are honey wine.

(7) Ayasya by the words of light that hymned him uncovered and saw as two the eternal goddesses who lie in one lair; then Indra, a doer of mighty works, held earth and heaven in the highest ether as the Lord of Joy holds his two wives.

(8) Two young goddesses of differing forms who are ever reborn, circle eternally to each other by their own motions about earth and heaven, Night with her dark, Dawn with her shining limbs.

(9) An eternal comradeship held with them the Son of Strength, the god of great deeds, labouring in perfect works. Even

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in the unripe cows of light thou settest, O Indra, by thy thought, a ripe, even in the black and the dun a shining milk.

(10) And eternally the immortal rivers who dwell in one house run not dry, but keep by their strengths his many thousand workings; sisters, they are to him like wives who are mothers and serve him with their works and he deviates not from his labour.

(11) That which is eternal seeking, seeking the riches, O potent god, our new thoughts run to thee with adoration, with songs of light. Longing for thee as for a longing husband our minds of thought touch thee, O mighty One.

(12) And eternally thy felicitous riches lie in thy arm of light and are not wasted nor destroyed, O potent god. O Indra, thou hast light, thou hast will, thou art a wise thinker. Master of powers, teach us of them by thy powers.

(13) And for thy eternity of being, O Indra, Nodha the Gautama has carved a sacred word for the yoking of thy bright horses and for thy good leading of us, O mighty One. At dawn may he quickly come rich with thought.

SUKTA 63

(1) Great art thou, O Indra, who by thy mights even whilst thou wast being born, founded earth and heaven in thy strength when all hugest things, even to the fixed mountains, quivered in their fear like rays of light.

(2) O Indra, when thou comest to thy two bright horses which have each its different action, thy adorer sets the thunderbolt in thy arms. O lord of the undeviating will who hearest man’s many callings, thou drivest out by it the unfriendly people and castest down their many cities.

(3) Thou, thou, art true, O Indra, in thy being, and violent assailant of those destroyers, thou art he who dwells in the wideness, thou art a soul of power, thou art one who overcomes. Thou wast with young and luminous Kutsa and smotest Sushna in the strength, in the satisfaction, in the summit.

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(4) Thou, O Indra, thou art the comrade who gavest that impulse, when, O puissant in works, thou didst crush Vritra the Coverer, when, O hero of the puissant mind, with the powers that go beyond thou easily overcamest and hewedst the Destroyers to pieces in the house.

(5) Thou, O Indra, when mortals desire not to remain even in the strong fortress, make that movement free from harms. Uncover the regions to our warhorse, break like thick clouds the unfriendly people.

(6) Thee, O Indra, thee men call in the battle, in the getting of the floods, in the streaming bounty of the sun-world. O lord of thy law of nature, let this increasing in thy plenties be the movement we shall get to through the clash of the battle.

(7) Thou, thou, O Indra, Thunderer, warring brokest for Purukutsa the seven cities. When easily thou hadst cut out the seat of his session for Sudas, then didst thou turn, O King, evil of suffering into good of bliss for the Puru.

(8) Thou, thou, O Indra, O pervading godhead, increasedst for us like the waters that rich and varied moving force by which, O hero, thou extendest to us thy self and thy energy and makest it to stream out in every way.

(9) A song has been made for thee, O Indra, by the Gautamas, and the sacred words spoken towards thee with thy two bright horses; bring us plenty of thy riches in a beautiful form. At dawn may he quickly come rich with thought.

SUKTA 64

(1) O Nodhas, bring a clear-cut song to the puissant host, the excellent in sacrifice, creators and ordainers, the Maruts. I make to shine out as if flowing waters, a thinker skilful-handed with my mind, the words that come into being in me in the births of knowledge.

(2) They are born, the swift Bulls of heaven, Rudra’s strong smiters, the sinless Mighty Ones. Purifying are they and pure and bright like Suns, dire bodies like rushing warriors.

(3) Young, unageing, Rudras, violent ones, slayers, of those take

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not joy, irresistible rays, they drive like moving mountains and make all the fixed worlds of earth and heaven to move by their might.

(4) They shine out with rich and varied lustres to make themselves a body. On their breasts they have cast golden ornaments for the delight of beauty. Burning lances are on their shoulders. Together by the law of their nature are born the strong ones of heaven.

(5) Vehemently rushing they come, makers of men into lords and kings, destroyers of all who would injure, make by their strengths winds and lightnings, press the teats of heaven, stream violently its torrents and speeding everywhere feed the earth with milk.

(6) The Maruts, great givers who are born to us in the coming of knowledge, feed the waters and make them a milk full of the brightness of clarified butter and lead about the master of plenty like a galloping horse that he may rain his bounty and milk the loud unwasting fountain.

(7) Great ones, full of creative knowledge and rich with manifold lustres, moving swiftly, strong in your own strength like hills, Maruts, you devour like the trunked beasts the pleasant woods of earth when you have yoked your strength to the ruddy herd of the lightnings.

(8) Wise of mind they roar aloud like lions, omniscient and like good moulders who knead all into forms, gladdeners of the nights with dappled mares and lances, when beset and stayed, python-passioned in their might.

(9) In the beauty of your hosts you speak to earth and heaven. You cleave to men, heroes python-passioned in your might. A force stands in the bodies of your chariots, O Maruts, that is like lightning and like a might that has vision.

(10) Omniscient are the Strong Ones and dwellers with the riches, inseparably joined to strengths and overflowing in might, shooters who hold the javelin in their two hands of light, infinite strengths with daggers of puissance.

(11) Increasing the waters the Maruts with their blazing lances grind in their ascent the mountains with their golden wheels

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like travellers breasting their path, fighters and marchers moving in their own motion, who make havoc and disturb all firm established things.

(12) We sing with invocation the blazing, purifying, enjoying, all-seeing children of the Violent One. Cling for the glory to the strong and puissant Marut host who move with a straight force crossing the middle world.

(13) Soon that mortal whom ye have cherished, O Maruts, takes his place in might above all men. He gets with his war-horses and his strong ones wealth and plenty and dwells in a wise will that meets the question and increases.

(14) Put in the masters of riches, O ye Maruts, a luminous strength active in works and hard to wound in the battles and may we increase for a hundred winters the Son and offspring of our body who is all-seeing and sung by the word and the [    ]

(15) Now set in us, O ye Maruts, the firm hundredfold and thousandfold treasure full of hero strengths that puts forth its might and overcomes in the movement of the path. At dawn may he quickly come rich in thought.

SUKTA 80

(1) Rightly in the intoxicating Soma-wine the Priest of the word has made thy increase. O most puissant Thunderer, by thy might thou hast expelled from the earth the Serpent, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(2) That intoxicating Soma which was pressed, which was brought by the Falcon, had made thee drunk with rapture, by which thou smotest the Coverer out from the waters, O Thunderer, by thy might, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(3) Advance, approach, be violent; thy thunderbolt cannot be controlled. O Indra, for thy puissance is a god-might, slay the Coverer, conquer the waters, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(4) [Not translated.]

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(5) Indra offended assails the height of Vritra where he lashes his body, and smites him with the thunderbolt, urging the waters to their flow, singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.

(6) On the height he smites him with his hundred-jointed thunderbolt; Indra, intoxicated with the Soma food, desires a path of travel for his comrades, singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.

(7) O Indra, master of the thunder-stone, thunderer, for thee an energy that cannot be moved, when thou slewest by thy wisdom that cunning one, the Beast, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(8) Thy thunderbolts set themselves abroad along the ninety rivers; great is thy energy; strength is established in thy two arms,—singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(9) The Thousand sang the word of illumination, the Twenty affirmed him, the Hundred moved in his wake, to Indra the Word was lifted up,—singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.

(10) Indra smote out of him his energy, he slew force with force; great is his virile strength; when he had slain Vritra, he released the waters, singing the song of illumination in the law of his self-empire.

(11) Lo, these two great goddesses tremble with fear to thy wrath, when, O Indra, O Thunderer, by thy might, having the Maruts in thee, thou hast smitten the Coverer, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(12) Vritra terrified thee not by his shaking, nor by his thundering; the adamant thousand-lustred thunderbolt sped against him—singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(13) When thou warredst with thy thunderbolt against Vritra and his bolt, when, O Indra, thou wouldst slay the Python, thy puissance became a fixed mass in heaven. Singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(14) When, O master of the Stone, all that moves and all that is

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stable trembles with thy shouting, Twashtri even is shaken with fear before thy passion. Singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(15) We cannot hold him by our thought; who is above Indra in energy? The Gods have set in him god-might and will and puissances. Singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

(16) The thought to which Atharvan and our father Manu and Dadhichi gave shape,—in him the Words and the Utterances meet together as of old in Indra. Singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.

SUKTA 81

(1) Indra, the Slayer of the Enemy,³ has increased by his men⁴ for the intoxication, for the puissance and him we call in the great courses of battle and him in the little. May he foster us in the fullnesses of plenty.⁵

(2) O Hero, thou art our Lord of hosts⁶ and thou art the giver over to us of the much, and thou art the increaser even of the little;⁷ and for the sacrificer who offers the Soma-wine thou bringest out (givest) thy much substance.

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(3) When the courses of battle arise, the wealth is held for the violent One.⁸ Yoke thy bright horses that drip the intoxication.⁹ Whom shalt thou slay? Whom shalt thou enthrone in riches of thy substance? O Indra, us shalt thou enthrone in riches of thy substance.

(4) The Terrible, who is great by will of action according to his law of nature,¹⁰ has increased his puissance. The swift One of the mighty jaws who drives his bright horses has taken in his hands his adamant thunderbolt to win the glory.

(5) He has filled the earthly region¹¹ and made firm the luminous worlds¹² in heaven; there is none like thee, O Indra; not one is born equal to thee nor shall be born. Thou hast carried beyond all that is¹³ thy course.

(6) May Indra, our Warrior who gives over the mortal enjoyment to the giver of sacrifice, win for us his gifts. Divide thy much riches of substance! let me have joy of thy opulence!

(7) He who is the Straight in will has given us in each intoxication of the wine the herds of his shining cattle. Collect for us the many hundreds of thy substance with both thy hands

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full, and intensify and bring the felicities of thy riches.

(8) Make with us the intoxication of the Soma-juice, O hero, for strength, for opulence; for we know thee to be of a manifold substance of riches and we cast loose towards thee our desires; become the fosterer of our being.

(9) Thine are these beings born, O Indra, who increase every desirable thing; for thou hast seen within the possession of knowledge¹⁴ of those who give not to thee, and thou art a noble warrior; bring to us the possession they guard.

SUKTA 90

(1) By a straight leading may Varuna lead us and Mitra with the knowledge and Aryaman, in harmony with the gods.

(2) For they are the masters of substance who become in us substance of being and they are the illimitable by their vastnesses and they maintain the laws of their activity in the universality of forces.

(3) May they work out for us peace, immortals for us who are mortals, repelling inimical powers.

(4) May Indra and the Maruts discern for us paths for our easy progress and Pushan and Bhaga, gods desirable.

(5) Yea and ye, O Pushan, Vishnu and thou who movest in all motions, make for us our thoughts such as are led by the rays of illumination and full of happiness.

(6) Sweetness in the winds of life to him who grows in the Truth, sweet for him the rivers of being; sweet for us be its growths.

(7) A sweetness be our night and our dawnings, full of sweetness the terrestrial kingdom; a sweetness be to us Heaven, our father.

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(8) Full of sweetness to us be the Lord of Pleasure, full of sweetness Surya, the luminous; sweet become to us the herds of his rays.

(9) O Mitra, be peace in us, peace Varuna, peace in us Aryaman; peace Indra and Brihaspati, peace Vishnu wide-striding.

SUKTA 91

(1) Thou, O Soma, becomest subject to perception by the intelligence; thou leadest us along a path of utter straightness. By thy leadings our fathers, O lord of delight, were established in thought and enjoyed ecstasy in the gods.

(2) Thou,O Soma, by our willings becomest strong in will, thou by our discernments perfect in discernment and universal in knowledge, thou by our strong abundances strong and abundant in thy might, thou by our illuminations luminous and of puissant vision.

(3) Thine now are the activities of Varuna the King, vast and profound, O Soma, is thy seat; pure art thou and delightful like Mitra; thou art powerful like Aryaman, O Soma.

(4) The seats that are thine in our heaven and on our earth and on the hills of being and in its growths and in its waters, in those, even all of them, do thou, well-minded and free from wrath, receive to thyself, O Soma, O King, our offerings.

(5) Thou, O Soma, art master of Being; King art thou and slayer of the Coverer; thou a blissful power of Will.

(6) And thou, O Soma, hast control to make us live, that we should not die,—the lord of pleasure who has delight in the song of his affirmation.

(7) Thou, O Soma, both for him who is already great in the Truth and for him who is young in the Truth, establishest Bhaga in joyaunce that has power for life.

(8) Keep us, O Soma, O King, from all that seeks to become evil in us; let not him come to hurt who is a friend of such a one as thou.

(9) O Soma, with those thy increasings that are creative of the Bliss for the giver, become the preserver of our being.

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(10) Come to us taking pleasure in this sacrifice, in thisWord; be in us, O Soma, for our increase.

(11) We, O Soma, know how to find expression and we increase thee by our Words; then with a gentle kindness enter into us.

(12) Become in us, O Soma, a distender of luminous movements, a slayer of unfriendly powers, a finder of substance, an increaser of growth, a perfect friend.

(13) O Soma, take thy delight in our hearts as the Herds in their pastures, as the Man in his own dwelling.

(14) He, O Soma, who, a mortal, has delight in thy friendship, a god’s, to him cleaveth the discerning Seer of things.

(15) Keep us far from the attack that divides, O Soma, protect us from the evil; flourish in us, a friend taking the ease of his perfect pleasure.

(16) Yea, nourish thyself in us, let strong abundance come together to thee from all things and do thou become in the meeting-place of that plenty.

(17) Grow full in us with all thy rays, O Soma of the complete ecstasy; be in us full of perfect inspirations that we may grow.

(18) Together may they come, thy nourishments, and thy plenties and the abundances of thy strength while thou overcomest the attack that would obstruct; so growing in fullness towards Immortality, O Soma, hold for us the highest inspirations in the heaven of the mind.

(19) Those thy seats that they effect by sacrifice by the offering, may they all be encompassed by the action of the sacrifice;¹⁵ distending the movement, pushing ever onward, perfect in energy, slaying all weakness travel forward to the gates of the mansions, O Soma.

(20) Soma giveth the fostering Cow, Soma giveth the swift Steed, Soma giveth the active Hero within who holdeth the seat, who winneth the knowledge, who is fit for the Wisdom,

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who hath the inspiration of the Father,—these he giveth to the man who divideth for him the offering.

(21) Unconquered thou in our battles and art satisfied in the throngs of war, winner of Heaven, winner of the Waters and our defender in the Crookedness (or of our strength); born in our fullnesses, firmly dwelling in us thou art rich in inspirations and victorious,—by thy raptures, O Soma, may we be intoxicated.

(22) Thou hast created all these growths of earth, O Soma, thou the Waters, thou the Rays; thou hast extended wide the mid-world,—thou by the Light hast smitten apart the covering darkness.

(23) With the divine mind in us, thou who art divine, O Soma, O forceful fighter, war towards our enjoyment of the felicity. Let none extend thee in grossness,¹⁶ thou hast power over all energy; do thou have the perceiving vision for gods and men in their seeking of the Light.

SUKTA 92

(1) Lo these are those Dawns that create for us the perception; in the highest realm of the luminous kingdom they brighten the Light perfecting it like violent men who furbish their arms; the ruddy mothers come, the radiant herds.

(2) Upward have soared the red-active lustres covering heaven; yoked are the ruddy Rays that set themselves perfectly to the work. The Dawns have made the manifestations of things even as before and their ruddinesses have entered into the reddening Light.

(3) For as forces that work the bright Energies give their illumination by entering into all things with an equal self-yoking from the supreme realm and thence they bring energy to the right doer, the right giver (who perfectly effects his aims);

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yea, all things here they bring to the sacrificer who expresses the Soma bliss.

(4) Like a dancing-girl she lays bare her clear forms of beauty, like a Paramour she opens her breast casting aside its defences creating Light for the whole world. The radiant herds have left their pen; Dawn has uncovered herself of her robe of darkness.

(5) Reddening, the illumination of her has appeared in front; it spreads and assails the Black Dense. They adorn her body as if sunshine in the things of the knowledge; the Daughter of Heaven has entered into the varied Lustre.

(6) We have crossed over to the other side of this darkness and Dawn widening makes her revelations of Light; she smiles and shines wide as joy towards beauty; she manifests in a front of fairness that the mind may be glad and perfect.

(7) Luminous guide to true thinkings, the Daughter of Heaven has been affirmed in praise by the Gotamas (the men of light). Thou supportest in us plentifulnesses rich in creations and energies, perceptively received in the nervous movements, led by the rays of illumination.

(8) O Dawn, may I enjoy a victorious and energetic felicity, delivered from the Enemy, perceptively received in the nervous powers, thou who shinest wide by an inspiration perfect in activity giving birth to richnesses,—O blissful one, to a plenty vast.

(9) Divine she beholds all the worlds, wide shines her vision and she gazes straight at things; she awakens every living soul for action and finds the Word for all that aspires to mind.

(10) Again and again is she born, she, the Ancient Goddess, and she glorifies one equal form. She as the slayer and cleaver of the Animal diminishes its strength and in her deity wears away the being of the Mortal.

(11) She has awakened opening wide the very ends of Heaven and continually she pushes away her sister Night diminishing our mortal periods. Paramour of the Sun, she has her light from her lover’s eye of vision.

(12) Varied in light and richly enjoying, it is as if she widens

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her animal Powers and wide she distends like a sea that breaks its way and she limits not our divine activities when she is seen in our perceptions by the rays of the Sun of illumination.

(13) O Dawn with thy energy of plenty, bring to us that varied richness whereby we can found our creation and our extending.

(14) Here and today, O Dawn of the radiant herds, Dawn of the forceful steeds, Dawn of the wide illumination, shine out upon us with ecstasy, O Lady of the Truths.

(15) O Dawn, energy of the plenty, yoke today thy steeds of red activity, then bring to us all enjoyable things.

(16) Ye,Obounteous Aswins, drivers of the Steed, with one mind direct your downward car along the path of the luminous rays, the path of the golden Light.

(17) Ye who have made for the creature the Light of heaven thus a splendour, carry force to us, ye, O Aswins.

(18) Twin bounteous gods with your luminous movements who create the bliss, you may those steeds that are awakened by the Dawn bring to the drinking of the wine of Bliss.

SUKTA 100

(1) He who sits the Strong housed with his strengths and is the all-ruler of the Great Heaven and the earth, the assailant of our assailants to whom we call in the mellays,

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(2) The Slayer of the Coverer whose march is intangible like the course of the Sun, in his greatest strength with his own rushing comrades,

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(3) He whose paths go as if milking the streams of heaven and because of his puissance they are not circumscribed, the overcomer, the breaker of the hostile powers by his virile mights,

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May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(4) He shall become most Angiras with the Angirases, strong with the strong, a comrade with the comrades, a singer of the word of light with the singers of the word, the Eldest with those who make the journey.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(5) Far-moving he goes with the Violent Ones as if with his children and overcomes the unfriendly host in the battle which is a forceful fighting of gods. He makes his way through the things of the Word with the Powers that dwell with him in his lair.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(6) He who forms the mind of passion and is the maker of the rapture, the Master of being to whom these many creatures call, shall on this very day by our Strong Ones conquer the Sun.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(7) His increasings make him glad in the conquering of the Hero; the inhabitants of the worlds have made him the deliverer of their having. He is One and alone and yet the lord of all work that is done.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(8) Strong men have gotten them a strong god for their increase and riches in the holidays of his might. He shall find the Light for us even in our blind darkness.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(9) His left hand represses those who grow too large, his right hand gathers together the things done. He shall conquer by the doer heaven’s riches.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

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(10) This is he that shall conquer with his hosts and his chariots; today he is known by all the nations. His strength overpowers the denials of the Word.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(11) These many creatures have called to him and in his rain of bounty he courses with his Rushing Ones to the conquest of the Waters and Son and the creation from our body.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(12) He is armed with the thunderbolt and a slayer of the Destroyers, he is strong and terrible and far-moving, he is the master of a thousand wisdoms and a hundred leadings. He is in his power as if the nectar-cup of the five peoples of men.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(13) His thunder harmoniously cries aloud conquering theWorld of the Sun and is as if the rending luminous shout of Heaven. Conquests cleave to him and all kinds of riches.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(14) His unbroken word measures with its thought earth and heaven and world to enjoy them in its embrace from each side and all around. He shall carry us beyond them in the rapture of his intoxication by the mights of his will.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(15) Gods in their godheads cannot reach any end of his puissance, nor mortals come to it, nor these waters attain to it. He exceeds by his all-cleaving strength earth and heaven.

May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

(16) His rapturous mare who is red and bay of hue and of a happy lustre and a blaze is upon her forehead and heaven is her dwelling-place has awakened to knowledge among the human peoples for the felicity of Rijraswa and she comes bearing in his yoke the chariot with the Mighty One.

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(17) The sons of Vrishagira, Rijraswa with those who stand behind him and Ambarisha and Sahadeva and Bhayamana and Suradhas, O Indra, speak the utterance that is an opulent joy of thee, of thee the Mighty One.

(18) The Lord of the thunderbolt to whom the many call shall slay, shall crush down on our earth the embattled Renders and Destroyers and with his white-shining comrades conquer the Field and conquer the Sun and conquer the Waters.

(19) Let Indra be ever our spokesman so that unturned to crookedness we may conquer heaven’s plenty. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 101

(1) Sing a word full of the nectar draught to that rapturous drinker, for by this wine of straight-going impulse he has smitten and driven out the mothers of the Dark Nation. Desiring increase we call to the Strong One in whose right hand is the thunderbolt.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(2) He has slain in his exultant wrath the shoulderless Demon, he has smitten Shambara and Pipru who kept not the law.He has torn down Sushna and that evil Power had no strength against him.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(3) Heaven and earth are his vast force; Varuna and the Sun act in the way of his working; the Rivers cleave to the law of Indra.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(4) He is the kine-master of the cows and the master of the horses. Opposed he stands firm in work and work. He is the smiter of even the stubbornly strong who gives not the offering of the nectar-wine.

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Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(5) This is he who is the lord of all that moves and breathes. First of the gods, he found the radiances for the singer of the Word; he has thrust down the Destroyers and put them below him.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(6) The heroes call to him and the cowards; the runners cry to him and the victors. To Indra all these worlds of beings turn and they grapple in him and are joined.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(7) This is the Wise in sight who moves by the direction of the Violent Ones, and by the Violent Ones the beloved Woman forms a wide field for her swiftness. The thinking mind has hearkened to Indra and it sings to him the word of light.

Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.

(8) Whether thou art drinking of rapture in that highest session or in this lowest strength, thence come, O Leader of Life-Gods, towards our sacrifice; for we have made ready the wine of the offering in desire of thee whose joyful riches are the Truth.

(9) O strong Thinker, in desire of thee we have pressed the nectar-juice, in desire of thee we have made ready the wine of the offering that chariots the Word. Driver of the steeds of the Breath, come then with thy hosts. Drink rapture in this sacrifice, on this sacred seat.

(10) Joy and be drunken, O Indra, thou with the bright horses which are thine. Open wide thy jaws, let loose the double stream. O god with fair strong chin, bid thy bright horses bring thee, desire our offerings, lean to us in thy heart.

(11) May we be the guardians of the strength that is hymned by the Life-Gods and by Indra get us heaven’s plenty. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify to me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

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SUKTA 102

(1) Behold I bring thee a thought great and of the Great One, because it is thy thinking mind that has wrought in the song of the human seer. This is that Indra in the wake of whose force the gods take rapture when he puts forth his might in the exaltation and the birth.

(2) The seven rivers carry his word; the wide heaven and earth are his body for our seeing. The sun and moon go cutting their paths,OIndra, that in us there may be vision and faith.

(3) Forward with that chariot of thine, King of Riches, that we may rejoice in its victor wake in the shock, in the battle. Hymned art thou with many voices by the mind. O Indra, King of Riches, give to men who desire thee thy bliss and peace.

(4) Thou for our ally, may we conquer by thee him who besets us; raise up our portion in mellay and mellay, make the path of our right journey to felicity easy to travel. O Indra, King of Riches, shatter the strengths of our foemen.

(5) These human beings would grow luminous in knowledge by thy cherishing aid, O Holder of the Wealth, and all are calling to thee in their several ways; mount upon our chariot for the victory and getting. For thy mind, O Indra, is the intent mind that conquers.

(6) His arms are conquerors of the rays of the light, he is measureless in the power of his will and complete in every act and a hundredfold increaser and a maker of battle. Indra has not his like; by his force he is the measure of all things, and to all sides men are calling to him who desire their getting.

(7) Thy word in the peoples exceeds in its wealth the hundredfold and the much more and the thousandfold. When the thought mind is great, it kindles thee into measureless light and thou slayest the Coverers, O render of their cities.

(8) A measure of might of a triple nature thou pervadest,O master of men, the three earths and the three luminous worlds of heaven and thou drivest on beyond all this universe, and from thy birth thou hadst no slayer and so art for ever.

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(9) First of the gods we call to thee and thou hast been an overcomer in the fighting of the armies. Then may Indra make his upward breaking car of action and passion the power in our front in our creation.

(10) Because thou hast conquered much wealth and hast not kept it back from us, King of Riches, in the little combats, in battle, and in the great fightings, we make thee intense in thy energy that thou mayst give us increase. O Indra, when the calls arise in the battle, urge us upon our road.

(11) Let Indra be ever our spokesman so that unturned to crookedness we may get for ourselves heaven’s plenty. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 103

(1) That supreme Indra-force of thee the seers held of old by their movings to the beyond. One strength of him is upon the earth, his other in heaven; the vision of the thought is brimmed and as if common to them.

(2) He upheld the earth and made it wide and smote with the thunderbolt and let loose the waters. He slew the Serpent and broke the Titan son of Rohina; the King of Riches severed with his powers the shoulderless Demon.

(3) This upholder of birth because he has faith in his puissance ranges breaking open the Titan cities. O Thunderer, hurl by thy knowledge thy weapon at the Destroyer; increase the Aryan force, the Aryan light.

(4) O then for the speaker the King of Riches bearing the human ages, bearing the glorious Name, advancing thunder-armed to the slaying of the Destroyer, when the Son bears the name for the inspired word!

(5) See how this multitude of his having has increased! Put faith in the hero might of Indra! He has discovered the Kine and discovered the Horses and the Waters and the growths of earth and the trees of her forests.

(6) Let us press and give the nectar-wine to the Bull and the

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Strong One and the Doer of the multitude of works, the Lord whose strength is Truth, who like a hero adversary on the path rends away the knowledge of those that do not sacrifice and goes abroad giving of it largesse.

(7) This is the same heroic might which thou madest thy force when thou wakenedst with thy thunderbolt the Serpent from his sleep. The wives of the Gods rejoiced in thy wake and the galloping horses were glad and all the gods drank rapture behind thee;

(8) Then thou smotest Sushna and Pipru and Kuyava and Vritra and the cities were shattered of Shambara. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 104

(1) A house has been made, O Indra, for thy session; come to thy place like a neighing war-horse. Loosing thy galloping steeds rest the horses who bear thee night and day in thy going abroad.

(2) These are the human beings that have hymned the name of Indra for their increase. Now and straight way let him put them on the paths. The gods are breaking down the passion of the Destroyer and they have brought us armour of light for our happy journey to felicity.

(3) He who has the vision of the knowledge of himself is sweeping down, is sweeping down from the tops the foam on the water. The two women beloved of Kuyava bathe in the sweet curd of the waves; let them lie slain in the rapids of the Shipha.

(4) The navel has been set of the higher being and the Hero moves on and shines there with his ancient powers. Anjasi and Kulishi and Virapatni are hastening with all their waters and bring him the milk of their streams.

(5) Now that the guide is seen, now that she goes in knowledge towards the house that was as if the home of the Destroyer, deliver us from the sin that was done, O King of Riches,

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and betray us not into his hands as one ignorant gives his wealth into the hands of the wasters.

(6) But give us, O Indra, our portion in the Sun and the Waters and in sinlessness and in the self-expression of living man and maim not our inner joy; for we had faith in thee and hoped for a greatness of thy proper force.

(7) Now my thought is fixed on Indra and I have set my faith in him. Be the Strong One to me and urge me to the winning of a great riches. Indra to whom the many call, give us not our food and Soma-drink, though we hunger, with thy house still unmade.

(8) O Indra, King of Riches, slay us not, betray us not to other hands. Rob us not of our dear enjoyings; shatter not the bowls, break not the vessels of the wine that were born with our birth.

(9) They have said that thou comest down to man because thou desirest his nectar-wine, and here it is pressed ready. Drink of it till thou art drunk with its rapture, lie in thy vast discovered widths and rain its sweetness into thy belly. Like a father hear us when we call to thee.

SUKTA 105

(1) The moon is lying within in the waters, the bright-winged bird runs in the sky of heaven.O ye gods, your golden-fellied lightnings find not your plane of light.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(2) Yet surely they who seek are joined to the object of their seeking. The wife is joined to her husband. Two have set streaming the milk of the Bull and receive it and milk out the nectarous essence.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(3) O ye Gods, let not the world of the Sun be cast down from its place encompassing Heaven, let not us who were the makers of the bliss of the nectarous Godhead abide in emptiness.

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Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(4) I ask of the lowest sacrifice and the messenger tells it to me, but where is gone the ancient highest Truth or who is he, the new seer, who carries it within him?

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(5) O all you gods that are yonder in the three worlds, in the luminous head of heaven, where is your Truth and where is the falsehood and where your ancient original offering?

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(6) Where then is your upholding base of the Truth? Where now is the seeing eye of Varuna? Whether false and feeble of thought, can we pass beyond by the mighty path of Aryaman?

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(7) Lo, I am very he who of old in the giving of the nectar was able to speak certain few things, and yet me, me my pains are devouring as a wolf devours a thirsting deer at the drinking-place!

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(8) My ribs plague me all around like rival wives and, as a mouse gnaws sinews, my pains are tearing and eating me, yet am I he who hymned thy name, O lord of a hundred powers!

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(9) Yonder are those seven rays, and in them the navel of my being is hung. Trita Aptya knows the truth they hold and is singing the word of wisdom that they may meet and be at one.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(10) Five Bulls are standing yonder in the midmost of the Great

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Heaven, this now is what the word must reveal in the godheads,—and they have turned back together, companions.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(11) The bright-winged birds that sit on the middle ascent of Heaven, stay the Wolf of the path as he crosses the mighty flowing waters.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(12) O ye gods, a new word has been set here to be spoken, that shall make full revelation. The Rivers flow towards the Truth; the light is Truth that the Sun has woven.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(13) O Flame, the word is thine, the new word that has yet to be spoken and it must be won to in the gods. Sit then with us and sacrifice to the gods with better knowledge as if a thinking man.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(14) The Fire has taken his seat like a thinking man, priest of the sacrifice, and has greater knowledge and speeds to them our offerings. He is a god among the gods and a wise thinker.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(15) Varuna creates the word and we desire him because he is the knower of the way. He spins wide the thought by the heart. May new Truth be born.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(16) Yonder child of the Infinite in heaven has been made the path; the Sun is that which my word must reveal; O gods, he cannot be overpassed! O mortals, ye see him not!

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(17) Trita cast down into the well calls to the gods for his increasing; and Brihaspati, the Lord of speech, heard his cry.

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Out of the narrow prison he is making a wide freedom.

Take ye knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(18) Once and once only the red Wolf saw me as I went upon the path, and when he had regarded me he reared himself up like a workman whose back is afflicted with long bending to his carpentry.

Take ye the knowledge of this word that I speak, O Earth and Heaven.

(19) But now by this hymn of power may we possess Indra and all the heroes be in our strength and we prevail and overcome. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 106

(1) Indra and Mitra and Varuna and Agni and Aditi and the Marut host we call to increase us. O bountiful Vasus, carry us beyond out of all the evil like a chariot out of a difficult place.

(2) O sons of the infinite Mother, come to us for an universality of creation. Gods, be makers of our bliss in our battle-breakings through the ranks of the Coverers. O bountiful Vasus, carry us beyond out of all the evil like a chariot out of a difficult place.

(3) Let our Fathers who spoke the revealing word cherish us and the truth-increasing goddesses twain; of them the gods are the sons. O bountiful Vasus, carry us beyond out of all evil like a chariot out of a difficult place.

(4) I make richer here with my plenty the master of plenty who gives his self-expression to man. Our desire goes to Pushan the Increaser with his happinesses in whom the heroes have their dwelling place. O bountiful Vasus, carry us beyond out of all the evil like

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a chariot out of a difficult place.

(5) O Brihaspati, ever make easy the road of our journeying who yearn for that peace and bliss of thy strength which is set in thinking man. Carry us beyond out of all the evil like a chariot from a difficult place.

(6) Kutsa the seer pent in the well called for increase to Indra the Vitra-killer, he has cried to the Lord of the Lady of Puissance. O ye bountiful Vasus, carry us beyond out of all the evil like a chariot out of a difficult place.

(7) May the goddess Infinite with the gods protect and the god who saves deliver us nor be careless of us in our need. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 107

(1) Our sacrifice travels to the bliss of the gods; O ye children of the infinite Mother, be gracious and take birth.May your perfect and kindly thought come down to us on its paths which out of the narrow press of pain and evil can find a larger bliss and good.

(2) Let the gods, hymned by the Sama verses of the Angirases, come to us with cherishing and Indra with his Indra-powers and the Maruts with the Maruts and the infinite Mother with her Sun children extend bliss and peace.

(3) That gladness may Indra, that Varuna, that Aryaman, that Savitri lodge in us. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 108

(1) O Indra and Agni, come in your chariot of many wonderful lights which looks upon all the worlds. Standing in one car when you have come drink of the wine we have made for you.

(2) As wide as is this whole world and deep with its vast manifested good and bliss, so wide be to your drinking this wine of nectar we give you and sufficient to your mind, O Agni and Indra.

(3) For you have made a twin inseparable blissful name and

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you are slayers of the Coverer close and inseparable. Close united sit, O Indra and Agni, O strong Gods, be strong-copious pourers of the might of this nectar-wine.

(4) When the fires are kindled high, then you two move busily about the sacrifice and you stretch out the ladle and you strew the sacred seat. Come down to us, O Indra and Agni, by the pourings of the keen ecstatic wine, that you may give us the glad and perfect mind.

(5) Come, O Indra and Agni, with all the heroisms you have done and all the forms you have shaped and all your strengths and all your happy ancient comradeships, and having come drink of this nectar-wine we have made for you.

(6) Come to my true faith by which I said at first when I chose you that this nectar-wine of me must be given among the Mighty Lords. Drink of the wine we have made for you.

(7) Whether, O Agni, O Indra, you are drinking of rapture in your own house or in priest of the word or king, O masters of sacrifice, thence come, ye Strong Ones, and having come drink of the wine we have made for you.

(8) Whether, O Indra, O Agni, you are among the Yadus or the Turvashas or the Druhyus or the Anus or the Purus, thence come, O ye Strong Ones. Drink of the wine we have made for you.

(9) Whether, O Agni, O Indra, you are in the lowest and in the middle and in the highest earth, thence come, O ye Strong Ones. Drink of the wine we have made for you.

(10) Whether, O Indra, O Agni, you are in the highest and in the middle and in the lowest earth, thence come, O ye Strong Ones, and drink of the wine we have made for you.

(11) Whether, O Agni, O Indra, you are in heaven or on earth or in the plants or the waters, thence come, O ye Strong Ones, and having come drink of the wine we have made for you.

(12) Whether, O Indra, O Agni, you are drinking of rapture by your nature in the rising of the sun or in the midmost of heaven, thence come, O ye Strong Ones, and drink of the wine we have made.

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(13) Thus drinking of the wine we have pressed for you, O Indra and Agni, conquer for us all and every kind of riches. This letMitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the Great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 109

(1) I hungered after riches of a greater substance and I turned and saw you, O Indra and Agni. I have looked on you as on my own people, even as brothers born with me. This is your mind of wisdom, and none other that is in me, and I have carved to shape a thought which gives me the plenitude of your riches.

(2) I have heard of you as more lavish in your giving than a daughter’s husband or a wife’s brother and I am bringing into birth in the delivering of the nectar wine a new hymn to you, O Indra and Agni.

(3) We are making towards our desire and pray that our suns of light may not be broken, we are striving after the energies of our Fathers. By joy of Indra and Agni, the Strong Ones drink of the rapture, you are two pressing-stones in the lap of the thinking mind.

(4) The goddess Mind longs for the ecstasy, O Agni, O Indra, and she is pressing out with you for her pressing-stones wine of nectar. O twin Aswins, come running to us with your beautiful happy hands and mix the honey in the waters.

(5) O Indra and Agni, I have heard of you that you are mighty to slay the Coverer and apportion a rich substance. O you who see, sit on this seat in the sacrifice and drink the intoxication of the wine that we have made.

(6) Amid the shoutings of the armies for men that see you advance and overflow in your strength earth and heaven; O Indra,OAgni, your greatness overpasses the rivers and over-tops the mountains and your being is outstretched beyond all these worlds of creatures.

(7) Bring for us, win for us your riches,O you whose arms carry

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the thunder, increase us, O Indra and Agni, by your mights. Behold our reins are the same rays of the Sun by which our Fathers came to the end of their common journey.

(8) Renders of the cities, gods with the thunders in your hands, Indra and Agni, get for us, increase us in fruitful battles. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the Great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 110

(1) Woven was my web of work. Again that web is being woven; a sweetest honied thought is finding words for its expression in speech. Behold, this is the nectar ocean in which are all the gods; it is here, it has been made Swaha of the divinities. Take your delight in it, O ye Ribhus.

(2) I give you the enjoyment of that for whose desire you come to me;O you near tome and high beyond, whatever powers, but my friends! O children of Sudhanwan, by the largeness of your movement of action you came to the house of Savitri when he was giving out the wine of his creation.

(3) Savitri the Creator poured out for you immortality and then you moved to make it heard here of knowledge and a thing not to be kept secret, and you made of the one wine-cup of the Almighty, the cup of the wine-drinking, a fourfold bowl.

(4) By entering in, by fulfilling of action, by the traversing of obstacles, by the speaking of the word, they who were mortal, have laid hands of enjoyment on immortality; Ribhus, children of Sudhanwan, saw with the sun for eye and were joined wholly to his thoughts in the year of Time.

(5) The Ribhus have measured out like a field and have shaped as if with a sharp-cutting instrument the one cup that is carried on the paths. Hymned of men, they made for the highest high desiring to hear the voice of knowledge among the Immortals.

(6) Come, let us pour out the thinking mind by knowledge to the strong ones of the Air as if clarified butter with a ladle. The Ribhus who have fixed their abodes, crossing beyond

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Father Heaven, climbed to the plenty of the luminous middle world.

(7) Indra in his puissance is even to us a newer Ribhu and Ribhu joined with Vajas, lords of the plenty, and the Vasus, masters of riches, and giver of substance. O ye gods, by your fostering power may we assail in your cherished Day the armies of the powers who give not the nectar wine.

(8) The Ribhus pressed into shape the Cow of Light out of her skin and joined the Mother with the child. O children of Sudhanwan, in your desire of perfect works you made our aged Father and Mother young again.

(9) Increase us by the Vajas, lords of the plenty, in the winning of plenty; O Indra with the Ribhus, tear for us from its hiding place our rich felicity. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the Great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 111

(1) The Ribhus who do all their works by knowledge have carved by knowledge the fair-moving chariot of Indra, shaped his two bright horses of strong rich substance. And they have made for the Father and the Mother their youthful age and for the child of the Ray his mother to be always at his side.

(2) Carve for our sacrifice a birth in which shall be the works of the Ribhus, carve light in the thought and power in the will, shape an impelling force which shall beget a perfect issue that we may dwell accompanied by the nation of all the heroes. Make them the host of our battle and set in them that great Indra-force.

(3) Carve getting for us, O Ribhus, getting for our chariot and getting for our war-horse.Mass together into form conquest and winning always whose strength companioned or alone shall avail against opposing armies.

(4) I call for my increasing to the drinking of the nectar wine Indra who dwells in Ribhu and the Ribhus and the Vajas

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and the Maruts and Mitra and Varuna, now, the double godhead, and the Aswins, and let them speed, let them charge for the getting, for the thought, for the victory.

(5) Let Ribhu whet our getting into a sharp weapon for fruitful battle and Vaja victor in the press and the fighting help us to thrive. This let Mitra and Varuna and the Mother Infinite magnify in me and the Great River and Earth and Heaven.

SUKTA 123

(1) The wide chariot of the Reason has been yoked, this all the immortal gods have ascended. From the blackness she has arisen who is noble and vast seeking knowledge for the mind’s foundation.

(2) First before all the universe Dawn awoke conquering substance, vast, safely-preserving; high she shone abroad in her youth reborn; Usha came first in the earliest calling.

(3) Because today thou dividest their share to the Strong Ones,Usha goddess beautiful shining upon the world of mortals, therefore here the god Savitri wide-governing utters us free from sin for the kingdom of the Sun.

(4) To house and house the bright one comes towards us, in sky and sky establishing in their place the names of things; bent on enjoyment ever shining she comes and enjoys always the first fruit of every possession.

(5) The sister of Bhaga, the twin of Varuna, Usha, goddess of Truth, thou first of the gods cleave to us; afterwards is he to be crushed who is the establisher of sin; him may we conquer by Reason with the speed of her chariot.

(6) May the true lights arise in us, may those that hold this mansion; the forces of the night flaming pure join them; our desirable possessions hidden away by the darkness the wide-shining Dawns reveal.

[Incomplete]

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SUKTA 179

(1) Many Autumns have I been toiling night and day, dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Now let the males come to their spouses.

(2) Even the men of old, who were wise of the Truth and they spoke with the gods the things of the Truth—even they cast (all) downward, yea, they reached not an end. Now let the males come¹⁷ to their spouses.

(3) Not in vain is the labour which the gods protect. Let us have the taste¹⁸ of even all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run¹⁹ this battle-race of a hundred leadings, a complete couple.

(4) Let not²⁰ desire come on me of the stream that stays me—desire born from here or from somewhere in those other worlds. Lopamudra goes in to her spouse; she drains deep her panting Lord, she ignorant, him the wise.

(5) Now to this Soma I speak. Drunk near into our hearts, all the impurity we have done, that let its grace wholly forgive: for mortal man is a creature of many desires.

(6) Agastya digging with spades, desiring offspring, the child and strength, he, the forceful Rishi, nourished both the Races (of either colour)²¹ and reached in the gods the true blessings.

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Mandala Two

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

SUKTA 23

(1) To thee we call, host-master of the heavenly companies, seer among the seers who art most rich in the supreme inspired knowledge, eldest king among the gods of soul, O Master of Soul, Brahmanaspati; hearken to us and by thy manifestations in our being take thy session in this house and seat.

(2) Even the gods, O Mighty One, O Brihaspati, who are conscious in thought, taste but thy share of the sacrificial enjoyment; as Surya gives being to his bright energies by the wide illumination of Mahas, so art thou the begetter even of all the gods of Soul.

(3) Assailing and preventing all plunderers and all darknesses thou ascendest thy luminous car of the Truth, O Brihaspati, that terrible chariot which crushes all hostile things, slays the Rakshasas who detain, breaks open the pens of Light and finds out the Heaven of mind.

(4) With perfect leadings thou leadest, thou deliverest the creature; if a man give to thee, him evil possesseth not; thou art the afflicter of the soul’s haters, thou holdest our temperament in thy grasp; great is that wide might of thine.

(5) Him neither evil nor sin from any side nor the energies of undelight can pierce nor the powers of duality; thou repellest all the goddesses of the crookedness from him whom thou guardest, a perfect protector, O Brahmanaspati.

(6) Thou art our protector and the builder of our path by the perfect and clear discernment, we woo the with our thoughts so that we may possess thy law of action; O Brihaspati, whosoever putteth crookedness in us, him may his own violent and troubled unease slay.

(7) Yea, and whosoever would oppress (limit) us without sin

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of ours, whatsoever mortal power of undelight and Wolf of the plateau, O Brihaspati, turn him from our path, make for us an easy going towards this manifestation of the godhead (wideness of the gods).

(8) Thee we call as the saviour of our bodies, O deliverer, and the revealer in them who seekest our being. O Brihaspati, crush those who limit the god-in-us, let not those of an evil movement attain up to the higher bliss.

(9) By thee perfectly increasing we, O Brahmanaspati, take to ourselves the desirable possessions of the human (mental) life; those who oppress us from near or from far do thou crush, those who do not the work and take not the delight.

(10) By thee we hold in our minds that highest wideness, O Brihaspati, by thee yoked to us as preserver and fulfiller of our beings; let not any power control us that would express ill in it and tear its fullness; perfectly expressed by our thoughts may we pass beyond.

(11) The Bull who pushes not forward (or is not shaken by the charge) but thou goest to the battle-cry, afflictest the foe and overpowerest in our battles, thou art the true in the movement, O Brihaspati, and the tamer even of the strong and fierce who exults in his strength.

(12) He who with an undivine mind striveth after knowledge and in his fierceness entering our mentality seeketh to hurt our expression, Brihaspati, let not his stroke reach us, may we cast out the passion of him of evil impulse when he putteth forth his force.

(13) He who is to be called in our fullnesses and to be approached with submission, who moves in our havings and gets for us (or keeps for us) this wealth and that other, Brihaspati the Aryan shatters like chariots the energies that assault us and would tear up our gains.

(14) With thy most flaming heat afflict the Rakshasas who held thee for confinement even when they had seen thy prowess; manifest that of thee which has to be expressed, crush to pieces the plunderers around.

(15) Brihaspati, that which the Aryan fighter aspires to compass,

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that which shines brilliant and powerful in creatures, that which by its force is brilliant, O thou who art born out of the Truth, establish in us that variously shining treasure.

(16) Deliver us not to the Thieves who take their delight in the place of Harms and as enemies have greed after our bodily havings or to those who arrange in the heart the hedge [    ] of the gods and know not of the equality beyond.

(17) For in all the worlds has the Maker, the Seer of harmony after harmony given being to thee; therefore Brihaspati knowing the right movement and following it is the slayer of all harms in him who holdeth the Truth of Mahas.

(18) For thy force of movement (or glory) the mountain of being flyeth asunder when thou lettest loose the herd of the brilliant kine, O Angiras; with Indra for thy yokefellow thou hast forced forth, O Brihaspati, the ocean of the waters that was girt in by the darkness.

(19) O Brahmanaspati, do thou awaken to this perfect expression of ours as its controller and rejoice in our extension. All that is blessed which the gods bring into being (or keep in being, protect). May we express the Vastness, becoming perfect-energised in the knowledge.

SUKTA 24

(1) Manifest (create) then for us this full-bringing, thou who hast the power, and let us dispose for thee the sacrifice by this new and mighty Word; so do thou perfect for us, O Brihaspati, our thinking that he, thy bounteous Friend, may be confirmed in us by the praise.

(2) He who forceth to bow down by his might all that must be bent and tore asunder by force of heart the illusions that destroy, Brahmanaspati manifested the supreme and immutable things; he entered wholly into the hill of substance.

(3) That for the most divine of the divine gods is the thing to be done; all that was firm, fell to pieces, all that was strong and hard, grew malleable and soft; he drove upward the cows of light, he broke the wall, Vala, by the soul-thought,

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he concealed the darkness and made the Heaven of mind visible to our eyes.

(4) The stone-faced pit that Brahmanaspati cleft open in his force, whose flowing waters are of honey, of that all they have drunk who see that Heaven; together they pour down= its rich and high-billowing fountain.

(5) There are there some eternal worlds that have yet to be for us, but by the months and the years their doors have been shut on you; these two at least act one and the other without striving or effort, the two which Brahmanaspati has revealed.

(6) They who journey to him, enjoy the supreme treasure of the Panis, the lords of active sense, which is hidden in the secret places of being, they get the knowledge, they distinguish by their gaze all untruths and to the place whence they came, they go up again till they enter in.

(7) They have the Truth and their gaze discerns the untruths of the world and they depart back hence as seers to the path of Mahas; they verily in their arms have cast Agni blown up to greatness in this hill; for there is no other labourer in this work, but only he.

(8) Brahmanaspati by his swift bow of which the string is the Truth, enjoys all whatsoever on which he placeth his desire; effective are his arrows of impulsion with which he shoots, they are strong-of-eye for the divine vision, they are wombs of the divine hearing.

(9) He placed in front bringeth together, he leadeth to their different places, he is the perfectly established, it is he in the battle, even Brahmanaspati; manifested in the vision when by the thought of the mind he bringeth substance to us and possessings, then indeed Surya burneth supremely with his heat and force.

(10) Existent widely in all and existent in front of us these are the delightful perfections of knowledge of Brahmanaspati when first he raineth his blessings, these are the winnings of this lord of joy and substance, by whom both the peoples of earth and heaven enjoy the two Births.

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(11) Thou who becomest pervadingly and in all ways in the lower crookednesses, art also he who bearest up rapturously the Vast by his force. So Brahmanaspati extendeth himself vastly a god towards the gods and round about all those objects he encompasseth them with his being.

(12) All truth is yours indeed, O ye two full and mighty Ones, and the waters of being cannot contain or measure your action. Come ye, O Indra and Brihaspati, like two steeds in one yoke, towards our material being that we make into offering.

(13) Swiftest bearers of our sacrifice have audience of knowledge according (to your law of action), and the illumined soul in its hall of wisdom gathereth him rich possessions by thought of the mind; a foe to strong fixities he taketh according to the motion of his desire; verily, he is our steed in the shock, even Brahmanaspati.

(14) All happeneth according to the desire of Brahmanaspati, true is his heart’s motion when he meaneth to do his mighty work, he who drove upward the cows of Light and divided them for the Heaven; it was as if a vast and wide stream flowed out in its force in separate currents.

(15) O Brahmanaspati, let us be charioted utterly in a felicity perfectly controlled and having the wideness; heap for us mights upon mights when, lord by the soul, thou comest to my calling.

(16) O Brahmanaspati, do thou awaken to this perfect expression of us as its controller and rejoice in our extension; all that is blessed which the gods bring into being. May we express the vastness becoming perfect-energied-in-knowledge.

SUKTA 25

(1) He kindles Agni and conquers those who would conquer him, he perfects his soul and puts forth his strength, making of delight his offering; by birth he passes beyond birth,—he of whom Brahmanaspati, Master of the Soul, maketh his comrade.

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(2) By his own mights he conquers the outer mights that would conquer him, by the herds of light he makes wide his felicity and awakens by the self, and he increases his creation and his extending,—he of whom Brahmanaspati, Master of the Soul, maketh his comrade.

(3) As the sea that breaks its banks, he overcomes by his might those that come against him, as a bull is master over the bullocks; like the marching of Agni he cannot be stayed,—he of whom Brahmanaspati, Master of the Soul, maketh his comrade.

(4) For him divine powers that have not attachment, perfect his knowledge; he by those lords of pure being goes in front in the herds of light; undistressed by his force he slays by his might,—he of whom Brahmanaspati, Master of the Soul, maketh his comrade.

(5) For him, verily, all the rivers of being stream swiftly and wide tracts of unbroken peace are established in his soul, he flourishes, perfectly enjoying, in the bliss of the gods,—he of whom Brahmanaspati, Master of the Soul, maketh his comrade.

SUKTA 26

(1) He that is straight in his self-expression (or is the expression of the straightness of the Truth) conquereth those who would conquer him, seeking the godhead in him he over-cometh him who seeketh not the divine; well-protected he conquereth in his battles him who is hard to pierce, sacrificing he taketh and divideth the enjoyment of him who sacrificeth not.

(2) Sacrifice, O mighty one, manifest to him who seeketh himself in mind, make him a mind glad and bright in the slaying of the Coverer. Effect the offering so that thou mayst be seated in us perfectly enjoying; it is the manifest presence of Brahmanaspati that we choose.

(3) He by the creature, he by the race of creatures, he by the birth, he by the sons of his strength and by the Purushas (or

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by the strong ones) gathereth him having and possessions, who with a mind of faith lodgeth in his being by the oblation Brahmanaspati, the father of the Gods.

(4) Whoso ordereth the sacrifice for him by offerings full of the rich brightness of the mind, Brahmanaspati leadeth him to the highest and keepeth him far from evil and guardeth from him who would do him hurt; for him even in the narrowness of mortal being he maketh by his acts wideness and becometh wonderful and supreme.

SUKTA 27

(1) These words by the force oblational of Agni I offer to the sons of Aditi who are for ever the Kings, words dripping with the richness; may Mitra hear us and Aryaman and Bhaga, Varuna born in strength and Daksha and Ansha.

(2) May Mitra and Aryaman and Varuna with power today cleave to this my song of confirmation, the sons of Aditi pure, purified in the streams, who know not crookedness, who are freed from sin-expression, who are beyond all harms.

(3) They, the sons of Infinity, wide and deep and unconquered, dividers of things, abundant in vision, see within the crooked things and the perfect; all is near to the Kings, even the farthest and highest.

(4) Children of Infinity, gods, in their stability they uphold that which moves and are the protectors of all the universe; long is the range of their thoughts, they guard the Might, they hold the Truth, they accumulate its movements.

(5) May we know, O ye sons of Aditi, this your manifestation which even in the fear, O Aryaman, createth the bliss; in your leading, O Mitra and Varuna, may I leave aside all stumblings even as a voyager avoideth pitfalls.

(6) For easy of going is your path, O Aryaman, O Mitra; it is thornless and perfect in effectivity; on that path, O sons of Aditi, give us expression, work out for us a peace hard to assail.

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(7) May Aditi who has the Kings of Heaven for her children carry us over all hostile powers, she and Aryaman by easy paths; may we approach the vast peace of Mitra and Varuna becoming wide-energied and untouched by all harms.

(8) Three are the earths that they uphold, three the heavens, three are the laws of action within these in the knowledge; by the Truth, O Adityas, is that vast might of yours, O Aryaman, Varuna and Mitra, a bright and beautiful wideness.

(9) Three heavenly worlds of light they uphold, pure they and golden bright and purified in the streams; they sleep not neither close their lids and are unconquered and hold a wide self-expression for the mortal who is straight in his paths.

(10) Over all beings art thou the King, O Varuna, whether they be gods, O mighty One, or whether they be mortal; give us a hundred years for our perfect vision; may we enjoy the firm-based lives that were before.

(11) I can distinguish not the right nor the left, nor the before, O sons of Aditi, nor the after; both the things that have to be ripened, O lords of substance, and the things that have to be held in knowledge,—led by you may I enjoy the Light where fear vanisheth.

(12) Who giveth to the Kings who act in the Truth, whomso their eternal nourishings increase, he goeth rapturously in the front in the Chariot, a giver of his substance, clear-expressed in the things of knowledge.

(13) Pure and unconquerable he taketh up his abode in the waters of the perfect pastures, increasing in wideness, perfect-energied; none smiteth him from near or from far who becometh in the leading of the sons of Aditi.

(14) O Aditi, Mitra and Varuna, be lenient to whatever sin we have sinned against you; may we enjoy the wide Luminousness where fear is not, O Indra, let not the long darknesses come upon us.

(15) Both to him become equal and foster him, increasing the abundance of Heaven he becometh truly perfect in enjoyment; conquering both his worlds of habitation he moveth

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through his battles; both kingdoms become for him perfectly effected.

(16) The illusions that ye have for the harm-doer, O masters of sacrifice, your snares spread wide for the foe, O ye sons of Aditi, may I pass beyond like one with horses in his chariot; may we dwell in a vast peace and unhurt.

(17) May I never, O Varuna, know the want of my mighty and beloved and richly-bounteous helper; may I not fall,O King, from bliss entirely controlled; may we express the Vast, becoming full-energied in the knowledge.

SUKTA 28

(1) May this that is of the Seer, the son of Infinity who hath the empire of himself possess all things of being with its might,—the god who beyond all has rapture for the sacrifice, his perfect effectiveness I ask for boon,—of Varuna in the full riches of his being.

(2) In the law of thy action may we entirely enjoy and have perfect incidence of our thoughts, O Varuna, when thee we have confirmed in us by praise, like fires of might enjoying (or seeking thee) from day to day in the coming of the luminous Dawns.

(3) May we abide in the peace of thee, the many-energied, the wide of self-expression, O Varuna, O leader forward on the path; do you for us, O unconquered sons of Aditi, put forth the powers of your divine being for comradeship with us in the fight.

(4) It is the son of Aditi who has let forth all things and holds all in its place; the streams of being travel towards the Truth of Varuna, they tire not, neither loose their hold, but fly like birds in their speed through the all-encompassing.

(5) Shear away evil from me like a cord; may we increase the continent of thy Truth, O Varuna; let not my thread be cut while I am widening out Thought in me, nor may the matter of my work fail me as it travels forward.

(6) O Varuna, separate fear from me utterly; Master of Truth

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who hast empire over the world, have kindly yearnings towards me (or, reach out and hold me in thy embrace); loose evil from me as a calf is freed from its tether; apart from thee I have not control even over my gazings.

(7) Smite us not with thy blows, O Varuna, that vibrate through him who doeth sin in thy sacrifice; let us not wander into exiles from the Light, cleave wholly away from us our besiegers that we may live.

(8) May we utter submission to thee, O Varuna, as before, so now and hereafter; for in thee verily as on a mountain are founded, O invincible one, all the laws of action that stand uno’erthrown.

(9) Bring out for me now my past movements that I have done; may I not, O King, enjoy by the doings of another. Many are our days that have yet not dawned; in them, O Varuna,do thou govern our living spirits.

(10) Whatsoever comrade or friend, O King, hath spoken to me of peril in a dream and made me to fear or whosoever, thief or wolf of the tearing, rendeth us, do thou from that protect us, O Varuna.

(11) May I never, O Varuna, know the want of my mighty and beloved and richly-bountied helper (or friend); may I not fall from bliss entirely controlled; may we express the Vast, becoming perfect-energied in knowledge.

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Mandala Three

SUKTA 54

(1) There is this conquering force in us and men when they have [it], make it perpetual, they bring it forward for the godhead which is vast, desirable, born of the Knowledge; may the Flame inviolable respond to us with his powers that are of his supreme home, may he respond with his powers that are of his heavens.

(2) Let the hymn light up for our vast heaven of Mind and our wide earth that vastness of Matter; for in them my desire of it ranges with wish of it in the heart and perception of it in the mind; and by their firm affirmation and in the comings of the knowledge to men the gods serve the Will and are drunken together with its rapture.

(3) In you may there be the Law and the Truth; may you become to us a means for the great and happy attaining. O Will, this obeisance to Earth and Heaven; I serve them with the love and pleasure in me for their food and I march to the ecstasy.

(4) Yea, O ye our firmaments that keep the law of the Truth, the ancients found in you that knowledge of it, for their words gave expression to the Truth; and in your meeting and union that is the Hero’s conquest of the Light, men, O Earth, discovered the knowledge and adored you.

(5) Who knoweth it aright, who here shall declare what path leads utterly to the gods, so that here are seen their lower sessions and there those that are founded in their supreme and secret laws?

(6) Because the Seer who is the eye of the Soul, set vision everywhere upon them, in the source of the Truth they had clarity, they had ecstasy, therefore they fashioned variously the seat of this Session by a common will in their action and a common thought in their knowledge.

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(7) With mutual heart they stood awake, in the wide-flung firm seat of things that lost its ends in the distance; Heaven and Earth have become as young maidens, they have become two sisters and they declare twin names of all things.

(8) They distinguish all, all the Births, they bear the vastnesses of the gods and faint not with that burden; for one that is all moves in them, is the stable and the mobile, and that which walks and that which is winged; one is born everywhere but his form is divergent.

(9) Ever I move in thought to that ancient Truth of the mighty Father who begot us, for that is twin with our being and there the gods who labour penetrate by their movements to the wide path within the far-flung infinity.

(10) O ye our firmaments, I declare this hymn of your affirmation; let them hear it who contain truth in their inward parts and with the tongue of the divine Will taste their enjoyments, the Lord of Love and the Kings of the world and the Lord of Purity, the ever young children of the Infinite, Seers, who widen their being before us.

(11) The Creator with his hands of golden Light and his tongue of enjoyment moves in Heaven’s triple Knowledge and in the gods mayst thou attain to the creative rhythm and loose forth in us, O Projector of things, the all-formation.

(12) May the Framer of things, with his perfect hands that work perfectly, for he has perfect light and possesses the Truth, confirm these things in us for our increasing. O Artisans of Knowledge, ye who have the fostering Sun with you, lift high the pressing stones and grow full of ecstasy, for ye have shaped the march of the sacrifice.

[Incomplete]

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Mandala Four

SUKTA 18

Aditi to Indra

(1). “This is the path of old discovered over again by which all the gods rose up and were born. Even by this path must thou be born in thy increase; go not out by that to turn thy mother to her fall.”

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Indra to Aditi

(2). “Not by this path must I go out, for hard it is to tread; let me go out straight from thy side. Many are the things I have to do that have not been done; by that way I would fight; by that way I would question after Truth.”

(3). His mother went before him and he looked after her. “Must I not refrain from following her? Nay, I must indeed follow.” In the house of the Maker Indra drank the nectar-wine of a hundred riches that was pressed from the stones.

---

The poet speaks

(4). What perverse thing should he do, that his mother bore him for a thousand months, for many autumns? Nay, there is none who is his counterpart and measure among those who have been born or who have yet to take birth.

(5). His mother deemed of it as if a sin and she hid him in her secret being overflowing with might. Then himself he rose up wearing light for a robe and in his birth he filled earth and heaven.

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Aditi to the poet

(6). Behold these waters go murmuring on their way; yea, they cry out together as those who have the truth. Ask of them what is it that they say, what encircling mountain the waters break?

(7). What have their mysteries of knowledge spoken to him? The waters went musing on the sin of Indra. It is my son who with his mighty weapon slew Vritra and loosed them forth.

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The poet speaks

(8). In the rapture of the nectar-wine, a young goddess, thy mother cast thee forth; in the rapture she brought thee out with difficult labour. In the rapture the waters were kind to the Infant; in the rapture Indra rose up and came forth in his might.

(9). In the rapture, O Master of the Riches, the shoulderless demon wounded thee and smote away thy jaws.When thou wert wounded, then thou rosest yet more high and didst crush the head of the Destroyer with thy weapon.

(10). The Cow who bore once, bore Indra the firm, the forceful, the mighty Bull; the Mother sent forth her unhurt child to his journeying, since he desired himself a path for his body.

(11). Then the Mother coaxed the Mighty One, “Behold, the gods abandon thee, O my son.” Then said Indra, for he meant to slay the Coverer, “O Vishnu, O my Comrade, pace all the width of thy steps.”

(12). Who made thy mother a widow? Who would have smitten thee in thy lying down and in thy moving or what god was above thee in his grace, that thou hast dragged thy father by his feet and wasted him away?

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Indra speaks to the poet

(13). Nought had I to live on, I cooked the entrails of the dog, I found none among the gods who had grace on me and I

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saw my wife not growing to her greatness. Then the Bird brought to me the honey wine.

SUKTA 25

(1) Who today in his inner strength desires the godhead, who longs and cleaves in heart to the friendship of the Lord of Mind? Who seeks him with adoration casting in the Flame high-kindled the Soma-wine for the great Presence that shall carry him over to that other shore?

(2) Who bows down with the Word of submission to the delightful One? Who becomes full in his mentality and wears the bright rays of the Light like a robe? Who desires the fellowship with Indra? who his friendship? who his brotherhood for the wisdom? who for his soul’s growth?

(3) Who takes into himself today the presence of the gods? Who seeks Infinity and her Sons and the Light? In whose mind do the Aswins and Indra and Agni drink the brightness of the Joy outpoured nor depart from their delight?

(4) For him may Agni of the Fullness work out peace, he may set his long-persisting gaze on the Lord of Illumination in his high ascent, him who has said, “Let us pour out the soul’s joy to Indra, to the Purusha of the strength, of all the Purushas the strongest.”

(5) Him neither the many nor the few can overcome (or satisfy); the Mother Infinite works for him a vast peace. Dear is he to Indra who perfects his works, dear who fulfils mind, dear who stands forward in his increasing soul, dear who is full of the wine of joy.

(6) For him who goes forward increasing, who expresses the Soma-wine, Indra in his strength works absolute perfection. But of him who offers it not he is neither helper nor friend nor brother, rather he smites down those who increase not in soul nor express it in the Word.

[Incomplete]

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SUKTA 39

(1) Swift is Dadhikra, him let us now affirm and let us do the work for the Heaven and the Earth.May the Dawns arising speed me on, may they carry me beyond all stumblings.

(2) For the mighty Horse of the [incomplete]

SUKTA 40

(1) Dadhikravan is he of whom now we must do the work; may mall the Dawns speed me on the path! of the Waters and of the Dawn and the Sun and Brihaspati, he of the puissance, the Victor.

(2) May this Power of being who seeks the full-bringing and seeks the Light and who abides in all activity, turn into inspiration the impulsions of the Dawn, may he abide in their speed that carries us beyond. Dadhikravan who is true in his running,—yea, he gallops and he flies,—brings into being the impulsion, the abundant force, the heavenly light.

(3) When he runs, when he speeds in his passage, as the wing of the Bird is a wind that blows about him in his greed of the gallop, as the wing that beats about the breast of the rushing Eagle; so about the breast of Dadhikravan when with the Force he carries us beyond.

(4) In the abundance of his strength he carries his impeller beyond; a rein binds his neck and a rein holds him about the chest and a rein is in his mouth. Dadhikravan puts forth his energy according to the will in the mind and gallops along the turnings of the path.

(5) This is the swan that dwells in the purity, the lord of substance in the middle world, the priest of the offering whose seat is upon the altar, the guest in the gated house. He dwells in the Man, he dwells in the Truth, he dwells in the wide Ether; he is born of the Waters, he is born of the Light, he is born of the Law, he is born of the Hill of Substance, he is the law of the Truth.

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Mandala Five

[word] - Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to themanuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

SUKTA 29

(1) Three mights has the Fulfiller of aspiration in man’s building of the godheads, three luminous strata of the Heavens these uphold, yea, the song of the Thought-gods when they are purified in their discernment is thy illumination, but thou, O God-in-Mind, art the thinker and their Seer of the Truth.

(2) When the Thought-gods sang the hymn of his illumination and its strains pursued the movement of his ecstasies, for he had drunk of the wine of our delight, then he took up his lightning, then he slew the Python, then he released the mighty Waters to their flowing.

(3) O ye Strong Movers, O singers of my soul-thought, let the Puissant One drink of this my wine that I have pressed out perfectly; for this is the food of the offering that finds for man the radiances; of that when he had drunk, God-in-Mind slew the Python.

(4) More vastly he supported heaven of mind and earth of body and his wide-yawning extension became a terror to the Beast; he forced him to draw in the expression of his sinuosities and smote down the Son of Division as he hissed against him.

(5) Then all the gods gave to thee by their will-in-works, O lord of the plenitudes, their draught of the wine of ecstasy; the brilliant-hued horses of the Sun of Truth as they galloped in front for the white-shining soul thou madest to mount upon the higher levels.

(6) When the Lord of our plenitudes severs at one blow with his thunderbolt all the ninety and nine coils of the Serpent, then the Thought-powers sing to him a song of illumination in the seat of our session and with the Word of the triple rhythm they press against our heavenly barrier.

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(7) God-in-Will, a friendly Flame, made ready for his friend three hundred mighty bulls of the vastness; God-in-mind drank from the three lakes of man all together the Wine pressed out by him, that he might slay the Enfolder.

(8) When the Lord of the plenitude had devoured the flesh of the three hundred vastnesses, when he had drunk up the three lakes of the immortalising wine, then all the gods called to the Doer of works, the Bringer of substance for the God-in-mind so that he slew the Python.

(9) When Ushana, soul of desire and thou together sped to thy home, O God-in-Mind, borne by forceful and speeding swiftnesses, conquering here thou didst go in one chariot with Kutsa, the embracer of knowledge and with the gods; thou didst conquer Strength that destroys.

(10) One wheel of the illumining Sun thou hadst smitten away for the embracer of knowledge, the other thou madest to move forward towards the supreme good. Thou hast crushed with thy stroke the mouthless Dividers who mar our self-expression, thou hast cloven them asunder in the gated city.

(11) The affirmations of the Manifester of Light increased thee and thou madest subject to the Son of Knowledge the demon of the evil satisfactions; the Extender in the straightness made thee his comrade,—thou didst perfect his ripenesses and thou drankest of his delight.

(12) They of the nine radiances when they have pressed out the Wine and they of the ten illumine in them God-in-mind by their hymnings; they accomplish the work, they uncover even that vastness of the Light over which there is a lid.

(13) How shall I with knowledge serve the mightinesses that thou hast done, O Lord of plenitude? yea, and these new works also that thou wouldst do, O brilliant Strength, we would bring out by speech in the comings to us of the knowledge.

(14) All these many things thou hast done, O Lord-in-Mind, and even in thy birth wast unassailable in thy puissance; and now the deeds thou wouldst do in thy violence, O hurler of the thunder-flash, there is none that shall prevent, nor any hedger-in of that energy.

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(15) O Power-in-Mind, cleave to these thoughts of my soul even while I shape them into form, they are the new thoughts that we have shaped for thee, O thou flashing Force. I, desiring substance, accomplished in thought, perfected in works, have fashioned them for thee as happy robes well made and as a chariot.

SUKTA 30

(1) Where is that hero-strength? Who has seen God-in-mind moving with his bright pair in his happy chariot? for he desires the soul that has pressed out the wine of delight and to him the lord of lightnings, to whom rises the manifold call, comes with increase to his dwelling-place.

(2) I saw far-off his world which keeps the solar light, even the intensity of his seat who is the Establisher of things; then I desired and went forth to seek. I asked of others and they said to me: “When we souls of men awake, then may we possess God-in-mind.”

(3) Nay, let us declare now in this pressing-out of the Wine, all the things that thou hast done, even all that thou cleavest to in us; let him that knoweth not, come by the knowledge and let him that knows hear it in his soul. Lo, the lord of the plenitudes who comes driving with all his armies!

(4) In thy birth, O Indra, thou makest firm the mind and goest forth to war one against many; and thou hast opened the very Rock to light by thy flashing strength and thou hast found the wideness of the radiances, the shining herds.

(5) When beyond in the highest supreme thou tookst thy birth bearing thy Name of inspiration, from that moment the gods had awe of the Puissant One; he conquered all these waters that had the Divider for their lord.

(6) For thee these Thought-Powers chant their hymn of illumination and they press out the food of delight. God-in-Mind prevailed against the Serpent that lies coiling against the waters; by his own creations of knowledge he overcame the weaver of illusions.

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(7) At thy birth thou didst scatter utterly the hurters, the divider,—in thy high desire thou slewest him with light, O lord of the plenitudes, when here thou sentest rolling the head of Namuchi the destroyer, desiring a path for man’s journey.

(8) Then indeed thou madest me the comrade of thy battle, when thou didst crush the head of Namuchi the destroyer and thou setst in action thy thunderstone that comes to us from thy luminous world and madest heaven and earth like two wheels (or wheelpaths) for the thought-gods.

(9) The Destroyer made of women the weapons of his warfare and what shall his strengthless armies do to me? Between both the two streams of this being God-in-mind was manifested; then he moved forth to battle with the Destroyer.

(10) Here the luminous mothers moved and came together, for they were roaming hither and thither divorced from their offspring; God-in-mind by his acts of puissance made them firmly to cohere when perfect outpourings of the wine of delight had filled him with their ecstasy.

(11) When the wine-pourings set streaming by the Tawny One had made him drunken with their ecstasy, the Bull roared aloud in his dwelling-places; God-in-Mind, the render-open of our cities, drank of this and gave back the shining cows, the radiant herds.

(12) O God-Will, a happy work was this that thy ruddy powers did who gave unto us the four thousands of the shining kine, and we took from the hands of the strongest of Active Souls from the Discerner of the Movement the fullnesses that he extended unto us.

(13) O God-Will, thy ruddy powers gave me perfect form and released me to my Home with the thousands of thy cattle; for the intense juices of the wine had intoxicated the God-Mind in the dawning of the Night that circumscribes.

(14) Out broke into dawn the Night that circumscribes, because of the Discerner of the Movement, the King of his ruddy powers. Like a horse driven swiftly in its gallop, the Ruddy One conquered his fourfold thousands.

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(15) Four times a thousand of the luminous cattle we have taken from thy ruddy powers, O God-Will; and this heated clarity that was for the intensifying of our strength,—of the thunderstone is its heat,—that too let us take, O minds illumined.

SUKTA 31

(1) God-in-Mind maketh him a steep descent for the chariot of his action when he stands upon it, lord of the plenitudes, in its movement towards fullness; as a keeper of the kine with the troops of his cattle, so he extends wide his herds of vision; unhurt, supreme, he moves towards his victory.

(2) Forward race, O master of thy shining steeds! let not thy delight turn away from us, O thou of the golden prosperity; cleave unto us! There is nought in the world more rich in substance than thou, O God-in-Mind; even to our life-powers, steeds that have no mate, thou givest a mother for their offspring.

(3) When by force he arose and was born as force, God-in- Mind gave his direction to all his powers; the good milkers that were shut up in their prison he goaded forth and he opened out by the Light the enveloping darkness.

(4) Subtle souls of men fashioned a chariot for thy steed, the Framer of things shaped thy shining thunderbolt, O thou of the manifold calling; the chanters of the soul-thought greatening the God-Mind by their hymns of illumination increased him that he might slay the Python.

(5) When to thee, the Bull of the diffusion, the Lords of the diffusion sang the illumining hymn and the pressing stones chanted it and the Mother Infinite, of one mind with these, then the wheels that bear no chariot and no horses draw them but God-in-Mind drives, came rolling against the Destroyers.

(6) Thy former deeds I will speak forth and the new ones that thou hast done, O Lord of the plenitudes, in that thou, O holder of the Force, bearest in their wide extension our earth

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and heavens, conquering for man the waters bright with the rich distribution of our being.

(7) And that too now is thy doing, O achiever of works, O illumined thinker, that thou, slaying the Serpent, containest here the energy; and thou hast seized on all the knowings of the evil Strength and hast cloven away the destroyers in thy forward movement.

(8) Thou madest the waters to play for Yadu and for Turvasu,—kine of a good milking,—and didst bear them to their other shore. Thou borest on Kutsa, embracer of knowledge, in his fierce driving against the foe when in ye two Ushana and the gods rejoiced together.

(9) O God-in-Mind and O embracer of knowledge, borne on in your car may the powers of your movement bring you to our ear of inspiration; do ye dispel Night from the waters and from the seat of the soul’s session and remove her darknesses from the heart of man so that he shall enjoy his plenitudes.

(10) The horses that the Breath of Life has yoked are yoked well, this Seer too, desiring his increase, is in motion upon the path, here all the Thought-gods are thy companions, and our soul-thoughts, O God, increase thy energy.

(11) And may the car too of the illumining Sun in the circumscribing Night rise supreme and gallop upon the upper levels; for his white-shining Steed brings the wheel of his action and sets it to its complete movement; placing it in front he shall win for us the whole Will to the work.

(12) Lo, O ye peoples, God-in-mind has come to us for the vision and desires for his comrade the man who has pressed out the wine of the ecstasy; the pressing stone lifts up its voice and is brought towards the altar and there are priests of the journeying sacrifice who keep its swiftness in action.

(13) They who would desire, now let them desire; but they are mortals, O Immortal! let not their march and labour lead them into evil. Take thy delight in the doers of the sacrifice and confirm thy energy in them, the people among whom may we be counted.

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SUKTA 32

(1) Thou hast rent open the fountain, thou hast released the doors that were sealed; thou, thou hast set to their play the floods that were in bondage; O God-in-mind, when thou openedst the vast hill, thou hast loosed wide the streams, thou hast hurled down the Titan destroyer.

(2) The fountains that were kept sealed, by the successions of the Truth thou hast made a rushing speed, thou hast milked the teat of the Hill, O hurler of the thunder-flash! O fierce and strong! O Power-in-Mind! and thou hast smitten the Python that lay coiled in front against them and established thy strength in us.

(3) Against that other mighty Beast also thou hast hurled forth thy stroke in all thy strengths, O God-in-Mind; for when thou deemedst thyself alone and without any opposer, lo, from him that was slain another was born mightier than he!

(4) Him too, as he drew intoxication from the self-nature of these peoples, a Son of the Mist, who increases mightily in his march towards the Night, Sushna’s evil strength that is the flame and light of the Titan Divider,—him too the Bringer forth of the abundance, the hurler of the thunders, smote with his thunderbolt.

(5) He too was settled deep within in the workings of the will of this mortal; but though he showed no vital part, yet this god found out his mortal centre; therefore, O warrior strength, when he warred against thee in the bringing forward of the rapture, him thou didst cast into the house of darkness.

(6) Him as he lay thus coiled in a knot against thee and increasing in the sunless darkness, him too the Bull, the Power-in- Mind, intoxicated with the distillings of the wine, forced to uncoil himself and slew him.

(7) When God-in-Mind lifted up his stroke, force irresistible, against the mighty Titan, when he crushed him in his advancing of the thunderbolt he made him the lowest thing of every creature born.

(8) From him too as he lay against the nether ocean drinking up

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the wine of sweetness, a denial of force, a mighty dungeon, God-in-mind wrested his gains; he cleft asunder with his mighty stroke the footless eater in our gated dwelling, the spoiler of our self-expression.

(9) Who shall hedge in his force and his heroic strength? Alone, irresistible he brings to us our possessions; yea, and even these two Goddesses hasten forward now in fear pursued by this rapidity of the God-mind and his mightiness.

(10) And for him the goddess, self-disposing Nature, hastens forward and she is a path for the God-mind and like a woman that desires she obeys him in her labour; and when by these goddesses he joins all his energy to the working, the worlds that are our dwelling-place bow down and obey his self-ordering puissance.

(11) Of thee my soul learns in its inspiration that thou art the lord of existence. One, thou art five in thy worlds of birth and thou art born in a victorious movement in their creatures. All the voices of my aspiration lay hands upon their strong impeller, day and night they call upon the Puissant.

(12) As such verily do I learn of thee that it is thou movest us according to the order of the truth and givest thy plenitudes to thy sages. What can the gods of our soul-thoughts, thy companions, seize of thee who by thee (or towards thee), O Power-in-mind, set in us their desire?

SUKTA 33

(1) Limited in my strength, I seek to hold vastly in my thought the gods for that other vast and true strength which is the god-mind; for he is the warrior in this struggle and affirmed awakes in knowledge in the creature to right mentality for this human being so that man wins the plenitudes.

(2) Therefore do thou, O God-mind, O Bull of the herds, by constant thought with the words of illumination attain to the yoking of thy brilliant swiftnesses; for thou upholdest, O lord of plenitudes, the thoughts that follow thee aright according to thy pleasure in them and thou cleavest faithfully

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to men who wage the noble war.

(3) No longer, O God-Mind, thou who movest to the knowledge, are there in us those powers of thine that remained unyoked to thy car because we found not the inspired word; now mount upon thy chariot, now hold the lightning in thy hands, for now thou hast perfect steeds, for now thou governest, O divine, thy reins of light.

(4) When, O God-mind, thou hast a multitude of thy words of self-expression, then warring thou createst from them the mother of Light in her abundant pastures; yea, the Bull of the herds has cloven in his battles the very Name of the destroyer for the Sun of the illumined truth that he may mount his own dwelling-place.

(5) We are they, O God-Mind, who are the souls that generate thy force and we thy chariot-warriors driving to thy onset; may there come to us, O Strength of the Dragon, the Fighter and delightful Enjoyer to whom we call in the bringings of our oblation.

(6) For the energy in thee, O God-Mind, desires satisfaction of delight and, immortal, as in a dance thou fulfillest thy divine strengths. So do thou become in us wealth of thy substance and give a pervading felicity; I would affirm the gift of the conqueror of many riches, the noble fighter.

(7) Thus, O god-mind, protect us by thy increasings; protect the doers of the works, the speakers of the word, O Hero in the battle; fill thyself with a delightful wine of sweetness well-pressed out that shall give us the very touch of the skin in thy conquest of the plenitudes.

(8) And may the ten white swiftnesses of the golden-hued seer, the son of the many-seeing, the scatterer of the dividers, bear me with delight; may I abide by the workings of will of the Son of the dweller on the Mountain.

(9) And may those red ones of the Son of him whose steeds are the powers of life bear me also, they that have the fullnesses of the will-force in the lavishing of the knowledge. The Mover of things gives me his thousands; he illumines the force of the fighter as if for increasing the fullness of his body

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(10) And may those well-loved steeds, shining and straining forward, of the King of Sound, the son of the Lord of Feature come to me in the greatness of bliss of the all-embracing seer even as the shining herds that I have gained crowd to their pen.

SUKTA 34

(1) Infinite, indestructible is the Nature that belongeth to the world of Light and to the Achiever of works it comes, to him whom none was ever born to smite. For him press the wine, for him prepare the food, set expandingly your abundance before him who manifoldly affirmed is the upholder of the inspired word.

(2) He has filled his belly with the wine of your delight, the lord of plenitudes has become drunk with the rapture of that honeyed food; as the soul of desire he of the mighty stroke wields his weapon of the thousand flaming points to slay the Beast.

(3) For whosoever presses out for him the wine in the clear heat of the light or in the heat of the abundance, he, oh he, becomes a soul of light; farther and farther the Puissant bears the extending limits of his being and makes it luminous in its formation; for this is the lord of plenitudes who is the comrade of the seer.

(4) When he has slain the father of a man or his mother or his brother, he flees not from him, no, he comes to all that that man has laboured out and he is the doer in him of his labour; it is he that creates in him his substance and he flees not away from the sin.

(5) Not with the five nor with the ten does he desire to ascend, nor does he cleave to the evil one who gives not the wine, even though he flourish and increase; he conquers him or he slays in his impetuous movement and he gives to the seeker of the godheads for his portion the pen full of the luminous herds.

(6) Grasping firmly his discus he hews asunder our foe in the

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shock of the battle, he turns from him who gives not the wine, but its giver he increases; the God-mind is terrible, he is the tamer of every opponent, he is the Aryan fighter and brings into subjection the Destroyer.

(7) Yea, he drives away the enjoyment of that miser Trafficker, he robs him of it and apportions to the giver of sacrifice that wealth full of powers. Every creature who angers the strength of the Puissant is held back by manifold obstacles and his path is painful and rugged.

(8) When Two perfected in wealth and universal in force are found by God-Mind, the master of plenitude in the fullness of the luminous herds, creating light he makes a third his helper and his impetuous movement with his fighters releases upward the luminous multitude.

(9) O God-Will, I praise the Slayer of the foe, the winner of the thousandfold riches, the son of the Dweller in the flame, let that Aryan fighter obtain the highest vision of the light; for him let the heavenly waters come together and nourish, in him let there dwell a forceful and blazing warrior strength.

SUKTA 35

(1) Bring us, O God-Mind, that will in works which is most effective for our increase, for it prevails in the fields of our labour, and conquers in their plenitudes and the foe cannot pierce it.

(2) The increasing birth of thee bring to us perfectly which thy four nations are, and that which are thy three, O Hero in the battle, and that which is of all the five.

(3) Yea, we call to us the supremely desirable birth of thee in thy utter strength of plenty; for the gods of the Life are created in us and by them thou art born as the rushing speed of the Bull of the abundance and breakest through thy opponent.

(4) Thou art the Bull of plenty and thou art born to give us the joy of our riches, for thy force rains abundance; violent is thy mind and a self-might of battle and thy prowess strikes out continually, O Puissant.

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(5) God-Mind, wielder of the thunderbolt, will of a hundred works, lord of luminous force, rush with all thy chariots upon the mortal who makes himself our enemy.

(6) Thee the peoples who have made clear the seat of sacrifice call for the winning of the plenitude, because utter is thy abundance, fierce thy energy, and first and supreme art thou in the multitude of thy thinkings.

(7) Advance, O Puissant, the chariot invulnerable that goes in our front and goes at our side in our battles conquering for us plenitude of possession after possession.

(8) Come to us in our battle, O God-Mind, advance our chariot by the power of thy many-thoughted goddess; may we hold in thought in our heavens, O lord of luminous strength, the inspired knowledge that is the supreme good, may our mind realise in its heavens the word of divine affirmation.

SUKTA 36

(1) May the God-Mind come to us, he who awakes in us to knowledge of our treasures to give of the giving of his felicities; like a bull that seeks its delight but has wandered in the desert thirsting and desiring, so let him drink of the wine of delight that we have pressed out for him.

(2) O hero of the battles, O driver of thy luminous coursers, let the Wine of our delight mount thy devouring jaws as if on to the high level of the mountain; to thee let the horses of our life gallop, may we all have intoxication in our words, O thou of the manifold calling.

(3) O thou called manifoldly by men, my mind is like a wheel that travels on the paths, but shakes and trembles in my fear that I may not have power to mentalise thee, O wielder of the lightnings; therefore utterly may thy adorer enriched with thy many riches affirm thee in his chariot, O thou who ever increasest, master of plenitudes.

(4) O God-Mind, thy adorer is a pressing stone of the wine that lifts up its voice to thee seeking possession of thy Vast; extend with thy left hand thy felicities, with thy right hand

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extend them, driver of bright coursers, lord of plenitudes, let not thy delight in us pass away from thee.

(5) Let Heaven rain its abundance to increase thee, the lord of abundance; diffuser of the rain of heaven art thou and the horses also that bear thee; as the bull of that plenty come in thy chariot of the abundance, O strong-jawed drinker; thy will is for the works of abundance, thou art lord of these rains, O hurler of the thunderflash, confirm us in the bringing of the plenty.

(6) The red coursers of his plenitude he of the plenitude directs and they cleave to the hundredfold riches of the triple state; to the Youth whose chariot is the voice of the knowledge may the worlds and their people bow down and the gods of the Life obey him to do his works.

SUKTA 37

(1) He labours by the light of the Sun of Truth, casting the oblation, bright with the surface of the clarities, moving perfectly; inviolable the dawns break forth for him who has said, “Let us press out the wine of immortality for the Puissant.”

(2) He has kindled the Flame and he conquers, he has extended wide the seat of his sacrifice, he has set the pressing stone to its labour and has pressed out the wine and he adores. When his pressing stones cry aloud with the voice of their swift impulsion, then by his oblation the priest of pilgrim sacrifice travels to that ocean.

(3) Lo the Bride, who comes to him desiring her lord, he weds her, a vast queen of swift impulsions; his chariot becomes a voice of knowledge and a thunder of proclamation and it sets moving around it the many thousands of the plenitude.

(4) He is a king and untroubled in whom the God-mind drinks an intense Wine with the light for its companion; and he charges with his fighters and slays the powers that conceal and possesses the worlds for his habitation, full of felicity, increasing the Name.

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(5) He increases in his secure having and he conquers in his getting, for him the human path and the divine meet in one and both are conquered. He becomes dear to the Lord of the Light, dear to the Lord of the Flame who presses out the Wine and gives it to the Puissant.

SUKTA 38

(1) O Puissant, O lord of thy hundred workings, vast is thy felicity, wide-diffused are its riches; O universal doer of works perfect in warrior-force, make large now our luminousnesses.

(2) O God-in-Mind,O shining Strength, when thou holdest that in thee as an impulsion, a thing of inspiration, far it extends itself, O hue of gold, far is the range of its inspired hearing and falsehood cannot pierce it.

(3) Lo thy aggressive strengths, O thou of the thunderbolt, that attain to perceptive vision and are themselves the rain of thy bounty, both thou and they are godheads who enter into possession of our being; ye rule our heavens and ye rule this material movement.

(4) Yea and this also ye rule that is some other discerning force of thine, O slayer of the Coverer. To us bring that divine power of man that for us thou shalt become the mind of the godhead.

(5) Now by these thy enterings in, O God-in-Mind, lord of the hundred powers of will, may we abide in thy peace and bliss perfectly guarded; may we abide, O Warrior, with thee for our strong protector

SUKTA 39

(1) O God-Mind, thou of the rich lights, thou of the thunderbolt, that which is thy rain of bounty and the felicity of thy giving bring to us with both hands full, O finder of our substance.

(2) O God-Mind, bring to us the supremely desirable thing

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which thou dost mentalise, that which dwells in the light of heaven; so may we have knowledge of thee that thou mayst give to us, nor stint the satisfaction of our longing.

(3) By mentality of thee which lavishes, which increases wealth of thy felicity, which is large, which is inspired in knowledge, by that thou rendest out even from fortified enclosures the plenitude for our possessing.

(4) To him who is richest of all the lords of riches and king over all who labour at the Work, I direct my love in the words to the Puissant, that I may express him by his many energies.

(5) For him the word of revealed wisdom, for the God-mind the speech of our utterance, the speech of our self-expression; for him who bears the thought of our soul the Eaters of things increase their Words, yea, they make them a bright gladness.

SUKTA 40

(1) Come to us, lord of the Wine, God-Mind, most powerful to slay the Coverer; drink, O diffuser of bounty with thy powers of the diffusion the wine that the stones have pressed for thee.

(2) Strong towards bounty is the stone of the pressing, strong in bounteousness this wine that we have pressed, strong in bounteousness is its rapture; O God-Mind, most powerful to slay the Coverer, drink with thy powers of the diffusion, O diffuser of bounty.

(3) Rich in thy bounty I call thee to me with all the abundance of thy varied expandings; O God-Mind etc.

(4) Thunderer of the straight movements, Bull of the puissance who conquers in the battle, the King, the Wine-drinker who slays the Coverer, may the God-Mind come forcefully to us yoking his bright coursers and grow drunken with the wine of the midday offering.

(5) O Sun of Truth, when the Light of thy world has become the undivine and pierced thee with the darkness, then the worlds and their peoples think like a man bewildered and

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deluded who finds not the Field which he is seeking (or knows not the field of his movement).

(6) O God-Mind, thereafter when thou didst hurl down from it as they moved over the mental heaven the formations of knowledge (illusions) of that Titan Light, the Eater of things found by the fourth Word the Sun of Truth that had been hidden in a darkness given up to a false working.

(7) Lo, here am I thine and in him I dwell; violated by me through fear or passion let him not cast me out from him! Thou art the Lord of Love who gives us the felicity of the Truth; he and the King of Wideness, let these two here foster me.

(8) Priest of the Word, setting the stones to their work, serving the gods with active obedience, learning from them, the Eater of things has set the eye of the Sun of Truth in his heavens and hid away the illusions of the Titan Light.

(9) The Sun that was smitten with darkness by the Light of his own world became undivine, the Eaters of things have sought out and discovered; others could not find him.

SUKTA 42

(1) Let the Word of my thought be full of the peace that it may embrace the godhead as Wideness and as the Harmonies and as the Enjoyment and as the Infinities of being. Yea, let the Master of all Might hear it who is the multicoloured birth of things, the sacrificer on the five planes, whose path none can cleave across, the creator of the Bliss.

(2) Let the infinite Consciousness clutch my affirmation to her bosom, as the Mother her child attractive to her heart in the fullness of her bliss; the soul state of love and joy which has its foundation in the Divine that I gain in the godhead of wideness and the godhead of harmony, even that which creates the Bliss.

(3) Make to rise up in you that highest Seer of all seers, send over him in a surge the sweetness and the clarity; he is the godhead creative who brings forth into being for us the

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delightful treasures of our substance and they are brought forward by his working and are firmly established.

(4) And thou, O divine Mind, by the mind lead us and by the radiances and by the illumined gods in us to that blissful state and by the soul that is founded in the divine and by the right mind of the godheads that preside in our sacrifice.

(5) The divine who enjoys in us and is the creator of bliss and the master of nectar and the divine Mind that conquers all the wealth which the Coverer keeps from us and the Shaper in Knowledge and the Artisan of plenty and the many-thoughted Inhabitant, let all these foster us, immortals who break through for us to our goal.

[Incomplete]

SUKTA 52

(1) Forward! Shyavasva, violently on with thy illumined thought by the Thought-powers that sing to thee their sentences of light, gods of the sacrifice who have rapture of an inspiration that betrays them not, for it follows Nature’s self-forming force.

(2) Violent are they, yet comrades of a firm gleaming Strength; full of boldness in their driving, but linked each to each they protect by their self-truth thy march.

(3) Swift-charging bulls of the diffusion, they leap beyond our Nights; then in their heaven as on our containing earth we mentalise the vast expansion of the Thought-gods.

(4) In the Thought-gods we establish by their bold violence affirmation and sacrifice and they protect throughout our human epochs our mortality from the Enemy’s harms.

(5) They are soul-strengths that become adept in us for the conquest, perfect in force of achievement, no half-strengths of the light; forward through heaven illumine the sacrifice with thy verse for the thought-powers, gods of the sacrifice.

(6) By their golden gleamings, by their battling these soul strengths move towards knowledge and cast out their

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searching spears; yea, the lightnings leap at the will of the Thought-gods,—then of itself the Light of the Sun arises in our heaven.

(7) They increase the mights of our clay in the wide intervening spaces and in the energy of the rivers of Truth and in their place in the vast heaven.

(8) Express upward the force of the thought-gods who have the luminous power of the truth and skill to shape it; then of themselves these strengths of the soul are self-yoked and they charge in our forward march towards the light and bliss.

(9) Both in the streams of its wide-flowing flood they purify themselves and garb themselves with its densities and here with the wheel of their chariots they break open the material hill.

(10) With paths that come home to us and paths that radiate out wide from us and paths within us and paths that follow our movement and by all these their Names extended they come galloping to my sacrifice.

(11) Now as human things they gallop in and now as yoke-steeds of the nervous Life and now they are thoughts from the supreme and wear richly-shining forms of vision.

(12) They maintain the rhythms, they thirst for the waters and, victorious in the work, they dance about the source. They are unseen extenders of my being, my increasers who were with me for a blazing force in the vision.

(13) They are finders of knowledge and their lightnings are as spears that search; they are seers, they are creators of harmony; O sage, bow down to the banded Thought-gods and give them delight by thy speech.

(14) O sage, approach the banded Thought-gods as one comes to a friend with the goddess who discerns and disparts as with the bride of thy love; then shall they in thy heavens, affirmed, aggressive in their energy, rush forward with they thoughts.

(15) If a man mentalises these, towards the godheads by the Thought that bears, then by the Thought that discerns and

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disparts he shall be joined to them in their light of knowledge, in their inspiration of movement, in their gleamingsout.

(16) That I might seek the divine Friend, they illumined, declared to me first their many-hued Mother,¹ yea, they declared the bright Mother of the herds; then their Father who gives us his impulsions they declared, the Terrible One² (they who are his mights).

(17) Seven by seven in their power, each seven his complete hundred gave to me; in the waters of Yamuna I cleanse my wealth and inspiration of her shining herds, I purify my glad wealth of his steeds.

SUKTA 54

(1) Raise thou up this voice of the word to the self-lustrous army of the Thought-powers, they who move the fixed hills; they who support the burning light and sacrifice on the back of heaven and have the luminous inspiration, to them sing out by the word a great mightiness of the soul.

(2) These are the powers of the Life that are mighty and desire the waters of heaven and they increase our wide being; yoking their swiftnesses they speed everywhere; they join themselves to the lightning, the Third Soul cries aloud to them, the waters raise their voice and rush over all the earth.

(3) These gods have the flashing powers of the lightning, they are the outflaming of the thunderstone, the fire and light of the storm-wind of Life, Powers of battle that move the hills; they follow their clamorous path again and again with giving of the waters, shouting in their strength, uplifting their energy with a passionate delight in their force.

(4) O violent ones, rushing you pervade in your strength the nights and the days and the mid-world and its kingdoms;

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when you drive like ships over open ranges or when you possess with your motion the difficult paths, O even then, you Life-gods, you come not by any hurt.

(5) That force of yours, O ye Life-gods, has extended its far reaching vastness as the Sun of Truth extends wide its working; ye are even as his white steeds whose pure light in their journeying none can seize and restrain, when you make to break apart the hill of being because it gives not up to you life’s prisoned swiftnesses.

(6) O Life-gods, O ordainers of things, your army blazes with light when you wrest out the flood like a woodcutter cleaving a tree. Now therefore shall you, setting all your heart on one object, lead our effort and struggle by an easy way even as his eye guides the wayfarer.

(7) O Life-gods, he is not conquered, he is not slain, he stumbles not, nor is hurt nor suffers anguish, his felicities and his increasings are not harried nor made havoc of whom you speed on his way a seer or a king.

(8) These Life-gods, they yoke the horses of the Life-power, they are like men that conquer groups and companies, they are as if lords of strength and aspiration; when these kings have upraised their voice, they feed (drink) the fountain of the waters and flood earth with the strong essence of the sweetness.

(9) This wide earth becomes prone to the advancing movement of the Life-gods, prone the heaven and prone paths of the mid-air and prone the mountains.

(10) When, O Life-powers, O souls of heaven, with your rich bringings you rejoice in the rising of its Sun of illumination, souls of the world of Light, ah, your horses fall not in their galloping, at once you attain the end of this path.

(11) Lances are on your shoulders, on your feet are sharp anklets, on your bosoms golden adornments, O Life-Powers happy in your cars; lightnings that are flamings of the flame of Will are in your luminous arms, on your heads are wide extended turbans of golden light.

(12) Strivers and fighters, O Life-powers, ye rush over that high

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heaven whose pure light cannot be seized where is the shining Tree; when their purifying strengths have come together and have become a blaze of light, desiring the Truth they raise a voice of far extended proclamation.

(13) O ye Life-Powers that attain to absolute knowledge, may we be wide in our being, charioteers of the felicity you give which never departs from us even as the star Tishya from heaven; let the Life-powers in us delight in a thousandfold riches.

(14) O Life-gods, you foster a felicity full of desirable energies, you foster the finder of knowledge who has illumined possession of equality, you for the bringer of the riches establish here his war steed of the plenitude, you his King of the inspired knowledge.

(15) O you who at once increase our being, I seek from you that substance by which we shall build as if the world of light in the godheads. Life-Powers, take joy in this my self-expression so that by its speed for our journey we may pass through safe to the goal of our hundred winters.

SUKTA 55

(1) Strong for the sacrifice the Thought-Powers with their shining spears and the golden light of their bosoms hold a vast manifestation of our being; they journey with swift horses perfectly controlled; their chariots roll one after the other as they journey to Bliss.

(2) Of yourselves you hold in thought an energy according to your knowledge; great are you and widely illumine a vastness; yea and with your force you have measured out the mid-world. One after the other their chariots roll [as they journey to Bliss.]

(3) Together they were born, perfect in their becoming, together they are diffused and ever the godheads increase for the glory advancing more and more; wide are their splendours like the rays of the Sun of Truth. One after the [other their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

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(4) O ye thought-powers, your greatness can enter into our being and carry with it a power of vision like the seeing of the bright Lord of Truth; and ye shall found us in the immortality. One after the other [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(5) O Thought-powers, from that ocean of the Waters you raise up and shower down the rain of your plenty; and your herds that foster are not harried by the foe, O ye achievers of the work. One after the other [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(6) When for horses of swiftness you have put your dappled deer in your yokes and have drawn about you your vestments of golden light, you scatter and sunder all that strives against you, O Thought-Powers of the Life. One after another [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(7) Not the mountains of being nor its rivers can hedge you in, but where you discern your way, O Thought-powers, to that you go. Your movement is over all the earth and all the heavens. One after another [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(8) Whatsoever is of old and whatsoever is new, that which rises in us, O Dwellers in substance, and that which is expressed, of all this you become the knowers. One after another [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(9) Be a gladness in us, O Thought-powers, hurt us not with your blows; work out widely for us your much bliss; enter into our affirmation and our companionship. One after another [their chariots roll as they journey to Bliss.]

(10) Lead us, you, O Thought-powers hymned by us, from this to a richer existence out of the sin and evil. Accept our giving and oblation, O lords of sacrifice; let us become masters of your riches.

SUKTA 56

(1) O Flame of will, today I call down even from the luminous world of heaven the nations of the Thought-powers, the

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host that puts out its force, shaped with shining ornaments of golden light.

(2) Even as thou conceivest aught in the heart, that so they express and to that they move; they who come nearest to thy callings increase into a terrible beauty.

(3) Our earth full of their bounty moves rejoicing in the impulse of their blows. O Thought-powers, your force tears and cleaves asunder and it is hard to restrain like a luminous bull seeking the Terrible.

(4) They move in their energy easily like shining herds that cannot be restrained; they impel forward by their journeyings even the stone of the heavens of light and the hill of being expressed with all its members.

(5) Arise, now I call by my affirmings the multitudinous army of these Thought-powers increased and diffused, a supreme host, as if a herd released of the shining ones.

(6) Yoke to your car your steeds of rosy light, yoke blood-red swiftnesses to your chariots, yoke those two swift brilliant coursers who are strongest to bear you in the yoke, your strongest bearers in the yoke.

(7) Yea and that one shining many-voiced visioned steed of the plenitude hath here been placed; O Thought-powers, let him not delay long in your journeyings; urge him forward in your chariots.

(8) Now we call the chariot of the Thought-powers that seeks the inspired knowledge, and there stands the Queen of the two firmaments with the Thought-powers and brings to us all delightful things.

(9) I call that keen-shining labouring host of you brilliant (happy) in the chariot, for there she greatens with the Thought-powers perfect in her being, perfect in her felicity.

SUKTA 57

(1) O violent ones who have one heart, travel with the God mind in your chariots of golden light on a happy journey to the bliss. Lo, this thought in us in which ye shall take

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joy! Come as the waters of heaven to the thirsting soul that desires its streams.

(2) Thinkers with your weapons of sound and your lances that seek, bows of firmness, arrows of impulsion, quivers of persistence, perfect are your horses, perfect your chariots, perfect your weapons. O Thought-powers, sons of the many-hued Mother, so you journey to the Bliss.

(3) You pour out earth and heaven as his wealth on the giver of the sacrifice, in fear of your movement earth’s forests of pleasure start away from their roots. Sons of the many-hued Mother, you hew at the wide earth in your search for the bliss when fierce in strength you have yoked your dappled ones.

(4) O Thought-powers, ye are the flamings of the Life-god, the rain of heaven is your robe, you are perfect in form and alike even as twin-born things; gold and rose are your swiftnesses; cleaving all things you are without hurt; you are great and vast like heaven.

(5) Many-streaming, luminously adorned, very forceful, a vision of flaming lights, a rich felicity that falls not away from them, perfect in being from their birth, golden bosomed, the illumined singers of heaven enjoy the Immortal Name.

(6) O Thought-powers, spears of light are on your shoulders, force and energy and strength are placed in your arms, on your heads are the mightinesses of the soul, weapons of war are in your chariots; all glories have taken form in your bodies.

(7) Give unto us, O Thought-Powers, a rich felicity of the herds of the light and the horses of swiftness and chariots for our movement and great hero-energies and delight and joy. Sons of the Violent, create in us our self-expression; let me have enjoyment of your divine increasing.

(8) Ho! ye divine souls, Thought-powers of the many plenitudes, give us bliss, Immortals and Knowers of the Truth and Right, Seers ever young whose inspired hearing listens to the Truth; and your words express its Vastness and that Vastness is the rain of your diffusion.

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SUKTA 58

(1) Now will I affirm that puissant host of these Thought-gods full of newborn expression, whose horses are swift and they carry strength in their chariots; they have self-rule, they have mastered Immortality.

(2) They are a strong host blazing with light, who wear sharp bracelets on their hands and all whose actions are a rushing speed and they have creative knowledge and are givers of desirable boons, for they are immeasurable in their vastness and creators of beatitude; O mind illumined, adore these divine powers who have many riches for thee.

(3) Let them come to you today bearing heaven’s waters, all these Thought-powers that speed the rain of its abundance. O Thought-powers, behold here the flaming god high-kindled, cleave to him, O seers who are young for ever.

(4) It is you, O powers of the sacrifice, that bring to birth for man the King of the great impulsions; yours comes this Fighter who speeds forth his arms and smites with his clenched hands, yours, O Thought-powers, this master of hero-powers and excellent swiftnesses.

(5) Those who moved not become like whirling spokes, those who were limited in knowledge are born like the days into ever greater vastnesses; for the Thought-powers, highest and most rapturous sons of the many-hued mother, by the force of their own thinking have rained down their bounty.

(6) When ye have gone forcefully forward, O Thought-powers, with your dappled deer for coursers and the strong galloping of your chariots, the floods of heaven shall flow in their channels, earth’s pleasant growths shall be set in movement, and let Heaven too like a shining Bull (rainer luminous) thunder out its cry upon us.

(7) In their passage our wide earth becomes more vast to us, and their desire like a husband places in her its own child; our life-currents they join to the yoke for their horses; they have made their rain as if the sweat of their toil, these sons of the Violent One.

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(8) Ho, ye divine souls, [Thought-powers of the many plenitudes, give us bliss, Immortals and Knowers of the Truth and Right, Seers ever young whose inspired hearing listens to the Truth; and your words express its Vastness and that Vastness is the rain of your diffusion.]³

SUKTA 59

(1) Lo they are in clear movement for the giving of the bliss! Sing the word of light unto Heaven; I will offer the Truth to it from our earth. They are spreading abroad their swiftnesses, they are crossing through the mid-world; they are casting down upon us their own light in seas.

(2) In fear of their force our earth trembles into vibration, like a ship that is full it moves from its place and voyages, agonised; for these are they of the far vision who awaken us to knowledge by their goings, within us these godheads strive on in knowledge towards the vastness.

(3) Uplifted unto the highest is their horn as of shining herds for the glory; their vision is as that of the sun of the truth in the wide-outpouring of the light. You are beautiful like swift horses and born perfect,—like strong men you awake in your knowledge to the glory.

(4) Who has tasted all the great things of your greatness, who your revelations of wisdom, O Thought-powers? who the virilities of your strength? You make our earth to vibrate like a ray of the Light when you bear her forward, for the giving of the bliss.

(5) They are as if shining horses of swiftnesses, brothers each unto the other, they are like heroes that fight in the forefront and they war in our vanguard; they grow like strong men in their utter increase, they limit and measure out the vision of the Sun of Truth by their diffusions.

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(6) None of them is greatest or least or middle, they have broken out into birth and grown by their own vastness; from their birth they are perfect in their being; as such come to us, O ye sons of the many-hued mother, O ye strong ones of heaven.

(7) Like birds in their series they go flying in their strength to the ends of heaven and over all the high level of the Vastness; their galloping swiftnesses move away the clouds that envelop the hill wherever and however gods and men agree in their knowledge.

(8) Let the heaven of the undivided Infinite shape our birth and the Dawns richly various with the divided life labour over it; for to the word that declared them these Thought-powers of the Violent One have poured out the treasury of heaven on the finder of knowledge.

SUKTA 60

(1) I adore with obeisance of submission the Flame that shall perfectly foster us; here let him advance and be the discerning judge of our action; I bring it to him as if with chariots speeding towards the plenitude and from the right hand of knowledge I would enrich my affirmation of the Thought-gods.

(2) Ye who ascend, O Thought-powers, O violent ones, your chariots of ease and your dappled deer to whose footsteps we listen, in fear of you, O fierce strengths, our earth’s pleasant growths start away from their roots, our earth herself trembles and vibrates and even her mountain.

(3) The very hill that had grown into largeness was alarmed and its high level of heaven shook at your cry. When you play, O Thought-powers, with your searching lances, like uninterrupted waters you come running.

(4) Like rich bridegrooms they have tricked out their bodies with shapes of golden light, even with forms of their natural being; glorious they seek glory, they are strong in their chariots, always they create greatnesses in their members.

(5) None of these is least or greatest, brothers they have grown

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together towards a blissful opulence; a youth and a good worker is the Violent One their father; their mother is as a cow that is a good milker and she is many-hued and bright in her days.

(6) Whether, O Thought-powers, you stand fulfilled in joy in the highest or in the middle or in the lowest heaven, thence to us, O violent ones. And thou too, O Flame of Will, with these take knowledge of the oblation that we give to you as your sacrifice.

(7) When the Will and you, O Thought-powers omniscient, you come driving from the higher heaven over the levels of the hill of our being, then in your rushing motion drunken with rapture destroying the powers that do us hurt establish desirable bliss for the sacrificer who presses the wine.

(8) O Will, drink of the wine of delight and grow exultant; with the Thought-Powers glorious in their hosts that speak the word of light and give the touch of bliss, beings all-pervading who purify us, drink,O universal Force of all, one with them in impulsion of speed by thy heavenly-shining vision.

SUKTA 61

(1) Who are ye,O Powers supreme in your glory, you who come to us one by one from the highest supreme?

(2) Whence had you your horses? whence your reins? how had you your puissance? what is the manner of your movement? Their seat is on the back of Life, their rein of control is in its nostrils.

(3) The whip of their urging falls on its loins; these powers labour it with their thighs as if women in the creation of a child.

(4) So come over to me, O ye strong Males with your happy consort, that ye may dwell full of the heat of the Flame.

(5) She who extends her arms to the hero when affirmed by the seer of the ruddy-dark life-powers, let her conquer for me the herd of the horses of swiftness and the herd of the shining cows and the flock of a hundred.

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(6) Woman is she, greater in bliss and substance than the male who dwells not in the gods and has not the riches.

(7) She knows the sufferer and the thirsty and the soul afflicted with its desire and she forms the mind in the godhead.

(8) Because that Male is but half in his being and unaffirmed by the word, therefore he is called the Miser of life; only by the giving of her energy shall he become whole.

(9) Young and full of rapture she shall cry aloud his path to the dusky soul; for the illumined who has attained to much riches and to a far flung splendour two ruddy steeds labour on the path.

(10) And he shall give me a hundred of the fostering herd, even as the son of him who finds the steed, yea he shall be in his largeness of bounty even as this host of the Life-powers that travel to their goal.

(11) For drinking an intoxicating sweetness they are borne on by swift steeds and they hold here the inspirations of knowledge.

(12) By their glory they blaze with light in the two firmaments of our being and they are as if a golden light above in our heavens.

(13) Young is that host of the Life-gods and a blaze of light are their chariots; they cannot be confined, unwithheld they travel to the bliss.

(14) Who knoweth of them where now they speed and rejoice born in the Truth, free from all hurt of sin?

(15) You, O illumined powers, are leaders of the mortal by right thought and you hear him when he calls you to the journey.

(16) You, with your many delights, destroy our hurters and you turn towards us, O lords of sacrifice, desirable treasures.

(17) O goddess, wide-billowing Night, bear my affirmation over to the son of the Render, carry my words to him like a charioteer.

(18) And thou shalt say this for me to the Journeyer in the Chariot who has pressed out the wine, that my desire passes not away from me.

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(19) Lo, the Journeyer in the Chariot is a lord of the plenitudes, he dwells in the countries where are the radiant herds; his lodging is upon the mountains.

SUKTA 73

(1) Whether your station be in the supreme world or in this of the descent, whether you range multitudinously enjoying the world of the Multitude or in the mid-habitation,—come to me, O Riders on the Steed of Life.

(2) I approach the twins, children of the highest who are its rays in this hill of Matter, and they become in the multiplicity of its forms here upon earth and bear up the manifoldness of its works. I call them to me for world-enjoying in their utter multiplicity.

(3) One moving wheel of your chariot ye keep in governed labour, form for that which takes form; two others ye set shining (or moving) by your might throughout these kingdoms and these periods of man’s pilgrimage.

(4) Well by this that is here has that been worked out by you, O ye universal Twain, and I affirm it in me according to your making of it; born separately in us, you come wholly into union and brotherhood without any hurt.

(5) For the daughter of the Sun of Truth ever ascends your swift-running car, therefore red of action and full of the heat of her force are the winged powers that draw you and they guard us from attack on every side by their burning clarity.

(6) O twin divine Souls, by your bliss the Enjoyer of things awakens to knowledge in his conscious mind when he bears in his mouth of enjoyment your burning clarity that yet hurts not, O ye leaders of man’s pilgrimage.

(7) Heard in man’s voyagings is the clanging voice of the Bird of strength that leads your movement when the Enjoyer of things sets you moving towards his paths by his works, O strong Souls, O Riders of Life.

(8) O violent enjoyers who seek the sweetness, she fed full of the sweetness cleaves to you; when you cross over the two

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oceans, ripe are your satisfactions that you bring.

(9) Truth have they spoken, O Riders upon Life, when they called you creators of the Beatitude. Therefore in our journey most ready are you for the call to the journeying, therefore in our journey you give us wholly bliss.

(10) May these soul-thoughts that increase these gods in us be full of the bliss for the twin Riders on the Life,—the thoughts that we fashion like chariots for their movement, and we express in ourselves the limitless surrender.

SUKTA 74

(1) Where are ye today,O Riders on the steed of living,O divine Twins rich in mental power, in the divine world of mind and of That ye have the inspiration, O abundant rainers of substance; the Enjoyer of things labours to establish you in all his dwelling.

(2) Where are they? where now is your word audible in heaven, O gods who lead our pilgrimage? In what creature born are ye labouring? who is your companion by the rivers of being?

(3) To whom come ye or to whom do ye go, towards whose dwelling do ye yoke your car? In whose soul-thoughts are ye taking your delight? We for the sacrifice desire you.

(4) O twin power of the multiplicity, ye have joy for man born in the multiplicity in the pouring out of the waters of its multitude, when for man seized fast and bound in his self-extension ye come to him as to a lion snared in this world of harms.

(5) From the mover in things when he has grown old ye loose his faded covering like a worn raiment; young he grows again when you form him afresh and he meets the desire of the Bride.

(6) Verily, there is one here who would affirm you and in the vision of you we abide for the glory. Now hear, now come to us with your fosterings, O gods who are rich in the force of the plenitude.

(7) Who today takes delight of you among mortals that have

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realised their multiplicity? What illumined soul, O you who bear up the illumined in his voyage? who wins you by his sacrifices, O gods rich in the force of the plenitude?

(8) Most mobile for our paths of all divine chariots is the chariot of your movement, O Riders on the Life, let it come to us, seeking us, breaking through that world of the multitude and becoming a movement of power in mortals.

(9) O seekers of honey, let our constant action be wholly full of bliss; downward yet keeping the wide and complete consciousness, come flashing (or cleave) swift as eagles drawn by your winged powers.

(10) O Riders on the Life, whensoever ye are ready to hear this call of man, utterly full of a rich substance are your enjoyings, your satisfactions fill our cup to the brim.

SUKTA 75

(1) Towards the abundant movement of your utter delight, your car that bears our rich substance, O Riders on the Life, the seer who affirms you grows by his affirmation to that in his being. O sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(2) Come breaking through beyond to me; I call to you, O ye universal, O ye eternal Twain, O fulfillers of the Work, O treaders of the path of gold, O keepers of the perfect peace, O voyagers on the upper Waters, sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(3) Bearing to us the Delights, O Riders on the Life, come, ye twain; O violent ones who tread the ways of golden light, choosing and cleaving to us, gods rich in the force of plenitude, sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(4) She who is as the speech of the perfect Affirmer of things, ye have taken her and set by you in your car, O ye abundant rainers of our substance; so indeed your clanging swan of the paths creates for you your rich-bodied satisfactions. O sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(5) Ye who have the mind that wakes to knowledge, drivers of your chariot, man’s impetuous impellers, hearers of his cry,

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drawn by your winged energies you come, O Riders on the Life, to the mover in things when he has freed himself from the duality. O sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(6) O divine Souls, let your chariot-horses that are yoked by the mind, that eat of the streaming honey, let your winged powers bear you to the drinking of the wine with all kinds of bliss in your car, O Riders on the Steed of Life. Sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(7) O Riders on the Life, come hither, let not your delight ever turn away from us, O aspirers in our pilgrimage, and let your movement pervade our path and speed beyond, O invincible! Sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(8) O invincible, O Lords of Bliss, ye in this sacrifice grow in your being upon your adorer who in his desire of increase, expresses by the word the Riders on the Steed of Life. Sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

(9) Dawn has been born with her shining herds, the fire of the Will has been established and it observes the order of the Truth, yoked is your immortal car, O abundant rainers of our substance, O achievers of the Works. Sons of the sweetness, hear my call.

SUKTA 76

(1) Strength shines out as the might of the dawns, upward rise theWords of the illumined minds, words that travel towards the godheads. Downward now come to us hither, O Drivers of the Chariot, O Riders on the Life, to the swelling clarity.

(2) When it is perfected ye diminish it not, O swift voyagers, O Riders on the Life, now here affirmed within us; swift are ye in your coming with increase for the Caller drinking in the soul’s daytime and when he rests from the journey ye create the utter peace for the giver.

(3) Yea, come when the rays of the Truth gather together in its evenings and in the dawn of its day; in its midday come and when the sun of Truth is rising, by day and by night with your blissful increasing. Not now first, O Riders on the Life,

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is lengthened out the drinking of the honey.

(4) This is your station in the front of heaven and your dwelling place; these are your houses, O Riders on the Life, and this your gated mansion. Come to us from the mountain of the vaster Heaven and from the waters of that Ocean bearing to us the impulsion, carrying to us the energy.

(5) May we attain by their perfect leading, by this new manifestation of the Ashwins that creates the Beatitude. Bring to us felicity, bring to us hero-strengths, all immortal enjoyings.

SUKTA 77

(1) Sacrifice to the Twins supreme who come with the Dawn,—they shall drink before the greed of the Devourer makes war upon us,—in the dawn the Riders on the Life uphold the sacrifice and the Seers of the Truth express the Word when they enjoy the first pourings.

(2) In the dawn sacrifice to the Riders on the Life and set them galloping on their paths; not at the falling of the night does the sacrifice journey to the gods nor is it accepted by them; yea, and another than ourselves sacrifices and discovers his increase; he who sacrifices first is stronger for the conquest.

(3) Your chariot comes to you with the burden of your satisfying pleasures, its surface is that golden light, its hue is the honey of sweetness, it rains down clarities, it has the swiftness of the mind, it has the rush of the life, your chariot in which you pass beyond all evil stumblings.

(4) He who has entered into the largest kingdom by the strength of the lords of the voyage and enjoys that delightfullest essence of the food of the gods in their apportioning, carries his creation to its goal by the achieving of his works and ever he breaks through beyond all the lights that aspire not to the highest.

(5) May we attain by their perfect leading, by this new manifestation of the Riders on the Life that creates the Beatitude. Bring to us felicity, bring to us hero-strengths,—all immortal enjoyings.

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SUKTA 78

(1) Hither arrive,O Riders on the Life,O Leaders of our voyage, let not our delight turn away from us; like twin swans come flying to the outpourings of the wine.

(2) O Riders on the Life, like twin stags, like two bulls that hasten to the pastures, like twin swans etc.

(3) O Riders on the Life, gods rich in force of the plenitude, cleave to the sacrifice for the offering of our desire; like twin swans etc.

(4) When the eater of things descended down into Hell, then he called to you like a woman that woos her paramour and new was your speed as of the eagle with which you came to him and it was full of the purest bliss.

(5) O Tree that keepest the Delight, start apart like the womb of a mother giving birth; hear my cry, O Riders on the Life, and deliver me who am smitten with the seven pains.

(6) For the seer smitten with the seven pains in his fear and in his crying joy, O Riders on the Life, by the powers of your knowledge, bring together over him the Tree and tear it apart.

(7) As a wind sets the pool rippling from bank to bank, so let thy child move in thee, O Tree, and in the tenth month come forth.

(8) As the wind moves and as the wood and as the sea, so, O ten months’ child, do thou descend with the [    ] in which thou art wrapped.

(9) Ten months let the Boy lie in his mother and then come forth living and unhurt, living in her alive.

SUKTA 79

(1) Awaken us today, O dawn, to thy vast bliss bearing in thee the light of heaven, even as then didst thou awaken us when the inspiration of the Truth opened wide upon us, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life’s movement.

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(2) As thou dawnedst once, O daughter of heaven, perfect guide, pure and shining movement, so now dawn, O victorious force, O true inspiration, O wide expanding, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life’s coursing.

(3) So today dawn on us, O daughter of heaven, bearer of substance as then thou didst dawn, victorious force, true inspiration, wide expanding whose perfect birth is the truth and gladness of life’s coursing.

(4) They who uphold thee in the sacrifice and express thee by their affirmations,O wide-shining Dawn, they have the utter glory of thy plenitudes, O queen of plenitudes; they hold the gift and hold the delight, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life’s coursing.

(5) Whatsoever these hosts of thine take pleasure in for the building of the fullness, they set round as their objects of desire, giving us a wealth from which there is no deviation into suffering, O thou whose etc.

(6) Confirm, O dawn, forceful victory and all plenitudes in the masters of light, who from their plenitudes have heaped on us undeviating felicities, O thou whose perfect birth etc.

(7) [Not translated.]

(8) Yea, and bring to us luminous impulsions, O daughter of heaven, with the rays of the Sun of Truth that are bright and shine in purity and realise illumination, O thou whose perfect birth etc.

(9) Dawn on us, O daughter of heaven, prolong not for ever our labour; thou art not afflicted by the light of the Sun of Truth as is the thief of our radiances, as is the enemy of our being, O thou whose perfect birth etc.

(10) Even so much and more shouldst thou give to the seeker of knowledge, thou who dawning with thy spacious light on him who affirms thee art not diminished in thy spaces, O thou whose perfect birth etc.

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SUKTA 80

(1) She follows the shining path of light and by the Truth is vast, for she has supreme hold of the Truth; wide is the splendour of her ruddy form. Towards Dawns divine as she comes to them bearing in her that luminous world, souls of the knowledge raise the adoration of their thoughts.

(2) Lo where she comes with the vision awakening the creature and she goes in front making his paths easy for his feet; vast is she and all-pervading, vast is her movement and she labours at the Light in the front of the days.

(3) Ruddy for the work are the radiances that she yokes to her chariot and unstumbling she makes for us a felicity that shall not pass away from us; divine is she and she hews out our paths for the happy journey,—multiply affirmed she gleams laden with all desirable things.

(4) All a whiteness she becomes in the two powers of her greatness as she unveils her body before our eyes; she follows the path of the Truth towards our self-perfection and knows all the regions of our travel and circumscribes them not.

(5) Lo, she manifests knowledge and stands up on the heights for vision bathing her white limbs in lustre. Repelling all discords and all darknesses Dawn the daughter of heaven has come to us with the Light.

(6) Lo, the daughter of heaven fronts men’s souls, a happy Dawn and sets their work in movement; and she floods with her desirable things the giver; still is she young who has made the Light again for us even as in the ancient days.

SUKTA 81

(1) They yoke the mind, they yoke the thoughts, illuminates to the Illuminate, to the vast godhead, to the enlightened Consciousness. He is One and knows all things that come into being and sets each in her place all the queens of the sacrifice. Vast is the affirmation of the divine Creator.

(2) He is the seer and assumes all forms and he brings into being

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their happy state for the twofold world and the fourfold. Yea, he manifests all Heaven and in his outshining follows the march of the Dawn.

(3) The other gods follow his march and by the force of his energy they attain to the vastness of the God, the lord of varied lustres who has measured out the earthly worlds by his large might, the godhead creative.

(4) And thou travellest, O Manifester of things, to the triple luminousnesses; and thou art expressed wholly by the rays of the Sun of Truth; and thou besiegest the Night from either side; and thou becomest Love the Harmoniser, O Godhead, by thy laws.

(5) And thou art the One who has power to bring forth the world and thou becomest the Increaser, O God, by thy progressions; and thou illuminest wholly all this world. Shyavashwa has attained to the affirmation of thee, O creator of things.

SUKTA 82

(1) It is that, the food of the divine Creator that we accept into us, even that best enjoyment of the Enjoyer we meditate which most establishes the all in us and brings us to our goal.

(2) For whatsoever delight there is of this Forth-bringer of things they cannot diminish it, for it is too self-victorious, nor his self-empire.

(3) He is the Forth-bringer and Enjoyer and it is the delights that he brings forth for whosoever gives to him; that varied glory of his enjoyment we desire.

(4) Today, O divine Bringer-forth of things, loose forth in us thy fruitful felicity; loose away from us all that is of the evil dream.

(5) All evils and stumblings loose away from us, O divine Creator; that loose forth upon us which is the good and the happiness.

(6) Blameless for infinite being in this new creation of the divine

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Creator, we seize with the thought all desirable things.

(7) Today we accept into us by the perfect forms of our thought the universal godhead, the master of being, the creator creating the Truth of things,—

(8) even he who goes in front of both this day and night with no heedless mind, placing perfectly his creative Thought, the Forth-bringer,

(9) he who makes heard in the rhythm of Truth all these births of the universe and so produces them, the Forth-bringer.

SUKTA 83

(1) Let thy speech turn in these Words towards the mighty One, affirm the Master of the Storm and by submission lodge him in all thy being. Shouting aloud the Bull swiftly achieving sets his seed, his child in earth’s growths that bear her heats.

(2) He smites down her trees; he smites down also the giants of evil; the whole world is in fear of his mighty blow. Even he that is blameless is seized and driven by him in his abundant might, when as the lord of the storm roaring he slays the doers of evil.

(3) Like a charioteer with his lash he drives on the steeds,—oh, he makes manifest his messengers of the rain. From afar arise his roarings of the lion when the lord of the storm makes his heavens full of the rain.

(4) The winds of life blow, the lightnings leap from our heaven, upward are tossed the growths of earth, nourished is the light of the luminous svar; for the whole world impulse of movement is born when the lord of the storm fosters our earth with his seed.

(5) To his law our earth bows down, by his law she bears the galloping hooves of the life-powers; by his law the growths of earth’s warmths assume all forms; O Master of the storm, achieve for us a vast peace.

(6) Oh ye Thought-forces, set flowing for us your rain of heaven; nourish us, O ye streams of the Horse of Life, the

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Male of the worlds; downwards in this form of thy thunders come pouring out the Waters; come as the Master of Might and our Father.

(7) Shout, roar aloud, plant thy offspring here; storm about with thy car full of theWaters; drag to thee entirely the skin opened wide and turned downward; let the high places and the low be equalled with each other.

(8) Raise up thy vast sack of the waters, pour out, let the rivers flow wide-streaming in front of us; flood our earth and heaven with the clarity, let there be free drinking of it for the herds unslayable.

(9) When, O Master of Storm, thou shoutest aloud and roaring smitest the doers of evil, all the world rejoices and whatsoever is upon the earth.

(10) Thou hast rained thy rains, now catch them upward; thou hast made the desert places easy to be crossed, thou hast produced the growths of earth’s heats for our enjoying,—yea, thou hast found the thought-mind for thy creatures.

SUKTA 84

(1) Truly, O Earth, thou bearest here the oppressive weight of thy mountains and thou rejoicest in thy wide soul leaning down from them in thy vastness, O vast and mighty one.

(2) O wide-ranging Earth, our affirmations support thee all about in thy movements, who settest into a gallop thy neighing horse of Life’s plenitude that crosses through all to its goal, O white shining goddess,—

(3) and though firm-rooted thou supportest thy growths of delight with thy containing power, yet thou doest violence to them in thy energy when the lightnings stream from thy clouded sky, and the abundance of heaven rains down upon thee.

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SUKTA 85

(1) Cast into the illumining word a soul-thought vast and delightful and profound for the Encompasser, the all-King whose voice is the Truth’s inspiration, and he has hewed the veil asunder as one slits open a skin that earth may lie open to the Sun of illumination.

(2) He has spread out the vital world supported in our pleasant things and plenitude of their force in the labouring life-powers and their sweet yield in the radiant herds and will in men’s hearts and the god-force in the waters of existence and the sun of truth in our mental heaven and the wine of delight on the hill of being.

(3) The Encompasser created with downward door the world that holds his embracing knowledge and from that opening he loosed forth heaven of mind and earth of body and this middle vital habitation; from that door the king of all this world of our becoming floods wholly this earth as rain sweeps over the crops of a field.

(4) He floods from it the wide earth and the heaven when he the All-Encompasser desires that sweet milk at last. The high summits of our earthly being are clothed then with his cloud and his hero-strengths put forth their might and loosen them from their bases.

(5) This is the might of the wisdom I declare to you of the All- Encompasser, the Inspired and Puissant One; for he stands in the middle vital world with the mind as his measuring-rule and he maps out our physical being with the Sun of knowledge.

(6) Yea, this is the might of the forming wisdom of the God in his absolute vision and to that might none can do violence, that the ocean of his being is one and all these moving and hastening waters pour into it, yet can they not fill it with their waters.

(7) O Wideness, cleave from us all sin that we have done against the law of Aryaman or the rule of Mitra, against comrade or brother or constant fellow or any fighter in this battle.

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(8) The evil that has been done in us as by treacherous gamesters in the playing, the truth that errs and we would not know it, the roots of all these things loosen and cut them away from us, so shall we be dear to thee, O Lord of Purity.

SUKTA 86

(1) O god-mind and god-will, the mortal whom ye both increase in the plenitudes, breaks through even fixed and strong formations, he becoming the triple soul, forward to the illumined energies and the voices of the heights.

(2) The twain who are hard to pierce in our battles, who are all inspiration in our plenitudes, who range in all the five worlds of our labour, the god-mind and the god-will we call to us.

(3) Full of solid might is their shining energy,—sharp is the out-flashing light of the lords of plenitude and from the two rays that are their arms it speeds running to its mark as the slayer of the Coverer of the radiant herds.

(4) Ye we call, O god-mind and god-will, for the impulsion of your movements, O masters of the ecstasy that breaks through to our goal, gods who have the knowledge and delight in the word.

(5) Gods invincible who increase day by day for the mortal, adepts of the work I set in the front, even as I set the two gods of the delight in front for the life-force in me that labours.

(6) So for the god-mind and the god-will has been cast a food offering of force as clarity purified by the pressing stones of heaven. May ye uphold in the illumined souls that give you expression vast inspiration and felicity, may ye uphold impulsion in them when they give you the word of your expression.

SUKTA 87

(1) Towards the Mighty One with whom are the Thought-powers, towards the All-pervading Deity may your thoughts

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travel forward; for it is he who is born on the mountaintops and he is the moving Thought-Force in us,—forward to the mighty force with the spiked gauntlets that advances in the sacrifice with a blissful impulse of speed whose action shakes the world.

(2) Ye who are born by the might of him and who are self-born when by knowledge the forcefully moving Thought-God sends forth his word, by his will-power, O ye forces of the Thought, that flashing might of yours cannot be violated; by his effective power and his might that is here in them and they become as the mountains to whom none can do violence.

(3) Their voices are inspirations from the vast heaven, by its word they shine out and come beautifully into being,—and are the moving Thought-God! their force of impulsion is not lord in this world of our self-accomplishing, therefore as fires of the god-will making their own lightning, they rush forward along life’s rushing streams.

(4) He—it was from that vast world, that equal seat that he came forward, the wide-striding Pervader of things, the Thought-God in the force of his movement. When of himself he yokes himself to them coming down from his own high home in the lower plateaus, they are spurred by a vast emulation, they are possessed of their pervading mightinesses and he moves with his Strong Ones increasing the Bliss.

(5) As the puissant sound of you vibrating travels the Bull of the world in his impetuosity and his forceful might, the moving Thought-God, and by Him ye shine out and have overcoming might and are self-brilliant and are fixed in radiances and are golden of the Light, armed, speeding impellently.

(6) No shore is there to the ocean of your might in its increase; may the forcefully moving Thought-God protect that flashing strength for in your forward march ye are that stand at last in the Vision; so shining out pure as fires of the god-will from that which confines and limits us protect.

(7) May they the violent ones, like fires of the god-will perfect in plenitude, multitudinous in their lustrous strengths

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increase us,—even the moving Thought-Force,—they in whose movements this our earthly seat far-extended and wide widens more and vast are the forceful mights of them supremely and wonderfully moving.

(8) O ye Thought-powers moving for us in the path where hostile division ceases, hear the cry of your adorer, O moving Thought-Power; becoming of one passion with the mighty Pervading Godhead repel from us always by your workings, happy in your charioted movements, all things that hurt and divide.

(9) Come to our sacrifice, O gods of the sacrifice, so that its achievement shall be perfect,—hear our call! and there shall come not to it the giants who devour. Like largest hills in the wide heaven may ye in your conscious knowledge evade the grasp of her who limits and binds.

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Mandala Seven

SUKTA 56

(1) Who are these souls that to us come suddenly and are in a moment revealed? Who are you that fly to us, children of one home, birds of one nest? who are you, riding hastily, O you great horsemen and warriors of the Violent One?

(2) None knoweth their births; they alone can know from one another the secrecy whence each was born.

(3) They flow plentifully in their own floods, and each casts in the other his seed, they strive like runners in a race and wing like eagles and their voice is a voice of many winds.

(4) When their vast many-hued mother brings her teats of plenty, then man the thinker awakes and knows the mystery of hidden things.

(5) Let this race of the thought-gods be mighty in me and heroic, let them put forth eternally their violent power, let them nurse manhood divine.

(6) They are moved with their speed of movement and eager for their journey, they are lovely with the beauty of their joy and mingled together in light, yea they embrace each other with their splendours, and are mighty with many mights.

(7) Because, O gods, you are fierce and swift and bold, yet firm the steps of your luminous strengths, therefore are you now this mighty troop and company.

(8) They are white and bright in their battle fury, and their minds are wroth with all the darkness that stands against them, the meditations of this advancing host are like the rushing of a torrent.

(9) Let not their eternal lightnings turn against us, nor their destroying mood come near to us,

(10) it is their names of pleasant loveliness to which we call when they are satisfied with the voice of their yearnings.

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(11) [Not translated.]

(12) Pure offerings we must give to them, for they are pure; they are stainless from their birth, they are very flames of purity and it is by the law of the truth that they march to the truth which they discover,

(13) [Not translated.]

(14) their thoughts come from the foundation and are its greatnesses; by the steps of their sacrifice they extend the names of their godheads; they shall have their thousandfold joy of their portion in the house of my soul, in the rites of this homestead.

(15) When you have come, when you listen to the voice of the seer and his call and his hymn of plenitude soon give your riches, soon bestow your force that the other, the enemy shall not crush beneath his feet.

[Incomplete]

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Mandala Eight

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

SUKTA 54

(1) This is that might of thee,O Indra, which doers of the action speak of in their Words. They praise and guard thy energy dripping with light; the people of the city reach thee by their thinkings.

(2) They by their good action reach Indra and have his guard, they in whose wine-offerings thou hast delight. Even as I approach thee empty of delight, even as I come to thee in my leanness, so in us take thy delight, O Indra.

(3) [Not translated.]

(4) [Not translated.]

(5) With that opulent pleasure which is thine, O Indra most full of the plenitudes, awake in us as our companion of the delight for our growth, for the giving of the enjoyment, O slayer of the Coverer.

(6) Lord of battles, king of the Gods, prosper in us, bring us plenitude, O hundred-willed. By the path(?), by the offerings, by the bringing into being of the gods, we have become full of peace and won inspired knowledge.

(7) For these are his warrior blessings; Indra is the life of men. Come to us, master of plenitudes and guard us; milk out for us a nourishing force.

(8) May we for thee, O Indra, adore with our hymns, thou for us, O hundred-willed, satisfy Praskanwa with a pleasure great and massive and unfailing.

SUKTA 94

(1) This is the Cow¹ that suckles all from her teats, the mother of

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the Maruts, lords of fullness, who seeks the inspired knowledge; she is under the yoke and a bearer of the chariots.

(2) This is she in whose lap the gods have established the laws of their activity and the sun and moon also for vision.

(3) Therefore do all of us who aspire and do the works of sacrifice declare ever in themselves the Maruts for the drinking of the Soma wine.

(4) This is the Soma that has been distilled; of this the Maruts drink and they who are the self-ruling lords and the two Aswins.

(5) Mitra and Aryaman drink and Varuna of this Soma that is purified by the extension in matter and established in the three seats of our being and has with it the daughter² of the worlds.

(6) According to his acceptance, verily, of this Soma rich in the light, [Indra] has in the dawn the intoxication of its joy as the priest of the offering.

(7) What is this light and force that the masters of solar knowledge have manifested? Purified in discernment they cross over those who assail them as over the flowing waters.

(8) What manifestation must I accept today for you, the vast gods who by the self have your overcoming power of light?³

(9) They who have given wide extension to all mortal things and to the luminous spaces of heaven,—the Maruts to the Soma-drinking,—

(10) I call for you from heaven those pure-discerning Maruts for the drinking of this Soma wine.

(11) They, the Maruts, who have made firm the two firmaments, them I call to the drinking of this Soma wine.

(12) Yea, that Marut host who are lords and seated on the hill, I call to the drinking of this Soma wine.

SUKTA 95

(1) The Words of our thought mount upon thee in the Soma-

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outpourings as men upon a chariot, O thou [who] hast the delight of the Word; they yearn (or expand) utterly towards thee, O Indra, as mothers towards a child.

(2) Its pure-bright outpourings are impelled (fall) towards thee, O Indra, enjoyer of speech; do thou drink of this food; O Indra, in all creatures it is ready placed for thee.

(3) Drink for the rapture, O Indra, the Soma brought by the Bird of swiftness and distilled here for thee, for thou art the master and king of all the series of the peoples.

(4) Hear thou the call of Tiraschi who adoreth (seeketh after)⁴ thee, fill him with a felicity full of the light and perfect in energy; great art thou.

(5) Tiraschi, who, O Indra, has created for thee a new Word of expression that has the rapture and a thought in the perceiving mind (or of the mind, O Perceiver,) that is ancient and nourished on the Truth.

(6) That Indra let us establish in praise whom all words and utterances⁵ increase; let us bring out his ancient mightinesses and enjoy them.

(7) Come ye now and let us establish in praise Indra purified by the purified Sama and increasing by purified utterances; purified in aspiration let him rejoice.

(8) O Indra, purified do thou come to us with purified increasings of thy presence, purified hold in thee our felicity, purified rejoice and be full of delight.

(9) For purified, O Indra, thou bringest felicity and, purified, thou givest thy raptures to the giver; purified thou slayest the things that cover, purified thou bringest thy full plenty to light.

SUKTA 97

(1) With all thy enjoyments, O Indra, that thou hast brought in thy fullness of Heaven from the Mighty Ones, O master of

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fullnesses, increase him who establishes that by the praise and those who in thee have set clear the seat of the sacrifice.

(2) That nervous force and mental light and undecaying enjoyment which thou, O Indra, holdest, establish it in that sacrificer who expresses in him the Soma and has the discernment and not in the creature of sense-activity.

(3) That Power in us who has an inert activity after the way of sleep and seeks not the godhead, may he exhaust himself by his own movements; afterwards establish in us continuously an increasing felicity.

(4) When, O Lord of Might, thou art in our higher being and when thou art in the lower, O slayer of the Coverer, he who has the Soma carrieth thee hence to thy home with the heavenward motion, O Indra, by his maned Words.

(5) Yea, whether thou art in the luminous space of Heaven or in the established world of the great Ocean or in an earthly dwelling, O strongest of the slayers of the Coverer, or in the mid-world, arrive.

(6) So do thou the Soma-drinker in our Soma-juices poured, O master of brilliant force, give us the joy by a delight that is of the perfect truth, O Indra, and by a felicity all pervading.

(7) Abandon us not, O Indra, but become to us full of the rapture of fulfilment⁶ (or our companion in the rapture); thou comest to us with increase and thou bringest fulfilment of our works; O Indra, abandon us not.

(8) Thou with us, O Indra, take thy seat in the Soma-offering for drinking of the sweetness; effect for thy lover, O master of fullnesses, thy vast presence with us, O Indra, in the Soma-offering.

(9) The gods possess thee not nor mortals, O lord of the hill of being; thou by thy shining might masterest with thy being all births and the gods possess not thee.

(10) They all together (with one impulse) have formed Indra as the Strong Purusha who overcomes all armies and gave him

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being that he might rule, supreme by his might of action and [    ]⁷ in the supreme, full too of fierce intensity and force and strength and swiftness.

(11) When the masters of joy have set Indra vibrating in sound⁸ for the drinking of the Soma, when they have set in action the Lord of Swar for his increase, then he held firmly the law of his activity by his force, by his increasing manifestations.

(12) By vision these illumined powers bend him into a nave (for the action), the words vibrating towards his seeings, and luminous and unhurtful they thrill the hearing in their speed with the words that realise.⁹

(13) To that Indra I call, the master of fullnesses, fierce-intense and ever holding without aught to conceal him his flashing strengths; may he in fullest strength by the words of our thought act in the sacrifice and as lord of the lightning set all things in us on the good path towards the felicity.

(14) Do thou, O Indra, know these cities that by thy force, O strong one of the flashing force, thou mayst destroy them; for in fear of thee, lord of the thunderflash, tremble all the worlds and heaven shakes and the earth.

(15) O Indra, hero and rich brightness, may that truth in me protect; carry me safe over multitudinous streams as over the waters. When wilt thou distribute to us, O Indra, of that felicity that is universal in form and utterly desirable, O King?

SUKTA 98

(1) Sing ye the Sama to Indra illumined, to the vast a Sama vast, to him who maketh the law, to him who sees, to him who labours.

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(2) Thou masterest with thy being, O Indra; ’tis thou that hast made Surya to shine; thou art universal doer and universal deity; great art thou.

(3) Burning bright with thy lustre thou goest to Swar, to the luminous world of Heaven; the gods travail to have thy friendship, O Indra.

(4) Come to us, O Indra, as one delightful and ever-victorious and not to be obscured and wide-extended on all sides like a mountain and the master of Heaven.

(5) For, O true in thy being and Soma drinker, thou hast taken possession of both the firmaments; O Indra, thou art the increaser of him who produces for thee the Soma, for thou art the master of heaven.

(6) For thou art he who shatters, O Indra, these ranged cities and the slayer of the plunderer and the increaser of man, the mental being, and the master of Heaven.

(7) So, O Indra who takest delight in the word, we set free our large desires towards thee, as men travelling by the sea who are carried forward on its waves.

(8) As the sea is increased by the rivers that join it, so thee, O hero, the thoughts of the soul increase and once increased swell yet more from day to day, O dweller on the hill.

(9) By the aspiring chant they yoke the two bright steeds of his swift impulsion in a wide car with a wide yoke; coursers that bear Indra and their yoke is the word.

(10) Do thou, O Indra of the hundred willings and the various activities, bring to us force and strength, bring to us the energy that overcomes the shock of the hosts.

(11) For thou, O master of substance, O lord of the hundred willings, hast become to us our father and become to us our mother; now ’tis the bliss of thee that we seek.

(12) To thee in thy plenty, O master of force to whom many call, I turn my speech, O lord of the hundred strengths of Will; do thou give to us a perfect energy.

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SUKTA 99

(1) Thee now and yesterday the Purushas have nourished and poured¹⁰ in their store, O master of the thunder-flash; do thou then, O Indra, hearken to those who here bear up the burden of thy affirming praise and come to thy place of rest.¹¹

(2) Take there thy joy (of the Soma), O thou brilliant and beautiful, for that we desire; in thee the Disposers tend to their becoming. Thy supreme inspirations must be expressed in the Soma-pourings, O Indra who hast delight in the word.

(3) They move as if to their home in Surya; all the things of Indra do ye enjoy; by his force we hold in the mind the riches of his substance, as if our portion for enjoyment, in that which is born and that which is becoming.

(4) Confirm in praise the giver of substance who has joy that does no hurt; good are Indra’s joys; he has not wrath against one who giveth him his desire as a sacrifice, urging his mind to the gift.

(5) Thou, O Indra, in the charges overcomest all opposers; slayer of non-expression, begetter of things art thou and he who carries all things through to their goal, do thou carry so all who would make the passage.

(6) According to thy strength the two worlds follow after thee in that passage as mothers their child; all opposers fall away before the passion of thee when thou piercest, O Indra, the Coverer.

(7) Move hence in your increase to the ageless who smites and is not smitten, the swift one, the conqueror, shooter and mightiest charioteer, unpierced who increases the [incomplete]

SUKTA 100

(1) Behold, I go in front of thee in my body and all the gods

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follow after me behind; when in me thou hast set thy portion of enjoyment, O Indra, it is by me, verily, that thou doest thy mighty works.

(2) I place thy enjoyable food of the sweetness before thee; set for thee as thy enjoyment be this Soma that I have pressed out; O unattached, thou art my friend and on my right, now let us two slay the multitude of the Coverers.

(3) Bring forward for Indra the truth for his affirmation in praise and increase its plenty, if the truth be that he is. “Indra is not,” Nema said of thee, “who hath seen him? who is it that we would affirm with praise?”

(4) “Lo here, O My lover, I am, behold me even here; all things created I possess in being by my might; Me the teachings of the Truth increase and I am the render who rend the worlds.

(5) “When the rejoicers in the Truth have ascended to me seated alone on the back of the resplendent world, Mind in Me made answer to their hearts and my lovers like children cried aloud.”

(6) All those deeds of thine have to be expressed in the Soma-sacrifices, which thou hast done, O Indra master of the fullness, for him who presses out the Soma, as when thou for Sharabha builder of the knowledge (or friend of the seers) didst uncover the supreme substance massed in its multiplicity.

(7) He who covereth it in you, runs forward now as if something separate here; in utterly into the heart of the Coverer Indra has hurled his lightning flash.

(8) Moving swift as mind the Bird has sped beyond this iron city, he has reached Heaven and brought the wine of Soma for the master of the lightning.

(9) Within the ocean of being lies his lightning covered over with the water; many forward-flowing waters coming together bear to it its food of strength.

(10) When Speech, uttering things that thought has not distinguished, sits as queen of the gods rejoicing, then from the Four she milks out their force, draughts for our drinking. But to what place unknown goeth her highest?

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(11) The gods have given being to Speech divine and her the herds¹² utter in all the forms that being has taken; may she, even Speech the Cow of the milking, full of rapture and milking out for us force of being and force of impulsion come to us perfectly affirmed.

(12) O Vishnu, our comrade, stride out thy widest! O Heaven, yield thy world to Indra’s lightning as it pushes wide. We two would slay the Coverer, we two would pour out the rivers of being; let them flow released in the impulsion of Indra.

SUKTA 101

(1) Richly so that mortal becomes passive for the extension in him of the godhead, who has called¹³ Mitra and Varuna into his being to possess it¹⁴ and give the offering.

(2) Abundant is their force and wide their revealed vision; far of range in their inspired hearing, they are the Purushas, the Kings; they by action as with a crowd of arms guide the chariot (of the Delight) along with the rays of the Master of Illumination.

(3) There is one who runs forward as your messenger, O Mitra and Varuna, iron-browed, impetuous in rapture.

(4) He who taketh not delight in the questioning nor in the calling back nor in the converse, from him protect us in the shock, with your arms protect.

(5) Chant ye to Mitra and Aryaman a Word of force,¹⁵ O thou rich in the Truth, a supreme and rhythmed word to Varuna, a song of affirmation to the Kings.

(6) They have set in movement a substance of being active

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and pleasurable, one child of the three; they immortal and unoppressed behold the Seats for mortal men.

(7) The Words of my thought are in labour upward, full of illumination are the deeds that I shall do. Come then both of you one in comradeship to the offering, that it may go to its goal.

(8) Now that we offer to you a delight¹⁶ free from the Rakshasas who detain, O Aswins rich in the plenty of substance, come bringing forward the Supreme Lady of the offering and protect her, O ye Purushas, ye whom the hymns of Jamadagni express.

(9) To our sacrifice that reacheth to Heaven come, O Vayu, with perfect thoughts; for thee within the purifying sense this Soma with its upward motion was worked into this pure brightness.

(10) The Master of the sacrificial substance comes by straightest paths to the offerings that they may go to their goal; now, O thou who yokest the steeds of Life, do thou drink in us of both, drink of the pure Soma and of that which is rich with the Rays.

(11) Truly art thou the great, O Master of Illumination, truly art thou the great, O Son of Infinity; great art thou in thy being and a greatness is thy labour; verily, art thou the great.

(12) Truly, O Surya, art thou vast in inspiration, ever, O god, art thou the great; by the greatness of the gods art thou the Mighty One, for they set thee in front, a pervading and unconquerable Light.

(13) Lo, she who is here below and luminous with realisation and shaped and ruddy-bright, here appeareth coming to us as one varied in hue between his ten arms.

(14) They travelled with a motion that went beyond the three worlds of beings; others entered around that illumination. Vastly he stood within the worlds, purifying and resplendent he entered into [    ]

(15) Mother of the Rudras is she, daughter of the Vasus, sister

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of the Adityas, periphery of the Truth. Now do I speak to that man who hath the perception; hurt not the Light that is without stain of evil, the Infinite who divideth not.

(16) The Light who knoweth the Words and sendeth for the Word, whom all the thoughts approach to serve, who, divine, has for the divine Powers gone abroad let not the mortal cleave away from him in the littleness of his understanding.

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Mandala Nine

[word] - Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

SUKTA 1

(1) O wine of Delight, flow forth in thy sweetest and most rapturous stream, pressed out for the Mind to drink.

(2) Slayer of the Rakshasa, doer of all works in the womb of its birth when it [is] smitten with the stone may it arrive by its wooden vessel to the place of our perfectioning.

(3) Becoming a perfect placer in us of the supreme good, fulfilled in plenitude, destroying utterly all that covers and conceals, bring over the joyous wealth of the lords of the plenitude.

(4) Arrive by the ambrosia at the disclosure in man of the vast gods, arrive at the inspiration and the plenitude.

(5) Towards thee we tread that very field day by day; O Bliss, all our aspirations are in thee.

(6) The daughter of the Sun purifies thy wine with her desirable and eternal body.

(7) Thee in the mighty labour the subtle Energies seize upon, the Women ten, sisters in the heaven that man must transcend.

(8) Thee the advancing streams of Life impel and they swell out (or forge) the [    ], the triple honey.

(9) This is the Child whom brightly rejoin the fostering herds of unslayable Light,—delight for Mind to drink.

(10) In the ecstasies of Joy the God in the Mind slays all the Powers that conceal from him and withhold and grows heroic in force, rich in plenitudes, packed with his fullnesses.

SUKTA 2

The joy of existence is called on to flow in a rapid, intense and abundant flood of delight beyond the limits of the sensational being and reveal or mount into the supramental consciousness which will then be manifest with all its divine powers. This

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comes by the abundance of the pure delight pouring into the luminous mind and awakening all its energies.

(1) Disclosing the godhead do thou flow out of the sheath of the purifying and beyond, O Delight, rushing swiftly. Enter in thy masterful abundance,¹ O Lord of sweetness, into the god in the mind.

(2) Masterful in thy abundance and full of a luminous Energy express thy form as a vast enjoying; take thy seat as our firm upholder in the womb whence thou wast born.

3III. The streams of the Disposer of things when he is pressed out milk for us this honey of Love and he becomes perfected in the will and wears the waters of our being for his robe.

(4) Wide those waters as they flow and move to thy wideness, because thou shalt clothe thyself with the Light.

(5) In the waters is purified the Ocean within that is the support and upholder of our heavens; it becomes that wine of Delight that desires us in the place of its purifying.

(6) That bright bay and masterful embracer of our energies shouts aloud becoming vast like Love that has the vision; it shines out brilliant with the light of that Sun.

(7) By energy of that joy, O Power in the mind, thy Words are cleansed of soil and become powerful for the work, by them thou becomest happy and ready for rapture.

(8) Even such we desire thee for that rapture fiery bright who buildest in us that wider world; for all that thou expressest of thy self is wide and great.

(9) Seeking that Mind, O Sweetness, flow pure for us with the stream of thy honey even as the Lord of abundance with all his rains.

(10) O Bliss, the Light thou winnest for us and winnest the Powers of the soul and plenties thou winnest and winnest the swift steed of Life; thou art the self of the world-sacrifice highest and first.

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SUKTA 3

(1) Lo this divine and immortal that shines out like one that opens wings of delight, to settle in his homes and vessels.

(2) Lo this god in us that is formed by our illumining passes in his race beyond the crookednesses, pure flowing, indomitable.

(3) Lo this god flowing into purity that by the seekers of illumination, by the seekers of the Truth is cleansed of soil for the plenty, the brilliant Lord.

(4) Lo how flowing pure like a fighter charging with all his men wins control over all desirable things.

(5) Lo this divine thing that becomes a movement as of chariots, that in its pure flow becomes a discerning and brings into manifestation.

(6) Lo this divinity affirmed by the illumined enters utterly into the waters of being, holding the Delights for the giver.

(7) Lo this that covers our heavens in its race for he reaches beyond these lower lights in his stream, pure-streaming, crying aloud.

(8) Lo his flood overspreads our heavens beyond the lower shining worlds [    ], pure-flowing, perfect in the journey and the sacrifice.

(9) Lo he who in the pristine birth is pressed out divine for Powers divine, and in the place of purifying is the brilliant one who travels to our goal.

(10) Lo this is he that is born with many laws for his action and gives being to our impulsions and is pressed out and then flows pure in his stream.

SUKTA 31

(1) Lo the movements of the Joy advance flowing into purity, placing aright the thought and create a conscious felicity.

(2) O Sweetness, become an increaser of the luminous energy in our heaven and in our earth, become the lord of many plenties.

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(3) Pleasant for thee blow the winds of life, pleasant for thee its rivers flow; O Joy, they increase thy Vast.

(4) Be fostered, O Joy; let the might of thee come together from every side; become in the meeting of plenty.

(5) O ruddy Joy, for thee radiant Herds have milked that warm-bright imperishable food on life’s most fecund plateau-tract.

(6) O armèd God, master of what is and what becomes, O Sweetness, thee for companion we desire.

SUKTA 32

(1) Forward move the streams of the Joy raining ecstasy full of plenitude giving us the Inspiration pressed out in the Knowledge.

(2) With the stones of the pressing the girls of Trita send coursing the brilliant lord of sweetness for the Power in the mind to drink.

(3) As the Swan that seeks the flock it yearns after the mentality in every man, as speed of the vital force it brightens itself with the rays of Thought.

(4) O Joy, looking down from above on the heaven of mind, on the body’s earth like a beast that is spurred thou hastenest on to take thy seat in the womb of the Truth.

(5) The brilliant Herds yearn after thee like [a] woman for a beloved paramour, that they may attain an action that helps the soul.

(6) In us confirm luminous and victorious energy, in the masters of plenitude and in myself, when thought-power and inspiration are won.

SUKTA 33

(1) Forward go the clear-discerning forces of Joy as waves of the Rivers, as Bulls of the Vastness that seek earth’s pleasant growths.

(2) Ruddy, pure is their brightness, they in a stream of the Truth pour on these vessels full plenty of its rays.

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(3) Poured out for the God in the mind, for the God in the Life, for Varuna the wide, for the Masters of Thought-power, travel its delights, for Vishnu, the pervading Lord.

(4) The Three Words mount upward, the fosterers low, the radiant herds; bright Joy goes shouting aloud.

(5) The mighty Ones of the soul, they who are mothers of the Truth, yearn towards him, they bathe clean the Child of Heaven.

(6) Let stream on us with their thousand ripples, O Joy, the four seas of felicity from all things that are.

SUKTA 34

(1) Delight pressed in its stream, in its body, travels coursing and its force breaks down all firm-established things.

(2) Poured out for Indra in the mind, for Vayu in the life, for Varuna the wide, for the Masters of Thought-power, travel its delights, for Vishnu, the pervading Lord.

(3) With the stones of the pressing they press out Joy, the Strong one compelled by the Strong; by Power they milk out the food of the gods.

(4) May it become for the Triple Trita a thing for brightening, may it become for the Master of mind a power for ecstasy. Bright Joy adorns itself with many forms.

(5) Him a bright and beloved oblation the many-hued mothers milk out in the heaven of the Truth.

(6) To him all these Words of our Thought move in their undeviating streams; he full of desire yearns after the fostering Herds.

SUKTA 35

(1) Stream on us in thy continuous flood, O Streamer into purity, a wide felicity, thy flood by which thou findest for us the Light.

(2) O Sweetness, drive in its channel the sea of our existence, set it streaming, put all in motion, be the sustainer of felicity in thy force.

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(3) With thee for our energy of battle we fight and conquer the supreme good. Pour on us the desirable thing.

(4) The Lord of sweetness drives forward, winning control of the plenty, for he is a seer and can win it, he knows the laws of his action, he finds his arms.

(5) Him by our speech we clothe in the expressive Word that flowing pure moves all, Delight that is master of the Light for the world.

(6) For in the law of that Delight every creature is able to hold it, Delight that is lord of the order of things, that in its pure stream is the riches of being born into the world.

SUKTA 36

(1) He parts in his race like a chariot’s courser pressed into the place of purifying, into the two vessels of the Wine; he progresses in his strength in the path of his labour.

(2) O Joy, upbearing all, awake do thou stream onward and beyond manifesting the gods in the sheath from which the honey drips.

(3) Illumine in us the lights of heaven, O streamer into purity, O ancient and supreme; towards will, towards high discerning impel our march.

(4) The seekers of truth brighten his gladness, the two arms of the light cleanse him from soil as he runs pure in the covering of the higher Sense.

(5) So for the giver, O pure-flowing Joy, all riches of that heaven and this earth and of the world between.

(6) O Joy, right to the heavenly plain thou climbest seeking swiftnesses, seeking light, seeking hero-energies, O thou Master of illumined force.

SUKTA 37

(1) So pressed out for the drinking the strong abundance of the wine of delight pours into the place of the purifying, destroying the giant powers, desiring in us the gods.

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(2) So into the vessel of the purifying the Bright Joy with its perfect vision hastens all-upholding, crying aloud to the place of its birth.

(3) So pure-streaming he is the steed that gallops over the luminous realms of Heaven slaying the Rakshasas to its covering of the higher Sense.

(4) So on the triple Trita’s plane pure-streaming he makes with his companions that Sun to shine.

(5) So slaying the Coverer pressed strong and abundant out, finder of the supreme good, indomitable, the Lord of Joy moves as to a goal of plenty.

(6) So divine, missioned by the Master of Wisdom he races to his vessels, the Lord of sweetness, for the plenitude of the Power in the mind.

SUKTA 41

(1) Lo the keen goers that advance as loaded herds of Light and cleave away the black skin.

(2) Our minds strain beyond the bridge of the good journey, the bridge that is hard to build and overpower the Enemy who does not the Law.

(3) The sound of the Joy in its strength is heard like the voice of an abundant Rain; lightnings run about in our heavens.

(4) Stream on us a vast energy rich in the sun’s herds, rich in that gold, rich in the steeds of swiftness, rich in the plenty, O Sweetness, when they have pressed thee out.

(5) Stream pure, O accomplisher of all works, fill with thyself a vast heaven and a vast earth, even as the Dawn of our light has filled them and our Sun with his rays.

(6) [Not translated.]

SUKTA 42

(1) He gives being to the luminous tracts of heaven, he gives being to the Sun in the Waters, he wears the rays and the waters,—the brilliant Lord,—as a robe.

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(2) This divine one by the ancient thought is pressed out in all the divine powers and he runs pure in his continuous flood.

(3) To the soul increasing and hastening to its goal, towards the winning of its wealth, pure flow the streams of the wine of the Delight in its thousand strengths.

(4) It is the pristine food that it milks out as it drizzles into the place of the purifying; shouting aloud Soma gives being to the gods.

(5) Towards all supreme boons, towards all the gods who increase in the Truth, purifying himself into streams moves the Lord of delight.

(6) Stream out on us the luminous and the mighty, stream out on us all that has vital speed and copious plenty, O Soma, as they press thee out; stream out on us impulsions vast.

SUKTA 43

(1) This with the Words let us clothe, this that appears as a life-movement cleansed pure of soil, by Light, for Rapture.

(2) This all our words that seek the being’s growth make glad as of old, delight for the Mind to drink.

(3) Purifying its streams bright-rejoicing moves this Bliss perfected by the Words from Medhyatithi’s luminous mind.

(4) O pure-flowing Wine, win for us a felicity, O Lord of delight, entirely glorious and thousand-energied in its brilliant power.

(5) Joy neighs aloud in the sheath of its purifying like the Horse that gallops towards plenty, when desiring the godhead it flows through it and beyond.

(6) Stream pure towards the winning of our plenty, towards the increase of the illumined who declares thee; O Joy, enrich him with an utter force.

SUKTA 44

(1) Towards a vast formation, O Joy, thou bearest us forward like the sea bearing forward a wave; thou movest becoming

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Ayasya towards the gods.

(2) Clasped in the mentality, made firm by the understanding Joy is impelled towards the supreme and holds seerhood by the illumined mind.

(3) It is this that is awake in the gods and it comes pressed from them into the sheath of the purifying, Delight in his movement accomplishing every work.

(4) So do thou flow pure for us desiring the plenty, effecting a shining sacrifice. Thee man on his fullness places, on all his seats.

(5) May its energy be utterly displayed, may this be ever increasing for the Lord who enjoys and the Lord in the vitality, may Delight labour controlling all in the gods.

(6) Today for possession of the soul’s substance, do thou, finder of the will, discoverer of the Way, conquer for us the plenitude, yea, the inspiration vast.

SUKTA 45

(1) Stream pure for our rapture with the soul’s strong vision that the godhead may be manifest in us, O Delight for the mind to drink.

(2) Arrive at the goal of thy embassy; let the god in the mind be satisfied; arrive for thy lovers to the godhead, arrive to the highest good.

(3) Ruddy art thou and we will adorn thee with the illuminations of the light for ecstasy. Open wide for us the gates to Bliss.

(4) He has flowed beyond the sheath of the purifying, he is the Steed of Power that flings in its strength its yoke behind on the road. Delight gallops towards the gods.

(5) To him his lovers cry aloud as beyond the senses he sports in the woodlands of his delight. For the lord of the sweetness they yearn who raise the song.

(6) Flow in that pure stream of thine by which when men drink of it thou givest them perfect vision. O Joy of God, for him who affirms thee an utter strength.

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SUKTA 46

(1) Like horses that gallop and do swiftly their work they are loosed in their race for the manifesting of the gods, they stream, they increase our linked formations.

(2) Powers of sweetness perfected, adorned like a woman by her father’s clan, the outpourings of bliss join and cleave to the vital god.

(3) Lo these outpourings of the delight and the sweetness full of the love and pleasure are poured into their vessels and increase the Power in the mind by works.

(4) O ye bright Energies run and with strong hands seize Soma’s soul-upheaving ecstasies; join his rapture with your rays.

(5) So stream pure, O winner of our wealth, enforcer for us of the vast treasure of felicity, O Joy, find for us the heavenly path.

(6) The ten who impel cleanse this that has to be cleansed, flowing into purity, for the god in the Mind an intoxicating wine.

SUKTA 47

(1) Lo, by this perfect working Bliss that was great, has increased; full of its own intoxication it aspires upward in its abundance and its mastery.

(2) All that it has done, all that it shall do becomes conscious in it by the beating down of all that opposes. So doing violence, it accumulates its gains of active Truth.

(3) May this Bliss become creme and essence of the Power of mind, even its electric force and win us our full thousand, now that its self-expression is born.

(4) For, seer of the Truth in the man who holds it of itself, it claims the Delight for his illumined mind when his thoughts become clear and bright.

(5) Thou art he who in the bringings, in the manifold plenty for the conquerors winnest possession of the felicities even as of these labouring powers.

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SUKTA 48

(1) Thou art that which brings to the seats of our fulfilment the mights of the Great Heaven and we seek thee in the beauty of thy brightness by perfection in our works,

(2) Thee, rapture entirely energised and its violent expressions, vast, with its motion of the snake, breaking open for us our hundred cities.

(3) Thence let the Bird of painless delight bring thee to be king of our heavens, O perfect in will, towards felicity.

(4) Him let the Bird bring who for every one that has vision of the luminous heavens is their common possession, transgressor of the lower Light, guardian of the Truth.

(5) Now driving forward he attains to a greater largeness of the Power in the mind, effects his possession of our energies and accomplishes all our endeavour.

SUKTA 49

(1) Stream down utterly on us thy rain, even the whole wave of the waters from all heaven; undecaying stream down those vast impulsions.

(2) Flow pure in that stream by which the herds of the Light come hither to this our house, they that belong to the creative Delight.

(3) The rich-offering stream down on us in that stream in the sacrifices and manifest entirely the godhead; stream on us the Rain.

(4) For Force race abroad in thy stream over all the sense-life where thou art purified; let the gods in us hear indeed.

(5) Let Bliss purifying itself in its streams flow upon us beating away the giant Devourers, illumining in us all luminousnesses with that pristine Light.

SUKTA 50

(1) Upward mount thy strengths and their voice is as the sound

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of the waves of the ocean of being. Urge the wheel of the wain.

(2) In thy pouring forth, when thou movest on the plane of the Sense, the three Words in us mount upward desiring their plenitude.

(3) In the veiling of the Sense they with the stones of the pressing send racing the Beloved and the Brilliant pure-flowing from whom sweetness rains.

(4) Flow in thy stream into the place of the purifying, O complete in ecstasy, O Seer, there to take thy seat where our illumination is born.

(5) So stream, O utter ecstasy, brightening thyself with the rays of the Light, with its active beams, O Lord of sweetness, that of thee the Mind may drink.

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Mandala Ten

SUKTA 54

Hymn of Brihaduktha Vamadevya to Indra, Master of Mental Force, when he exceeded Mind and entered Mahas, yet maintained the lower firmaments,—realising his unity with Sah, the supreme Purusha.

(1) When thou hadst given wholly the fullness of the ideal to thy fame, O Maghavan of the fullness, when both the firmaments cried to thee in their terror, thou didst protect the gods, thou didst transfix the Enemy, by teaching strength of the Spirit, O Indra, even for this creation.

(2) When thou didst range abroad increasing in thy force of substance and prophesying strength to the peoples, that force was sufficient for thy battles of which they tell, but for thee thou knowest today no enemy nor before thou knewest.

(3) Who were the sages before us that came to the end of thy greatness equal-souled? didst thou not give being to thy father and thy mother together out of thine own body?

(4) Four, verily, are thy untameable mightinesses when thou dwellest in the Vastness; all of them thou knowest and by them thou hast done thy works, O Maghavan.

(5) Thou holdest all these that are absolute existences, thou makest known the objects that are hidden in the Secret Places of Being; smite not asunder my desire, O Maghavan, thou art he that commands it and thou art he that giveth.

(6) He who placed light in the heart of other light and joined sweetnesses to sweetness, to that Indra this love, this force, this thought was spoken from Brihaduktha when he fulfilled in himself the Brahman.

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SUKTA 129

(1) Then Non-Being was not, nor Being. When the mid-world was not, nor the highest heaven, what was it that was covered up? where? and in whom had it taken refuge? What was that ocean deep and impenetrable?

(2) Death was not then nor Immortality; there was no knowledge of day nor of night. That was One and lived without the Breath by its own fixity (E.S. nature); there was nothing else beyond It.

(3) Darkness concealed by darkness in the beginning was all this Ocean and perception was not in it. When by littleness it was covered up in chaos (abhva, anything dark, dense and unformed), then That (which is) One was born by the vastness of its energy.

(4) Desire (it was that) in the beginning became active in (that field, desire) that was the first seed of mind. The Wise Ones sought in their heart and found by thought the bond of Being in Non-Being.

(5) Their ray was extended horizontally, it was above, it was below. There were Casters of the seed, there were Mightinesses; self-fixity was below, working of energy was above.

(6) Who knoweth of this? who here can declare it, whence (this creation) was born, whence was this loosing-forth of things? The Gods exist below by its creation (loosing-forth); who then can know whence it came into being?

(7) Whence this creation came into being, whether He established it or did not establish it, He who regards it from above (or presides over it) in the highest ether, He knows,—or perhaps He knows it not.

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Appendix to Part Two

Sri Aurobindo selected and translated these verses along with others from the Veda, Upanishads and Gita which he revised and used as mottoes at the beginnings of chapters in the revised edition of The Life Divine(1939–40). Verses from the Rig and Yajur Vedas not included in The Life Divine are reproduced here from the manuscript, arranged in the order of the hymns.

Selected Verses

Rig Veda

This is the most adorable work, the loveliest deed of the Wonderful that the higher streams have fed us in the crookedness, even the four rivers of the Sea of sweetness. [I.62.6]

I purify earth and heaven with the Truth and burn the Great Forces of Harm that possess it not. [I 133.1]

They uphold three earths and three heavens, and within them are their ways of action in the knowledge three. By the Truth that greatness is great and beautiful. Three divine worlds of light they uphold—golden and pure and sleepless and invincible giving voice to the wideness for the mortal who is upright.... May I attain to that wide and fearless Light, may not the long nights of darkness come upon us. [II.27.8,9,14]

When the world of Truth became visible by the words of Truth, when they kindled the Great Light in the Night the blind darknesses were shaken that there might be vision. [IV.16.4]

Up the iron-pillar, grown golden of form in the light of the Dawn, in the rising of the Sun, you ascend to the Lair and behold from thence the Infinite Mother and the Finite. [V.62.8]

They approach the secret knowledge with its thousand branchings by the intuitions of the heart. [VII.33.9]

In these there is not the Wonder nor the Might; for the harms of things cleave to the falsehoods of mortals, and your occult truths exist not for their ignorance. [VII.61.5]

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Three Words that carry the Light in their front and milk the teat of the honey of delight; a triple refuge, a triple way of then Light. [VII.101.1,2]

He discovered and drove upward the herds of light that were in the Secrecy and cast downward Vala; the luminous planes of heaven were fixed and fortified, made firm so as never to be thrust away. [VIII.14.8,9]

O Soma, ascending beyond the three luminous worlds thou blazest. [IX.17.5]

In his flow he begets the vast and brilliant Truth-Light and smites away the darknesses. [IX.66.24]

Thrice seven the Milch cows that gave him their milk of Truth in the supreme ether; he cast into form four other worlds of beauty when he grew by the Truths. [IX.70.1]

One sea that holds all the streams of Energy,—one who has many births sees the world from our heart. In the lap of the two secret ones (mystic Mothers) is the hidden plane of the Being. [X.5.1]

The Seers guard the plane of the Truth and there they hold their supreme and secret Names. [X.5.2]

The ancient movements and energies of the Truth cleave to him who has come to a perfect birth. [X.5.4]

Desiring the seven luminous sisters the Knower upholds the sweetnesses for the vision of the Bliss. [X.5.5]

One part of him is all these beings, three parts of him are that which is Immortality in heaven. [X.90.3]

Truth and the Law of Truth were born from the kindled flame of

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Energy, thence Night was born and the flowing Ocean of being, from the Ocean Time arose controller of all that lives and sees, the Creator (ordered) heaven and earth and the mid-world and the world of Light. [X.190.1–3]

Yajur Veda

When he arises and builds a perfect world on earth let us then dig out the Fire in its perfect image and climb to the supreme heaven, the world of Light. [XI.22]

He saw That hidden in the secret heart of things where all lives in a single nest, in Whom all this converges and diverges and he is the Lord self-aware in creatures. . . . He encompassed all beings and worlds and approached the first born of the Truth, he tied together the extended thread of action done, he saw That; he became That; he was That. [XXXII.8,11,12]

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Mandala One

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

[1]

[RV I.2.1 – 3]

II

वायवा याही दर्शतेमे सोमा अरंकृताः। तेषां पाहि श्रुधी हवम् ।।१।।
वाय उक्थेभिर्जरन्ते त्वामच्छा जरितारः। सुतसोमा अहर्विदः ।।२।।
वायो तव प्रपृञ्चती धेना जिगाति दाशुषे। उरूची सोमपीतये ।।३।।
इन्द्रवायू इमे सुता उप प्रयोभिरा दाशुषे। इन्दवो वामुशन्ति हि ।।४।।
वायविन्द्रश्च चेतथः सुतानां वाजिनीवसू। तावा यातमुप द्रवत् ।।५।।
वायविन्द्रश्च सुन्वत आ यातमुप निष्कृतम्। मक्ष्वित्था धिया नरा ।।६।।
मित्रं हुवे पूदक्षं वरूणं च रिशादसम्। धियं घृतताचीं साधन्ता ।।७।।
ऋतेन मित्रावरूणावृतावृधावृतस्पृशा। ऋतुं बृहन्तमाशाथे ।।८।।
कवी नो मित्रावरूणा तुविजाता उरूक्षया। दक्षं दधाते अपसम् ।।९।।

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।।१।।

वायव् आयाहि दर्शत इमे सोमाः अरंकृताः। तेषाम् पाहि श्रुधि हवम् ।।

वायव् । O Wind.

From Rt वा with the addition of the nominal suffix उ, base and suffix connected by the semivowel य्. The roots व, वा mean to exist in substance, solidity, plenty, fact, patent appearance. The wider sound आ, less simple and absolute than अ, brings out and lays stress on the idea of pervasion which the अ only involves and implies. Vayu is he who exists or moves pervading the whole world. The meaning “to blow” is of subsequent development and attached only to the physical aspect of Matariswan manifesting in gross matter as the Wind. It is more prominent in the word वातः.

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आयाहि । Come!

य, या express general motion to or from as opposed to the intenser and narrower senses of इ, ऋ etc.

दर्शत । See.

Imperative plural of Rt दृश् , intensive formation from दृ to pierce, tear, divide, cut; also, to seize; from the sense of penetrating, seizing etc in the more instantaneous and decisive दृश् we get the sense “to study, scan; perceive, grasp, see, know, analyse”, all ancient meanings of दृश् . Gr. δέρχoμαɩ, I see, δράχωνd (tearer, biter), δράχσσoμαɩ, to seize, are formed from this root. The plural is used, because Vayu is only considered as the leader of the quaternary of great Gods whom the seer is addressing.

इमे । These.

ए, the old plural termination, added to इम् , this; now used as the plural of अयम् , an alternative form of इम्.

सोमाः । Juices of immortality.

The root सु modified with the nominal suffix मः. We have seen that सु has various meanings, among which “to press out, pour out”, “to produce, beget”, “to besiege, invade, fight, attack” are of the most common. सोमः in the sense of “wine”, सुरा, wine, सुतः, a son, सव, libation, sacrifice, and Greek σῶμα, body, lit., object, production, (भूतम्), are instances of the first sense. On the other hand सु, सुतं, सवः, are used in the sense of to fight, attack, overpower (cf सूद् , सूर् etc); battle, siege etc. A third sense is to be at ease, in bliss, from which we get सुखम्, happiness; सुरः, happy, blissful, a god; सोमः, bliss, delight, ananda, nectar, the God of the Moon. Amrita or nectar may also be derived from the first sense, to press out; it may have meant not only extract, liquor, wine, but the wine of the gods, and the nectar distilled from the Brahmayoni in the Yoga.

अरंकृताः । Drawn up in battle array.

The root अर्; secondary from अ, with the letter र् conveying rapid, forceful, various and scintillating action, play, vibration etc. From the idea of working continually comes the sense, “to plough” which we find in Greek and Latin, aro, arvum, ἄρoνρα,

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ἄρóω, ἄρoτoς, άρóτƞσ, ἄρoτρoν . But its earlier and more distinguished sense was “to fight”. From this sense we get आर्यः, अरिः, अर्यमा, Greek Ares, the god of war; άρετή, fighting power, courage, virtue; ἄρεσɩς, Latin arx. It also meant to excel, rule, lead; to enjoy, satisfy, love, woo, please, Gr. άρέσχω, ἄρχoμαɩ, ἄρχων, Tamil arasan, a King, S. अर्च्, अर्घ् etc. It is one of the most important of the ancient Aryan roots, and has a wide & varied number of derivative meanings. अरं from अर्, to fight, means fighting, battle, battle-array, अरंकृताः drawn up in array, ready for battle.

तेषाम् । Of those, them.

पाहि । Protect.

    Rt पा to protect, with the emphatic affix हि.

श्रुधि । Hear!

    Rt श्रु with the emphatic affix हि modified to धि.

हवम् । Battle.

    Rt हु to fight, modified, with the nominal affix अ. See under होतारम् in the first sloka of the first hymn.¹

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।।२।।

वायो उक्थेभिः जरन्ते त्वाम् अच्छा जरितारः । सुतसोमाः अहर्विदः ।।

वायो । O Wind.

उक्थेभिः । With desires, passions, attachments.

Root उच् or उश् to desire, in the form उक् with the nominal suffix थ् (थि, थु) as in ऋक्थम्, वेपथुः etc. The two roots उष् and उश् are almost identical in meaning, उष् means to reach after, seek to embrace; उश् to cling to, embrace fondly, seek, desire, be attached to. From उश्, we have उशनम् the name of Shukra or Venus, the planet of love & desire in the ancient astrology; उशना,

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with desire, attachment, joy; उशाना, wish, desire; उशिज्, desiring, devoted; उशी, wish, desire; उशेन्य, desirable. उच् is another form of the same verb and means to be attached to, fond of, used to, suitable; to cling to, flock together, keep companionship.

जरन्ते । Consume.

Rt जृ, also जृृ The roots in ज् almost always assume sudden, violent or hostile action. To strike, shiver, burst are ordinary senses; to attack with physical force or speech; to damage, injure, hurt, kill; to consume, waste, decay; to burst open, be open; to manifest, appear, be born; to manifest, bring to light; produce; are frequent in this class. We find जृ, to humiliate, outdo; जृ, to decay, grow old, wear out, break up, digest; जृम्भ्, to yawn, gape, burst open, manifest; जूर, to hurt, kill, be angry; grow old; जै, जुर्, to decay, grow old; जीर:, a sword; जार, a ravisher; जि, to overcome, conquer; जरा, old age, decay etc. The meaning is to shatter, break to pieces, wear down, consume.

त्वाम् ।

त्वा, accusative of तु (cf Greek περɩχλέα etc) with the definitive particle अम् as in त्वम्, अहम्, वयम्, etc.

अच्छा । Juices.

Root अच्, to move, flow with the nominal suffix ह. The adjective अच्छ, flowing, liquid, swift, clear as a liquid; and the substantive, water, a liquid, a juice, रस.

जरितारः । Disintegrating.

Rt जृ with the verbal suffix तृ connected by the enclytic इ. See जरन्ते, above. जरितृ is assailing, destructive, disintegrating, consuming.

सुतसोमाः । Warring down the gods of immortality.

सुत verbal adjective (participle) from सु, used either actively or passively. सु, to fight, besiege, oppress, crush.

अहर्विदः । Knowing their time.

अहर् . Root अह्, to be, pervade; to be strong, to breathe, speak, sing. From अह् we have अह, ’tis so, true, well, surely; अहन्, sky, the pervading ether, day; अहम्, originally meaning

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आत्मा, self, I, अहंयु, selfish, or, from the sense of strength, proud, haughty, a strong man, hero; अहि, pervading; sky, cloud; serpent (crawling thing, reptile); अह्, to move with effort, drag; अहु, pervading, also, strong, concentrated, narrow. In the Veda, it means often “time”.

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।।३।।

वायो तव प्रपृच्पति धेना जिगाति दाशुषे । उरूची सोमपीतये ।।

वायो । O Wind.

तव । Thy.

प्रपृच्पति । Abundant, redundant, overflowing.

Rt पृच् reduplicated and nasalised; the form is the verbal adjective. A secondary intensive form of पृ, to occupy, fill, satisfy, grow full or to fullness; also to strike, dash, shiver, penetrate; to protect, cherish, embrace, touch, cling to, join, meet with. From the first sense we get that of possession or fullness in पृक्तम् or पृक्थम्, wealth, possessions, पृक्षम् food (?); from the second, that of investigation, examination, “to ask, inquire”; from the third, the ordinary meaning of पृच्, पृक्त.

धेना । Stream.

Root धि modified with the nominal feminine suffix ना. The ध् roots contain the idea of heaviness, solidity, consistence, steadiness in being, motion, action, relation, etc. The ordinary idea is “to hold”, “to fix”, with all the obvious derivative meanings. When applied to motion, they give the idea of a continuous streaming, flowing, running motion. Hence such words as धारा, धातु (rasa), धे, धाव् etc. From the idea of suckling, nourishing, supporting comes the sense of “earth”, “cow”, “nurse”, applied to words like धेना, धेनु; from the sense of flowing, continuous motion comes that of “speech”, “river”, “ocean” (धेनः).

जिगाति । Goes, flows.

Reduplicated from गा, to move widely, go, flow. गा also means to sing, from the sense of flowing sound.

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दाशुषे । To the enemy; assailant.

उरूची । Passionate, longing, yearning.

Rt उर् with the adjectival suffix चि (च, चु) preceded by the long connecting enclytic ऊ. This suffix, characteristic of the older language, inclined to the long enclytics, आ, ई, ऊ. Cf घृताची, पिशाचः, नमुचिः, दधीचिः or दधीचः. The root उ, ऊ expresses primarily being in pervasion or abundance or to the uttermost, motion through, across, to a great distance or height, embracing relation, (yearning, longing, desire etc), action of violence or intensity. In the roots उर्, ऊर् the addition of र् the intense sound of vibration brings out with yet greater emphasis the idea of magnitude, extent, intensity or passion. Thence the particles उरी, उररी, expressing emphatic assertion, verily, certainly, of course, yes; उरः, उरणः, उरभ्रः, a ram, & ऊर्णा, wool, felt (butting, aggressive, assailing); उरु, wide, abundant, prominent, excellent; उर्व्, to take violently, hurt, kill; उर्ज्, to cast away, abandon; उर्वरा, fertile soil; ऊर्ज्, ऊर्जः, ऊर्जस्, vigour, energy; ऊर्ध्व, high, lofty; ऊर्मि, a wave, high billow; उर्वशी; ऊरु, the thigh or seat of enjoyment; उरस्, desire, the seat of desire, emotion, heart. उरु in the ancient tongue had all these latter meanings, eminent; wide; desire, longing; emotion; heart; thigh. It is especially used in the Veda for the heart.

सोमपीतये । For drinking the juice of immortality.

Rt पी, to drink, with the nominal ति (S. पिब्, Latin bibo), a common meaning of the प् roots, from the sense of “filling, taking fully”, to drain, swallow, devour, drink. Cf पिपासा, पानम्,Gr. πóτoς, σνμπóσɩoν, Lat. potio, potare etc.

[2]

[RV I.2.1]

I

1. वायवायाहि दर्शतेमे सोमा अरंकृताः । तेषां पाहि श्रुधी हवम् ।।

दर्शत. Rt दृश् at that time still used in all its parts. The plural

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is used because the Rishi has in his mind not only Vayu, but the ganas or inferior devatas who assist the functioning of Vayu.

सोमाः. The lunar gods, ganas of Chandra, masters of the nectar of immortality, or “Somas” in the sense of “several cups of Soma” or of “Soma juices”, but this is a very strained sense. The English plural “wines” is not analogical. One would not say in any language “The brandies are ready.”

अरंकृताः. The root अर्, it has already been said, resembles अग् in conveying the idea of superlative existence, action or feeling. Like अग्, Grk ago, it means to move rapidly or violently, to struggle, to lead, drive, act, or to labour ground etc. From the latter sense comes that of ploughing from which we have the Greek άρóω, ἄρoνρα, ἄρoτρα etc, the Latin arvum, aro, arator etc (अग् must have had the same sense, cf ager, ἀϒρóς a field). Cf also अरणिः tinder, that which is rubbed or worked to produce fire, अरिन्रम् oar, rudder or boat, Lat. ars, art, working, arma, tools; अरर्यति to work with an awl, test, try, अररः an awl, अरिन् a wheel. We have the idea of moving, wandering, अरणः (cf अट् to wander, अटवी a forest), अरिन् a wheel, अर्वन् a horse, अरं swiftly; nomadic ground or wild country अरण्यम्, Greek ὄρoς, (अरस्) a mountain. From the idea of struggle, we have that of fighting and this is one of the most characteristic uses of the root. We have in Greek Ἀρƞς, the god of war, Ἀρεɩμανής, our Aryama, άρετή, virtue (originally, valour, cf Lat. virtus),άρήϒω, fight for, succour, ἄρɩστoς, best, (originally perhaps, most valiant), in Latin arcus, a bow, arma, arms, armo, I arm. In Sanscrit we have अरिः, अरातिः, meaning originally a fighter, then an enemy; अररं, war, fighting; अररुः an enemy, a weapon. Other senses are to honour (अर्घ्), to love, woo, to shine, to have power, strength, to use power upon. Eg अर्ह् to be fit, worthy, honourable; अर्य excellent, best, master, —also, dear, loved; cf आर्यः, ἄρɩστoς ; अर्यमा, meaning a bosom friend, as well as the god Aryama; अर्ब् to kill, hurt; अर्द् to oppress (in Latin to burn); अर्थ्, अर्ज् & अर्द् to woo, press, ask, pray; अर्चिः ray, flame, brightness; अर्थ् wish or desire; अर्क् to heat; अरु sun etc. A farther sense is little, young, inferior in अर्भक, अर्भग, अर्भ, अरम (low, vile)which may have come from the sense of love applied to children (darling); for the natural sense of अर् is just the opposite;

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it means superior, sufficient, high, strong; cf Latin arduus, Grk ἄρδω, ἄρρƞν, or ἄρσƞν, a male, Sanscrit अरं enough, excessively. Among these meanings, we have to find the right sense of अरं in अरंकृत. Three possible senses suggest themselves; made sufficient, laboriously worked, (both senses leading to the idea of ready, prepared), or made war upon, attacked, taking अरः in the sense of war, just as अरिः means a warrior, fighter, enemy. From the nature of the hymn the last is to be selected, if the deeper interpretation be accepted; the former, if it is the ceremonial. But the plural सोमाः is a strong objection to the ceremonial interpretation.

श्रुधी. This lengthened इ is a trace of the free interchangeability of long & short vowels in the pre-Vedic tongue.

हवम्. The line is capable of two different interpretations. “Protect them, hear their cry”, or “Hear our prayer, protect their battle.” The ceremonial sense would be “Hear us, drink their libation”; but their libation must mean the libation given by the nectar-juices, which has no meaning, or the throwing down of the nectar-juices, where the expression “to drink the offering of” would be a forced and indeed impossible construction in Sanscrit. To interpret “a libation consisting of them” would be to contradict the spirit of the Sanscrit language which does not admit such a loose form of language. A cup of gold is possible in English, स्वर्णस्य पात्रम् is not possible in Sanscrit. On the other hand the other two senses are both of them perfectly straightforward & sensible and can only refer to the lunar gods of immortality who subtly protect the Soma or amritam in the body. The evidence of this line finally disposes of the ceremonial interpretation.

Translation.

Arrive, O Vayu; behold ye, these gods of the nectar assailed with war; protect their battle, hear our prayer.

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[3]

[RV I.2.1 - 3]

Rig Veda I.2.

१. वायवा याहि दर्शतेमे सोमा अरंकृताः । तेषां पाहि श्रुधी हवं ।।

Come, O Vayu visible, these are (ie here are) the Somas (ie Soma-pourings) made ready, drink of them, hear our call.

दर्शतः. S. दर्शनीय beautiful. दर्शतः, from Rt दृश् to see, may mean either (1) to be seen = therefore worthy to be seen, beautiful, or (2) to be seen = visible. It may even be active = having sight, ie having the power or faculty of the द्रष्टा—cf यजत, भरत. The latter has clearly an active sense.

अरंकृताः. Not another form of अलंकृत as Sayana wrongly supposes, but from अर् which means among other things to work at, so to elaborate, prepare.

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२. वाय उक्थेभिर्जरन्ते त्वामच्छा जरितारः । सुतसोमा अहर्विदः ।।

O Vayu, thee-wards with their (expressive) speakings adore adorers whose Soma has been pressed and who have found (or know) the day.

उक्थ. There is a distinction between उक्थ and सोम. उक्थ from उच् (वच्), literally to bring out, express, is the hymn or word that expresses, brings out the god or his workings or the results desired; स्तोम is the hymn or word which affirms or confirms that which has been thus brought out by the उक्थ.

जरंते. From जृृ (जृ) lit., to break up, destroy, wound; then from the sexual act, to enjoy, love, as जारः a lover, close friend. जृृ, जर्च्, जर्झ् have also the sense of “to speak” (sound, but properly speaking loud, abrupt or harsh sound). जर्च् and जर्झ् mean also to blame, revile, from the original sense of hurting. जृृ in the Veda means to adore or woo, the sadhaka being the desirer of the godhead; but it has in the ritual the sense “to praise, hymn”.

अहर्विदः. अहस्, says Sayana, means a sacrificial rite performable in a single day. This is a far-fetched and artificial ritualistic interpretation. अहस् in the Veda means day in the

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sense of light, and the Rishi finds or wins the light of day as he is said to find or win the Sun सूर्यं विदत्, सूर्यं जयत्, सनत् or as he finds the luminous kine of the Angirasas. The adorers of Vayu nhave already pressed the Soma and won the light of the solar day for the yajna.

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३. वायो तव प्रपृंचती धेना जिगाति दाशुषे । उरूची सोमपीतये ।।

O Vayu, thy stream goes brimming (or, filling, lit. touching to the full) for the sacrificer, wide for the drinking of the Soma.

धेना. S. takes धेना = वाक् and gives an extraordinary interpretation.The speech of Vayu goes for Soma drinking to the man who has given, ie to say, Vayu says to him “I am going to drink”; the voice is प्रपृंचती = सोमसंपर्कं कुर्वती, ie it praises the Soma, and उरूची, many-going, ie praising or speaking of many sacrificers. The only possible answer to this amazing explanation is that no poet in his senses would use such language in such a sense, and if he did use it in a moment of aberration no reader or hearer would understand “O Vayu, thy speech, making relation, many-going, goes to the giver for Soma-drinking” to mean “O Vayu, thy voice says to the sacrificer ‘I will drink’ and praises the Soma and talks of many sacrificers.”

धेना from धि (धे) to drink, make drink, suckle, foster, means like धेनु, cow, and from धि in the lost sense to move, flow originally common to all the ध् roots, (see Aryan Origins), river, stream, flood—cf धाव्, धारा, धू, धन् (Vedic), धोर्, Greek θέω (dhav) to run, etc.From धि to sound comes the sense of speech. धेना means either “the flow, the stream” of Soma or of Vayu or else the Vayavic cow Priҫni, mother of the Maruts; but the latter seems to have no business here.

प्रपृंचती. Probably filling, satisfying.We have पृक्षः in this sense. The sense to “touch, join etc” is the literal sense, from which comes that of filling.

उरूची. Sayana takes उरु = many, & the termination च = to move (अंच्), but उरु means wide, and च is simply an adjectival termination like क, त etc suffixed to a root or another word to modify slightly its force, eg पिशाच, दधीचि, घृताची, सत्राच्.

The three first verses complete the first movement of the

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hymn, which is a hymn of the Soma-offering to the gods who lead towards the Truth. The first of these,—Dyavaprithivi, Night & Dawn & Agni being taken for granted,—is Vayu (Matariҫwan), master of the life or vital principle. Life and Mind, Force & Light, Power & Knowledge are the continual duos of the Veda. Vayu has the first draught of the Soma, the Wine of Delight or Joy of things expressed or generated in the body of man by the pressure of the divine sensations, those which seek with the electrical force of the divine mind, the pure rasa of things. The Soma juices are ready—the immortalising joy in the mind, the amrita in the body. The Life-force is to drink of these [incomplete]

[4]

[RV I.3]

Rig Veda

Hymns of Madhuchchhandas, son of Visvamitra

I. 3. Madhuchchhandas’ hymn of the Soma-Sacrifice

(1) O Aswins, swift-footed lords of bliss, wide-enjoying, take delight in the impulses of the sacrifice. (2) O Aswins, ye strong Purushas of the many activities, firmly-seated with your bright-flashing thought, take joy of our Words. (3) O givers, O masters of the movement, O ye who are fierce in your paths, clear-set is the seat of sacrifice, strong-energied are the Soma-distillings; do ye arrive.

(4) Come thou too, O Indra of the varied lustres, thee these Soma-juices desire,—purified they in their subtleties & in their extension. (5) Come, O Indra, impelled by the thought, guided by the enlightened knower to the soul-thinkings of the Soma giver who aspires in the hymn. (6) Come hastening, O Indra, to our soul-movements, lord of the brilliance, uphold our delight in the Soma outpoured.

(7) O all gods who are kindly & uphold the actions of the

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doer, arrive, divide the Soma-offering of the giver. (8) O all gods who are active and swift, come ye to the Soma-offering, like the cows to their stalls (like the powers of light to the places of delight). (9) O all gods who stumble not but are wise in your might and do no hurt, accept and upbear the sacrifice!

(10) May purifying Saraswati, full-plentied with all sorts of possessions, control (or desire) our sacrifice in the riches of her thought. (11) Impeller of truths, awakener to right thinkings Saraswati upholds the sacrifice. (12) Saraswati awakens in consciousness the ocean Mahas by the perception; she illumines (or governs) variously all our thoughts.

The third hymn of the first Mandala of the Veda, Madhuchchhandas’ hymn of the Soma sacrifice, is addressed to no single god, but built in a harmony of four successive movements, each composed of three verses in the Gayatri metre, each an invocation of a separate divine power or set of divine powers, which in their significance are intended to follow the ascending series of a particular psychological progression reached by the Rishi in his self-development through the Vedic Yoga. The psychological symbolism of the Vedic Soma-offering is in this hymn expressed with that succinctness and rich suggestiveness of which Madhuchchhandas is a master.

The Soma wine in the Vedic symbolism is the wine of Immortality, the flowing stream of divine beatitude which wells up out of the secret places of the being and manifests in the triple human system, in the mind, the nervous life, the body. According to the philosophy of the ancient Indian seers Ananda, delight,— the rendering, in the terms of sensation, of the plenitude of divine being,—is that which supports, overtly or secretly, all mortal & immortal life & activity. “Who could live or breathe,” asks the Taittiriya Upanishad, “if there were not this ether of Delight in which we have our being?” Human joy & pleasure, even human grief & pain, are only minor terms natural or perverse in an inferior formula of this divine Bliss of being. All strength, all activity, all fullness proceed from this creative principle and are supported by it. But all mortal life is a broken rhythm of

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something that should be & in itself is vast, perfect & evenly harmonious. The one goal of Vedic Yoga is this vastness, this perfection, this state of infinite & harmonious being. The aim of the seers of the Veda is to exchange the small & broken, for the ample & whole, to travel, climb or fight their way out of the limited mortal state into illimitable immortality. The instrument of their effort is sacrifice; the strength that is both to be born of the sacrifice and to make it effective, is the triple strength of divine Force, divine Light and divine Bliss.

The primitive verbal sense of the word yajna was action, effort, endeavour done with a force directed towards some goal, some object or some person; its idea-sense in the Veda is action or effort internal or external directed towards the gods or immortal principles of higher being by this lower or mortal inhabitant. To the Vedic sages body was not our only possession nor bodily existence the whole of our existence. The body is only our earth, base and lower tenement or firmament of the conscious spirit that we are. Above it, in ourselves, there are higher reaches of conscious being represented in the body and in bodily existence but exceeding it by awakening which we can rise into ranges of experiences, manifest faculties and amplitudes of which the body-bound mortal is incapable.We have to awake those reaches of conscious being in the body and through their activity in the body to have access to their native vastnesses beyond. Informing this body and animating it there is the ocean of nervous or vital force just above the physical ocean of matter; informing the vital force & illuminating it there is the ocean of pure mentality which is beyond & exceeds nervous vitality; supporting, creating & rectifying the pure mentality, there is the ocean of supra mental & pure ideal self-existent, self-perceptive Truth or Light which leads us into the heights of the divine being; generating the divine Light, pouring itself out on the surge of the infinite harmonies of this Truth is the ocean of the divine Bliss & the plenitude of self-existence. These are the five states or stairs of Being easily accessible to the tread of the human soul. Yet beyond is the absolute divine self-Awareness manifesting itself cosmically as the divine creative Force of God’s self-knowledge

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& it is this that takes delight in cosmic existence & by taking delight generates it on the foundation of the luminous Truth of things. That Force of divine self-Awareness, too, is an expression of a seventh & ultimate principle, pure divine Conscious Being which is, as it were, the surface of the Absolute & the source of Its world. All this existence is the ascending hill of our being & its successive summits rise out of our manifest being here and climb up into hidden altitudes veiled from us by clouds of vapour or by inaccessible depths of dazzling light. And as the body is only the lowest term of our subjective being, so also is the material universe represented for us by the earth only the lowest term of cosmic existence. Nervous life on earth is but the representative of great worlds or organised states of being beyond, of which not matter, but vital force is the primary condition, mind here the representative of a great mental world of which pure mentality is the primary condition. There is too a vast world or organised state of luminous being governed by divine Truth and worlds yet beyond in which the three supreme principles of the immortal life govern severally & unitedly their cosmic harmonies.

The psychological practice of the Vedic seers was founded upon this reading of human psychology in the microcosm with its corresponding life-notations in the world macrocosm. Two ideas of especial importance were entirely derived from it,—the need of divine help and the principle of a graduated & harmonious upward ascension. No creature of the lower worlds can develop a higher principle in him except by the attraction & aid of those grand Principles, Emanations & Forms of Deity, called the Gods, who inhabit the higher reaches of being and manifest themselves as powers in man, as both Powers & Personalities in the worlds. Hence the need of the manifestation in man of the gods, the need of their presence, aid and protection, the need of their constant friendship. By the aid of the gods man has to rise beyond them to God; with their consent & assistance he is helped to ascend and dwell in the divine being which they also dwell in & enjoy, the Vast, the Delightful, the True, the Light, — mahas, brihat, ratnam, ritam, satyam, jyotih, various epithets by which the seers expressed the manifestation in conscious being of the

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inexpressible because unthinkable Parabrahman. The Vedic sacrificer is continually described by the Veda as devayu, devayan, one who desires the gods, one who is developing the godhead in himself; the sacrifice itself is frequently described by the words devaviti, the widening, the opening, the manifestation of the God, & devatati, the extension of the God in the sacrificer. It is described also as an ascent of the hill of being from plateau to plateau, from summit to summit, or a journey on a path beset by obstacles, difficulties, enemies,—enemies who are described by various graphic epithets,—the plunderer, the detainer, the concealer, the thief, the wolf on the path, the devourer, a journey to the river of heaven & over it by the path of the divine Truth into the ineffable wideness. It is described also as a battle against individual enemies or groups of enemies, a Vritra, the Coverer, a Vala, the wall of concealment who fences in the Light, Panis, lords of sense-activity who intercept the herds of the divine Rays & pen them up in the obscure cavern of our unexpressed being behind this outward material life—or the battle is, generally, against the legioned hosts of evil, the armies of mortality for the victory of Immortality in the mortal. The journey, the ascent, the march is, by the very nature of things, a progressive development conquering the successive kingdoms of being in order to arrive safely & fully into our high & blissful dwelling place. The seers of the Veda, therefore, did not reject matter or the nervous life or the mental in order to reach now inaccessible felicities. Their idea of human progression was a conquering march and not a flight. Therefore, their idea of the gods was a conception of great divine Beings manifesting or born, as they said, variously in all the kingdoms of being. Surya is manifest as creative solar Light in the material world, he is Savitri, the Father; he is manifest in his own home, the Truth-principle, as the divine Light that illuminates our liberated being. To all the gods this parallelism applies and it is the basis of that concrete & material symbolism which saturates the whole language of the Veda and is for modern minds the chief stumbling block in the way of perfect comprehension. Moreover, since all these gods were but different powers & personalities of the one Being who is the source of all

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personalities & powers as is the solar principle of all beams & rays, the seers continually recognise their essential oneness; they differentiate them clearly when they are thinking of the diverse action of these Persons & their powers, they deliberately confuse them together when they look beyond; they declare plainly of Agni or another “Thou art Varuna, thou art Mitra”, or they address one god by the name of another in the course of the same hymn & the same strain of thought. Here lies the true secret of that isotheism & henotheism,—but henotheism in a far different sense from that understood by the German savant, —which is an unique & constant feature of the Vedic writings.

[5]

RV I.4.1-6

Indra Maker
The Fourth Hymns of Madhuchchhandas.

Indra is the God to whom by preference Madhuchchhandas Vaiswamitra raises the Vedic chant. Agni indeed claims his opening homage; the Aswins and Vayu,Mitra and Varuna, Saraswati and the Viswadevas have shared Indra’s praises in the two succeeding hymns; but from the fourth Sukta to the eleventh we have an unbroken series devoted to the mighty God of his preference. It is no small advantage for us to possess these eighty riks occupied by a single deity, yet addressed to him from different standpoints, composed in different states of mind and expressing a different set of related ideas about his personality, powers and functions; for from such an ensemble the figure of the god is likely to emerge with an exceptional fullness and distinctness. How far do these hymns confirm the ideas about Indra we have derived from the third Sukta? Indra, whether god of the sky or of the mind, is the most considerable of the Vedic deities and the most prominent presence in physical nature or in human psychology; it is right and fitting that his subjective physiognomy should be the decisive starting point for any theory of the Veda.

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Fortunately, the very first lines of this fourth stotra, this first hymn to Indra in the Rigveda, supply us with a striking passage in which the question is raised and solved. It is as if the Rishi were lying in wait for us with his answer to our difficulty at the very opening of his great Indra series. In the first word of the first rik he describes Indra as surúpakritnu, a fashioner of perfect or beautiful images or forms, or possibly a good fashioner of forms. There is no sense in which this epithet—brought forward so prominently and strikingly as the opening idea of the hymn—can be appropriate to the god of sky and rain or opportune in a hymn of material sacrifice. Sayana has seen the difficulty and met or rather dodged it scholastically in his usual fashion; surúpa, beautiful form, means, he says, sacrificial action of a beautiful form!We bow as usual to the learning and the fearless ingenuity of the great scholiast and we pass on. The epithet is nothing to the purpose in a material sacrifice; but if this outer sacrifice be the image of an inner rite, the use of the epithet becomes quite inevitable in sense and luminously clear in intention. Indra, god of mental force, is indeed a maker of beautiful forms or perfect images or a good fashioner of forms. If our hypothesis of Vedic philosophy is correct, Indra is, indeed, the direct builder of all forms; it is Mind that measures, limits & by its stress compels the infinite plastic Idea to objectivise Brahman in fixed mental & material forms. We have, therefore, at the very outset a difficulty straightforwardly met and luminously solved by the psychological theory.

Indra, maker of images, is not only a perfect, but an abundant workman. He is likened in his work to a good milker in the milking of the cows, sudughám iva goduhe. The balancing of the forms surúpakritnum and sudughám is strongly in favour of our taking the particle su in both cases as affected to the act expressed, to kritnu as to dughá. Indra is a good maker of images, skilful and abundant, like a good milker who knows how to produce a free yield from the teats of the herd. It is in this capacity that Madhuchchhanda calls on the god of his preference, juhúmasi dyavi dyavi. A rich and clear activity of mind, abundant in perfect forms of thought and inner vision, is

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the first aim of the sacrifice in this Sukta.

But there is a deeper subtlety concealed in this vigorous pastoral simile which, once we have grasped its principle, opens new doors on the significance and value of words in the Veda. Go in the Vedic tongue is not confined to the ordinary sense, cattle, but means frequently ray or light. In the language of Madhuchchhanda, we may almost affirm, it has usually this latter sense and, even when it means primarily cows, always refers obliquely to rays.We have gobhir in connection with Surya in the seventh sukta, where it can only mean rays and nothing else; we have the combination súnritá gomatì in the eighth where coherence & good sense demand the rendering “true & luminous”; we have gomat sravah in the ninth, where ceremonially we may translate “wealth consisting of cows”, but also either “luminous fame” or, as I shall show, “luminous knowledge”; we have it in the tenth, twice in successive riks, gavám apa vrajam vridhi and san gá asmabhyam dhúnuhi, where the sense cows, if it adheres at all to the text, is only a conventional figure for rays of light; we have it twice again in the eleventh, vájasya gomatah, which may mean, ceremonially, wealth consisting of cows, but also, as I shall show, psychologically, “luminous plenty”, and Valasya gomatah which certainly contains the same use as in the tenth sukta; we have it finally in the second rik of this very sukta, godá, where there is a plain allusion to the goduhe of the first line and the sense of the whole passage demands the rendering “giver of light”. I shall seek to justify the theory that this distribution represents fairly enough the ordinary usage of Veda; go means oftenest ray, light or cows as a conventional figure for rays, is sometimes capable of a double sense, material or psychological, and, even in the rarer passages where the reference is to physical cattle, there is usually a play of the mind on the other and figurative sense. These rays which figure so largely in Vedic imagery are not, as I shall show, the rays of the physical sun, but of Surya, the brilliant god of knowledge, master of revelation & ideal perception, the prophetic Apollo. Thus we have such expressions as gavyatá manasá, with a radiating mind.

In the present rik the image is certainly of physical cows,

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but the usual double figure of the Veda familiar to the Rishi colours, as is perfectly natural & inevitable, the physical image. This is shown by the immediate repetition of the word in godá of the second verse, where, as we see from the third verse, athá te vidyáma sumatínám, it is the light of knowledge that Indra is praised for giving. We have then the second sense of a great and abundant activity of luminous mental perceptions out of which are produced the clear images of thought and vision desired by the Rishi. The rays of Surya, of ideal knowledge, are the cows of the milking; the constant stream of thought-forms are their yield. For the aim of the Yogin is to avoid the confusion which comes from an abundant but hurried and ill formed mental activity and to effect a perfect distinctness in the forms of his knowledge—the rashmín vyùha of the Isha Upanishad.

We are given, finally, an object for this calling of Indra and this abundance of mental perceptions and thought-images, útaye, and a circumstance of the calling, dyavi dyavi. Útaye, Sayana says, means “for protection”. This is undoubtedly one of the senses of ùti, but not, as I think, either in this Rik or in any hymn of the Rigveda. It gives here no real sense; for in order to accept this significance, we have to suppose that ùti has no connection in thought with the words with which it is most nearly connected in the structure of the verse. It is obviously meant by its position to be a part of the idea conveyed in the description of Indra, a good fashioner of forms like a good milker in the milking of the cows of light; but neither mental activity nor abundance of thought-forms has anything to do with protection. We must seek for a more appropriate significance. The only other received value of ùti, enjoyment, will make good sense in this and a great many other passages; but I propose throughout the Veda to take ùti in another and more fundamental meaning not recognised by the lexicographers,—“growth, expansion, expanded being, greater fullness, richness or substance.” ùti, in this significance, will not belong to the root av, but to the obsolete roots u, ù(see Aryan Origins), the primitive base of the U family of roots which has for its fundamental significance mediality, incomplete being or limited pervasiveness. It is this sense which is at the

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basis of udaya, udan, uchchá, ut, udara, ushas, uru, ùrjas, ùrmi, ùrdhwa and the words of this class which express the idea of wish and desire. Growth or expansion in richness & substance of the individual being, (the primary object of all Rigveda), is the purpose for which this luminous mental activity & abundant formation is desired by the Rishi,—growth especially of mental force, fertility and clearness.

Again, this processwith its resultant growth is desired, dyavi dyavi, from day to day,—say the scholiasts. A daily growth, as we see in the first hymn of the Veda, rayim posham eva dive dive, is the object of the daily sacrifice and the daily invocation. On the other hand dyavi dyavi may equally mean, in sky and sky; for dyu & its congeners have the basic sense of light from which arise diversely the idea of day as in diva, divasa, dina, and of sky or heaven as in divi, dyu-loka, dyuksha; dyu shares in both meanings. It may therefore well be that we have here an allusion to the Vedic theory of the five earths and the three or sometimes five heavens, which correspond to the five principles and the three bodies of our complex existence,—the 5 principles, earth, matter or body, prana, midair or nervous vitality, manas, heaven or mentality, mahas or pure idea, and mayas or ananda, nthe divine state of bliss, & the three bodies, physical, subtle and typal (sthùla, sùkshma and kárana). This system, as can be established from a hundred indications, was not a creation of Vedantic or Puranic mystics but well known already to the Vedic Rishis.We shall then have a very strong & pregnant sense; the Rishi invokes in each of these ethers the activity of Indra, abundant in mental perceptions and thought-images, so that there may be growth in mind, growth in physical & sensational receptiveness, growth in ideal knowledge, ùtaye .. dyavi dyavi.

Such is the significance, deep, pregnant, rich in psychological suggestions we have gathered in the light of the words surùpakritnu and go from this first rik of the fourth sukta. But our system is to hold nothing for certain from a single text,— to demand rather confirmation from the whole context and the whole hymn before we are satisfied.We proceed then to question the second verse.

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Upa nah savaná gahi      somasya somapáh piba
    godá id revato madah.

“Thou, the Soma-drinker,” cries Madhuchchhandas, “come to our outpourings and drink of the Soma, for verily light-giving is the intoxication of thee in thy impetuosity.” Savana is the Soma-offering, but the word often retains something of its basic meaning,—the outpressing or outpouring of the Soma, & the insistence here, savaná.. somasya somapáh, justifies the supposition that the Rishi wishes to dwell on the characteristic act of the sacrifice. “We are pressing out for the use of the gods the nectar of joyous vitality within us,” he says in effect, “come therefore to that rite; thou, the Soma-drinker, take thy part of the nectar offered to thee.” Then the Rishi with that admirable logical connection and coherency which is the principal characteristic of Vedic style—though always in the logical form of poetry which half-veils the process of reasoning, and not of prose which parades it,—gives the idea which connects the second rik with the first, the offering of nectar with the luminous formative activity of the god of Mind. “Verily light-giving is the intoxication of thee impetuous.” For when the vital force and joy in us, especially that divine vitality and joy developed by Yoga is placed at the service of Indra’s luminous mental activity, then the mind increases in a sort of ecstatic intoxication of energy, vriddho ajáyatháh, and the abundant light of thought pours forth in the impetuous stream of the mind’s swiftness.

Sayana would have us render the verse: “thy intoxication, who art wealthy, is indeed cattle-giving.” Guarda e passa! He connects reván evidently with rayih and rai in the sense of wealth; but the evidence of the other members of this root-clan justifies a different interpretation. Rayih itself signifies primarily motion, energy & then matter or substance; rai is properly ecstasy or felicity, then by a natural transition wellbeing or material prosperity. The primary root rí means to flow, to stream; ríti, motion; rev or reb, to go or leap; revata, the rushing boar or the whirlwind; revá, the name of a river, must mean flowing or streaming, revatí, the name of a constellation, either bright or

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moving; and we have the Latin rivus, a river, and the Greek rīpē, rush. The balance of probability is therefore in favour of reván in the sense of swift, rushing or impetuous. It is here the just and inevitable epithet describing the ecstatic impetuosity of the Soma-drinker in his intoxication and rapture, revato madah.

Still, the proof is not complete; for another and materialistic interpretation of these verses is possible, and it may well be argued, “Ought not a plain naturalistic sense to be preferred to these too brilliant and illuminating ideas? True, the expression in the naturalistic interpretation becomes horribly cramped, awkward and even grotesque and unnatural; no one, ordinarily, would dream of saying ‘The drunkenness of thee wealthy is truly cattle-giving’, but what can you expect from a primitive barbarian? And if you paraphrase the whole thing becomes natural, vivid and convincing. Madhuchchhandas, the old barbaric sacrificer and medicine man of the tribe, says to Indra, the god of the sky & rain, the fertiliser, ‘We are calling you every day, for you are just like a good milker busy with the herd, a very fine craftsman. Just come and drink this Soma; for you are a very rich fellow but it is only when you are drunk that you give us plenty of cows.’ ” Such an argument would square well with the European idea of genial old Vedic barbarians, lusty, earthy, practical, naturalistic, greedy of wealth & cattle, who would besides be well-accustomed to the drunken liberality of their chiefs and easily attribute the same nature to their gods.

We must therefore still go forward and question yet a third verse.

Athá te antamánám      vidyáma sumatínám
    má no ati khya á gahi.

This magnificent verse, admirable in rhythm, admirable in thought, admirable in poetical nobility and force, is reduced by Sayana to the last bathos and incoherency. “Then may we know thee in the midst of intellectual people who are in thy vicinity”, or “May we know thee for getting good ideas about sacrificial operations.” The plain sense of the words, for sumatìnàm is here obviously a genitive of vague possession as in somasya piba, is

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perfectly easy to grasp. “Then indeed” says Madhuchchhandas, “may we know somewhat of thy most intimate felicities of thinking, manifest not a thought beyond us, come.” The whole thought of these opening verses is here summed up and receives its rich and inevitable consummation. Then indeed when the ecstatic activity of the mind is most luminous we can open the inner eye to those most intimate and felicitous perceptions of true & profound thinking of which the mental energy in us is capable. “But” says the Rishi “let not thy revelation of thought be beyond our capacities already developed”; for then there will no longer be the clearness of thought images and the entire inner satisfaction attending fulfilment, but rather a vagueness and straining with a waste of vital force and joy and not its self-renewing contentment. In this idea, for this deep, precise and limited purpose, “come”.

We are, therefore, justified by the succession of these three riks in holding the psychological intention of the hymn to be well-established. And when we proceed, when the Rishi turns to another strain of thought, that intention becomes yet clearer and more perfectly indisputable.“Parehi vigram astritam Indram prichchhá vipaschitam”, “Approach Indra the vigorous, the uno’erthrown; question him who has the discerning eye.” Not for cattle, but for light is Indra called to the sacrifice of the Veda. Of no mortal herds is he the giver, but of the luminous kine of Swar, (swarwatír apah san gá asmabhyam dhúnuhi), sumatínám súnritánám, of the rich illuminations, the right thinkings, the right feelings, the perfect states of mind which the seeker after perfection desires. These he carries to us in his force, san .. dhunoti, in the divine ecstasy, so delightful and precious to mankind in its youth, of a luminous & joyous mental activity. The succession of the thoughts is clear and natural. Indra is a rich fashioner of clear mental images, an abundant milker of the luminous kine; as such we call him in each layer of our consciousness, dyavi dyavi, in sensational perception, in mental & emotional thinking, in ideal vision and experience. But only when by the Soma wine of Ananda, our vitalities are pure, perfect and intense, does he give of his fullness; therefore

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we offer him the sacrifice of that immortalising nectar, áyus, amritam. Then indeed, when he is drunk with it & impetuous, we may attain all the felicities of thought which our deepest mental capacities are ready to seize; but let him not go beyond; for we should exchange clearness and definite possession for an ungrasped possession. Dhanánám sátis, ktēmatōn sōsis, the safe possession of what we have, is the condition of the sacrifice. To such a Soma-offering, for such activities, O Indra, arrive.

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II

The three opening riks of the Sukta have been admirably clear and straightforward in thought and expression; the three that follow present a number of difficulties, not, I think, because their style or thought is at all harsh or obscure, but because they contain a number of unfamiliar words or familiar words used in an antique & unfamiliar sense, over which the tradition of the scholiasts has seriously stumbled. I will therefore begin by giving first Sayana’s solution and then my own with my justification for differing from the accepted renderings.

Parehi vigram astritam      Indram prichchhá vipaschitam
    yas te sakhibhya á varam.
Uta bruvantu no nido      nir anyatas chid árata
    dadháná Indra id duvah.
Uta nah subhagán arir      vocheyur dasma krishtayah
    syámed Indrasya sarmani.

Sayana renders: “O sacrificer, do thou approach Indra the intelligent and uninjured, and ask of me the clever priest (whether I have praised him well or not),—Indra who gave perfectly the best wealth to thy friends, the sacrificial priests. Let (the priests connected) with us praise Indra (so Sayana amazingly interprets uta no bruvantu), also, O our censurers, go out (from this country) and from elsewhere (another country),—(the priests) maintaining service to Indra. O destroyer, our enemies have called us wealthy, men (our friends) of course say it, so let us, being wealthy, be in the ease given by Indra.” Whatever else

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may or may not be the sense of the Veda, this confused and ungrammatical rigmarole cannot be that sense. Apart from the questionable interpretation of particular words, Sayana drags into the fourth verse a non-existent mám, which unnecessarily disturbs syntax & sense, for vipaschitam can only refer like the other epithets to Indra and, indeed, if it did not, the relative yah could not refer back to the god, as Sayana would have it, over the head of this new antecedent. In the fifth rik equally, he drags in a non-existent ritwijah; no cannot conceivably stand for nah sambandhino ritwijah, as the scholiast wishes,—the thing is preposterous,—and if it did, dadháná could not refer back over the head of nidah and a whole clause to a far back unexpressed ritwijah which the hearer, if indeed he ever guessed at its existence, has long ago forgotten. In the sixth verse, to take krishtayah as a sort of algebraical symbol for a whole clause, krishtayah tad vocheyur eva, is to establish a kind of syntax which a grammarian in a difficulty may admit, but no writer in his senses would use. We must reject Sayana’s interpretation totally and start afresh with a clean slate.

I reject to begin with vigram in the sense of wise or intelligent,— for it would then be identical with vipaschitam and lead to a heavy tautology; I take it in the sense of vigorous. The root vij expresses any intensity of motion, emotion, thought or being; it signifies “to tremble”, “to be disturbed”, “to be keen-minded”, “to be vigorous”; for the Latin vigor undoubtedly represents an old Aryan vijás and we have in Veda itself vijarbhrit, which signifies, I suggest, “strength-holding”. Vigra, the adjective, may well mean energetic or vigorous. If we take it in this perfectly easy and natural significance, we are at once taken back in thought to the revatah of the second verse and go forward to the epithet astritam that follows. Indra, the impetuous, the intoxicated Soma-drinker, is also a god of vigorous strength, “uno’erthrown”, capable of bearing without a stagger mor a fall the utmost burden of activity demanded of him. He is vigra, vijarbhrit. Parehi, says the singer; him approach, have recourse or take refuge with him; for he will bear triumphantly all the swift & impetuous activity that is demanded of him and

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lead you mightily into the peace of self-fulfilment. We shall see how the idea thus thrown out in these four simple & vigorous words stands as the basis of all the riks that follow. The Rishi adds, prichchhá vipaschitam; question him, for he has the eye of discerning thought.

[6]

[RV I.5]

5. Hymn in Praise of Indra

आ त्वा इत निषीदत इन्द्रमभि प्रगायत । सखायः स्तोमवाहसः ।।१।।

But approach, but sit down, sing out towards Indra, O friends who bear the burden of the psalm.

स्तोम. From स्तु to establish firmly. Stoma is the psalm, the hymn of praise; it is the expression in the potency of speech of those qualities in the Lord of Mental Force—or whatever other Master of being is praised,—which the sadhaka is either calling to his aid or aspires to bring out in his own being and activity. The expression of a quality in inspired & rhythmic speech tends by the essential nature of mantra to bring forward & establish in habitual action that which was formerly latent or vague in the nature. For this reason the psalm is stoma, that which establishes or confirms, as the prayer is uktha, that which desires or wills and the simple hymn is gáyatra, thatwhich brings up and sets in motion or sansa, that which brings out into the field of expression.

पुरुतमं पुरुणामीशानं वार्याणाम् । इन्द्रं सोमे सचा सुते ।।२।।

When the nectar has been distilled, then it is Indra I take for friend, the mightiest of all that is mighty, the lord of all highest things.

पुरुतमं पुरुणाम्. Sayana’s far-fetched & violent gloss, “waster of many (foes), lord of many possessions”, is an entirely needless violation of the plain sense of the words. Purùtamam purùnám

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can have only one meaning & grammatical connection, “most पुरु among all that are पुरु”, just as ईशानो वार्यानां means “master among all that is supreme”. वार्य may indeed mean “desirable”, very much in the underlying sense of वर, a boon, but “supreme” rather than “desirable” chimes with ईशान & suits the balance of the phrases.

सचा is accepted invariably by the grammarians as an adverb in the sense of “together” formed from Rt सच् to adhere, to accompany. But is it certain that the word has no other sense in the Veda? The arrangement, if not the construction of the words in this line calls imperatively for a verb to connect इन्द्रं with सोमे सुते. To read in अभि प्रगायत from the first rik, is intolerably clumsy. Now in form, सचा may be the Active imperative of सच्—the singular would then be addressed to one of the company and replace temporarily the collective plural of the first and fourth riks—as सचस्व is its imperative Middle; or it may be more naturally, if my suggestion in connection with पृच्छा (I.4.[4]) is accepted, the first person indicative present of the verb used in the Active Mood & with a transitive effect. If सचस्व can mean “to consort with, always dwell with as a friend” (I.[1.9]), सचा in the Active may very well mean “I keep with me as a friend or comrade.” The sentence then becomes natural, straightforward & simple and the sense perfect & appropriate not only to the present verse, but to the preceding rik and to the rik that follows. It provides us with the perfect logical connection & transition which is a perpetual feature of Vedic style. In the first verse the Rishi invites his “friends” or “life-companions” to sing the psalm of Indra; the second states the object & purpose of their singing which is to have this mighty&supremeMaster of things as a friend, — the peculiar purpose of Madhuchchhanda as the acknowledged head of this group of sadhakas, यस्ते सखिभ्य आ वरं; the third justifies the choice of the forceful God by affirming Indra’s faithful friendship and his perfect helpfulness.

स घा नो योग आ भुवत् स राये स पुरंध्यां । गमद्वाजेभिरा स नः ।।३।।

It was he that was ever present to us in the union (with our desire), he ever for our felicity, he ever in the holding of our city;

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ever he came to us with gifts of substance (in his hands).

स घा. The emphasis is on सः which is, therefore, repeated with each case of application स योगे, स राये, स पुरन्ध्याम्; and घा serves to bring out the intention of the Rishi to emphasise the word. He is explaining why it is towards Indra, इन्द्रमभि, that the psalm must be upheld; for it is Indra that is there always in the getting of our desire, Indra always when felicity is the result of our active consciousness, Indra always when our gettings & our felicity are attacked & our city has to be held against the dasyus, the robbers, the foes. He comes to us always bringing fresh substance to our mental faculties, increased resources of mental force for our active consciousness.भुवत्, गमत्,—the habitual past, formed direct from the proper stem भू, गम्. I accept राये as the usual dative, although I do not feel at all certain that we are not sometimes in the presence of a form रायः and this राये like योगे and पुरंध्यां a locative.

योग. The idea of Yoga in all its Vedic senses is the reaching out of the being in us to unite itself with being expressed in other persons, objects or forces, whether in the form of application of effort, contact of consciousness or acquisition of things desired.

पुरंध्याम्. I can accept neither Sayana’s योषिति nor his बहुविधायां बुद्धौ; his construction of पुरं = बहु with धि = बुद्धि is almost grotesque in its violence. पुर् is that which is filled or that which contains & protects, the city, the adhara, this nine-gated city of ours in which we guard our gettings and enjoy our felicity; धिः is holding, supporting. Always attacked by spiritual enemies, Dasyus, Rakshasas, Daityas, Vritras, Panis, it has to be maintained and upheld by the strength of the gods, Indra first, Indra always, Indra foremost.

यस्य संस्थे न वृण्वते हरी समस्तु शत्रवः । तस्मा इन्द्राय गायत ।।४।।

Sing to that Indra whose steeds no foemen in our battles can withstand in the shock.

संस्थे. Sayana’s construction यस्य रथे (युक्त्यौ) हरी seems to me in the last degree forced and impossible. If संस्थ means रथ & वृण्वते means संभजंते, the only sense can be that Indra’s enemies in Indra’s chariot do not approve of his horses! We must find a

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more possible sense for संस्थ. In connection with battle, it may well mean the meeting and locked struggle of two enemies, and वृण्वते will have the sense which we find so often, of checking, obstructing or successfully opposing. When Indra and the enemy stand struggling together in the shock of battle, they cannot succeed in restraining the progress of his car; it forces always the obstacles & moves forward to its goal. The verse following on the आ भुवत् पुरन्ध्यां of the last rik & ending in the resumption of the first idea in the word गायत, closes appropriately & with true Vedic perfection of the minutiae of style, the train of thought started by प्रगायत & brought out by इन्द्रं सचा.

सुतपाव्ने सुता इमे शुचयो यन्ति वीतये । सोमासो दध्याशिरः ।।५।।

Distilled for purification are these juices of the Soma; pure, they are spent for thy manifestation, able then to bear their own intensity.

सुतपाव्ने. सोमस्य पानकर्त्रै, says Sayana, & he is well within his rights, for पावन् would undoubtedly be in later Sanscrit a noun of the agent &, so taken in this passage, it makes good sense. “Here are these Somas distilled for the Soma-drinker.” But, as European scholars have discovered, in the old Aryan tongue the dative अने was used verbally to express the action, no less than the agent, and appears disguised in the Greek infinitive ναɩ, εναɩ, while the shorter form अन्, dative or nominative, appears as the ordinary Greek infinitive εɩν. Old Aryan असने for being remains in Greek as εἶναɩ to be, दावने for giving as δoȕναɩ to give, भुवन् for becoming as ϕύεɩν to become, श्रुवन् for hearing as χλύεɩν to hear. Can we hold that this ancient Aryan form persists in the Veda, in such forms as पावने, दावने? The hypothesis is tenable. In that case, however, we should land ourselves in our passage in a piece of grotesque bathos, “These Soma-juices have been distilled for the purpose of drinking Soma”! If we are to accept the idea of drinking for पावन्, Sayana’s interpretation is infinitely to be preferred. But although पावन् occurs to us naturally as of the same form as दावन्, by the addition of अन् to the root पा to drink with the intercalary euphonious व which we find established in Tamil & surviving in Sanscrit forms like ब्रुवन्, स्तुवे, yet पावन् may equally

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derive from the root पू to purify by modification of the root vowel, as in पावक and पावन before the termination अन. If we accept this account of सुतपाव्ने, we get a deep and fruitful significance thoroughly in harmony with the subtle, suggestive and pregnant style of the hymns of Madhuchchhandas. The nectar juices are distilled for the primary process of purification of what has been distilled, सुतपाव्ने; when they are purified, शुचयो, they then come into use यन्ति वीतये, because they are then दध्याशिरः. The presence of the epithet शुचयो becomes at once intelligible; otherwise an ornate epithet, not without meaning, but not really needed, it becomes in this rendering a word of capital importance, logically occurring & indeed inevitable in the context, & दध्याशिरः, led up to naturally by शुचयः, comes with equal inevitability as the climax of the sentence & the thought.

वीतये. Sayana says भक्षणार्थं, but he gives other significances also for वी, गमनप्रजननकान्त्यसनखादनेष्विति. In the sense of going, as in the familiar classical वीत, वी is sometimes the compound of वि +इ to go, but the verb we have in वीतये is rather the long form वी of the primary root वि to manifest, shine, open, be born, appear, produce, grow, spread, extend, move, still surviving in वयस्, वियत्, वयुनं. The rendering खादन strikes me as an additional sense forced upon it by the ceremonialists in order to bring this crucial Vedic term within the scope of their ritualistic conceptions. I take it, in the Veda, in its natural sense of manifestation, appearance, bringing out or expansion. This word वीति describes the capital process of Vedic Yoga, the manifestation for formation & activity of that which is in us unmanifest, vague or inactive. It is वीतये or देववीतये, for manifestation of the gods or of the powers and activities which they represent that the Vedic sacrifice is initiated & conducted internally in subjective meditation & surrender, externally in objective worship & oblation. The Soma-juices purified यन्ति वीतये go to manifest, are spent for manifestation,—in this case, as we see in the next verse (वृद्यो अजायथाः), of Indra, the god of the hymn, Master of mental force.

दधि-आशिरः. This expression must either consist of two separate words, दधि & आशिरः wrongly combined in the Padapatha or it is a compound epithet—as Sayana takes it—of सोमासः.

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In the first case, दधि mean curd & आशिरः milk, used in the plural to express several helpings of milk; we shall have then to translate ritualistically, “Here are (Somas) distilled for the Soma drinker & here, purified, go Somas, curd and milks for eating.” Let those take it so who will and reconcile as they can its puerility with the loftiness of the verse that precedes & the subtlety of the verse that follows. But it is clear from the construction & arrangement of words that दधि-आशिरः is an epithet of सोमासः. Sayana’s explanation is too wonderfully complex for acceptation; nor can दधि-आशिरः mean दधि-आशिरः-युक्त; one of the two factors in the compound may have a verbal force, the other of the governed substantive; nor in the older terms of Vedic language is there any insurmountable objection to the verb in the compound preceding the word it governs. दधि will then be a verbal adjective formed by reduplication from धि (cf दधिष्व, the adjective ददि etc) upholding, able to uphold and आशिर् a noun expressing devouring heat, force or intensity akin to the other Vedic word आशु more than once used adjectivally in this sense by Madhuchchhandas. We get therefore the sense “able, being purified, to sustain the action of their own intensity”,—not, therefore, rapidly wasted so as to be unable to supply the basis of delight & force necessary for Indra’s action.

त्वं सुतस्य पीतये सद्यो वृध्यो अजायथाः । इन्द्र ज्यैष्ठाय सुक्ततो ।।६।।

Thou for the drinking of the Soma-juice straightway didst appear increased, O Indra, for supremacy, O great in strength.

अजायथाः didst appear; again the habitual past.

The idea of the verse follows in logical order on the suggestions in the last. The Rishi has devoted his first four verses to the reasons he has to give for the preference of Indra and the hymning of Indra. He then proceeds to the offering of the Soma, the wine of immortality, ananda materialised in the delight-filled vitality; it is first expressed in the terms of joy & vitality; it is next purified; purified it is spent in the putting out of mental force for the manifestation of divine Mind, Indra; Indra manifests at once, सद्यो अजायथाः, but he manifests वृध्यो increased; a greater mental force appears than has been experienced in the past stages of

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the Yoga or the life. Indra appears thus increased सुतस्य पीतये & ज्यैष्ठाय, primarily for the drinking of the joy & vitality that has been distilled, secondarily, through & as a result of the taking up of that joy & vitality in the active mental consciousness for supremacy, that is to say, for full manifestation of his force in that fullness in which he is always the leader of the divine war, king & greatest (ज्येष्ठ) of the battling gods. Therefore is the appellation सुक्ततो placed at the end in order to explain ज्यैष्ठाय. The Lord of Mental Force is a very mighty god; therefore, when he appears in his fullness, it is always his force that takes the lead in our activity. We have in these two verses a succession of symbolic concepts in perfect logical order which express stage by stage the whole process of the divine manifestation in this lower material activity, devaviti in adhwara yajna.

आ त्वा विशन्तु आशवः सोमास इन्द्र गिर्वणः । शं ते संतु प्रचेतसे ।।७।।

May the fiery Soma-juices enter into thee, O Indra, thou who hast delight in the Word; may they be peace to thee in thy forward-acting awareness.

आशवः. व्याप्तिमंत, says Sayana; but the epithet is then inapposite. आशु like आशिर means devouring, fiery, intense, impetuous, swift—cf the senses of आशिर fire, the sun, a demon. The joy & vitality are to pervade the mental force and, because this is to be done in the force of the word, the mantras, गिरः, therefore Indra is addressed as गिर्वणः,—the word, besides, preparing after the fashion of Vedic interlinking the transition of the thought to the subject of the next verse.

प्रचेतसे. The epithet is not here merely ornamental or generally descriptive; if it were, the vocative would have been preferred. The use of the dative indicates clearly that प्रचेतस् is meant to express the condition in which the peace is desired. The most serious obstacle of the sadhaka is the difficulty of combining action with a basis of calm; when intense force enters the system & is put out in activity, it brings eagerness, disturbance, trouble, an excitement of activity & exhaustion of relapse. There is अशान्ति, absence of शं.It is easy to avoid this when there is quietude & the ananda is merely enjoyed,

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not utilised.But Indra, as mental force, has to be prachetas, consciously active, putting his consciousness forward in thought & action, प्रचेतस्, he has to absorb the Soma-wine & lose nothing of its fire, yet preserve the peace of the liberated soul. The Somajuices have to bring added peace with them to the active mind as well as an added force.

त्वां स्तोमा अवीवर्धन् त्वामुक्था शतक्रतो । त्वां वर्धंतु नो गिरः ।।८।।

Thee the hymns of praise have increased, thee, the hymns of prayer, O Indra of the hundred mights; thee may our Words increase.

अवीवर्धन् the habitual past. In the past and as a rule, praise of Indra & prayer to Indra have increased & increase the mental force; let the words also of this mantra now increase it.

गिरः takes up the गिर्वणः of the last line. It is the mantra that has to make the Soma effective in increasing Indra. The thought, therefore, takes up the प्र गायत of the first rik and applies it to the office which is asked of Indra, for which he has been given the Soma wine, the final purpose of the invocatory chant & the utility of this divine increase in the fiery strength of the Soma offering.

अक्षितोतिः सनोदिमं वाजमिन्द्रः सहस्रिणं । यस्मिन्विश्वानि पौस्या ।।९।।

Unimpaired in his expansion may Indra safeguard this myriad wealth (of mind) on which all our strengths are established.

अक्षितोतिः. The ritualistic interpretation of the ninth rik is not unworth noting for its unadulterated clumsiness & unconvincing pointlessness. Sayana takes वाजं in the sense of food and supposes it to allude to the Soma. “Let Indra” he renders it “whose protection is undamaged enjoy this food thousandnumbered, in which food are all strengths.” Nothing is clear here except the working of a mind ignorant of the meaning of the text and compelled to hammer out a meaning in harmony with tradition and ritualistic prepossessions. In the light of the symbolic interpretation, the verse like every other becomes both in sense & construction simple, straightforward, logical, wellordered & full of subtle purpose & consummate dexterity. ऊतिः

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is expansion, see [    ] & appendix. Indra is supposed to have increased mental force in accordance with past experience (वृद्धो अजायथाः, अवीवृधन्) and in answer to the prayer त्वां वर्धंतु नो गिरः; the Rishi prays that that increased mental force may remain unimpaired अक्षित, and that the Lord of the Force, thus preserved in the expansion of his power, may safeguard, preserve or keep safe (सनेद्) this substance of mind, this rich mind-stuff full of the force of Indra सहस्रिणं in which all human strengths repose for their effectiveness and stability.

सनेद्. The group of words सा:, सातिः, सन्, सनयः, सनः, सनिः, सानसिः, are of great importance in the Veda. Sayana is not consistent in his interpretation of them. He applies to them his favourite ritualistic ideas of giving, favour, praying, eating etc. I attach to them invariably the sense of substance, permanence, safety, preservation, safeguarding. The basic sense of the roots of the Sa family is substance, steadfastness, stability, solidity. साः is the Greek σῶς, safe, सातिः the Greek σῶσɩςɩ, safety, salvation, preservation; सन् is the basis of the Latin sanus, sound, sane, in health which rests on the fundamental sense “well-preserved, safe from harm”, & of the Sanscrit सनत्, सना, सनात्, सनातनः perpetual, eternal, & सनयः, सनिः, सनः, सानसिः are its derivatives in this fundamental significance. We shall find that this interpretation will illuminate the sense of every passage in which the words occur, need never be varied and never lead to either straining of sense or awkwardness of construction.

सहस्रं means “a thousand”; if that be its only significance, सहस्रिणं must mean, myriad, thousandfold, infinitely numerous or varied. I am convinced, however, that सहस्र meant originally as an adjective plentiful or forceful, or as a noun, plenty or force; सहस्रिणं would then mean “abundantly plentiful” or “rich in force”. In any case, it describes well themyriad-shaped wealth of mind-stuff & mind-force which is the basis of all our masculine activities or practical masteries, यस्मिन् विश्वानि पौंस्या. We may, if we choose, take the phrase to mean “wealth counted by thousands” of gold pieces or of cattle, in which, says the Vedic Rishi, reside all forms of human strength and greatness. But I am not disposed to lend the sentiment of Mammon worship to

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men of an early age in which strength, skill and mental resource must have been the one source & protection of wealth & not, as falsely seems to be the fact in a plutocratic age, wealth the source & condition of the rest. The Vedic Rishis may have been primitive savages, but primitive savages did not hold sentiments of this kind; they valued strength & skill first, wealth only as the reward of strength & skill.

मा नो मर्ता अभि द्रुहन्तनू गिर्वणः । ईशानो यवया वधं ।।१०।।

Let not mortal men (or, let not the slayers) do hurt to us, O Indra who delightest in the mantra; be the lord of our bodies & give us to ward off the stroke.

मर्ताः Greek βρoτóς, mortal. The Rishi has already prayed for protection of his spiritual gains against spiritual enemies; he now prays for the safety from human blows of the physical body. But I am inclined to think that मर्ताः here has an active rather than a passive sense; for the termination त may have either force. मर्तः undoubtedly means mortal in the Veda, but it is possible that it bears also the sense of slayer, smiter, deadly one like मर्त् in the Latin Mars, like the transitive sense in mortal, which means either subject to death or deadly. In any case I cannot follow Sayana in taking तनूनाम् as subject to अभि. I take it subject to ईशानो which is otherwise otiose & pointless in the sentence. The significant use of गिर्वणः indicates that the safety from mortal strokes is also claimed as a result of the Vedic mantra. “Let not those who would slay, do harm against us (अभि in our direction); do thou, Indra, lord of mental force, in the strength of the mantra, govern our bodies and when the blow comes in our direction ward it off or enable us to ward it off (यवया, causal).” The reference seems to me to be to that power of the mental force in which the Indian Yogin has always believed, the power which, substituting a divine mental action for the passive, helpless & vulnerable action of the body, protects the individual and turns away all attempts physical or otherwise to do him hurt. If I am right in my interpretation, we see the source of the Tantric idea of the stoma or stotra acting as a kavacha or mental armour around the body which keeps off

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the attacks of suffering, calamity, disease, wounds or death. We may note that if मर्ताः be slayers, तनूनाम् may be governed by मर्ताः, “Let not the slayers of the body do hurt towards us, O Indra who delightest in the mantra; govern them (our bodies with thy mental force) & give us to ward off the stroke.” But, in any case, whether we associate तनूनाम् with अभि or मर्ताः or ईशानो, ईशानो must refer back to तनूनाम्. Sayana’s “ward off the blow, for thou canst”, is a pointless superfluity, one of those ideas which seem right & ingenious to the scholar, but would never suggest itself to the poet; least of all to a master of style like Madhuchchhanda.

[7]

[RV I.82.1]

I.82

उपो षु शृणुही गिरो मघवन्मातथा इव ।
यदा नः सुनृतावतः कर आदर्थयास इद्योजा नु इंद्र ते हरी ।।

upo [shu] ςrinuhî giro     maghavan mâtathâ iva
yadâ nah sûnritâvatah     kara âd arthayâsa id
yojâ nu indra te harî

उप उ अस्मान् प्रति अभिमुख एव सन् towards (us) verily षु सम्यक् well, गिरः शृणुहीशृणुहि उक्तीः शृणु hear (our) words मघवन् हे धनवन् मा अतथाः इव मा यथार्हसि तदन्यथेव किंवासत्य इव भव (be) not as if other than thou art यदा नः सुनृतावतः करः यदा त्वं नः सुसत्यवागन्वितान् वा करोषि when thou makest us possessed of the mind of truth आत् तदा अथर्यासे इत् अर्थं प्रति गच्छस्येव thou seekest the goal इंद्र हरी ते योजा नु हे इंद्र तव दिप्तावश्वावधुना योजय O Indra, yoke now thy two bright horses.

Turn well thy ear of hearing towards us and hearken to our words; O master of riches, be not other than thy Truth; when thou hast made us to have the word of truth, then thou movest

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to the goal of thy way. Yoke now, O Indra, thy bright horses.

उ = एव. अथवाः. S. “not as before”. But I think it means either not right, not as thou ought to be, not giving the just response to our words or else not as thou art really, ऋजुक्रतुः etc, straight of will, a warrior for the Aryan, a conqueror and giver of the riches of truth and its powers; do not seem to be something else. Cf the force of तथा in याथातथ्यतः aright, तथ्य true. सुनृतावतः. सूनृता is taken by S. in its latest sense, true and pleasant speech. The word is probably from सु and ऋत with an euphonic connecting न्. Other passages suggest true mind rather than true speech, but it may here mean speech, since it is the words, गिरः of which the Rishi is speaking. अथर्यासे. S. takes अर्थ् in the sense of प्रार्थं् = याच्यसे, thou art prayed to or desired. I take the verb as a nominal from अर्थ = thou movest to the goal.

For the whole sense of the verse consult the parallel passage I.[10].3 – 4 युक्ष्वा हि कोशिना हरी वृषणा कक्ष्यप्रा । अथा न इंद्र सोमपा गिरामुपश्रुतिं चर ।। एहि स्तोमाँ अभि स्वराभि गृणीहि आ रुव । “Yoke thy two maned bright horses (cf below युनज्मि ते केशिना हरी), strong (males) which fill their girths, then, O Indra Soma-drinker, act the hearkening towards our words, come, give voice in answer to our hymns of praise, utter the word, cry aloud”; and the previous verse I.10.2. तादिम्द्रो अर्थं चेतति यूथेन वर्ष्णिरेजति ।। “Then Indra gives us knowledge of the goal, a bull with the herd (of his rays यूथा गवां), he moves (towards the goal).”

Indra’s hearing of the word उपश्रुति has a meaning as is shown by this parallel passage. His hearing is for a response, the divine nMind answering with its word of Truth गृणीहि आ रुव to the human word that seeks the Truth. This gives a connected sense to मातथा इव, do not seem to give another than the right answer; do not confuse our minds with error. Why? Because it is when Indra makes men सुनृतावतः, that is, gives them possession of the mind and word of the Truth that he leads them towards the अर्थ, तादिम्द्रो अर्थं चेतति, the goal of Truth, the supreme levels rising from height to height सानोः सानुमारुहत् I.10.2.

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[8]

[RV I.86.1-3]

I.86.

The eighty fifth & eighty sixth hymns of the first Mandala, hymns of the Rishi Gotama to the Maruts, are of especial importance, because they fix the subjective character & functions of the Maruts with a greater clearness than most of the suktas addressed to these deities; for in these others the material symbol is so prominent as to veil for modern minds the truths of our inner being and experience which it symbolises. I take first the second of the two hymns, because it is the simplest in language and its indications are quite lucid and definite.

Maruto yasya hi kshaye páthá divo vimahasah,
    Sa sugopátamo janah.

In this verse I cannot accept pátha in Sayana’s sense, somam pibatha, drink the nectar. Pátha clearly prepares us for the sugopátamo in the third páda of the rik and means “protect”. Divo cannot mean “from heaven”, since there is no verb of motion; it must, therefore, be connected with vimahasah. The Maruts are the diffused energies (vi-mahas) of Div, the mental world; they are the rays of the ideal knowledge-force, the Vijnana, pouring itself out in mind and diffusing itself in action of mental knowledge. The expression divo vimahasah gives the justification of sugopátamo; because the Maruts are these diffused energies of the Truth, Right, Wideness above, therefore their protection is perfectly effective for the Sacrificer.

“O Maruts, verily, in whosoever’s dwellings ye protect, the spreading energies of Heaven, he is the most safely guarded of men.”

Yajnair vá yajnaváhaso viprasya vá
    matìnám, Marutah srinutá havam.

The Maruts bear the action of the sacrifice, says Gotama, yajnair.

We have here the fundamental sense of yajna coming to the

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surface; yajna is really the putting out of force which constitutes the effort of the Yati; it is yatna applied or devoted to a particular object or to a particular person; from this latter sense we get the idea of giving and sacrifice. The Maruts uphold the sacrifice of force, joy or being in the human individual by sacrifices of force, joy or being from the store, the samudra, of the mental Brahman,— divas. In other words by outpourings into activity of the universal substance which they as gods have at their command they support the outpouring into being by man of the individual store which he has at command.

Vá .. vá means rather, “both .. and”, than “either .. or”. It is affirmative like vai. Váshabdah samuchchaye, says Sayana. Matìnám depends by a very natural figure on the idea of bearing in “váhaso”, the second part of the preceding compound, which casts out from itself the shadow of an implied “vahnayah” or “vodhárah”. The Maruts are upholders not only of action, but of the thoughts or mind states that express themselves in action —still, because they are divo vimahasah the thought continues logically from the first verse.

“Ye who by your sacrifices uphold alike our sacrifice, and the thoughts of the seer, O Maruts, hear my call.”

Uta vá yasya vájino, anu vipram atakshata,
    Sa gantá gomati vraje.

Uta vá, “And besides”, “moreover”; the Rishi is giving a fresh aspect of the activity of the Maruts; as diffused energies of an illuminated mentality & therefore efficient protectors of our mental being, substance & gains, not only are they upholders of our outgoing action and upholders of our illuminated mind states, but they are the formers of being & thought & image, inward & outward, like Indra their chief (Indrajyesthá Marudganáh), who is surúpakritnu, a maker of perfect forms. Vájino may be an epithet either of yasya or of the subject of atakshata. I think that, like vírasya in the next line, it is meant to describe the state of the sacrificer’s being which is the condition of the action described in the rest of the sentence, not so much the condition necessary in the Maruts for their work of

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formation, although that also is perfectly suitable to the sense. There is a certain difficulty also about vipram. Is it an accusative governed in sense by anu or by atakshata? The former is only possible if we suppose vipra to have, besides its ordinary sense of enlightened, also, like kavi and rishi, the sense of enlightenment. It would be perfectly legitimate to assign this sense to the word and we may even say that it must, in the origins of the Sanscrit language, have borne it for a time; but it is a question of fact whether it still bore it in the language of the Veda. It is, I think, necessary to take it so here, because of yasya. If vipra meant the seer, we should have yam & not yasya. As it is, vipram is evidently something in the sacrificer which the Maruts mould into shape, anu, according to the energy from the vijnana above. For atakshata is the defining into shape of the indefinite substance of mind in Div, through yajna and mati, putting forth of force for activity and movement of the mind state into mental thought & feeling. By these movements the Maruts shape the mental enlightenment of the seer into a well-arranged and well formed knowledge. As a result, sa gantá gomati vraje, he has freedom of movement in the luminous ordered motion of the Chit in mind, vraja in the sense of regular movement, or in the luminous throng of thoughts from above, vraja in the sense of herd or assemblage. The rays of thought, descending from above, are assembled in their movement, the rashmín vyúha of the Isha Upanishad, and among them the man of full substance, right thought & action protected & energised by the Maruts moves a formed and complete thinker & knower, freed from the darkness and the twilight of lower states.

“Then too, whosoever has substance & in him ye have shaped aright his knowledge, moves in the radiant march.”

In these three verses the powers & functions of the Maruts are defined, by virtue of which they are the deities the Rishi chooses for invocation in this hymn. Because they are the supporters, energisers & formers of the knowledge in him, therefore he calls them for the action desired by him in this sukta. So much is praise; the rest of the hymn is prayer.

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[9]

[RV I.122.1-3]

Veda.

ओं प्र वः पान्तं रघुमन्यवो अन्धो यज्ञं रूद्राय माळ्हुषे भरध्वं ।
दिवो अस्तोषि असुरस्य वीरैरिषुध्येव मरूतो रोदस्योः ।।१।।

(1) Sayana

पांतं = पालनशीलं पातव्यं वा रघुमन्यवो = लघुक्रोधा यज्ञं = यागसाधनं असुरस्य = असुराणां निरसितुः (कर्मणि षष्ठी) मीळ्हुषे = फलस्य वर्षित्रे

Rendering—Offer perfectly to Rudra, rainer of the fruit, the protective sacrificial food, O light in anger (priests); I praise theMaruts in the two firmaments & the driver out from heaven of the Asura with his heroes by means of the quiver.

(2) Suggestions

रघुमन्यवो—रघु = swift मन्यु = ϴνμóς, mind, passion, soul. मीळ्हुषे = kindly, friendly अस्तोषि = I stood firm, was established.

Bring forward the substance, O ye who are swift in impetuous passion, a sacrifice for Rudra who hath befriended even that which maintaineth you; by the strengths of the mighty One I sit established in heaven, O Maruts, yea in the two firmaments, as an arrow in a quiver.

पत्नीव पूर्वहूतिं वावृधध्या उषासानक्ता पुरुधा विदाने ।
स्तरीर्न अत्कं व्युतं वसाना सूर्यस्य श्रिया सुदृशी हिरण्यैः ।।

(1) Sayana

स्तरीः = शत्रूणां हिंसकस्तेजसाच्छन्नो वादित्यः अत्कं = अक्तं संततं वा Rendering—As a wife to increase the former call (of her husband becomes swift of gait), so may Dawn & Night variously known (by various mantras) or variously knowing (many ways of increasing us) come quickly; like the sun, wearing a form well-connected with golden rays and extended, well seen by the brightness of the sun (may Usha protect our former call).

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(2) Like a wife for increase of our former offering Dawn&Night be manifoldly manifested; Dawn, wearing Being sewn together like garments, seeing perfectly by the power of the sun, by his golden brilliances.

ममत्तु नः परिज्मा वसर्हा ममत्तु वातो अपां वृषण्वान् ।
शिशीतमिन्द्रापर्वता युवं नः तन्नो विश्वे वरिवस्यन्तु देवाः ।।

(1) Sayana

वसर्हा वसनार्हो यद्वा वासकानामाच्छादकानां वृक्षादीनां हंताग्निः ।
पर्वतः पर्ववान् वृक्ष्यादिपूरणवान् पर्जन्यः ।
शिशीतं तीक्ष्णीकुरूतं शोधयतमित्यर्थः ।
वरिवस्यन्तु प्रभूतमन्नं प्रदातुमिच्छन्तु ।

Rendering—May Agni, destroyer of coverings (trees etc), widely who goes abroad, intoxicate us & may the wind that is rainer of the waters intoxicate us; O Indra & Parjanya, do you make us sharp; therefore (because we praise) may the all gods be willing to give us plenty of food.

(2) May he the wide-pervading who destroyeth all coverings be full of rapture in us; may the Wind be full of rapture, he who is masterful over the waters; O Indra & Parvata, do ye become keen in us, and may all the gods in us attain their supreme substance.

[10]

[RV I.223.1]

Hymns of Kakshivan Dairghatamasa
Hymn to Usha.
I. 123.

पृथू रथो दक्षिणाया अयोजि, आ एन देवासो अमृतासो अस्थुः ।
कृष्णादुदस्थादर्या विहायाः, चिकित्सन्ती मानुषाय क्षयाय ।।१।।

Sayana

प्रवृद्धायाः स्वव्यापारकुशलाया उषोदेवताया विस्तीर्णो रथोऽशवैः सन्नद्धो

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ऽभूत् । एतं सन्नद्धं रथममरणधर्माणो देवनशीला हविर्भाजो देवा आस्थितवन्तः (देवयजनं गन्तुमारूढा इत्यर्थः ।) अनन्तर सोषा पूजनीय विविधगमनयुक्ता महती वा मनुष्याणां निवासायान्धकारनिवारणरूपां चिकित्सां कुर्वती (तमो निवारयन्ती) निकृष्टवर्णान्नैशात्तमसः सकाशादुत्थिताभूत् ।

दक्षिणायाः दक्षिणा in this verse may be an epithet of Usha, the Dawn. There is also a goddess Dakshina in the Veda, who is a female energy depending on the god Daksha. Daksha being the god who conducts the faculty of discriminative judgment, Dakshina is the faculty he conducts, intelligence, discrimination or reason. Intelligence has yoked her car, instituted, that is to say, the joy of her activities; the deathless gods take their seats in the car, not as Sayana suggests to go to the material sacrifice in the car of dawn, but to take their part in the internal yajna in the chariot of the Intelligence. In this hymn, however, since it is the dawn of realisation in the mind that is intended, Dakshina and Usha are possibly identified or at any rate so closely associated that their action and epithets are almost in common.

Intelligence or Dawn has risen up out of the black darkness; illumination of Intelligence has come out of the obscuration of ignorance or aprakasha; कृष्णात् from the black is a description of the tamoguna which is always represented in Yoga by the black colour. Dakshina or Usha is अर्या, noble, one of the high gods that help as opposed to the Dasyus, the dark & ignoble enemies of the spirit; she is विहायाः, either wide or various in her motion or wide & vast in her being, बृहती, a power of the Mahas, a birth from the wideness of the truth of things. She rises चिकित्सन्ती मानुषाय क्षणाय. Sayana’s interpretation, “healing the disease of darkness with a view to human habitation”, is obviously a forced modern gloss. चिकित्सन्ती in the Veda differs in sense from कित् (चिकेत; केतु) only by the addition of the general idea of continuity or else of frequency or prolonged unfinished action. Dakshina or Usha, the dawn of mental illumination, brings knowledge, perception, vision, in a word केतु for the firm establishing either of the mind in its illumination or of the human sadhaka in the fresh spiritual position or abiding place he has gained in the progress of his yoga. क्षय is frequently turned in

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this sense by the figurative & symbolical language of the Vedas. Or else it may be that Dakshina seeks certainty of knowledge (compare विचिकित्सा) for the firm establishment of the mind in its gettings.

[11]

[RV I.176]

I. 176

यस्य विश्वानि हस्तयोः पंच क्षितीनां वसु । स्पाशयस्व यो अस्मध्रुग् दिव्येवाशनिर्जहि ।।
असुन्वंतं समं जहि दूणाशं यो न ते मयः । अस्मभ्यमस्य वेदनं दद्धि सुरिश्चिदोहते ।।

O thou in whose two hands are all the possessions of our five dwelling places, make clear to our eyes him who betrays us, slay him even in heaven becoming the thunderbolt. Slay him who presses not out the nectar, the indifferent and oppressed in hope, who is not thy lover, give us the knowledge of him becoming utterly luminous to the worshipper so that he bears up thy activities.

Experienced, Dec 14 & 15th 1913. There are Powers of pure mind which are indifferent, equal to all things, as in possession of the samata,—but they are void of active delight; they do not press out the wine of immortal delight, they possess man in that state when, his hopes oppressed, he takes refuge in a passive & equal indifference, and is no longer in love with mental activities. In this state man takes this enemy of Indra & of his own perfection as a friend and helper. Mental force becoming entirely luminous in knowledge, súrih, is to pierce this dangerous disguise & make clear to the inner eye the true nature of this harmful agency, sama indeed, but asunvan, sama because dunasha & not because of equal delight. He is to be slain in the pure mind where he dwells by Indra in the form of the thunderbolt, mind force informed with vaidyuta energy

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from Mayas. A uhate is proleptic; the result of Indra or mind force becoming entirely luminous with the solar light of the ideal knowledge is to perfect the mental power of the Yogin so that he is strong to support & hold all the activities of mental knowledge & of the temperament in their fullness.

“Be rapturous in us and a dwelling for the sacrifice, enter with mastery into Indra, O Soma; thou art powerful, moving forward, and thou meetest no hostile forces on thy way. In him give to dwell our self-expressions, who is alone of the lords of action, and according to his movement is self-state sown in us & masterfully he cultivates that crop. O thou etc..... He who has the twofold fullness and his created being is free from flaw or crevice (continuous) in our realisations, in that Indra’s struggle, O Indu, prolong (protect) his richness in its havings. As to thy former adorers, O Indra, thou cam’st into being as a lover, like waters to the thirsty, even after that manner of soul-experience I call to thee. May we find the force that is intense & pierces in the slaying.”

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Mandala Two

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

[12]

[RV II.11 – 12.1]

Hymn 11

1) [मा] रिषण्यः । मा हिंसीः । इदमल्पं न साधीय इति मा निराकार्षीः ।। स्याम । दावने दानाय पात्रभूताः भवेम ।। वसूयवः । दातुर्यजमानस्य धनमिच्छति तादृशानि ।। ऊर्जः । हविर्लक्षणान्यन्नानि घृतक्षरणोपेतानि ।।

Sy. Hear my prayer, O Indra; do not hurt me; let us be objects of thy giving of wealth; these foods we have given thee which desire the wealth of the sacrificer & are like flowing rivers, increase thee.

O God-in-mind, hear our call; be not our enemy; may we be elect for the giving of thy treasures of substance; seeking that substance these our abundant energies increase thee, yea, they flow forth as the waters of existence.

Notes. सिंधवो न ।। The energies well forth as the seven forms of conscious force typified by the seven rivers. न here is the “as” of identity, not of similitude. It has more the force of एव than of इव, but hovers between the two. This sense is evident from the next Rik—सृजो महीः .. पूर्वीः. These abundances of forces, ऊर्जः, are those of the great floods formerly held in by the great Python.

2) चित् । एव ।। दासं । सर्वस्योपक्षपयितारं ।। अव । अवाङ्मुखं यथा भवति तथा ।। शूर । शत्रूणां हिंसक ।। अभिन्त् । लङि सिपि रूपं ।।

Sy. O Indra, destroyer of the foe, thou hast released many great waters beset by the closed (waters), which thou didst increase.Increasing by our hymns thou hast split downward the destroyer who thought himself immortal.

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O God in mind, thou hast released the mighty Ones whom thou didst feed,—yea, O Hero, many waters that were beset by the Python. When he increased by our expressings of him, then did he rend & cast down the destroyer who had dreamed that he was immortal.

अवाभिनत् । The usual sudden transition from the second to the third person; there is no need to take it as an old or irregular form for अवाभिनः ।।

3) रूद्रियेषु । रूद्रियं सुखं ।तत्साधनभूतेषु । यद्वा रूद्राः ।
स्तोतारस्तत्कृतेषूद्गातृणां सतोमेषु ।। नु । क्षिप्रं ।। चाकन् । स्तुतीः कामयसे ।। मंदसानः । हृष्यन्भवसि ।। एताः । स्तुतयः ।। वायवे । अस्मदीय यज्ञ प्रत्यागच्छते तुभ्यमेव ।। न । संप्रत्यर्थे । ता अधुना सेवस्व ।।

Sy. O Indra, destroyer of the foe, lo the chants & praises, means of happiness, which thou didst swiftly desire, the hymns of praise, yes, the hymns of praise in which thou becomest joyful, these are those shining praises that go forward for thy sake as thou comest to our sacrifice.

Even these expressings of thee, O Hero, O God-in-mind, in which was thy desire, and the affirmations of the violent God, they increased thee; and now lo these energies white & bright in which is thy ecstasy, & they stream forward on his way for the Master of Life.

एताः. It is impossible to understand स्तुतयः । And what in the name of common sense are shining praises? एताः answers to इमा ऊर्जः of the first verse, प्रसिस्रते recalls the सिंधवो न क्षरंतः. The first line of this rik is a parenthesis developing the idea of the expressions which increase Indra, the second returns to the idea of the ऊर्जः, the महीः.

रुद्रियेषु—either of Rudra, or of the Maruts who are Rudras & sons of Rudra. The sense is affirmations of the God-mind apt for the Rudra-creation, the struggle of the Pranic powers in the triple world. Hence the waters or energies flow forward for Vayu, the Pranic god, Master of vitality.

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4) शुभ्रं । शोभनं बलं स्तोत्रैर्वर्धयंतः शुभ्रं दीप्तं वज्रं नु क्षिप्रं तव बाह्वोर्निदधाना भवामः । स्तुयमानो हींद्रोऽसुरवधाय वज्रमादत्ते ।। शुभ्रस्तेजसा युक्तः ।। अस्मे । अस्माकं।।दासीः । उपक्षपयित्रिर्विश आसुरीः । प्रजाः ।। सूर्येण । सुष्ठु प्रेरयति त्वं युध्यस्वेति ।।

शुभ्रं. Sayana not understanding how strength can be bright, makes शुभ्र here = शोभन but in the other three cases (v. 3 & 4) bright. This is hypercritical as well as inconsistent, for he has already admitted “shining praises”. Strength can very well be described as shining or bright; the phrase has a clear & strong significance, unlike shining praises.

सूर्य. Sayana’s explanation of Surya from सू to send, impel is false etymology & false interpretation. सूर्य = sun, comes from सू = to shine, cf सोम moon. In the Veda it means the Illuminant & Luminous & also in the form सवितृ the manifester, producer.

Sy. We become increasers of the fine strength and placers swiftly of the shining thunderbolt in thy two arms. Thou increasing & bright, O Indra, overcome the destroying Asura nations with the Sun for impeller of thy weapon.

White & bright thy strength that we increase, white & bright thy lightning that we place in the two arms of our strength; white & bright increasing thou in us, O God-mind, overcome the nations of the dividers by the light of the Sun of truth.

दधानाः. Sy. takes “we placing” in the arms of Indra by our prayers, because Indra increased by praise takes the thunderbolt to slay the Asuras. दधानाः is middle & would better mean “holding in my two arms”. The arms are the two powers of the mind, intuition & discernment; the thunderbolt is the electric flashing of the divine mind, and we see in the next line that it is in the worshippers अस्मे that the god-mind increases & overpowers the Dasyus. Cf also v. 10 where it is Indra as the human being who slays Vritra.

अस्मे.अस्मासु & never as Sy. takes it = अस्माकं.

5) अपीवृतं । तिरोहितं ।। अहिं । असुरं मेघं वा ।। वीर्येण । सामर्थ्यभूतेन वज्रेण ।।

Sy. The Asura placed in a cave, secret, hidden, concealed, illusive,

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dwelling & also stopping the waters & heaven, thou, O destroyer of thy foes, hast slain by thy power, the thunderbolt.

O Hero, thou hast smitten in thy prowess the Python who was firm in our secret being, secret, concealed in the waters of existence & covered over, & there he dwelt creating forms of illusion and held imprisoned the movement of the waters & the shining of our heavens.

6) नु । क्षिप्रं ।। स्तव । स्तवाम ।। उशंतं । दीप्यमानं ।। सूर्यस्य । सुष्ठु प्रेरकस्य सुवीर्यस्य वा सूर्यात्मनो वेंद्रस्य ।। केतू । प्रज्ञापकौ ।।

[Sy.] O Indra, let us quickly praise thy great ancient deeds, also thy new ones let us praise; let us praise the thunderbolt shining in thy arms; let us praise the proclaiming (or knowledge-giving) horses of the impelling (or puissant) Indra (or, of Indra as the Sun).

O God-in-mind, now may we affirm in us thy former mighty doings & affirm others that are new & affirm the lightning’s desire in thy arms & affirm thy two shining steeds that are the two powers of perception of the Sun of Truth.

केतु. Intuition & discrimination, the powers of the Truth consciousness most readily active in the mental plane, or else the higher or revelatory divine perception & the lower This is a decisive passage for the right interpretation of Indra’s brilliant pair of horses.

उशंतं—or the lighting that gleams; but if so, why should not उशिजः as applied to the gods mean the Shining Ones & not as Sayana interprets it always, “desiring”?

7) वाजयंता । वेगं कुर्वंतौ ।। घृतश्चुतं । उदकस्य च्यावयितारं ।। नु । क्षिप्रं ।। स्वारं । मेघध्वनिं । स्वरतिः शब्दकर्मा ।। सामना । समस्थाला यद्वा सामना सर्वतो व्यप्रथिष्ट । गर्जनं श्रुत्वा ममोपरि वृष्टिर्भवति प्रथिताभूत् । पर्वतश्चित् । मेघोऽपि ।। सरिष्यन् । वर्षणार्थमितस्ततो गमिष्यन्नरमत ।।

Sy. Swiftly speeding thy horses, O Indra, sounded a water-dropping sound; the level earth spread itself out (or the earth spread itself on every side); the cloud too, about to go about, played.

Thy two steeds increasing in their plenitude neighed out

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now their cry that rains down the mind’s clarities; our earth grew equal & spread itself into its utter wideness; this hill of being that was about to move from its base grew full of delight.

8) नि पर्वतः सादि अप्रयुच्छन्
    सं मातृभिः वावशानः अत्रान् ।
दूरे पारे वाणीं वर्धयंतः
    इंद्रऽइषितां धमनिं पप्रथन् नि ।।

अप्रयुच्छन् । मातृभिः । अप्रमाद्यन् वर्षणे सावधानः । निषादि । नभसि निषण्ण आसीत् ।। मातृभिः । अड्भिर्माध्यमिकाभिर्वाग्भिर्वा ।। संवावशानः । सह शब्दं कुर्वाणः ।। अत्रान् । अत्रमीत् । इतस्ततः संचारमकरोत् ।। दुरे पारे । अतिदूरेऽतरिक्षे स्थितां माध्यमिकां वाचं स्तोत्रैः समृद्धां कुर्वंतः स्तोतारो मरुतो वेंद्रेण प्रेरितां शब्दं कुर्वाणां तां वाचं नितरामप्रथयन् ।।

[Sy.] The cloud careful to rain sat down (in the sky), it moved making a sound together with the Mothers (the waters or Madhyamika words); the praisers increased the Speech in the distant mid-air; they widened that speech sent by Indra which was making a sound.

The whole hill of being settled down nor faltered in its toil, but laboured & desired with the maternal Waters. They increased that Speech on the far shore of the mind, they widened the rushing stream that Indra set flowing.

पर्वतः may mean both hill & cloud; but when connected with Earth & the Rivers it means usually the Hill of being or articulate formation of our conscious Existence imaged sometimes as a hill, sometimes as a cloud. It now takes a settled base in the wideness of the earth consciousness & labours with the seven waters Indra has set flowing to produce the Truth.

पारे of heaven, the mind पार्ये दिवि . That is on the borders between the reasoning Mind & the Truth-consciousness.

वाणीं the Speech or Word of the Truth, the divine form of Thought set sounding by the two horses of Indra which forms the impetuous stream of the intuitive Mind to which Indra gives his impulsion.

9) इंद्रः महां सिंधुं आशयानं
    मायाविनं वृत्रं अस्फुरत् निः ।

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अरेजेता रोदसी भियाने
    कनिक्रदतः वृष्णा अस्य वज्रात् ।।

सिंधुं । स्यंदत इतस्ततः संचरतीति सिंधुर्मेघः । यद्वा सिंधुरूदकं ।। आशयानं । अधिष्ठाय शयानमसुरं ।। वृत्रं । वृणोत्याकाशमिति वृणो मेघः ।।

[Sy.] Indra split the cunning (deceitful) cloud that was lying upon the great water (or the deceitful demon that lay upon them great (moving) cloud). Heaven & earth shook in their fear of the sounding thunderbolt of this rainer.

God-in-mind has shivered into pieces the Coverer full of his thoughts of illusion who lay against the Great Water. Our heaven & earth shook & were afraid of the lightning of this Lord of abundance as it roared abroad.

सिंधुं । Sayana’s learned trick with the word is entirely indefensible.The Great Water is the same महो अर्णः or महानर्णवः to which reference is made in I.3.12 & other hymns; it is the Vast Truth ऋतं बृहत् kept back from us by Vritra.

10) अरोरवीत् वृष्णाः अस्य वज्रः
    अमानुषं यत् मानुषः निजूर्वात् ।
नि मायिनः दानवस्य मायाः
    अपादयत् पपिवान् सुतस्य ।।

वृष्णः । कामानां वर्षकस्येंद्रस्य ।। अमानुषं । मनुष्याणां रहितं यद्वा मानुषोऽहं न भवामीत्येवं मन्यमानं तमसुरं ।। मानुषः । मनुष्यणां हितकारी यद्वा मतिमानिंद्रो निजूर्वात् ।। मायाः । वचनानि ।। अपादयत् । न्यपातयत् । बबाधेति यावत् ।।

[Sy.] The thunderbolt of this rainer of desires roared when the man-helping (or thinking) Indra killed Vritra who had no man (or who thought he was not human). Drinking the Soma offered he obstructed the words of the deceitful Danava.

वृष्णः । I do not understand why Sayana should suddenly change the rainer of rain of the last few verses into a rainer of desires.

मानुषः । Sayana’s dealings with मानुष & अमानुष are truly amazing. It is Indra as the human or mental being who slays the Coverer, & for this reason men are described as carrying the thunderbolt in the two arms of Indra. See v. 4. Vritra is,

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on the other hand, the non-mental being, the non-human. He represents in man those formations of consciousness मायाः which belong properly to the infra-mental material & animal world out of which man has come. Man’s struggle is to rise above these formations which prevent his progress as the mental being.

मायाः । This means mental formation, consciousness that creates forms. Both Indra & Vritra are मायिनः which does not mean deceitful; but the formations of Indra are mental & of the Truth, those of Vritra non-mental, sensory, physical & therefore full of illusions & falsehoods.

Loud roared the lightning of this lord of abundance when the human split apart the non-human; he drank of the wine of delight that had been pressed & he trod down the conscious formations of the Divider with his forms of the illusion.

11) पिबपिब इत् इंद्र शूर सोमं
    मंदंतु त्वा मंदिनः सुतासः ।
पृणंतः ते कुक्षी वर्धयंतु
    इत्था सुतः पौरः इंद्रं आव ।।

शूर । बलवन् ।। पिबऽपिब । आदरार्था वीप्सा ।। मंदंतु । मादयंतु । व्यत्ययेन परस्मैपदं ।। कुक्षी । उदरस्योभौ पार्श्वौ ।। पौर । उदरपूरकः ।। आव । तर्पयतु । अवतेस्तर्पणार्थस्य लिटि रूपं ।।

Sy. O strong Indra, drink indeed this Soma; let the intoxicating Soma juices intoxicate thee; filling the two sides of thy belly increase thee; thus let the filling Soma satisfy Indra.

Drink, O drink indeed the wine of delight, O hero, O God- Mind; may the enrapturing juices fill thee with their ecstasy; may they increase filling thee to thy two sides; rightly pressed out may the wine of the multiplicity foster the growth of the God-mind.

12) त्वे इंद्राप्यभूम विप्रा
    धियं वनेम ऋतया सपंतः ।
अवस्यवो धीमहि प्रशस्तिं
    सद्यस्ते रायो दावने स्याम ।।

त्वे । त्वयि त्वद्धदयेऽभूम । अपि सानुनयप्रश्ने वर्तते । किं वर्तामह इति ।। ऋतया । ऋतं कर्मफलं तत्कामनया ।। संपतः । त्वां परिचरणाख्येन कर्मणा

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स्पृशंतः ।। धियं । कर्म ।। प्रशस्तिं । प्रकृष्टशंसनं स्तोत्रं ।। धीमहि । त्वयि निदधीमहि ।।

Sy. May we intelligent live in thy heart, O Indra, may we enjoy the work touching thee with a desire for the fruit of the sacrifice. Desiring protection we place the hymn of praise in thee; may we be at once for thy giving of wealth.

अपि । Here a preposition, Greek έπί = in, upon.

सपंतः । सप् to attain, touch, taste, know; cf Latin sapiens, wise; sapor, taste; Gr.σoϕóς, wise; S. सप्तन् seven, originally = wise man, rishi.

ऋतया । An adverb, according to the Truth. आ is an old Aryan adverbial termination surviving in Latin ē, ō.

प्रशस्ति । ie the clear expression of the thought, the truth or of Indra.

In thee, O God-mind, may we become illumined; may we know according to the Truth and conquer understanding; seeking increase we confirm in the thought its expression. At once may we be prepared for the giving of thy felicity.

13) स्याम ते त इंद्र ये त ऊती
    अवस्यव ऊर्जं वर्धयंतः ।
शुष्मिंतमं यं चाकनाम देव
    अस्मे रयिं रासि वीरवंतं ।।

[ऊती ।] ऊत्या प्रणयनेन । अवतेः प्राप्त्यर्थस्य क्तिनि रूपं ।। ते । तव ।। ते । त्वदधीनाः ।। देव । द्योतमान ।। शु ।मिंतमं । दावनभागायार्हतया बलवत्तमं यद्वा शत्रूणां शोषयितृतमं ।। वीरवंतं । पूत्रपौत्रैः सहितं ।।

Sy. May we who are thine be subject to thee, Indra, by thy leading who desire thy protection & increase the food. O shining one, give us thy felicity most strong in fitness (or, most foe-destroying) and attended by sons & grandsons which we desire.

ते ते. One ते = तव, the other is the demonstrative pronoun.

ऊति. Sayana usually takes = protection or else favour. He does not explain why he suggests another sense here. ऊति we take throughout = increase, expansion.

वीरवंतं । वीर is the symbol of a battling energy,—the Hero in man. The Ananda is described in the Veda, sometimes, as a heroic conquering joy which overpowers all obstacles.

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May we be they of thy troop, O Indra, who by the expansion desire their growth increasing the energy. That felicity most strong in the battle, full of hero energies, which we desire, thou increasest in us, O godhead.

14) रासि क्षयं रासि मित्रमस्मे
    रासि शर्ध इंद्र मारूतं नः ।
सजोषसो ये च मंदसानाः
    प्र वायवः पांत्यग्रणीतिं ।।

रासि । देही ।। मित्रं । सखायं ।। ये । मरूतः ।। वायवः । यज्ञं प्रति गंतारः संतः । यद्वा ये च वायवः पिबंति ।। अग्रणीतिं ।। अग्रणीतिं । अग्रे नीयमानं सोमं ।।

[Sy.] Give us a house, give us a friend, give us, Indra, the Marut strength; & the winds that released together & rejoicing drink the Soma that is being brought forward.

क्षयं । Habitation; Indra gives fresh fields of the spirit to dwell in or widens those we have.

मित्रं । Mitra; the godhead of agreement & harmony in the Truth; not “a friend.” It is the godheads, Mitra, the Maruts, Vayu for whose increase he is asking.

अग्रणीतिं । This epithet carries on the idea of the Ananda as a force of conquest & progress.

Thou enrichest our habitation, thou enrichest in us the harmonious godhead, thou enrichest, O god-mind, the host of our thought-powers and those gods of the vitality who one-hearted in their rapture drink the wine that leads us forward.

15) व्यंत इन्नु येषु मंदसानः
    तृपत्सोमं पाहि द्रह्यदिंद्र ।
अस्मान्त्सु पृत्स्वा तरूत्र
    अवर्धयो द्यां बृहभ्डिरर्कैः ।।

येषु । सहायभूतेषु मरूत्सु माद्यन्भवसि ।। नु । क्षिप्रं ।। व्यंतु । सोमं भक्षयंतु । यद्वा सोमा गच्छंतु ।। द्रह्यत् । दृंहतेरिदं रूपं । आत्मानं दृढीकुर्वन् ।। तृपत् । तर्पयंतं सोमं ।। तरूत्र । शत्रूणां हिंसक ।। बृहभ्डिरर्कैः । बलवभ्डिरर्चनीयैर्मरूभ्डिः सहितः त्वं ।। आ । चार्थे । तेनास्मान्द्यां च सुष्ठु पृत्सु पशुपुत्रादिभिरस्मानस्मत्पालनेन च दिवमवर्धयः ।।

Sy. Let those (Maruts) by whose help thou becomest

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intoxicated, swiftly eat the Soma (or, let the Somas with which you get intoxicated quickly go to you); O Indra, making yourself firm drink the satisfying Soma. Thou with the big worshippable Maruts, O hurter of enemies, increasedst us & heaven in the battles.

येषु seems to refer to the Vayus of the last verse. व्यंतु then means either “come to us” or “manifest themselves”.

तृपत् goes more naturally with इंद्र (त्वं) than with Soma.

बृहद्भिरर्कैः । The illuminations of the ऋतं बृहत् increase the shining world of mind, ध्यां.

Let them come to us in whom thou hast the ecstasy; drink of theWine of our delight, O God-in-mind; sate thyself, strengthen thyself. Us in our battles, O thou who winnest through, thou hast entirely increased & heaven by the power of the vast illuminations.

16) बृहंत इन्नु ये ते तरूत्र
    उक्थेभिर्वा सुम्नमाविवासान् ।
स्तृणानासो बर्हिः पस्त्यावत्
    त्वोता इदिंद्र वाजमग्मन् ।।

तरूत्र । आपद्मस्तारक ।। सुम्नं । सुखकरं त्वां ।। आविवासान् । परिचरेयुः ।। नु । अविलंबेन ।। पस्त्यावत्.. वाजं । गृहसहितमन्नं गच्छंति ।।

Sy. Those who serve thee the ease-giving, with hymns, O deliverer, become big indeed; those who strewing the grass serve thee, are indeed protected by thee, O Indra, and go to food that is accompanied with a house.

Vast indeed are they who by their expressings of thee make to dwell in them thy peace & bliss, O thou who winnest to the goal; heaping the soul-seat of the sacrifice full of the energy they attain indeed by thee to their expansion, O God-in-mind, and arrive at the plenitude.

17) उग्रेष्विन्नु शुर मंदसानः
    त्रिकद्रुकेषु पाहि सोममिंद्र ।
प्रदोधुवच्छ्मश्रुषु प्रीणानो
    याहि हरिभ्यां सुतस्य पीतिं ।।

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शूर । बलवन् ।। उग्रेषु । उग्दर्णेषु बहुस्तोत्रशस्त्रवत्सु ।। त्रिकद्रुकेषु । ज्योतिर्गौरायुरित्येतन्नामकेष्वाभिल्प्रविकेष्वहः सु ।। मंदसानः । हृष्यन् ।। प्रीणानः । सोमपानेन प्रीतः भवन् श्मश्रुषु लिप्तं सोमं पुनःपुनर्धुन्वन् ।।

[Sy.] O strong Indra, rejoicing drink Soma on the three days of the Abhiplava which are full of hymns; shaking it continually from thy beard in thy satisfaction go with thy two horses to the drinking of the wine offered.

त्रिकद्रुकेषु । कद्रुक means variegated = the three worlds of different hues, त्रिषधस्थे; the dark physical, the red vital-dynamic & the bright mental. Elsewhere Indra is represented as drinking the human being’s three lakes of Soma (V.29.[7]). The symbol is changed, but the sense is the same.

प्रदोधुवत् । Sayana’s interpretation is attractive, but the difficulty is that here Indra is represented as going to the drinking & not coming from it. When then should there be Soma on his beard?

O hero, O God-in-mind, rejoicing in the full energy of these three worlds of various hue drink thou the wine of delight; full of pleasure, letting thy beard stream in the heavens come with thy two bright steeds to the drinking of the nectarous yield.

18) धिष्वा शवः शूर येन वृत्रम्
    अवाभिनद्दानुमौर्णवाभं ।
अपावृणोर्ज्योतिरार्याय
    नि सव्यतः सादि दस्युरिंद्र ।।

धिष्व । धारय ।। और्णवाभं । ऊर्णाभिः कीटविशेष और्णवाभ इत्युच्यते । यद्वा और्ण ऊर्णनाभिः । तदाभं तत्सदृशमित्यर्थः ।। आर्याय । कर्मणामनुष्ठात्रे जनाय कुत्साय रार्षये वा ।। ज्योतिः । प्रकाशकमादित्यम् ।। निषादि । त्वया नितरां सन्नो बाधितो वर्तते ।। अवाभिन्त् । बिभेदिथ ।।

[Sy.] O Indra, hold such strength as that by which thou didst break spiderlike Vritra; thou didst open the luminous sun to the doer of works (or to Kutsa), the destroyer of works remained very much oppressed by thee on thy left side.

और्णवाभं । ऊर्णवाभि is a spider; और्णवाभं must be either spiderish or the web of the spider.

सव्यतः । The side away from knowledge; the right is of

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knowledge, the left of power & its works.

O hero, hold in thy thought the flashing strength by which the destroyer Vritra & his web were rent to pieces & cast down; thou didst uncover the Light for the Aryan; hewn the Divider sank away to the left, O God-in-mind.

19) सनेम ये त ऊतिभिस्तरंतो
    विश्वाः स्पृधो आर्येण दस्यून् ।
अस्मभ्यं तत्त्वाष्ट्रं विश्वरूपम्
    अरंधयः साख्यस्य त्रिताय ।।

सनेम । तान् पुरूषान् संभजेम ।। आर्येण । आर्यभावेन ।। तरंतः । सर्वा स्पर्धमाना विशः हिंसंतस्तथोपक्षपयितन् हिंसंतो भंवति ।। तत् । तदस्मभ्यं वशमानय ।। त्वाष्ट्रं । त्वष्टुः सुतं विश्वरूपं ।। अरंधयः । वशमानयः । यद्वावधीः ।रध हिंसासंराव्द्योः ।। साख्यस्य । किं च सखिभावस्यानुपालनाय त्रिताय महर्षये वशमानयः ।यद्वा समेम ते वयं प्रवृद्धा भवेम ये वयं प्रजा दस्यूंश्चातित्रामंतो भवेम ।।

[Sy.] May we enjoy those men who by thy protections hurt all rivals & also hurt the destroyers; to us make that subject; thou didst make Visvarupa son of Twashtri subject; also to observe friendship thou didst make him subject to Trita.

सारव्यस्य । The genitive of purpose. Cf V.41.[20] सिषक्तु न ऊर्जव्यस्य पुष्टेः.

For us who shall conquer breaking by thy expressions through all energies that contend with us, the Destroyers by the Aryan doer of works, for us thou didst cleave that universal form of Twashtri’s making; for the Triple Soul thou didst cleave him that ye might have comradeship together.

20) अस्य सुवानस्य मंदिनस्त्रितस्य
    न्यर्बुदं वावृधानो अस्तः ।
अवर्तयत्सूर्यो न चक्रं
    भिनद्वलमिंद्रो अंगिरस्वान् ।।

मंदिनोऽस्य । मदकरमिमं सुवानस्य सुतवतः ।। त्रितस्य । तीर्णनमस्कस्य महर्षेरर्थं ।। अर्बुदं । अंबूनि ददातीत्यर्बुदो मेघः । अनुस्वारस्य रेफश्छांदसः । यद्वा नामैतत् ।। न्यस्तः । स्तृ हिंसायामित्यस्य लङि तिपि बहुलं छंदसीति विकरणस्य लुक् । गुणे कृते हल्ङ्यादिना तिलोपः ।। अवर्तयत् ।

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असुरहननार्थं वज्रमभ्रामयत् ।। सूर्यो न यथा सुर्यश्चाऋं भ्रामयति तद्वत् । यद्वा यस्मादसुराभ्डिया सुर्यः स्वकीयं रथचऋं नावर्तयत् तं वलं पणीनां चक्रमिन्द्रेणापहृतं । सुर्य इति सुपा सुलुगिति षष्ठयेकवचनस्य सुः । सुर्यस्य संबंध्यपहृतं । तदेकं चक्रमवर्तयत् । पक्षोहननार्थमभ्रामयत् । तेन चक्रेण वलमभिनच्च । नश्चार्थे ।।

[Sy.] Thou slewest Arbuda increasing for Trita when he offered this intoxicating; as Surya his wheel, so Indra whirled (the Vajra); and with the Angirasas broke Vala—or broke Vala because of whom Surya could not keep his wheel going or he whirled the wheel of Surya & with it broke Vala.

Increasing with this wine that was pressed out of Trita’s ecstasy thou didst lay low Arbuda; thou didst set rolling as Surya his wheel, thou with the Angirasas didst break Vala to pieces.

21) नून सा ते प्रति वरं जरित्रे
    दुहीयदिन्द्र दक्षिणा मघोनी ।
शिक्षा स्तोतृभ्यो माति धग्भगो नो
    बृहद्वदेम विदथे सुवीराः ।।

दक्षिणा । दक्षमुत्साहनं करोतीति दक्षिणा स्तोतृभ्यो देया ते त्वत्संबंधिनी धनवती स्तोत्र वरं श्रेष्ठमभिमतमर्थं नून प्रतिदोग्धि संपादयति ।। शिक्षा । प्रयच्छ ।।भगः । भजनीयस्त्वं नोऽस्मानतिक्रम्यान्येभ्यो दक्षिणां मादाः । दहेर्दानार्थस्य लुङि मंत्रे घसेत्यादिना च्लेर्लुक् । यद्वा नोऽस्मांक कामान्मा धाक्षीः । सुवीराः । शोभनपुत्रपौत्राः संतो वयं विदथेऽस्मिन्यज्ञे प्रभूतं स्तोत्रं वदेम ।।

[Sy.] Now that wealthy gift of thine, O Indra, milks for the praiser his best desire; give it to thy praisers; being enjoyable (or adorable) do not give it to others first. May we have plenty of men (sons & grandsons) and speak a big thing (hymn) in this sacrifice.

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[Hymn] 12
Sayana gives a number of stories invented to explain this hymn: (1) That it was chanted by Indra when engaged in Tapasya and attacked by Dhuni and Chumuri; (2) that it was chanted by Gritsamada at Vena’s sacrifice, Indra having very meanly

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escaped in Gritsamada’ s form & left the latter to be attacked when he came out of the grove of sacrifice; (3) that it was chanted by Gritsamada at his own sacrifice when the Asuras after Indra’s escape in his form broke into his house & thought him to be Indra disguised as Gritsamada.

यो जात एव प्रथमो मनस्वान्
    देवो देवान्क्रतुना पर्यभूषत् ।
यस्य शुष्माद्रोदसी अभ्यसेतां
    नृम्णस्य मन्हा स जनास इंद्रः ।।

प्रथमो. Chief, first. Sayana says “of the gods”, but this is not necessary.

मनस्वान् S. preeminent among the intelligent. Again, this rendering is not warranted by the text. मनस्वान् = one who has mind. प्रथमो मनस्वान् means therefore the Supreme Thinker or the supreme mental being.

पर्यभूषत् S. took to protect or overpassed, outstripped. रक्षकत्वेन पर्यग्रहीत् । भूष अलंकारे भुवादिः । लडि रूपं । यद्वा पर्यभवत् । अत्यक्रामत् । अस्मिन्पक्षे भवतेर्व्यत्ययेन क्सः । क्ष्युकः कितीतीट्प्रतिषेधः ।। Sayana follows the Nirukta in these alternative explanations. परिभूष् is in the Veda simply an intensive form of परिभू and means here “enveloped or encircled with his own being”.

Indra, the Purusha of the divine luminous or intuitive Mind, is the first or supreme thinker or supreme mental being; from his very birth he in his divine power takes the other gods, the other divine principles developing or developed in man into his periphery by the force of his will. They all work in him as in a field. Just as now the ordinary sense mind provides the field for the sensations, emotions, impulses of action to work, so then the supreme Mind & supreme Sense, taking its place, will contain all the other activities of the divinised man.

अभ्यसेतां । अबिभीतां । भ्यस भयवेनयोरीति नैरुक्ताः । Nir. 3.21. It is possible, however, that the verb is really अभि +अस् = became subject to him. अभि +अस् is used II.26.1 in the opposite sense to overcome, but it means essentially to enter upon or into relation with, a relation that may be either friendly or the opposite, subordinate or superior.

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नृम्णस्य S. सेनालक्षणस्य बलस्य—his force in the sense of his army; but this is not the ordinary sense of नृम्ण. Psychologically we can take it as meaning personal force, soul-force, the force of the नृ human or divine.

मन्हा S. supplies युक्तः—possessed of greatness of his host. This device is as awkward & clumsy as it is unnecessary.

जनासः O Asuras, says Sayana. Grit. is explaining to the Asuras that he is a poor weak mortal & not Indra!

Heaven & Earth, the physical & mental consciousness become subject to the divine Mind or are shaken with the grandeur & awe of this mighty advent. For he is full of an aggressive heroic force that subjects all things by its attack & the greatness of his soul-force or divine power encompasses & subdues all things that enter into its orbit.

[13]

[RV II.28]

Selected Hymns of the Rigveda.

इंद कवेरादित्यस्य स्वराजो विश्वानि सान्ति अभ्यस्तु मन्हा । अति यो मन्द्रो
यजथाय देवः सुकीर्तिँ भिक्षे वरूणस्य भूरेः ।।१।।

इदं this कवेर् of the sage आदित्यस्य the son of Aditi स्वराजो the self-ruling विश्वानि all शान्ति अभि about, or in relation to अस्तु let it be मन्हा । अति यो who मन्द्रो यजथाय देवः the god सुकीर्तिं भिक्षे I pray for वरुणस्य of Varuna भूरेः ।।

तव व्रते सुभगासः स्याम स्वाध्यो वरूण तुष्टुवांसः । उपायन उषसां
गोमतीनामग्नयो न जरमाणा अनु द्यून् ।।२।।

तव thine व्रते सुभगासः स्याम may we be स्वाध्यो वरुण O Varuna तुष्ट्रुवांसः when we have praised or hymned thee. उपायन उषसां of the Dawns गोमतीनाम् luminous, radiant अग्नयो fires न like जरमाणा अनु over or among द्यून् ।।

तव स्याम पुरवीरस्य शर्मन्नुरूशंसस्य वरूण प्रणेतः । यूयं नः पुत्रा
अदितेरदब्धा अभि क्षमध्वं युज्याय देवाः ।।३।।

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तव thy स्याम may we be पुरुवीरस्य शर्मन् in peace ऊरुशंसस्य वरुण O Varuna प्रणेतः । यूयं you नः of us or for us पुत्रा O Sons अदितेः of Aditi अदब्धा unvanquished अभि in relation to something क्षमध्वं are capable, able युज्याय for the enemy देवाः O Gods.

प्र सीमादित्यो असृजद्विधर्ता ऋंत सिन्धवो वरूणस्य यन्ति । न श्राम्यन्ति न
वि मुचन्त्येते वयो न पप्तू रघुया परिज्मन् ।।४।।

प्र forward, in front सीम a bourne, limit; आदित्यो the son of Aditi विधर्ता who holds apart or variously ऋतं law or truth सिन्धवो rivers or oceans वरुणस्य of [Varuna] यन्ति go. न not श्राम्यन्ति they grow weary न not मुचन्ति leave एते they वयो manifestation or heaven रघुया by swiftness पप्तू they fall न not परिज्मन् ।।

वि मच्छ्रथाय रशनामिवाग ऋध्याम ते वरूण खामृतस्य । मा तंतुश्छेदि वयतो धियं मे मा मात्रा शार्यपसः पुर ऋतोः ।।५।।

वि मत् my श्रथाय रशनाम् इव like आग come, or thou camest रध्याम may we flourish, be rich ते thy वरुण O Varuna ख अमृतस्य in nectar or immortality. मा not तंतुः extension, continuity, thread छेदी may be broken वयतो extending, manifesting, opening out धियं the understanding, buddhi मा not मात्रा substance, material शारि be lost, fall away, fail अपसः of work or deed पुरः in front, before ऋतोः true, right, satya.

अपो सु म्यक्ष वरूण भियसं मत्सम्राळृतावोऽनु मा गृभाय वलत्साद्वि मुमुग्ध्यंहो नहि त्वदारे निमिषश्चनेशे ।।६।।

अपो सु well म्यक्ष वरुण O Varuna भियसं मत् my सम्राट् O supreme ruler ऋतावो अनु मा गृभाय । दाम rope इव like वत्साद् from a calf वि मुमुग्धि loose अंहो sin नहि not त्वद् thy आरे O warrior निमिषः चन ईशो ।।

मा नो वधैर्वरूण ये त इष्टावेनः कृण्वन्तमसुर भ्रीणंति । मा ज्योतिषः प्रवसथानि गन्स वि षू मृधः शिश्रथो जीवसे नः ।।७।।

मा not नो us वधैः वरुण O Varuna ये they who त to thee इष्टाव् in the sacrifice एनः sin, deviation कृण्वन्तं doing असुर O mighty one भ्रीणंति । मा not ज्योतिषः from or of the light

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प्रवसथानि गन्म may we go वि on all sides षू well, entirely मृधः the enemies शिश्रथो mayst thou slaughter जीवसे for life नः our.

नमः पूरा ते वरूणोत नूनमुतापंर तुविजात ब्रवाम । त्वे हि कं पर्वते न श्रितानि
अप्रच्युतानि दूळभ व्रतानि ।।८।।

नमः adoration, submission पुरा formerly, before ते to thee वरुण O Varuna उत नूनं (खलु same) उत अपरं another, again तुविजात O born in the Tapas ब्रवाम we say, declare. त्वे in thee हि for कं water पर्वते on the mountain न like श्रितानि repose अप्रच्युतानि steadfast, unfallen दूडभ व्रतानि the laws (धर्माः) ।।

पर ऋणा सावीरध मत्कृतानि मांह राजन्नन्यकृत भोजं । अव्युष्टा इन्नु भूयसीरूषास आ नो जीवान्वरूण तासु शाधि ।।९।।

परः supreme ऋण come, go आ in this direction, to सावीर् manifest अध now मत्कृतानि my actions मा not अहं I राजन् O King अन्यकृतेन by another’s deed भोजं may I enjoy, suffer. अव्युष्टा not yet dawned इत् verily नु now भूयसीः more, very many उषासः dawns आ with शाधि नो us or our जीवान् souls of living beings or life वरुण O Varuna तासु in them शाधि rule, control.

यो मे राजन्युज्यो सखा वा स्वप्ने भयं भीरवे मह्यमाह । स्तेने वा यो दिप्सति नो वृको वा त्वम् तस्माद्वरूण पाहि अस्मान् ।।१०।।

यो whatever, if any मे of mine राजन् O King युज्यो enemy वा either, whether सखा friend वा or स्वप्ने in a dream or in the state of dream भयं fear भीरवे afraid मह्यं to me आह spoke, speaks. स्तेनो thief वा or यो who दिप्सति नो वृको wolf, destroyer वा or त्वम् thou अस्माद् from him पाहि protect अस्मान् us.

माहं मघोनो वरूण प्रियस्य भूरिदान्व आ विंद शूनमापेः । मा रायो राजन्त्सुयमादव स्थां बृहद्वदेम विदथे सुवीराः ।।११।।

मा not अहं I मघोनो of Indra वरुण O Varuna प्रियस्य beloved भूरिदाव्न freely giving आविदं may I experience शूनम् आपेः । मा Not रायो in prosperity, bliss or delight राजन्

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O King सुयमाद् from right government or control अवस्थां descend बृहद् the large, true, vijnanamaya वदेम may we speak विदथे सुवीरा in good strength or with full knowledge.

द्वितीयो मण्डले सूक्तं कूर्मस्य वा गृत्समदस्य वा ।

---

Conjectural

(1) शान्ति fr सत् old plural or from सात् (Rt सा), existences.

मह्ना fr. महन् with महस् or the principle of vijnana.

अति very, exceedingly. मन्द्रो Rt मन्द् +र (cf चन्द्रः) full of delight, anandamaya, or else full of capacity, deep, vast, abundant.

यजथाय for sacrificial action. सुकीर्तिं, fr. कृ to spread — extension, expansion .. otherwise fame.

भूरेः abundant, abounding, mighty in being.

(2) व्रते law, rule, dharma (habit of being, swabhava)—ie calm, greatness, majesty, vastness of being and knowledge.

सुभगासः (भज् to enjoy) fortunate, happy, glorious or splendid.

स्वाध्यो सु +आधि, either from आ & धी well-established or from अध् (अध्वरः, अधः, अध्वा) & meaning substantial being, substance, matter.

उपायन in the approach (wooing) of the Dawns by the Fires or at the approach of the Dawns.

जरमाणा जृ to act, move or enjoy violently, to work like a saw, to woo, make love to (जारः). द्यु sky, akasha, the three heavens or the five or the seven.

(3) पुरुवीर वीर = developed strength, or knowledge or full clearness of manifestation. (वी to open out, reveal, develop)

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उरुशंस as in नराशंस—aspiration or expression or self-development. प्रणेतः guide, leader.

[Incomplete]

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Provisional Translation

May this state (that is manifest in me now) of the sage, the selfking, son of Aditi, be about all beings by the Greatness; Varuna the god who has exceeding delight towards the sacrificial action, —I crave for myself the glory of Varuna in his abundance. May we, O Varuna, in the law of thy being be full of enjoyment and rich in matter when we have hymned thee, like fires that in the approach to the radiant Dawns woo them from sky to sky. O Varuna, our guide & leader, may we dwell in the peace of thee, of thee in the fullness of thy force & the wideness of thy aspiration. You, O ye sons of Aditi unvanquished, have strength, O gods, to combat for us the foe. The son of Aditi hath put forth a bourne, even he that holdeth things apart in their places, and the waters follow Varuna’s law; they weary not, neither do they leave flowing (widening), they have fallen not (from their heaven) though they speed swiftly, O Varuna of the wide spaces. May we advance, O Varuna, for my free movement the circuit of thy law as a lover widens the girdle of his beloved, may not my thread be cut as I expand my understanding nor matter fail for my action as it goes forward. Cleave away from me utterly my fear, O Varuna; be thy grace upon me, O high ruler, O protector of the Law; loosen sin from me as a man loosens the rope from a calf; O noble Varuna, I have no power to meet thy gaze. Let them not slay us who cast down, O mighty One, the man that in the sacrifice to thee doeth sinfulness; let us not wander into exile from the light, but do thou slaughter utterly our opposers that we may live. As we utter our word of submission to thee in front of thee now, hereafter too may we utter it, O Varuna born in the Strength; for because they rest on thee, O thou who confirmest (or, masterest) the heavens, the laws of being abide

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unfailing like water resting on a mountain. Thou supreme and manifest in thy being, O Varuna, do thou give increase to my works, letme not,OKing, taste the fruit of the works of another. Many more are the dawns that have yet to dawn on me; in them all, O Varuna, do thou govern our souls (or, our lives). From whatsoever fear, O King, enemy or friend has spoken to me in dream and I have been afraid, from whatsoever robber or render seeketh to do hurt, protect us from him, O Varuna. May I never know, O Varuna, separation from that Lover & Beloved who is full of the greatness of Mahas and gives me of it bountifully; may I not deviate from felicity or from right control; may we, clear & open in being, speak in the knowledge of the Greatness.

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Mandala Four

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

[14]

[RV IV.28.1–2]

Rigveda IV
28

त्वा युजा तव तत्सोम सख्य इन्द्रो अपो मनवे सस्रुतस्कः ।
अन्नहिमरिणात्सप्त सिन्धुनपावृणोदपिहितेव खानि ।।१।।

By thee as yokefellow, with thee for friend, O Soma, Indra set flowing the waters for this human mentality; he slew the Serpent, he poured out the seven streams, he uncovered doors concealed (opened the doors that had been closed).

मनवे. Manu, the typical मनस्वी or मनोमयः पुरुषः or simply “man” with a stress upon the root idea of the word, “man the mental being”.

अपिहितेव. Sayana says अन्नेवशब्दश्चार्थे. इव means originally, “thus”, “thus indeed”, “so”, and is identical with एव. It may, therefore, have like एव the sense of emphasis, or like एवं in Bengali the sense “and”, or its more usual significance of comparison, “as it were, like”. The latter here, comparing the concealed but now uncovered waters to doors that have been shut or curtained over, is possible, for the figure of uncovering the concealed waters is common enough in the Veda; but it would be strained and inappropriate. Sayana renders “and he opened the concealed doors of the waters”; but इव coming after अपिहिता seems specially to affect that word. We may take Sayana’s rendering or else render it, either, “doors indeed concealed”, or “opened doors that were, as it were, concealed.”

त्वा युजा नि खिदत्सूर्यस्येंद्रश्चक्र सद्य इंदो ष्णुना बृहता वर्तमानं महो द्रुहो अप विश्वायु धायि ।।२।।

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चक्रं. Sayana takes the image to be that of Surya’s wheel, one of two in his chariot, which Indra violently cuts off,—the wheel that moves in the wide air above us & goes everywhere. But there is no allusion to a chariot & चक्रं, the Greek xύxλoς, may well refer to the sun, the wheel or disc of the sun. निखिदत् is rather dug or cut out than cut off. The waters of the first verse are always associated with the cows or rays of light of Surya. The poet therefore passes naturally from the image of the waters to that of Surya himself concealed & brought out for man, like the waters, by Indra. He dug out from the darkness the disc of Surya that moves in the fixed level above of the Mahat or Vijnana and brought it down to the mental plane for Man मनवे. The two verses, then, form a connected & logical development of thought.

विश्र्वायु. Sy. takes आयु = अयन from इ or अय् to go or move = all-pervading. But we have also आयु = life, & there is nothing to prevent us from taking विश्र्वायु= that which is the source of all being here on this earth, for Surya is सविता, the Father & Creator; all things are, says the Vishnu Purana, सर्वाणि विज्ञानविजृंभितानि.

महो द्रुहो अपधायि. Sayana says “The wheel was wrested from Surya, the great doer of harm”! प्रभुतस्य द्रोग्धोः. An astonishing interpretation. The great evil-doer, injurer of the मनु is surely the demon, Vritra or another, who covers from us the waters, covers from us the disc of the Sun: of him the wheel now is uncovered, from him rapt away. It was अपिहितं, it is now अपहितं. All the ideas & expressions then hang together, allude to each other, express a connected whole.

[15]

[RV IV.31, 32, 26, 27, 28, 29, 19]

Notes on Rigveda.
IV.31

1)
चित्रः Sy चायनीयः पूजनीयः ।
ऊत्या Sy तर्पणेन ।
आ भुवत् Sy आभिमुख्येन भवेत् ।

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शचिष्ठया Sy प्रज्ञावत्तमया ।
वृता Sy वर्तनेन कर्मणा ।

ऊति—कया ऊत्या.. कया वृता—only intelligible if it means “By what expansion of being, by what action of highest energy may this brilliant one, our friend, be an ever-increasing force in us?”

2)
को मदानाम् अन्धसः Sy मादयितृणाम् मध्ये को मदकरः सोमस्य रसः ।
मत्सद् Sy मादयेत् ।
वसुनि Sy शत्रूणां धनानि ।
आरूजो Sy समन्ताद् भंक्तुम् ।

What true and most copious of delights (Ananda) shall intoxicate thee with this (earthly) food (annam), so that thou mayst break down even firm-set states of our being.

3)
सखीनाम् Sy समानख्यातीनाम् (जरितृणाम्) स्तोतृणाम् ।
ऊतिभिः Sy रक्षाभिः ।
अभिभवासि Sy अभिमुखो भव ।

Faults of Sayana—1. Capricious ingenuities of learning. 2. Inconsistency of interpretation. 3. Disregard of tense.

Towards us thou becomest by a hundred expandings the increaser of thy friends and adorers.

ऊति.. अव् Objection to sense “expansion”, unless अव् also means to “increase”. अव् to produce (Latin avus; auctor), to keep in being (protect), to increase in being.

4)
वृतं चक्रं Sy वर्तमां चक्रं । But he takes it later as action.
अर्वतः Sy उपगन्तृन् ।
चर्षणीनाम् Sy अस्मदीयानां मनुष्याणां ।
नियुड्भ्डिः Sy स्तुतिभिः ।
आववृत्स्व Sy अभ्यावर्तस्व ।

Towards us in our battling activity come into active being as work that is fulfilled by the applications of our efforts. (external figure—come rolling like a round wheel or moving wheel towards us battling with multitudes of men)

चक्रम् .. अर्वतः .. नियुत्

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5)
प्रवता पदेव Sy यजमानानां संबन्धिनः प्रवणान्देशान्देशान्पदानि स्वकीयानि स्थानानीव ।
क्रतूनाम् Sy कर्मणां यजमानानां संबन्धिनः ।
अभक्षि Sy अंह भजे ।

Verily, thou comest down headlong to the seats of our strengths (mental willings); thou art enjoyed in company with the Sun, (the mind supported by the Ideality & mingled with it).

6)
मन्यवः Sy स्तुतयो ।
संदधन्विरे Sy अस्माभिरनुमन्यंते ।
चक्राणि Sy चंक्रमणानि कर्माणि ।
अध .. अध Sy तदानीं .. तदनंतरं ।

दधन्वेरे—cf धन्वा, firm land or desert.

When, O Indra, thy emotions and thy acts become firm in us, now in thee and now in the Sun

चक्र. Full proof of चक्रं in sense of action.

7)
शचीपते Sy कर्मपालकेन्द्र ।
अविदीधयुं Sy विदीधयुरदीप्यमानः । न विदीधयुस्तं दीप्यमानमाहुः ।

Thee in very truth, O master of energy, they have called him of the full & compact substance, the giver who disperses not his light.

8)
महंसे Sy प्रयच्छसि ।

Always in truth to him who offers to thee his being & joy thou increasest in fullness even his many possessions.

9)
आमुरो Sy बाधका राक्षसादयः ।
राधो Sy धनं ।
च्यौत्नानि Sy बलानि ।
करिष्यतः Sy शत्रूणां हिंसनं करिष्यतः ।
शतं Sy शतपरिमितमपि धनं ।

Sayana’s fault—straining of words to mean what they do not convey.

Not even a hundred of those who limit & restrain can shut in

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thy delight; there are no stumblings for thee when thou wouldst act.

आमुरो .. च्यौन्तं

10)
अभिष्टयः Sy त्वदीयान्यभिगमनानि ।

Us may thy hundred, yea thy thousand expandings increase in growth, us all approaches of thine.

अभिष्टि

11)
स्वस्तये Sy अविनाशाय ।
महो राये दिवित्मते महते दीप्तिमते धनाय ।
वृणीष्व Sy संभजस्व ।

Us on this earth accept for thy friendship, for perfect being, for ideal felicity in the brightness of heaven (pure mind).

राये. Cannot be earthly wealth; there is no sense in “shining wealth”; even if we apply it to gold, it is unnatural and inconsistent with राया परीणसा in the next line. Neither in that line is there any sense in protecting with wealth, although increasing with wealth is possible.

12)
विश्वहा Sy सर्वेष्वहःसु । But elsewhere he takes it differently.

परीणसा Sy महता ।

Us increase into universal being by an all-encompassing felicity, us by all manner of expandings.

(13)
For us open up like an archer the pens of the brilliant herds, O Indra, with ever new expandings.

ऊति. This is decisive against the sense of protection for uti, since to open up by protections is nonsense & along with new protections is a forced construction and forced sense. Favours is possible; but the connection of अव् & अविडि्ढ is against it.

14)
धृष्णुया Sy धृष्णुः शत्रूणां धर्षकः ।
गव्युरश्वयुः Sy गोमानश्ववान । The meaning?

Violently our chariot of delight proceeds brilliant, O Indra, & unfalling, seeking the herds of light, seeking the steeds of life.

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गव्युः .. अश्वयुः Not decisive, but significant.

15)
सूर्य Sy हे सर्वस्य प्रेरकेन्द्र हे आदित्य वा ।
देवेषु Sy द्योतमानेषु वहन्यादिषु मध्ये ।
वर्षिष्ठं Sy अतिशयेन प्रवृद्धं सेचनसमर्थं वा ।
द्यामिव Sy द्युलोकं यथा सर्वेषां लोकानामुपरि स्थितमुत्कृष्टमकरोः (तथास्माकं यश उत्कृष्टं कृधि) ।

Sayana’s defects. Want of literary perception & taste.

For us, O Sun, make highest inspiration in the gods like a full & mighty day above us.

---

32

1)
तु     Sy क्षिप्रं ।
अर्धं     समीपम् ।

O Indra, Vritra-slayer, come thou to our sphere, vast with vast expandings.

2)
चित्र Sy चायनीय पूजनीय ।
चित्रिणीषु Sy चित्रकर्मयुक्तास्वस्मद्रूपासु प्रजासु ।
चित्रं Sy चायनीयं धनं ।
भृमिश्चिद् Sy भ्रमणशीलोऽपि ।
तूतुजिर्घासि Sy अस्मदभीष्टप्रदाता च भवसि । घेति पूरणः ।
आ कृणोषि Sy समन्तात्करोषि ।
ऊतये Sy रक्षणाय ।

Thou who bringest art also he who shieldest; O curious brilliance, thou createst in the powers of brilliance their varied light for our growth.

3)
शशीयांसं । शश प्लुतगतौ । उत्प्लवमानं महांतमपि शत्रुं ।

By little powers thou slayest in thy might one who is swifter (or bulkier) and increasing for thy comrades who live with thee.

ब्रध्न. Light is thrown on the meaning of bradhna by vrádhantam.

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4)
नोनुमः । अतिशयेनाभिष्टुमः ।
उदव । उत्कर्षेण रक्ष ।

We to thee cleave, O Indra, we towards thee urge; us, us raise up to thee.

अव. The sense of being, increasing is established by this verse. Latin avus, avidus, avis, ovis, ovum. Cf aveo to desire, S. av to wish. But aveo to be well & ovare to rejoice, belong to the sense of av to be well off, to protect, to be glad etc.

5)
अद्रिवो । वज्रवन् ।
चित्राभिः । चायनीयाभिः ।

O master of being, come to us with bright increasings & blameless and inviolate.

ऊति .. अद्रि Decisive for ऊति. Significant for अद्रि.

6)
त्वावतः । त्वतसदृशस्य ।
युजो । संयुक्ता (भूयामः) ।
घृष्वये । महते ।
वाजाय । अन्नाय ।

May we be entirely the comrades of one who is a possessor of light like thee, one who battles for that brilliant plenty.

With वाजाय घृष्वये cf राये दिवित्मते । IV.31.11. See also next line.

7)
इषं यन्धि । अन्नं प्रयच्छ ।

For thou alone art master, O Indra, of that brilliant plenty; do thou then work out for us a mighty (boundless) force.

(8)
Thee they press not back by any other when thou, established in praise, distributest fullness to those who give thee the praise, O Indra who delightest in the expressive word.

9)
प्रानुषत । प्रकर्षेण स्तुवंति ।

Towards thee & in thee the Gotamas (the utterly enlightened) by speech widen out for thy giving, O Indra, of that brilliant plenty.

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10)
दासीः । क्षेप्तुरसुरस्य स्वभुता याः पुरः ।

We would declare (bring out in ourselves) thy mightinesses which thou didst when in the intoxication of thy rapture thou didst assail and break the cities of the foe.

11)
वेधसः । प्राज्ञाः ।
सुतेषु । सोमेषु ता गृणंति ।

Those then the disposers of the sacrifice express, thy virile things which thou didst in the pourings of the Soma, O Indra who hast delight of the expressive Word.

12)
वीरवद्यशः । पुत्रपौ त्रादियुक्तमन्नम् ।

The Gotamas (utterly enlightened) who support that fixity of thee, O Indra, have increased thee (in themselves) (or, have increased their being who support that fixity in thee); in them do thou establish a forceful victoriousness.

13)
शश्वतां । बहूनां सर्वैषाम् ।

Since indeed thou, O Indra, art common to all who attain perpetuity, therefore to thee we call.

14)
अर्वाचीनो । (अस्मासु) अभिमुखो भव ।

सोमानामन्धसो । Sy connects these two words, but सोमस्य सोमपा, वसूनां वसुपतिः is common.

वसो । यज्ञनिवासकेन्द्र ।

Lean downward to the lower world, accept in us the utter intoxication of Earth’s food,OIndra, Soma-drinker of the Soma-wine.

15)
मतीनां । स्तोतृणाम् ।

May the fixity of our thoughts govern thee in us, O Indra; downward turn thy steeds.

स्तोमः

16)
योषणाम् । स्त्रीणां गिरः ।

Thou hast eaten of our sacrificial cake and thou cleavest lovingly to our Words as a lover to the speech of his mistresses.

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17)
युक्तानाम् । शिक्षितानाम् ।
व्यतानाम् । गमनवतामश्वानाम् ।
खार्यः । खारीः । अत्र मानविशेषवाचिना खारीशब्देन द्रोणकलश उपलक्ष्यते ।

A thousand yoked coursers we desire from Indra, a hundred measures of Soma-wine.

अश्वाः. Proved by association with psychological गावः.

18)
आच्यावयामः । अस्मदभिमुखं कुर्मः ।

Hundreds & thousands of thy kine we make descend to us; into our world let enter thy felicity.

गावः

19)
दश हिरण्यानाम् । हितरमणीयानां धनानाम् दशसंख्याकानि ।
कलशानां । कुम्भपरिमितानाम् ।
अधीमहि । धारयामः ।

Ten shining jars of thee we attain; a giver of largeness art thou, O Vritra-slayer.

20)
दिस्तसि । दातुमिच्छसि ।

O giver of largeness, thy largeness give to us; not the petty bring, but the large only; the largeness it is that thou seekest to divide.

21)
आभजस्व । समन्ताद्भगिनः कुरु ।

As the giver of largeness art thou known multiformly, O hero, O Vritra-slayer; enjoy us in our felicity.

22)
बभ्रू । बभ्रुवर्णावश्वौ ।
गोषणो । गवां सनितर् । But cf योषणाम्
नपात् । न पातयितः स्तोतृनविनाशयितः किन्तु पालयितरित्यर्थः ।
शिश्रथः विनष्टा मा कार्षीः । गावोऽश्वदर्शनाद्विश्लिष्यंते । तन्मा भूदित्यर्थः ।

O Indra of perfect seeing, I declare in myself thy many-coloured steeds; O saviour of the herds descending (or, O thou who descendest from the saviour of the herds), destroy not by these two those kine.

23)
विद्रधे । विदृढे ।

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नवे । नवजाते । अर्भके । अल्पके ।
द्रुपदे । द्रुमाख्यस्थाने स्थिते ।
कनीनका । कमनीये शालभंजिके ।
यामेषु । यज्ञेषु ।

Like young girls firm & new and swift-footed & small the dappled pair shine in their coursings.

यामः । Identified with yajna by Sayana.

24)
अस्रिधा । अहिंसकौ ।
यामेषु । गमनेषु ।
उस्रयाम्णे । उस्राभ्यामनडुड्भ्यां युक्तेन रथेन यातीत्युस्रयामा । अनुस्रयाम्णे ।
पह्यामेव गच्छते ।

Sufficient for me whether moving in the light or moving unillumined are thy dappled pair for they stumble not in their courses.

अश्वः. The passage sufficiently proves the psychological character of the horses.

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26

1)
मनुः । सर्वस्य मंता प्रजापतिरस्मि ।
सुर्यः । सर्वस्य प्रेरखः सविता ।
न्यृंजे । नितरां प्रसाधयामि ।
पश्यता मा । हे जना मां सर्वात्मकं पश्यत । यूयमप्येवमेव स्वस्वरूपमनुभवतेत्युक्तं भवति ।

I became Manu, I am Surya; Kakshivan the Rishi am I of the illumined mind; I [    ] Kutsa son of Arjuni, I am Ushana the seer; Me behold.

2)
अहं । वामदेव इन्द्रो वा ।
आर्याय । मनवे ।
वावशानाः । शब्दायमानाः ।
केतं । संकल्पमनुयंति ।

I give earth to the Aryan man, I rain of strength to the mortal who giveth; I bring the waters sounding; the gods move according to the perceptions of my mind.

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3)
वेश्यं । दिवोदासनाम्ने प्रवेशार्हमकरवं ।
सर्वताता । यज्ञे ।
अतिथिग्वं । अतिथीनामाभिगन्तारं ।

I shattered to pieces, rejoicing, the nine & ninety cities of Shambara; the hundredth I made a city of dwelling in man’s universal extension when Divodasa’s being I increased, Divodasa of farranging knowledge.

4)
मरूतो । वेगेन मरूत्सदृशः पक्षिणः ।
प्र सु अस्तु । बलेन प्रकृष्टो भवतु ।
श्येनेभ्यः । शंसनीयगमनेभ्यः स्वसमानजातिभ्यः पक्षिभ्यः ।
अचक्रया स्वध्या । चक्रवर्जितया स्वधया रथेन । स्वधाशब्दो रथवाची ।

May that bird, O ye Maruts, be first of all the birds and a hawk swift-winging above all hawks since, perfectly winging over, he brought to man by actionless self-calm the offering loved of the gods.

विः । श्येनः ।। This verse perfectly establishes the psychological intention of विः and the figure of the hawk.

5)
वेविजानः । सोमपालकान्भीषयन् ।
भरत् । अहरत् । आहृतवान् ।
तूयं । क्षिप्रं ।

When the bird (of manifestation) brought thence his burden, quivering (or putting forth vigour) was he released, mind-swift on the paths of wideness; mightily the hawk came with (or attained strength by) the honey wine of the Soma and he attained in this world the revealed knowledge.

तूयं

6)
परावतो । दूराद् ।
अंशु ददमानो । सोमं धारयन् ।
देवावान् । देवैः सहितः ।

The hawk of strength straight-flying took the brightness from on high in his force, the intoxicating wine; he brought the Soma, growing firm in his strength, full of the godhead, taking it from that higher heavenly world.

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उत्तराद् दिवो परावतो

7)
पुरंधिः । बहुकर्मा ।
अमुरो । अमूढः प्राज्ञ इन्द्रः ।

The hawk seized & brought the Soma, a thousand pourings and ten thousand thereto; here the holder of the city slew the hostile energies in the rapture of the Soma-wine, unlimited he destroyed their limitations.

सोमः पुरंधिः

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27

1)
अन्ववेदं । आनुपूर्व्येणाज्ञासिषं । परमात्मनः सकाशात्सर्वे देवा जाता इत्यवेदिषमित्यर्थः ।
पुरः । शरीराणी ।
अरक्षन् । अपालयन् । यथाहं शरीराद् व्यतिरिक्तमात्मानं न जानीयां तथा मामरक्षन्नित्यर्थः ।
अत्रैष श्लोकः पठ्यते । श्येनभावं समास्थाय गर्भाद्योग निः सृतः । ऋषिर्गर्भे शयानः सन् ब्रूते गर्भे नु सन्निति ।।

While I was yet in the womb I knew in their order all the births of these gods. A hundred cities of iron kept me in; now I have cleft my way out of them as the hawk in my speed.

2)
जोषं । पर्याप्तम् ।
अपजभार । उपजहार । गर्भेऽपि वसतो मे मोहो नाभूदित्यर्थः ।
ईम् । इंद गर्भस्थं दुःख ।
त्वक्षसा वीर्येण । तीक्ष्णेन ज्ञानसामर्थ्येन ।
अभ्यास । अभ्यास । अभ्यभवं ।
ईर्मा । सर्वस्य प्रेरकः ।
पूरंधिः । पुरां धारकः परमात्मा ।
अजहात् । अत्यजत् । जघान ।
शुशुवानः । वर्धमानः परिपूर्णः परमात्मा ।
वातान् । गर्भल्केशकरान्वायून् ।

He took not from me my consent, (or he bore me not unconsenting), filled with an all-shattering energy I took my seat upon his wings; impetuous in force the master of the city left his foes, he

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overcame & passed by the strength that grew in him the winds of the Prana.

ईर्मा पुरंधिः वातान्

3)
अस्वनीत् । अवाङ्मुखं शब्दमकरोत् ।
यदि वा । यदा च । वेति चार्थे ।
यद् । यं पुंरधि ।
अतो व्यूहुः । अस्माच्छ्येनात्सोमपाला विक्षिप्तवंतः ।
मनसा भुरण्यन् । मनोवेगेन गंतुमिच्छन् ।
कृशानुरेतन्नामकः सोमपालः ।
सृजदव । त्यक्तवान् ।
तथा च ब्राह्मणं । तस्या अनुविसृज्य कृशानुः सोमपालः सव्यस्य पदो
नखमच्छिददित्यादि ।

When now the hawk sent down his clanging cry from heaven each time they bear hence (or from here) the master of the city, when the archer of the subtle life willing fullness by the mind shot at him, then unloosed the string वा = and

4)
अधि स्रोः । अपरि स्थिताद् द्युलोककत् ।
ईम् । सोमम् ।
यामनि । युद्धे ।
प्रसितस्य । कृशानोरस्त्रैर्बद्धस्य ।
वेः । गन्तु ।
पतत्रि । पतनशीलम् ।
अंतः । मध्ये स्थितं ।

Straight in flight the hawk bore him on the mighty upper plateau (of Mahas) as Bhujyu the enjoyer from the world of Indra, —deep in that winged passage flew of the bird now speeding forward in his course.

बृहतो स्नोः सानुः प्रसितः

5)
गोभिरक्तं । गव्येन पयसा सिक्तं । कलशं । पात्रे स्थितं ।
शुक्रं । सारोपेंत ।
प्रयतं । दत्तं ।
अंधः । सोमलक्षणमन्नम् ।
प्रतिधत् । प्रतिदधातु ।

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Now the white jar sprinkled with the rays (or by the cows), the pure bright food increasing, offered by the Adhwaryus in front of the honey-wine, let Indra dispose for intoxication in the drinking, the mighty One dispose for intoxication in the drinking (lit. to drink for intoxication).

अध्वर्यु .. अंधस् .. भुज्यु

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28

1)
अपो । वृष्टिलक्षणान्युदकानि ।
इव । अत्रेवशब्दश्चार्थे ।

With thee as companion, in thy friendship, O Soma, Indra set the waters flowing for man; he slew the serpent destroyer; he poured forth the seven streams; he opened the doors that were sealed.

2)
चक्रम् । पूर्व द्विचक्रस्य रथस्यैकं चक्रमाच्छिन्त ।
बृहता । महतांतिक्षेण ।
महो द्रुहो । प्रभूतस्य द्रोग्धुः सुर्यस्य संबंधि सर्वतो गंतृ चक्रमिन्द्रेणापाहारि ।

With thee as companion Indra cut out straightway by violence the wheel of the Sun, O Moon-lord of delight. The infinite life that dwells on the mighty upper plateau (of our being) was uncovered from our vast foeman (or from the assailant of Mahas).

3)
अभीके । संग्रामे ।
पुरा । पूर्वाह्वे तव पानालल्ब्धबलौ ।
याताम् । गच्छतामसुराणाम् ।
सर्वा । सर्वाणि ।
दुरोणे । दुरवने रक्षितुमशक्ये दुरवगाहे देशे क्रत्वा न कर्मणा स्वकीयं कार्यमुद्दिश्य गच्छतः पथिकान्यथा धनलोलुश्चोरो हंति तद्व् ।

Indra slew, Agni burned, O Indu, the demons before the midday in their meeting; many thousand companies of the assailants he crushed as by the might of his will in their inaccessible dwelling.

शर्वा

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4)
म् । एनान्दयून् ।
दासीः । कर्महीनाः ।
अप्रशस्ताः । गर्हिताः ।
अपचितिं । पूजाम् ।

Everywhere, O Indra, thou hurledst the destroyers down to the nethermost places, thou madest unmanifest their hostile peoples. You twain oppressed & crushed our foes; by your smitings you won worship.

अपचिति

5)
अश्व्यं गोः । अश्वसमुहं गवां समूहं च ।
आदर्दृतं ।आदरयतं अश्वयं ।
क्षाश्चित् । पणीनां भूमीश्च ।
अश्ना । अशनपरेण बलेन ।
रिरिचथुः । रेचितवंतौ ।
ततृदाना । शत्रूणां हिंसकौ ।
एवा सत्यं । युवामेवैवं यत्कृतवंतौ तत्सर्वं सत्यमेव ।

Thus you in the fullness of your might, O Soma, thou & Indra, driving towards us that truth which is the wide force of the Light, tore open by the thunderbolt the things that were covered and enriched these earths, our dwelling places.

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29

1)
तिरश्चित् । प्राप्तानि । तिरः सतः इति प्राप्तस्य । नि० ३.२० । इति यास्कः ।
पुरूणि । पूर्णानि ।
ऊती । रक्षणार्थं ।
अर्यः । स्वामी ।
आंगूषेभिः । स्तोत्रैः ।
सत्यराधाः । सत्यधनः ।

Come to us with increase, O Indra, established by praise, with thy havings of plenty, drawn by thy brilliances, full of delight, —come even from the levels in thy high activity to our many offerings, manifested by the strong, having the joy of the truth.

आंगूष तिरस् राधस्

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2)
नर्यो । नृभ्यो हितः ।

The strong one who perceiveth comes to our sacrifice called by the distillers of the Soma; he who fearless in his thinking and drawn by perfect steeds of sense takes his joy with the strong souls that offer the Soma-wine.

3)
जुष्टामनु दिशम् । सेवितासु सर्वासु दिक्षु ।
उद्वावृषाणो । सोमेनोत्सिच्यमानः ।

Let his ears hear the knowledge that he may increase, even in the direction that he loves, that he may rejoice; mounting in his growing mastery, strong for the rapture, may Indra effect for us safety in our passage & freedom from fear.

राधस्

4)
त्मनि । आत्मनि स्थितानात्मवश्यान् ।
ऊती । रक्षणार्थ ।
नाधमान् । याचमान् ।
इत्था । इत्थमनेन प्रकारेण ।

He who cometh to the [    ] with increase here, to the soul enlightened that calls him and manifests by speech, setting in himself in hundreds & thousands his swift ones under yoke.

5)
बृहद्दिवस्य । महद्दीप्तेः ।
आकाय्स्य । आ समन्तात् स्तुत्यस्य ।
रायो दावने । धनस्य दाने ।
भेजानासो । त्वां भजमानाः स्याम भवेम ।

In thee increased,OIndramaster of substance, may we illumined become sages expressing all of thee, enjoying the felicities of the vast heaven embodied here and of wide content for the giving.

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19

1)
ऊमा । रक्षकाः ।
ऋष्वं । दर्शनीयं ।

Verily, O Indra of the lightnings, all the gods wide-living who

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hear the call, choose out thee alone in the slaying of Vritra, thee who art swift & vast & increasest the two firmaments elect.

सुहवासः ।

ऊमः । wide-living, desirous, kindly, producing.

2)
जिव्रयो न । जीर्णाः प्रवृद्धाः पितरो यूनः पुत्रानिवावासृजंत ।
विश्वोधेनाः । विश्वस्य प्रीणयित्रीर्वर्तनीः सर्वत्र प्रवर्तिका नदीः ।
प्रारदः । प्रकर्षेण विलेखनं कृतवानसि ।

The gods [    ] sent thee down; thou becamest supreme king, O Indra, awomb of Truth; thou slewest the dragon that slept coiled around the sea, thou hewedst out the powers of movement that are its universal streams.

जिव्रि
वर्तनि विश्वधेनाः

3)
अबुध्यं । दुर्विज्ञानम् । अबुध्यमानम् । किमप्यजानंतम् ।
सप्त प्रवतः । सर्पणस्वभावा अपः ।

अपर्वन् । पौर्णमास्याम् । Sayana appeals to the authority of the Taittiriya for his “full moon”.

The dragon insatiable, wide-extended, that cannot be known (or waked) & waketh not to knowledge but lies in deep sleep, O Indra, him thou didst rend with the lightning-flash in his jointless frame (?) who lies against the seven slopes.

4)
क्षाम बुध्नं । बुध्नमन्तरिक्षं क्षाम क्षीणोदकमक्षोदयत् संपिपेष ।
वार्ण । उदकमिव ।
न्यौभ्नात् । अभांक्षीत ।
ककुभः ।पक्षान् ।

Indra dug out by his flaming force earth for a foundation, as the wind by its violences digs up the waters; desiring force he shattered the things that were firmly settled; he broke down the peaks of the hills.

5)
विसृतः । विसरणशीला नदीः ।
उर्मीनुब्जः । मेघानवधीः ।

They ran to thee like women to a child, like chariots the hills sped together; thou didst satisfy those that moved abroad, thou

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didst crush what were heaped high;O Indra, thou settest flowing the pent up rivers.

6)
महीमवनिम् महतीं भूमिं । Elsewher अवनयः is rendered नद्यः
तुर्वीतये वय्याय । names of Kings
क्षरंतीम् । अभीष्टान् कामान्दुहतीम् ।
नमसा । अन्नेन ।
एजदर्णः । चलतार्णसोदकेन ।

That great birth & universal stream flowing for manifestation of Force & wideness of being (or for him who manifests force & widens his being) thou didst give delight by submission to that moving ocean; thou madest, O Indra, its rivers easy to cross over.

अवनि

7)
नभन्वः । शत्रुणां हिंसिका ।
वक्वाः । सेनाः But cf Latin vacuus.
ध्वस्राः । कूलानां ध्वंसिका ।
युवतीर् । अभ्डिर्मिश्रिताः ।
ऋतज्ञाः । ऋतस्यान्नस्य जनयित्रीः ।
अग्रुवः । अग्रगामिनीर्नदाः । अग्रुव इति नदीनामैतत् ।
धन्वानि । निर्जलानुन्नतान्देशान् ।
अज्रान् । मार्गस्य गन्तृन् तृषाणाम् पिपासया युक्तान्पुरूषान् ।
दंसुपत्नीः । दमनपरा असुराः सुष्ठु पतयो यासाम् ।
स्तर्यः । स्तरीर्निवृत्तप्रसवा गाः । सप्रसवाश्चकारेत्यर्थः ।

[Riks 7 – 11 not translated.]

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Mandala Seven

[    ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.

[16]

[RV VII.41–50]

Seventh Mandala.
Hymn 41

(2) प्रातर्जितं. P.P. [Padapatha] Sayana separates. Cf other passages.

आध्रश्चिद् .. तुरश्चिद् .. राजा चिद्—দরিদ্র ষোতা এবং ধনশালী রাজা. But there are three. “One who holds .. one who makes the passage .. one who is king” or “the grave .. the swift .. even the King”.

आध्रः .. तुरः

भक्षीति. আমায় ভজনীয় ধন দাও. Rather “enjoy”.

(3) उदवा ददन्नः “raise up” (to the higher Truth), “give us our desire”

नृभिः नृवंतः स्याम—with गोभिरश्वैः

(4) प्रपित्वे—দিবসের প্রারম্ভে

(5) जोहवीति—বারম্বার আহ্বান করেন

(6) सं .. नमंत— আমাদিগের যজ্ঞে আগমন করুন bend downward to the place of sacrifice

(7) विश्वतः प्रापीताः . সর্ব্বগুনে প্রবৃদ্ধ. But cf प्रपित्वे अह्नाम्

घृतं दुहानां . জলসেক করতঃ

यूयं. The gods.

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Hymn 42

(1) प्र क्रंदनुर्नभन्यस्य वेतु . পর্জন্য আমাদের ষোর বিশেসরুপে ইচ্ছা করুন अद्री. আদরবিশিষ্টা পত্নী ও যজমান যজ্ঞের রূপ যোজনা করুন

May the brilliant (or mighty) lords of the soul move forward, forward may he come who cries aloud in the region

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of ether, may the Fosterers of being move forward pouring out its waters, may the two Stones (mind & body) be yoked to their work, that are the mould of the material of sacrifice.

ब्रह्माणः. The Brahmanaspatis as priests of the inner sacrifice. क्रदनुः either Indra or Parjanya. पेशः distinguished form —from पिश् to separate, distinguish .. or पिष् to crush, mould, shape.

(2) सनवित्त चिरलब्ध. This establishes the sense of सानः in ऋषि - सानः etc.

Easy of going & securely known to thee is the path, O Agni; yoke in the Soma-offering thy bright steeds & thy fierce-red or those who in their seat are ruddy-active & bearers of energy. I sit & I invoke the births of the gods.

सनवित्त सुते (?) युक्ष्वा अरुषाः वीरवाहः

अरुषाः indicative passage for the double sense of अरुष.

(3) महयन् S. takes “they worship”

प्ररिरिचे S. “is better than all others”!

पुर्वणीक S. बहुतेजस्विन्

अरमतिं যজ্ঞার্থ ভূমিকে আবর্ত্তিত কর. Rather = अरतिं activity

Greatening for you the sacrifice with obeisances of adoration the Offerer in your presence overaboundeth in his rapture. Sacrifice perfectly to the gods, O multitudinous in force; set in movement the energy of the sacrificial activities.

अनीक—life, force (cf अनीकिनी army) .. appearance; object; face.

(4) स्योनशीः—সুখে শায়িত

विश इयत्यै নিকটগামী প্রজাকে.

When in the house of the strong & the joyous the Guest resting at his ease awakens to knowledge, Agni well-pleased, rightly established in his home, gives so to the creature for his journey to the supreme bliss (or gives so the bliss that he may travel to it).

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(5) सदताम् Sit on the seat at dawn & in the night!

Cleave in love, O Agni, to this our sacrifice; in Indra, in the Maruts make us victorious; let the Night & the Dawn sit on the seat of fullness; sacrifice here to Mitra & Varuna & let them have joy of their desire.

यशसं नः Sing. plur.

(6) Thus has Vasistha desiring bliss in all its forms (or masteries, energies) affirmed in praise Agni of the Strength; may he extend in us impulsive force & felicity & plenty & do ye protect us always with glad states of our being.

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Hymn 43

(1) विप्रा. See Padapatha wh. [whether] विप्रा or विप्राणि. Sayana’s “hymns of the wise ones” is impossible.

For you the seekers of the godhead in the sacrifices have realised in the word Earth & Heaven (the bodily & mental states) by submission & adoration that they may impel us (upward),—even they whose soul-thoughts yet unequal, O ye illumined ones, spread out on all sides like the branches of a forest tree (as branchings of the growth of lower delight).

(2) यज्ञ एतु. যজ্ঞে গমন করুন. See Padapatha.

घृताचीः. S. स्रुचः—rather धियः

साधु . S. takes with बर्हिः. Probably with शोचींषि.

Let the sacrifice move forward (or let him, Agni, move forward in the sacrifice) like a horse swift-galloping (as the nervous force impelled forward towards the attainment); with one mind strain upwards the thoughts enriched with brightness (the sacrificial image is of ladles dripping with clarified butter); spread the seat of fullness effective for the sacrifice; high rise the flames of light seeking the godhead (or the flames of light effective for the sacrifice of the lower being).

(3) Like sons sustaining wholly their mother let the gods sit on

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the high level of the seat of fullness; may the universal power of thee set in action the force of knowledge; create not for us enemies to smite us in the extension of the God.

विभृत्राः अनक्तु

(4) The Lords of sacrifice have attained the enjoyment of Love, for they pressed out, skilful milkers, the streams of the Truth. Today attain to the eldest vastness of the riches of being and with one mind stand in the divine endeavour.

सुदुघाः P.P. Either with देवाः or धाराः

महः P.P.

(5) Thus do thou for us, O Agni, be bountiful in the peoples; by thee, O master of force, we [    ] by thy felicity & thy fellowship have the joy of fulfilment (or a common joy) & are free from all hurt. Do ye protect us always with glad states of our being.

आस्क्राः ? S. তোমাকর্ত্তৃক অপরিতেক্ত হেইয়া

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Hymn 44

(1) Dadhikra first of you (or for you) I call, the Aswins, Dawn & Agni kindled high & Bhaga for my increase; Indra & Vishnu & Pushan, Brahmanaspati & the sons of Aditi, Earth & Heaven & the waters & Swar.

अपः waters or the Antariksha?

(2) Let us awaken by adoration Dadhikra & impel him upward; let us approach the sacrifice & seating Ila the goddess on the seat of fullness, let us invoke the Aswins illumined & swift to the call.

(3) I awaken Agni Dadhikravan & express by speech Dawn & the Sun & the Light and the red wideness of Varuna when he hews the foe; let these remove from us every kind of evil.

ब्रध्न মহং. Probably “broad, wide” = महत्.

मँश्चतोः শত্রুবিনাশকারী contrasted in IX[.97.54] with पृशने

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cleaving & clinging.

(4) Dadhikra, first & full of strength & action, appeareth in front of the chariots (the movements of Delight) consciously perceiving, one in knowledge with Surya & the sons of Aditi & the Vasus & the Angiras (with the divine illumination & the gods of the infinite Being & the lords of Substance & the lords of Puissance).

अंगिरस् here evidently a class of gods.

(5) May Dadhikra in us work out a way of going that he may follow the path of the Truth. May the Divine Might (or host) hear us, even Agni,—may all They hear, the vast Gods illimitable.

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Hymn 45

(1) May Savitri the divine arrive, perfect in delight, filling the mid-world, borne by his steeds (the nervous forces), holding in his hand many human fulfilments, bringing forth & establishing here the fullness of being (or, that which becometh).

सुरत्नः or else, perfect in light. But Savitri in this verse is not the Sun, see l. 2, or not the Sun in his light-giving aspect, but the creator, the bringer out, from the divine being, of its human manifestations, नर्या पुरूणि .

नर्या or mightinesses.

भूम hardly here the earth. Lit. “becoming”, so “abundant [or] full becoming”.

(2) Loose & wide his arms of the bright-golden Light reached up to the ends of Heaven (the mind); now may that might of him labour & the Sun also give to him according to that labour his own activity (ie the divine Truth manifest in the creative illumined consciousness of man here).

पनिष्ट सूरः. Note the difference between Savitri & Surya.

(3) Verily may that divine creative Savitri create for us, master

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of substance, his many possessions; when he goeth abroad in a wide energy, then he abounds for us in the enjoyment of this mortality.

रासते expressing rather rich enjoyment or having than the limited sense of giving.

(4) Lo, these are the words of my hymn & they seek after Savitri who has the tongue of perfect enjoyment, the arms of light that are full, the effective hands of action. May he establish for us a vast manifestation of being rich in content. And do ye always protect us with states of happy being.

सुजिह्व recalling सुरत्न of the first verse.

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Hymn 46

(1) Bring ye theseWords (as offerings) to Rudra; firm is his bow (of acquired possession) & swift are his arrows (of impulsion), the god who possesses the self-state of his nature (ie who firmly holding the acquired state of being shoots from it like a bow the fresh impulsions that lead to farther progress); unconquerable & conquering, sharp are his weapons. May he hearken to us.

स्थिरधन्वने — क्षिप्रेषवे double meaning.

(2) For he awakens to knowledge by secure dwelling in the earthly birth and utter empire of the heavenly; fixed in his presence let him move to our doors that keep us; O Rudra, be free from unfriendly powers in the forms that we create.

साम्राज्येन — अवन्नवंतीः or protecting to our doors that protect.

जासु ? D. [Dutt] translates “do not give us disease”.

(3) That brilliant force of thine which is loosed downwards from thy heavens and ranges on the earth, may it encompass us around; easily dawning upon us thou hast a thousand powers of healing; do not harm to the things of our creation & the things of our extending.

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परि वृणक्तु — পরিত্যাগ করুক D. स्वपिवात simply reproduced in the translation.

(4) Slay us not, O Rudra, nor deliver us over; let us not be in the path of thy onset when thou art wroth. Enjoy in us in that seat of fullness which is the expression of the living creature. And do ye protect us always by states of happy being.

प्रसितौ बहिर्षि जीवशंसे

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Hymn 47

(1) O ye Waters of being, that supreme flood of yours, a flood of revealed knowledge, which the seekers of godhead made as a drink for Indra, may we enjoy today pure and free from all rejection & raining the mind’s brightness and full of the sweetness.

इळः D. has ভুমিসম্ভূত

(2) That flowing abundance of yours, utter sweet, O ye Waters, may he of the swift-movement keep in manifestation who is the child of the waters,—that in which Indra with the Masters of substance groweth drunk with rapture, may we taste in you today growing to the godhead.

(3) Full of a hundredfold purification, rejoicing in the self-state of the nature the divine waters move to the ranging-field of the gods & they measure not nor limit the activities of Indra. Do ye to the Rivers offering—an offering full of the mind’s richness.

पाथः or move into the path.

(4) They whom the Lord of Illumination by his rays extended and for whom Indra clove out their abundant movement,— may those Rivers establish for us that which has the supreme good. And do ye protect us always with states of happy being.

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Hymn 48

(1) Ye of the plenty who hold the shaping knowledge, take joy in us of the Soma distilled, O Purushas great in your fullnesses; may your downward powers come as force of action to us & set in motion the human car.

(2) Informed by your powers of knowledge, wide-pervading by your powers of pervasion may we overcome by your force all opposing forces; may he of the plenty keep us in the possession of the plenty, with Indra for our yokefellow may we pass through the coverer.

(3) They also master the many states that have been expressed, yea, in the upward struggle they conquer all & pass beyond. Indra & the Pervader & the Possessor of the shaping knowledge & he of the plenty, fighting our battle, scatter the strength of the foe in confusion.

उपरताति see P.P.

(4) Now, O ye gods, create for us that which has the supreme good, be all together in us for our continued being & may the masters of substance utterly give force to us. And do ye protect us always by states of happy being.

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Hymn 49

(1) Eldest of the ocean they go amidst this water purifying all, not resting in any, they whom Indra with the lightning, the Male, [clove out]—may those divine waters keep me here in my being.

(2) The waters divine,—whether they that flow in the channels we dig for them or they that are self-born, they who are substance of the Ocean pure & purifying—may those divine waters keep me here in [my] being.

(3) They in whose midst moveth Varuna the King looking down on the truth & falsehood in creatures, they who stream sweetness & are pure & are purifying, may those divine waters keep me here in my being.

(4) They in whom Varuna the King, in whom Soma, in whom

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all the gods have ecstasy of the fullness of force, in whom Agni, the universal Power, has entered in, may those divine waters keep me here in my being.

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Hymn 50

(1) Mitra & Varuna, protect me here; may neither that reach me which houses itself in the body nor that which universalises itself; vanished has the evil that resides in the activities & that of imperfect vision; let not the Serpent find me with the attack.

अजकावं. Apte a disease of the eye .. a venomous vermin.

(2) That which becomes a pleasant evil in the various parts of the solid being and enters the knees & the ankles, may Agni burning purely repel it hence; let not the serpent find me with the attack.

(3) The poison that is born in the shalmali tree & in the rivers & from the herbs, may all the gods press it out of me. Let not the serpent etc.

(4) [Not translated.]

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Mandala One

[1]

इष्. Force. Cf I.46.6. या नः पीपरदश्विना ज्योतिष्मती तमस्तिरः । तामस्मे रासाथामिषं ।। The force of light, O Aswins, which brought us through the darkness to its other shore, in that force do you for us take delight.

नासत्या. Lords of our voyage. Cf 46.7. आ नो नावा मतीनां यातं पाराय गन्तवे । युंजाथामश्विना रथम् ।। O ye who are the ships of our thoughts come to travel to the other shore; O Aswins, yoke your car.

दंससा. Fashioning. Cf 30.16. स नो हिरण्यरथं दंसनावान्त्स नः सनिता सनये स नोऽदात् ।।It was he (Indra) who fashioned for us a brilliant car; he is our saviour, for our safety he gave it.

दस्रा. Givers. Cf 30.17. आश्विनावश्वावत्येषा यातं शवीरया । गोमद्दस्रा हिरण्यवत् ।। O Aswins, come with a force full of impetuosity and vital energy, O givers of a radiant & brilliant wealth.

रत्न. Cf 41.6. स रत्नं मर्तौ वसु विश्वं तोकमुत त्मना । अच्छा गच्छति अस्तृतः ।। Here Sayana says रत्नं रमणीयं. That mortal moves unfalling towards every delightful possession & even the little he possesses with continuity.

ऋतं. Cf 41.4. सुगः पन्था अनृक्षर आदित्यास ऋतं यते । नात्रावखादो अस्ति वः ।। Easy to travel & unswerving is the path, O sons of Aditi, for him who goes the way of Truth; nor is there in it any pitfall. Also 46.11. अभूदु पारमेतवे पंथा ऋतस्य साधुया । अदर्शि वि स्रुतिर्दिवः ।। By tapasya the path of the Truth was for the voyaging to the other shore; the wide flow was seen of the Heaven (of mind). (Heaven was seen streaming out far & wide.)

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[2]

[RV I.51 – 52]

Hymns of Savya Angirasa

(1) मेषं. Say. स्पर्धमानं. A proof that mesha does not always mean ram.

वस्वो अर्णवं cf महो अर्णः 3.12. Say. धनानामावासभूमिं ।

मानुषा. Possibly “mental”.

(2) जवनी सूनृता ie Ila, the goddess of revelation. Say. प्रेरयित्री ।

दक्षास ऋभवो gods of discernment .. gods of skill in work and formation.

(3) गोत्रं. Say. गोसमूहं or वृष्तेरावरकं मेघं ।
शतदुरेषु. Say. शतद्वारेषु यंत्रेषु प्रक्षिप्ताय ।

(4) पर्वत the summit or high place of being.

सूर्यं दृशे . Cf 7.3 सूर्यं दीर्घाय चक्षसे ।

अहिं वृत्रं. Say. आ समान्ताद्धन्तारं । तथा च वाजसनेयिनः समामनन्ति । सोऽग्निषोमावभिसंबभूव सर्वा विद्यां सर्वं यशः सर्वमन्नाद्यं सर्वां श्रियं स यत्सर्वमेतत्समभवत् तस्मादहिरिति । तथा च शाखान्तरे समाम्नातं यदिमाँल्लोकानवृणोत्तद्वृत्रस्य वृत्रत्वमिति ।

(5) मायाभिः. Strength. Say. मायेति ज्ञाननाम । शची मायेति तन्नामसु पाठात् ।

शुप्ताव्. Say. तथा च कौषीतकिभिराम्नायते । असुरा वा आत्मन्नजुहवुरूद्वातेऽग्नौ ते पराभवन्निति ।

ऋजिश्वानं । Say. ऋजुगमनमेतत्संज्ञकं स्तोतार ।

(6) सनात् Say. चिरकालात् . Proof of meaning of सन् to keep, persist.

(7) सध्यक् Say. सध्रीचीनं । अपराड्भुखं यथा भवति तद्वत् ।

(8) रन्धय Say. रध्यतिर्वशगमने—इति यास्कः नि॰ 6.32.

शाकी Say. शक्तियुक्त.

चाकन Say. कामये.

(9) सन्दिहः. Probably an accusative plural of सन्दिह्.? Fastenings.

स्तवानः. See स्तोम in 14.

(10) नृमणः Say. नृषु रक्षितव्येषु यजमानेष्वनुग्रहबुद्धियुक्त । But probably nom. plu. of नृमण् strength or strong.

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(11) उशने. The present shows that there is no reference to any legend. Locative of उशनं.

सचाँ. Why not सचान् ? Cleaving to or growing strong.

वंकू वंकूतरा. Cp. & sp. in same case.

ययिं Say. गमनयुक्तान्मेघान् Absurd.

शुष्ण. A decisive verse for one use of शुष्ण, withering, drying or dry, withered. दृंहिता is petrified by the dryness, inert.

पुरः Evidently in a subjective sense.

(12) श्लोकं Cf पुण्यश्लोक. The story of Sharyata is obviously invented.

(13) कक्षीवते Story invented.

वचस्यु Desiring self-expression.

अभाँ महते Obviously the opposition of the अल्प & the महत्.

मेनाभवो वृषणश्वस्य. Story invented. Probably genitive.

(14) स्तोमो firmly standing.

पज्रेषु Say. तथा च शाय्यायनिभिराम्नातं । पज्रा वा अंगिरसः पशुकामास्तपोऽतप्यंतेति. But probably पज्रं = पाजस्यं.

अश्वयुः etc. The meaning of रथ is here evident.

सुध्यो निरेके. ? From रिच् . Purification; xάϴαρσɩς.

(15) वृजने. Say. वर्जनवति संग्रामे ।

सूरिभिः. “By the gods of light” or “with the wise ones”.

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Sukta 52

(1) मेषं. Again a clear proof that mesha does not mean Ram.

सुभ्वः Say. स्तोतारः or अश्वाः but see Verse 4. Say. सुष्ठु भवन्तीति सुभ्वः ।

अत्यं न वाजं. Say. गमनसाधनमश्वमिव ।

ववृत्यां. Say. प्रत्यावर्तयामि ।

सुवृक्तिभिः.. महया. Helpful passage to decide the meaning.

(2) धरुणेषु. Say. सर्वस्य धारकेषूदकेषु ।

(3) Say. wholly unacceptable.

(4) बहिर्षः. Decisively proves that बहिर्ः need not mean Kusha
grass.

सुभ्वः Sayana. नद्यः ।

अहुतप्सवः Say. अकुटिलरुपाः ।

ऊतयः. Say. अवितारो मरुतो । He takes अभिष्टयः with ऊतयः.

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(5) रघ्वीः Say. गमनस्वभावा आपो ।

Tritah. Elaborate legend.

स्ववृष्टिं Say. स्वभूतवृष्तिमंतं वृत्रं ।

(10) अयोयवीद् . Say. अत्यर्थं पृथग्भूत आसीत् । अकंपतेत्यर्थः ।

अमवान् . Decisive line for अमः.

(11) दशभुजिः Say. दशगुणिता ।

बर्हणा Say. वर्ह वल्ह परिभाषणहिंसादानेषु । वृत्रादेर्वधरुपा ।

(12) अपः स्वः Decisive for अपः उरु in I.36.8.

(14) व्यचो Say. व्यापनं ।

(15) भृष्टिमता. Say. भृष्टिरश्रिः ।

[3]

[RV I.58]

Hymns of Nodha Gautama
Sayana

58.
(1) होता either. नि तुंदते नितरां व्यथयति—तुद व्यथने—उत्पन्नमात्रस्याग्नेः(?) स्प्रष्टुमशक्यत्वात् यद्वा निर्गच्छति. नू चित् क्षिप्रमेव साधिष्ठेभिः समीचीनैः रजो वि ममे. निर्ममे—पूर्वं विद्यामानमप्यंतरिक्षमसत्कल्पमभूत् । इदानीं तस्य तेजसा प्रकाशमानं सदुत्पन्नमिव दृश्यते ।

Sugg. नू चित्—Is it not “Now indeed”? Now indeed the force-born and immortal smites in (?) when he becomes the envoy of the wide-dwelling (Sun); he has measured out the Antariksha with most effective paths and in the formation of the gods he by the offering lodges them (in the home of the wide-dwelling Sun).

(2) युवमानः . संमिश्रयन् (grass, bushes etc)—rather taking (joining) to himself. अविष्यन्. भक्षयन्—अविष्यन्नित्येतदत्तिकर्मसु पठितं तृषु. क्षिप्र अतसेषु अत्रातसशब्दः काष्ठवाची—अतसं न शुष्कमिति दर्शनात. अत्यो न. His back shines like a horse going to and fro. प्रुषितस्य पृष्ठं. दग्धुमितस्ततः प्रवृत्तस्याग्नेरूपर्यवस्थितं ज्वालाजालं. सानु. समुच्छ्रितमभ्रं.

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Taking to himself his food, undecaying, seeking increase he leaps upon his fuel (or, अतसेषु अत्यः—covert meaning); as if a horse moving to the level of the wide-diffused (world of the rain of truth स्ववृष्टेः cf 52—रजसो अंतं .. स्ववृष्टिं) he cries aloud as if making to roar the high level of Heaven.

(3) क्राणा हविर्वहनं कुर्वाणः- करोतेः शानचि बहुलं छंदसीति विकरणस्य लुक् पुरोहितः पुरस्कृतः होता summoner. विक्षु .. आयुषु like a chariot among ordinary people, praised among yajamanas!! ऋजसानः स्तूयमानः वार्याणि.संभजनीयानि धनानि or वरणीयानि हवींषि. विशेषेण प्रापयति स्वयं or प्राप्नोति. आनुषक्. आनुषक्त यथा.

The doer set in front by (or with) Rudras & Vasus, the priest seated within conquering felicity, immortal, the god in human creatures shining (or moving) like a chariot bears abroad (or brings) uninterruptedly desired blessings.

(4) अतसेषु. उन्नतवृक्षेषु जुहुभिः हूयत आस्विति जुव्हः स्रुचः सृण्या. सरणशीलेन तेजः समूहेन- सृ गतौ- सरतीति सृणिः cf वृष्णिः तुविष्वणिः महास्वनः वृषायसे. वृषवदाचरसि । दहसीत्यर्थः रूश- द्रूर्मे. दीप्तज्वाल.

Impelled by the Wind (Pranic force) he spreads among the trees (वनानि .. अत् here not to move, but be, grow) easily with his flames of the offering in a moving chain (श्रेणि cf), he many-sounding; when, O Agni, thou playest the bull with the things of the woodland, black is thy path, O red-billowed, O undecaying.

(5) तपुर्जंभः. तपंषि ज्वाला एवायुधानि मुखानि वा यस्य सः यूथे. ज्वालासमूहे सति— to the bull गोसमूहे. रजः आर्द्रवृक्षांतर्गतमुद- कं. अव वाति व्यान्पोति. वंसगः. वननीयगतिर्वृषा. पतत्रिणः पतनवतोऽग्नेः स्थातुः like जनुष् मनुष् कमुष् (?) or स्थातुरनंतरं चरथं भयते.

(6) आ दधुः. आधानसंभारेषु मंत्रैः स्थापनेन समस्कुर्वन् होतारं summoner अतिथिं. अतिथिवत्पूज्यं । यद्वा देवयजनदेशेषु सततं गंतारं.

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शेवं. सुखकरं दिव्याय जन्मने. देवत्वप्राप्तये चारूं. शोभनं

(7) सप्त जुव्हः.. वाघतः सप्तसंख्याका होतारो.. ऋत्विजः अरतिं वसूनां. प्रापयितारं. ऋ गतिप्रापणयोः यामि. याचामि—वर्णलोपश्छांदसः

(8) मित्रमहः अनुकूलदीप्तिमन्नग्ने. शर्म. सुखानि ऊर्जो नपात् अन्नस्य पुत्र—भूक्तेनान्नेन जठराग्नेः प्रवर्धनादग्नेरन्नपुत्रत्वं आयसीभिः व्याप्तैः । यद्वा अयोवद्दृढतरैः । ूर्भिः पालनैः—पृ पालनपूरणयोः ।

(9) वरूथं. अनिष्टनिवारकं गृहं भव. शर्म. सुखं यथा भवति तथा भव धियावसुः. कर्मणा बुध्द्या वा प्राप्तधनः

[4]

[RV I.65 – 66]

Hymns of Parasara Shaktya

I.65
(1)

तायुः thief with the cow in mountain cave .. (query, one who forms, creates पश्वा by the cow of vision)

गुहा चतंतं . See parallel passages. S. अब्रुपायां गुहायां or अश्वत्थगुहायां Taitt. स निलायत सोऽपः प्राविशत् or (sruti) अग्निर्देवेभ्यो निलायत । अश्वो रूपं कृत्वा सोऽश्वत्थे संवत्सरमतिष्ठत्

चतंतं S. going = वर्तमानं. चततिर्गतिकर्मा. Perhaps “hiding” cf चतुः four = originally, side, wall

Data चत् 1 ask, request 2 go

Caus. to cause to hide scare, terrify

चतित hidden, made to disappear चातन driving away, removing चातनं removing, scaring away .. tormenting, afflicting चतुल depositing, placing चत्वर a quadrangular place or courtyard, a levelled spot of ground for sacrifice, a place where many roads meet, a collection of four chariots. चत्वालः a hole in the ground prepared for oblation or sacrificial fire, Kusha grass, womb. चतुर clever .. swift ..

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charming चतुरः round pillow .. crooked gait .. elephant’s stable (also चतुरं). चतुरं cleverness. See also चट्, चण्, चंड् and their derivatives.

गुहा

नमः S. offering food; really “obeisance, devotion”

युजानं 1. आत्मना संयुजानं. So “taking to himself”; may it not =प्रयुज्? Parallel passages.

धीराः S. The intelligent gods. Simply the thinkers—possibly the Angiras Rishis.

सजोषाः समानप्रीतयः

पदैः. S. Tracks.

Parallel passages.

यजत्राः. S. यजनीयाः to be worshipped with sacrifice. But he also takes it active elsewhere.

उपसीदन् S. समीपं प्राप्नुवन् । ददृशुरित्यर्थः. But simply “came” or “came up to thee” or else “came for the knowledge”

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I.65 (2)

ऋतस्य S. गतस्य पलायितस्याग्नेः. Absurd. ऋतस्य व्रता = परमसत्यस्य धर्मान्, or else सत्यस्याग्नेर्धर्मान्. Is ऋत ever adjective in R.V.?

ऋतस्य व्रता Parallel passages

व्रता S. कर्माणि. But it means “a regular or fixed course of action” = धर्म. S. says his actions of going, sitting, lying etc अन्वेष्टुमगमन्—cf such expressions as दृढानि व्रतानि which means “firm, unchanging courses or laws of action” or अदब्धानि व्रतानि. Hence the later meaning of व्रत

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परिष्टिः. S. परितः सर्वतोऽन्वेषणं—इषु इच्छायां. No .. Agni became परितः स्थितः all encompassing as the heaven encompasses the earth. Cf अभिष्टिः गविष्टिः is different information.

द्यौर्न भूम. S. Earth became like heaven. But it means “as earth heaven” or “a great wideness like heaven” or “encompassing the earth like heaven”.

वर्धंति. S. The waters increase him, ie so keep him that the gods cannot see him, but that would rather show than hide him.

पन्वा. S. स्तोत्रेण. I take it as “working, toil”. The waters increase him by their working. Cf Greek πóνoς toil, Tamil pan. to do, act. पण् to deal, traffic, trade and its derivatives पनुः = toil

सुशिश्विं. S. सुष्ठु प्रवर्धितं

ऋतस्य S. यज्ञस्यान्नस्य वा योनौ कारणभुते जले. योनिरित्युदकनाम गर्भे गर्भस्थाने Sayana says the Fish gave news of him. Taitt. तं देवताः प्रैषमैच्छन् । तं मत्स्यः प्राब्रवीत्

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I.65 (3)

पुष्टिर्न रण्वा S. (1) delightful (हृद्या) as the increase of desired fruits, because all dealings with both worlds depend upon Agni.

or (2) गंतव्यः or शब्दनीयः स्तुत्यः—ie Agni is got in the sacrifice by offerings as increase is got. स्तुत्यः not possible—cf 66.2

गिरिर्न भुज्म भोजयिता with its fruits and roots, as Agni by cooking our food, or as Agni gives enjoyment of Paradise or as a mountain protects people in famine by its fruits and nuts, so Agni delivers from sin.

शंभु सुखकरं

अज्मन् battle—why not course, race? अत्यः सततगमनशीलो जात्यश्वः

सर्गप्रतक्तः विसर्जनेन प्रगमितः to the man who has to be killed;

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instr. compound तृतीया कर्माणीति पुर्वपदप्रकृतिस्वरत्वं तंचु गतौ

सिंधुः न क्षोदः स्यदनशीलमुदकमिवायमपि शीघ्रगामी क्षोदः = उदकं क्षुद् to tread on, trample, strike against, crush, bruise, pound. At. [Atmanepada] to move, be agitated. क्षोदः pounding .. mortar .. flour .. dust .. small particle क्षोदस् water.

को वराते को वारयेत्

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I.65 (4)

सिंधूनां स्यंदनशीलानामपां

जामिः बंधुः because they are born of him तथाम्नातं । अग्नेरापः or because he hid in them and then became very friendly with them,

भ्राता as a brother is हितकरः to his sisters

इभ्यान् S. 1. enemies—भियं यंतीति. 2 rich men—by taking from them their wealth. In either case हिनस्ति.

इभः (इ-भन्-किच्च) elephant; Vd [Veda] fearless power or servants, dependants

इभ्य wealthy (Dk [Dashakumaracharita]) .. belonging to one’s servants

इभ्यः a king, elephant driver, acc. to S. enemy

इभ्या a female elephant .. olibanum tree, boswellia serrata.

इभ्यक wealthy, rich.

Suggestions to follow, go (elephant cf T. [Tamil] yanai) .. to attack (enemy) .. to rule (ईश्) so king, rich or powerful man .. power .. The servants, retinue from sense of to go with, follow

दाति छिनत्ति

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I.65 (5)

श्वसिति. S. He breathes there when he runs away from the gods, ie is hidden.

क्रत्वा S. ज्ञानहेतुनात्मियेन प्रकाशेन

चेतिष्ठः S. with विशां—अतिशयेन ज्ञापयिता—ie by the light he gives at night.

क्रतु in sense of knowledge

चेतिष्ठः Parallel passages.

वेधाः S. विधाता स्रष्टा. Soma creates the plants which are eaten भोग्यजातं, Agni is the eater भोक्तृ, as सोमो वा ओषधीनां राजा and Taitt. अग्निरन्नादोऽन्नपतिः and in Vajasaneyaka एतावद्वा इदमन्नं चैवान्नदश्च सोम एवान्नमग्निरन्नादः

Does वेधा = creator?

ऋतजातः born from water

शिश्वा S. (1) शयानः. Agni has contracted like an animal in the waters (2) (the cow) with the calf

विभुः प्रभूतः when born as opposed to contraction or प्रभुतावयवः like the cow in his birth—all this to be connected with श्वसिति

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I.66 (1)

चित्रा. चायनियो विचित्ररूपो like wealth

संदृक् संद्रष्टा (दर्शयिता of all things वस्तूनां) like the sun—may it not be “seeing of the sun”?

आयुः संचरन् like the breath moving (in the mouth) or as the प्राणवायुरायुर्जीवनमवस्थापयति (S. यावध्यस्मिन् शरीरे प्राणो वसति तावदायुः)

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नित्यो न सूनुः ध्रुवः पुत्र इव प्रियकारी because Agni gives Swarga. Sru[ti]: पुत्रः पित्रे लोककृज्जातवेद इति

Parallel passages

तक्वा गतिमानश्वः तक हसने. अत्र गत्यर्थः as that is one of its meanings.

भूर्णिः भर्ता धारयति पोषयति—may it not be “swift”?

धेनुः प्रीणयिता

सिषक्ति दग्धुं समवैति सेवते वा

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I.66 (2)

क्षेमं. स्तोतृभ्यो दत्तस्य धनस्य रक्षणं धारयति = कर्तुं शक्नोति

रण्वः delightful or गंतव्यः—गृहवत्सर्वैः प्राप्यते

यवः is उपभोग्य because it is पक्वः ripe, Agni because he cooks पाकादिकार्यहेतुतया!!

जनानां of enemies मध्ये

स्तुभ्वा देवानां स्तोता

प्रशस्तः famous प्रख्यातः among Yajamanas.

वाजी as a horse goes joyfully to battle, so Agni joyfully carries the offerings.

वयं अन्नं दधाति दधातु let him give us

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I.66 (3)

दुरोकशोचिः दुष्प्रापतेजाः उच समवाये

क्रतुः—firm as a कर्मणां कर्ता. As he is firm, without negligence and wakeful in his works, so Agni is firm and wakeful in burning the Rakshasa cf 1.5

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अरं अलं भूषणं —as a wife in a house so Agni is अग्निहोत्रादिगृहे an ornament for every sacrificer

चित्र 2 meanings

श्वेतः शुभ्रवर्ण आदित्य इव one at night, the other at day. But what of the white horse?

त्वेषः दीप्तः—keen flaming

समत्सु समानं माद्यंत्येष्विति समदः संग्रामाः यद्वा सम्यगत्ति भक्षयति वीरानिति समत्

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I.66 (4)

सेना इनेन सह वर्वत इति सेना

अंम दधाति भयं करोती बलं दधाति वा = is strong—Yaska.

दिद्युत् वज्रनाम here = इषु like the shining faced arrow of the shooter it frightens the enemy

यमः Agni is giver of desires to praisers यच्छतीति or twin because born with Indra. All creatures born or to be born are Agni, because all भावऽ are subject to Agni on account of आहुति—सर्वेषां भावानामाहुतिद्वाराग्न्यधीनत्वात्

Possible “Like Yama he controls what is born and what is to be born.”

जारः पतिः S. quotes a Rik.

सोमो ददद्गंधर्वाय गंधर्वो दददग्नये ।
रयि च पुत्रांश्चादादग्निर्मह्यमथो इमां ।।

and तथा चाख्यायते

अनुपजातपुरूषसंभोगेच्छावस्थां स्त्रियं सोमो लेभे । स च सोम ईषदुपजातभोगेच्छां तां विश्वावसवे गंधर्वाय प्रादात् । स च गंधर्वो लविवाहसमयेऽप्रददौ । अग्नि मनुजाय भर्त्रे धनपुत्रैः सहिता-मिमां प्रायच्छत् । Agni is the lover at the time of marriage, because then their virginity ceases.

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But Yaska Ni. 10.21 तृतीयोऽग्निस्तो पतिरित्यपि निगमो भवति

Or, says S, he is the जनिनां पालयिता because he gives the fruit by the sacrifices performed.

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I.66 (5)

चराथा चरथया—चरथः पशुः । तत्प्रभवैर्हृदयादिभिः साध्याहुतिरपि चरथेत्युच्यते—the effect being expressed by the cause

वसत्या पुरोडाशाद्याहुत्या (in the Sadhyahuti)—निवसतीति स्थावरो व्रीह्यादिर्वसतिः—Yaska

नक्षंते So P.P. 3rd for 1st person व्याप्नुयाम? But obviously it must be नक्षंतः. For present participle in place of verb,

Parallel passages

नीचीः इतस्तो नितरामुद्गच्छंतीर्ज्वालाः as the stream goes quickly downward

प्रैनोत् प्रेरयति

स्वर्दृशीके नभसि वर्तमाने दर्शनीयेऽग्नौ

गावः गमनस्वभावा रश्मयः

नवंते संगच्छंते

[5]

[RV I.74 – 77]

74
(1) अस्मे = in us. आरे अस्मे च शृण्वते. The god hearing within the man.

(3) रण in sense of battle? but “delight” is also possible.

(4) वेषि हव्यानि वीतये— वीति = journey cf दूत
cf 6 वहासि ताँ इह देवान् प्रशस्तये । हव्या सुशचंद्र वीतये ।। दस्मत् effective दस्मत्कृणोष्यध्वरं

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(7) शृण्वे. Passive = श्रूयते
योः = going न योरूपब्दिरश्व्यः शृण्वे रथस्य

(9) विवाससि. द्युमत्सुवीर्यं बृहदग्ने विवाससि देवेभ्यो देव दाशुषे ।।

75
(1) वचः = expression in psychological sense जुषस्व सप्रथस्थतमं वचो देवप्सरस्तमं
प्सरः = enjoyment in psychological sense.

(2) अग्निरस्तम. Angiras as epithet.

76
(1)वराय—supreme good शं —का त उपेतिर्मनसो वराय भुवदग्ने शंतमा का मनीषा
दक्ष in sense of mental capacity, discernment. cf सौमनसाय—2

(2) अव् = foster, increase, not protect. अवतां त्वा रोदसी विश्वमिन्वे ।।

(4) प्रजा in psychological sense प्रजावता वचसा आसा आ च हुवे

77
(1) Making the gods कृणोति देवान् in 2 आ कृणुध्वं

(2) वेर्देवान् वेः = create जनयसि or गच्छसि

(3) मर्यः not possibly mortal = strong. स हि क्रतुः स मर्यः स साधुः
क्रतुः power of work, not sacrifice दस्म
विशः आरीः—evidently आरीः = आर्यः = doers of the work.

(4) वेतु—go or manifest धीतिं
Past participle in active sense—वाजप्रसूताः

[6]

[RV I.94 – 100.1]

Hymns of Kutsa Angirasa

(1) (a) अर्हते. S. पूज्याय Panini अर्ह्= पूजा, प्रशंसा

सं महेम. सम्यक् पूजितं कुर्मः!!

जातवेदसे. 3 senses

(b) संसदि. S. संभजने प्रमतिः. S. प्रकृष्टा बुद्धिः

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(2) साधति S. स्वाभिलषितं साधयति सुवीर्यं.. S. takes = adjective —धनं understood cf 3 साधया धियः

अनर्वा S. शत्रुभिरप्रत्यृतः

(b) तूताव. S. वृध्द्यार्थः सौत्रो धातुः

(3) शकेम. S. समिधं सम्यगिद्धं कर्तुं ,—can it be सोढुं, धारयितुं?

(4) चितयंतः making to know? or getting to know. S. त्वां प्रज्ञापयंतः

पर्वणापर्वणा. P.P. पर्वणाऽपर्वणा. S. प्रतिपक्षमावृत्ताभ्यां दर्शपूर्णमासाभ्यां ।

धियः. S. कर्माणि—why not “thoughts = hymns = prayers”, if it must be ritualistic.

(5) S. takes गोपाः plural in agreement with जंतवः = जाता रश्मयः —and the rest separately supplying अक्तं = आश्लिष्टं with द्विपत् etc.

प्रकेतः. S. प्रदर्शयिता of everything hidden by Night, greater than Usha because all night, she only in the last part.

अक्तुभिः—drivings, impellings of the herdsmen गोपा. S. अंजकै रश्मिभिः!!

चित्रः S. विचित्रदीप्तियुक्त

(6) अध्वर्युः Sayana takes each word in alternative senses, one the priest, ie he becomes the priest by dwelling in the priest, eg जाठररूपेण वागिंद्रियाधिष्ठातृत्वेन, and making him do his functions, the other a Nairukta sense.

Nairukta sense. अध्वरस्य यागस्य नेता देवान्प्रति प्रेरयिता

होता N. देवानामाह्वाता

पूर्व्यः = मुरव्यः in comparison with hota who is so in comparison with others.

प्रशास्ता. N. प्रकर्षेण सर्वेषां शिक्षकोऽसि

R. यद्वा होतर्यज पोतर्यजेत्यादिना प्रैषेण शास्तीति मैत्रावरूणः प्रशास्ता

पुरोहितः पुरस्तदागामिनि स्वर्गादौ हितोऽनुकूलाचरणः or सर्वेषु कर्मसु पूर्वस्या दिशि आहवनीये स्थापितोऽसि. R. the Brahma— representative of Brihaspati—बृहस्पतिर्देवाना ब्राह्माहं मनुष्याणां (मंत्रांतरे)

पुष्यसि S. takes वर्धयसि—may it not be वर्धसे?

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(7) सुप्रतीकः S. शोभनांगः—rather well-fronting

सदृङ् S. विश्वतः सर्वस्मादन्यूनः सदृशो भवसि = समानः rather = सदृष्टिः

तळिद् . S. अन्तिकनामैतत्

(8) पूर्वो. S. in front of others.

शंसः. S. शंसनीयमभिशापरूपं पापं. It is evident it means “utterance, mantra”

दुर्धियः S. takes evil-minded अग्निष्टाचरणपरान्, but it is the opposite of सुधी and must mean either मिथ्याबुद्धिः (or सदोषबुद्धिः) or दुष्टकर्मा

(b) तद्. S. इदं मद्वाक्यं. Rather = तत्सत्यं

(9) दुःशंसान् S. दुःखेन किर्तनीयान् (b) यज्ञाय यज्ञपतये. It is the sacrifice that travels अध्वरो यज्ञः

(10) S. अरूषा = रोचमानौ वातजूता. S. वातस्य वायोर्जूतं जवो वेग इव ययोः ।।

(b) धूमकेतुना. धूमः केतुः प्रज्ञापको यस्य तादृशेन रशिमना इन्वसि. व्याप्नोषि

(11) उत. S. अपि—even the winged Gods. Rather “also” = even ते तावकेभ्यो S. all the wood for you and so for your chariots. The flames go first & make it easy for the chariots!!

तत्ते not सर्वमारण्यं तदा, but that goal of thine तत्सत्यं cf तत्ते भद्रं & Sayana’s note

(12) धायसे. S. धारणयावस्थापनाय. From धा. S. understands भवतु and अयं = स्तोता. Rather it is अयं हेळः and धायसे अवयातां. अवयातां S. अवस्ताद्गच्छतां that is in Antariksha below Swarga! it is rather descending

मृळ. S. सुखाय सु S. प्रसन्नं

(13) देवो देवानां. S. द्योतमानः सर्वेषां देवाना मित्रः वसुर्वसूनां. धनानां निवासयिता

अभ्डुतः S. महान् . So in 12 अभ्डुत इत्येतन्महन्नाम

सप्रथस्तमे. S. reads संप्रथस्तमे सर्वतः पृथुतमे

शर्मणि यज्ञगृहे

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(14) तत्ते भद्रं यत् त्वत्संबंधि तत्खलु भजनीयं । किं पुनस्तत् । जरसे स्तुयस इति यदस्ति

स्वे दमे S. उत्तरवेदिलक्षणे निवासस्थाने । स्वो लोको यदुत्तरवेदीनाभिरिति श्रुतेः

(b) रत्नं रमणीयं कर्मफलं वा

(15) सर्वताता. S. सर्वासु कर्मततिषु यद्वा सर्वेषु यज्ञेषु. Yaska सर्वाः स्तुतयो येषु यागेषु ।

अदिते अखंडनीय (b) भद्रेण भजनीयेन तल्याणेन चोदयासि S. संयोजयसि

“He whom thou yokest with happy force, becomes wealthy; and let us be yoked with wealth accompanied by sons and grandsons.”

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95.
(1) स्वर्थे. = सुऽअर्थे S. शोभनगमनागमने (स्वरणे) । यद्वा अर्थः प्रयोजनं. Rt ऋ—भावे कर्मणि वा थन्प्रत्ययः. He takes it as dual plural, adjective. May it not be singular locative noun—udatta on first syllable of second member of compound a poetical usage आद्युदातं द्वाच् छंदसीति; but this seems to be the rule with compounds of सु

वत्सं. S. each her own son. अन्यान्या= परस्परव्यतिहारेण स्वकीयं रसं पाययतः. Agni is the Day’s, Surya the Night’s. अन्यस्यां. Other than his own mother

हरिः. S. रसहरणशील आदित्यः!!

ददृशे. दृशेश्छंदसि लुङ्लङ्लित इति वर्तमाने लिट्

(2) दश. The ten regions from the clouds—or ten fingers from the air-element.

त्वष्टुः दीप्तान्मध्यमाद्वायोः. He quotes Sruti अग्नेर्हि वायुः कारणं वायोरग्निः He derives from त्विष् = to shine.

युवतयः. नित्यतरूण्यः or अपृथक्कृत्य वर्तमानाः

विभ्रुत्रं. S. विहृतं. He explains the र् as a poetical form and भ हृग्रहोर्भ इति भत्वं । जाठररूपेण विझज्य वर्तमानं = सर्वेषु भूतेषु विहृतं स्वयशसं. स्वायत्तयशस्कं । अतिशयेन यशस्विनमित्यर्थः

जनेषु जनपदेषु सर्वदेशेषु. परि सीं नयंति सर्वे जनाः स्वकीयं देशं प्रापयंति

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(3) जाना जननानि जन्ममानि

परिभूषंति S. परितोऽलंकुर्वंति or परि for सम् = संभवंति

अप्सु. S. अंतरिक्षनाम प्रशासत् प्रकर्षेण ज्ञापयन् and प्रदिशं= प्रकृष्टां ककुभं

अनुष्ठु. S. सम्यगनुक्रमेण. He says like सुष्ठु it equals सम्यक् !

(4) निण्यं. S. गर्भरूपेणांतर्हितं (अबादिषु)

वत्सो मातृः S. Agni as lightning child of the cloud-waters produces these cloud-waters by the foods of the offering. S. quotes Smriti अग्नौ प्रास्ताहुतिः सम्यगादित्यमुपतिष्ठते ।

आदित्याज्जायते वृष्टिर्वृष्टेरन्नं ततः प्रजा इति

अपसामुपस्थात् S. समुद्रात् !! In 5 he takes it differently.

(5) आविष्टयो. आविः शब्दाच्छंदसि— आविर्भूतः प्रकाशमानः

चारूः S. शोभनदीप्तिः सन्

जिह्मानां S. कुटिलानां मेघेषु तिर्यगवस्थितानां.

सिंह. S. सहनशीलमभिभवनशीलं

उभे. S. द्यावापृथिव्यौ. Yaska suggests also Day and Night or two armies. So also S. in next verse.

(6) भद्रे भजनीये शोभनांग्यौ जोषयेतो. S. सेवेते like servant girls to a king

गावो न उपतस्थुः S. takes all as part of the simile; but the construction is, it was as if cows came to their calf—गावः = रश्मयः

एवैः स्वकीयैश्चरित्रैः— इण् गतौ

दक्षाणां दक्षपतिः बलानां मध्ये यदतिशयितं बलं तस्याधिपतिः

दक्षिणतः the Ritwiks on the right side of the आहवनीय.

अंजंति. आर्द्रीकुर्वंति तर्पयंति

(7) बाहू S. arms = rays सिचौ— सिंचतः फलेन संयोजयत इति सिचौ द्यावापृथिव्यौ

यतते स्वव्यापारे प्रयतते— यति प्रयत्ने ऋंजन S. स्वतेजसा

अत्कं सारभूतं रसं उदयते ऊर्ध्वं रशिमभिरादत्ते

सिमस्मात् S. सर्वस्माभ्डूतजातात्

वसना. S. वृष्टयुकेभ्यः प्रत्यग्राणि सर्वस्य जगत आच्छादकानि तेजांसि उद्गमयति

(8) उत्तरं उत्कृष्टतरं

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संपृंचानः वैद्युरूपेन संयुक्तः गोभिः गंत्रीभिः

अभ्डिः. मेघस्थभिः सदने अंतरिक्षे

बुध्नं. उदकस्य मूलभूतमंतरिक्षं घीः— धारकः

मर्मृज्यते. तदानीं मार्ष्टि स्वतेजसाच्छादयति— मृजूष् शुद्धौ

देवताता. देवनशीलेनाग्निनना तता दीप्तिः

समितिः अस्माभिः स्तुता तेजसां संहतिर्बभूव

(9) ज्रयः राक्षसादीनामभिभावुकं

महिषस्य. महतः धामं तेजः स्वयशोभिः स्वकीयैस्तेजोभिः but like स्वयशसं it may be adjective.

(10) धन्वन्— रवि रवि धवि गत्यर्थाः धन्वांतरिक्षं धन्वत्यस्मादाप इति यास्कः

गातुं गमनशीलं ऊर्मि उदकसंघं

स्रोतः कृणुते स्रोतसा प्रवाहरूपेण युक्तं करोति

सनानि. जठरेषु धत्ते. S. अन्ननामैतत्—for that reason he gets into the new plants produced by the rain to ripen them and turn them into food.

(11) रेवत् रयिमते धनयुक्ताय (चतुर्थ्या लुक्) श्रवसे अन्नाय दीप्यस्व

श्रवसे. Because he is the कविः

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96.
(1) प्रत्नथा. S. चिरंतन इव= पूर्वं विद्यमान इव as if preexistent!

काव्यनि. क्रांतदर्शिनः प्रगल्भस्य कर्मानि

धिषणा. माध्यमिका वाक् साधन साधयंति कुर्वंति

देवाः ऋत्विजः गार्हपत्यरूपेण or इंद्रादयः दूत्ये धारयंति. In latter use द्रविणं = हविर्लक्षणं धनं

(2) पूर्वया अग्निर्देवेद्ध इत्यादिकया

कव्यता गुणिनिष्ठगुणाभिधानलक्षणां स्तुतिं कुर्वता— कु शब्दे— कवनं स्तुति करोति

आयोः मनोः संबंधिनोक्थेन च. Praised by Manu he created men.

विवस्वता. विवासनवता विशेषेणाच्छादयता चक्षसा तेजसा

(3) आरीः गच्छन्त्यः (अग्निं स्वामिनं) not vocative in agreement with विशः!

प्रथमं देवेषु मुख्यं ऋंजसानं स्तोत्रैः प्रसाध्यमानं

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ऊर्जः अन्नस्य पुत्रं = जाठराग्निः because it increases by food.

भरतं हविषो भर्तारं यद्वा प्राणरूपेण सर्वासां प्रजानां भर्तारं. श्रूयते च एष प्राणो भूत्वा प्रजा बिभर्ति तस्मादेष भरत इति

सृप्रदानुं सर्पणशीलदानयुक्तं । अविच्छेदेन धनानि प्रयच्छंतमित्यर्थः.

Note ईळत Parasmaipada.

(4) गातु विदत् अनुष्ठानमार्गं लंभयतु

मातरिश्वा सर्वस्य जगतो निर्मातर्यंतरिक्षे श्वसन्वर्तमानः

स्वर्वित् स्वर्गस्य यागद्वारेण लंभयिता

(5) वर्णं स्वकीयं रूपं आमेम्याने. परस्परं पुनः पुनः हिंसंत्यौ

समीची संगते संगते संश्लिष्टे रूक्भः रोचमानः

(6) बुध्नः मूलभूतः by आहुतिः वसूना. निवासहेतूनां धनानां

वेः आत्मानभिगच्छतः पुरूषस्य अमृतत्वं. स्वकीयं

(7) क्षां. निवासयितारं

सतः सर्वत्र विद्यमानस्य नित्यस्याकाशादेः भवतः सभ्डावं प्राप्नुवतोऽसंख्यातस्यान्यस्य भूतजातस्य

(8) तुरस्य त्वरमाणस्य चलतो जंगमस्य द्रविणस्य. धनस्य बलस्य वा सनरस्य संभजनीयस्य स्थावररपूपस्य धनस्य रासते. प्रयच्छतु

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97.
(1) शोशुचत् अस्मत्तो निर्गत्यास्मदीयं शत्रुं शोचयतु । यद्वा । अस्मदीयं पापं शोकग्रस्तं सद्विनश्यतु ।

आ समंतात् शुशुग्धि. प्रकाशय

(2) [सुक्षेत्रिया सुगातुया वसूया] शोभनक्षेत्रेच्छया शोभनमार्गेच्छया धनेच्छया

(3) भंदिष्ठः स्तोतृतमः As Kutsa is, so our praisers become. भंदतिः स्तुतिकर्मा । भदि कल्याणे च सुखे चेती तु धातुः

(4) Since thy praisers become of numerous kinds by offspring, therefore let us too have children and grandchildren.

प्रजायंते— पुत्रपौत्रादिरूपेण बहुविधा भवंति suggested by प्र जायेमहि = पुत्रपौत्रादिभिरूपेता भवेम

(6) विश्वतः—from every side.

(8) सिंधु—river. स्वस्तये क्षेमार्थं

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अति पर्ष अतिक्रमय्य पालय— पृ पालनपूरणयोः

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98. (1). वैश्वानरस्य. नराणां लोकांतरनेतृत्वेन स्वामित्वेन वा संबंधिनः
    भुवनानां. भूतजातानां अभिश्रीः. अभिश्रयणीय आभिमुख्येन सेवितव्यः सन्.

इतः from the aranis. वि चष्टे. इदं सर्वं जगद्वि चष्टे विशेषेण पश्यति

यतते संगच्छते—yet he says यती प्रयत्ने

सूर्येण. उद्यंतं वावादित्यमग्निरनुसमारोहतीति तैत्तिरीयकं. But Yaska
अमुतोऽमुष्य रश्मयः प्रादुर्भवंतीतोऽस्यार्चिषः । तयोर्भासोः संसंगं दृष्ट्वैवमवक्ष्यत्

(2) पृष्टः— संस्पृष्टः । यद्वा निषिक्तो निहितो वर्तते स्पृश संस्पर्शने । छांदसः सकारलोपः यद्वा पृषु सेचने Sun. Garhapatya. Pakartham. Probably = filled, भरा, भरपूर

(3) तत्. त्वदीयं तदस्माभिः क्रियमाणं कर्मावितथफलं भवतु.

मघवानो रायः. धनवंतो रायो धनवदतिप्रियाः पुत्राः सचंतां सेवंतां.

तत् What we have prayed for.

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99. [1]. जातवेदसे Yaska जातानि वेद जातानि वैनं विदुर्जाते विद्यत इति वा जातवित्तो जातधनो जातविद्यो जातप्रज्ञानो यत्तज्जातः पशूनविंदतेति तज्जातवेदसो जातवेदस्त्वमिति हि ब्रह्मणं

वेदं धनं नि दहाति imp. [imperative] sense. दुर्गाणि दुर्गमनानि भोक्तुमशक्यानि दुःखानि दुरितानि दुःखहेतुभूतानि पापानि अतिपर्षत्. अतिपारयतु— अतिक्रमय्य सुखं प्रापयतु पृ पालनपूरणयोः

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100.
(1) वृष्ण्येभिः वृष्णिभवैर्वीर्यैः समोकाः सम्यक् समवेतः

पृथिव्याः प्रथिताया भूमेः सतीनसत्वा. उदकस्य सादयिता गमयिता सतीनमित्युदकनाम— षदृ विशरणगत्यवसादनेषु मेघेषु निषीदतीति सतीनं वृष्टयुदकं. भवतु ऊती. रक्षणाय भवतु

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[7]

[RV I.100.1 – 2]

Notes on Veda

Kutsa Angirasa
Hymns to Indra
I.100

(1) स यो वृषा वृष्येभिः समोकाः

S. कामानां वर्षिता वृष्णिभवैर्वीर्यैः संगतः

He who is the Strong (Bull) housed with his strengths.

वृषा may mean वर्षकः in some passages; but here its sense must obviously be determined or coloured by the sense of वृष्ण्य. If वृष्ण्य means strength, force, वृषा must mean the strong one; if वृषा means Rainer, वृष्ण्य must mean abundance. But we have वर्षीयः, वर्षिष्ठः, comparative and superlative = stronger, strongest, larger, largest, which must be originally from वृषन् —though used for वृद्ध; the verb वृष् to have supreme power, to strike, hurt, वर्षयते to be powerful, वृषः a strong man, enemy, also virtue, cf Lat. virtus, वृषण strong, stout. वृषः, वृषा, वृषभः, bull, वृष्णि ram, वृषलः horse must come from the sense of male, stallion, the sprinkler, impregnator (cf वृषणः scrotum, वृष्य aphrodisiac, वृषली a girl in menstruation); वृषभः in fact means any male animal. The idea of strength may come from this sense = virility, as here the Male, Bull or Strong one with his virilities, cf नृ, नृम्नं, वीर, वीर्यं, etc, or perhaps from the sense of striking, hurting, cf बलं strength, Greek belos, weapon, ballo, I strike.

वृषा I take then = strong, as वृषंतम in v. 2.

The Maruts themselves are probably the strengths वृष्ण्यानि of Indra; they are in their personality his नरः or वीराः, therefore in their force his नृम्णानि, वीर्याणि, वृष्ण्यानि. Indra dwells with his strengths, his Marut-powers.

महो दिवः पृथिव्याश्व सम्राट्. The all-ruler of the great heaven

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and the earth. Is “great” here simply an epithet of the ordinary heaven or sky, or does महो दिवः = बृहतो दिवः, the greater heaven, स्व? I take it in the latter sense.

सतीनसत्वा हव्यो भरेषु. The assailer of the enemy to be called in the bringings (of wealth) or battles.

S. takes सतीनसत्वा = उदकस्य सादयिता गमयिता. सतीन he explains as मेघेषु निषीदति, that which sits in the clouds = water or that of which सती = माध्यमिका वाक् is the इना ईश्वरी, both of them absurd and fanciful derivatives, the latter contrary to all the rules of scientific philology.

असृजद्विधर्ता means a charger, fighter, warrior, from सद् to move on, attack; सतीन is an archaic word of quite doubtful meaning, possibly it means enemy, सतीनसत्वा = assailer of the enemy.

भरेषु. How does भरः = battle? भृ means to bring in the Veda; भरः would naturally mean bringing of wealth; but भृ may also have meant in the archaic tongue to move, attack, or strike, injure, so to fight, there is some hint of this in the derivative भर्त्स् to menace, revile. Or भरः may mean a burden, pressure, full crowding of the fight, mellay, cf भार brunt, thick of battle (N.C.) and bhara, to fill in Bengali, from the original sense of loading on, pressing in.

मरूत्वान् नो भवत्विंद्र ऊती. May Indra Marut-holding or Marut-accompanied be for us with or for our increase.

ऊती S. ऊत्यै for protection. ऊती may stand for instr. or dat. ऊत्या or ऊत्यै. But does ऊति—अवः mean protection or fostering? There is much here of fighting and protection might be the appropriate sense. But cf v. 7 where even S. cannot maintain this sense. The sense aid, increasing, fostering, makes good sense everywhere in the R.V. but there are passages in which the sense of protection is impossible. I therefore take अवः and ऊति everywhere in the former sense.

The accepted senses of अव् are (1) to defend; (2) to please, satisfy, do good; (3) to favour, promote; (4) to like, love, desire, wish. It has also some other senses, among them बृद्धि increase. Cf L. ave, fare well, prosper. ऊतिः means not only protection,

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but enjoyment, sport, play, a sense very close to felicity and prosperity, and also favour, aid, as well as wish, desire.

(2) यस्यानाप्तः सूर्यस्येव यामः He whose march none has attained like that of the sun.

अनाप्तः S. परैरप्राप्ता गतिः not got by others

Indra and Surya’s motion

भरेभरे वृत्रहा शुष्मो अस्ति In mellay and mellay (or bringing and bringing) the Vritraslayer is forceful or heroic.

शुष्मः S. असुराणां शोषकः

शुष् is of the शु root. It means (1) to break etc, so to put forth force शुष्मं, शुष्मन् strength, शुष्मिन् strong, cf शूरः, शुटीरः, शवः, शुठ्, शुंड्, शुर् etc (2) to burn, shine, blaze, शुष्मः = sun, fire (शुष्णः), शुष्मन् fire, शुष्मं lustre cf शुच्, शुभ् (3) to move.

I take it = forceful, strong. If not, then blazing, brilliant like the sun.

वृषंतमः सखिभिः स्वेभिरेवैः Mightiest with his own rushing friends.

S. वृषंतमः कामानां वर्षिता. The सखिभिः are Indra’s friends, the Maruts.

80.6. इंद्रः सखिभ्यो गातुमिच्छति—in verse [4] the सखिभिः and गातुभिः seem to refer to the Angiras Rishis.

[8]

[RV I.152 – 54]

Vedic Notes

I.152.1. ऋतं and Mitravaruna.      ऋतं

अवातिरतमनृतानि विश्वा ऋतेन मित्रावरूणा सचेथे ।।

Sayana. ऋतेन फलेन तत्साधनेन यज्ञेन वा. But see 3. ऋतं पिपर्ति अनृतं नि तारीत्

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152.1.      वस्त्रं

युव वस्त्राणि पीवसा वसाथे युवोरच्छिद्रा मंतवो ह सर्गाः ।

You put on coverings of (lit. with) gross matter, for it is your faultless thoughts that become creations (in the world); cast off all falsehoods, cleave to us with the truth, O Mitra and Varuna.

(2) सत्यो मंत्रः कविशस्त ऋघावान्      मंत्र.. शस्त.. ऋघावान्

The true mantra (thought revealed in speech) manifested (declared) by the seer.

त्रिरश्रिं हन्ति चतुरश्रिरूग्रो देवनिदो ह प्रथमा अजूर्यन् ।।      निदो

The four-square by its fiercer intensity destroys the three-sided; for the first thoughts of the gods fall into decay.

(4) अनवपृग्णा वितता वसानं

Unmixed (pure) and widely extended ऋताणि

(5) अनश्वो जातो अनभीशुरर्वा      अश्व

A strong steed that becomes not an aswa (free from vital effort) unrestrained by reins

अचित्तं ब्रह्म जुजुषुर्युवानः प्र मित्रे धाम वरे गृणंतः ।      ब्रह्म गृ

The ever-youthful gods were enamoured of the soul void of mind expressing (establishing cf गिरिः) their abode in Mitra & Varuna.

Also 6. ब्रह्मप्रियं & 7. ब्रह्म

(6) धेनवो अवंतीर्      धेनु

The kine of knowledge or the streams of being.

पित्वो भिक्षेत वयुनानि विद्वानासा      पितुः वयुनं आसा
विवासन्नदितिमुरूष्येत् ।।      अदितिः

May he live on that drink (Brahman) as on alms, knowing all manifestations in his force and dwelling vastly extended widen into infinite being

(7) अस्माकं वृष्टिर्दिव्या सुपारा      वृष्टिः

“Divine and strong to carry us across”, cannot refer to rain.

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Lexic.
सच् 1.      विवासन् 6.      भिक्षेत 6.      नमसा 7.      अवस् 7.      पृतना 7.

Gr.
ववृत्याम् 7.

153.1. यजामहे वां महः सजोषाः.      महः

Say. महान्तौ. It is better to take महः as a genitive dependent on सजोषाः

घृतैर्घतस्नू .. अध्वर्यवो न धीतिभिर्भरन्ति      घृतं न धीति अध्वर्यु भृ

Sayana takes घृतं स्रावयंतौ and न = अपि. I take it = like or as. भरन्ति = पोषयन्ति Say.

(2) प्रस्तुतिर्वां धाम न प्रयुक्तिरयामि मित्रावरूणा सुवृक्तिः ।      स्तु वृक्तिः

प्रस्तावना करोमीति संकल्पः Say. अयामि = गच्छामि Say. Obviously impossible. I take न = and, as well

Preparation .. process .. clear emergence, were all governed so as to be your law of action or else, were all directed towards your seated condition (establishment in your functions) or towards your seats, ie the mahas or ritam.

अनक्ति यद्वा विदथेषु होता सुम्नं वां सूरिर्वृषणावियक्षन्      यज्, यक्ष्

सुम्नं सुखं S. इयक्षन् यागं कर्तुमिच्छन् S. But may it not be अंकतु - मिच्छन् , wishing to effect or work out? अनक्ति is the action or effort of the sacrifice. If इयक्षन् is from यज् then यज् means to get by effort, it governs सुम्न and cannot mean to sacrifice.

(3) पीपाय धेनुरदितिर्ऋताय जनाय      धेनुः अदितिः ऋतं जनः

Infinite Being (Parardha Sat) increased for Mahas & Ananda.

(4) गाव आपश्च पीपयन्त देवीः ।      गावः आपश्च Cf. स्वर्वतीरपः सं गा धूनुहि I[.10.8]

Lexic.
नमः 1.      धाम 2.      अनक्ति 2.      विदथं 2.3.      मानुषो होता 3.      रातहव्यो 3.      अंधस् 4.      वीतं 4.

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     उस्रिया 4.      न 3. (as एव अपि)

Gr.
पीपयंत (S. आप्याययन्तु)

154.1. पार्थिवानि रजांसि      रजस्

रजस् is kingdom = world, राज्यं.

यो अस्कभायदुत्तरं सधस्थं विचक्रमाणस्त्रेधा उरूगायः

also 3. सधस्थ उरूगायः

सधस् = anything established, here perhaps foundation. उरूगायः is plainly widely-moving cf उरुक्रमः 5. Vishnu firmly established or supported as on pillars the higher seated world, ie Mahas, by striding variously in a triple stride of his wide movement ie in Swar, Bhuvar & Bhur.

(2) प्र तद्विष्णुः स्तवते वीर्येण मृगो न भीमः कुचरो गिरिष्ठाः      स्तवते

The only sense consistent with the wording is: Then Vishnu stands established by his deed of energy like the dread lion who stalks the wilds standing on a mountain.

(4) त्रिधातु पृथिवीमुत द्यामेको दाधार भुवनानि विश्वा ।      त्रिधातु

Say. पृथिवी-अप्-तेजोरूपधातुत्रयविशिष्टं, but it means Sat, Chit, Ananda.

(5) तदस्य प्रियमभि पाथो अश्यां नरो यत्र देवयवो मंदति ।      पाथः देवयु

पाथः । अंतरिक्षनामैतत् । पाथोऽन्तरिक्षं पथा व्याख्यातं । This is nonsense. पाथः is here पदं, elsewhere पन्था, & from पा to drink, “drink” or generally food.

उरूक्रमस्य स हि बन्धुरित्था विष्णोः पदे परमे मध्व उत्सः ।।      मधु

Here is the real sense of the Vedic मधु or सोम. Cf also 4. यस्य त्री पूर्णा मधुणा पदानि ।

(6) ता वां वास्तून्युश्मसि गमध्यै यत्र गावो भूरिशृंगा अयासः      गावः शृंगं

Here again we find that गावः in the Veda is figurative, not material either as cows or rays. रश्मयः Sayana.

Lexic.
कं 1.      शूषं 3.      मन्म 3.      प्रयत 3.      बंधु 5.

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Mandala Two

[9]

[RV II.1.1 – 2]
II.1

(1) आशुशुक्षणि Rt शुच् to blaze, shine (cf शुक्र), to be bright and so also to be pure; brightness, clearness and cleanness are easily associated ideas. In the Vedic use of शुच् , शुचिः, even I think for शुक्रः, the ideas of light and purity are, I think, always or almost always blended. “Thou art he who blazest up with thy lustres”, or, with the idea of purity carried in the action, “Thou art he who burnest out in the purity of thy illuminations.”

In the physical sense, the fire of lightning, the fire struck out from the flints or from Indra’s thunderbolt, the fire burning from the fuel or perhaps the forest fire. In the psychological, the fire of the seven sacred rivers, the fire from the thunderbolt of Indra, the fire that feeds on the material of the physical and vital life.

अश्मनः. This may mean “from the stone all round”, but more naturally it means “thou art born about (all round) the thunderbolt”. For अश्मा in this sense of [incomplete]

नृणां नृपते—cf वसूनां वसुपतिः etc. नृ may mean men = विश्पतिः, but more probably the gods. Agni is नृपति lord of the divine Purushas, as he is later addressed ग्नावः, possessor of the divine Prakritis.

(2) ऋत्वियं S. seems to take this in the sense of आर्त्विज्यं. It is rather the office of Potâ etc performed according to the right seasons.

*अग्नित्

ऋतायतः. Here is one of the passages in which ऋत may very readily be taken in the sense of sacrifice; but we are bound by

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the psychological [incomplete]

Thou, O Flame, blazest out into purity, thou with thy illuminations; thou from the waters, thou enringing the thunderbolt, thou from the pleasant growths and warmths of earth art born in thy light of purity, O master of the godheads.

[10]

[RV II.5, 3.1 – 2]

Notes on Veda

II.5. Important hymn indicating the symbolic nature of the Vedic sacrifice & priesthood. Agni as the sevenfold priest of the sacrifice. The Sisters & the Mother’s sister evident as symbolical figures. Connection of the Brahmans with the Brahman—the Eighth Ray in man the mental being. The Seven Rays & the (Seven) Cows—(sisters) ascending from the domains of the three to the Highest (Varnam .. Varam)

भुवनं is interpreted by Sayana in its etymological significance, a becoming, creature, भुतजातानि; he does not accept the ordinary sense, world. But to arrive at this original poverty of meaning we have to get rid of the plain & natural sense of other words also & to disregard the connections of thought in the Veda. Eg II.3.1 समिद्धो अग्निर्निहितः पृथिव्यां प्रत्यङ् विश्वानि भुवनान्यस्थात् where the natural sense is that Agni placed in the earth (the physical world) rises up fronting all the other worlds, the Rajas, Div, the other heavens. This sense is confirmed by the second rik. नराशंसः प्रति धामान्यंजन्. Mighty in his manifestation brightening those seats by his reflected lustres (प्रति), तिस्रो दिवः प्रति मन्हा स्वर्चिः, brilliantly luminous in his greatness towards the three heavens. Evidently भुवनानि.. धामानि.. दिवः refer to the same conception.

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[11]

[RV II.30 – 34]

II.30.The Enemy—The Patron.

1 “Savitri”—creator of Truth
“अक्तुः” = movement. अक्तुरपां

2 सिनं = strength cf सेना army
सि, सिन् = to cut

2 “धुनयो” rivers—धु = to rush, sweep, not tremble. Therefore the Maruts are rushers, धुनयः, धूतयः, sweepers on of things. “अर्थं” goal of movement—यंत्यर्थं,

3 मिहं—rain or mist cf मिहं वपंति (Maruts) VIII.7.4

4 अश्रा (तपुषा) stone = वज्र—(5) दिवो अश्मानं “असुरस्य” for Vritra, but may here mean Strong one—

4-5 “शत्रुं” to be killed “तोकस्य सातौ तनयस्य भूरेः” “अर्धं कृणुतादिंद्र गोनां” all by the stone of heaven hurled down from above.

4 ‘वृकद्वरसो’ of the असुरस्य वीराः
‘बृहस्पति’ as a name of Indra—not altogether conclusive.

5 “अर्धं” गोनां = wealth.

6 क्रतुं—either force xράτoς (will-power) or sacrifice—यजमा - नस्य
‘रध्रस्य’ यजमानस्य चोदौ —“wealthy” or “rapturous” in connection with Soma. ‘अस्मिन्भयस्थे कृणुतमु लोकं’ in connection with, अर्धं कृणुतादिंद्र गोनां

7 ‘The Patron—यो मा सुन्वंतमुप गोभिरायत् = the god or inner power—of the Sacrifice’ ‘तमन्’ to be darkness or inertia cf तंन्द्रन्

8.9.10. “The Enemy”

Saraswati “मरुत्वती” slays the enemies of whom the chief is that famous वृषभं शंडिकानां, evidently Vritra, slain by Indra.

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Brihaspati makes visible, manifests or else discerns, distinguishes अभिख्याय & slays them himself तिगितेन (तेजसा) which can only mean the vajra. He who hurts man is to be exposed on all sides to द्रुह्. These spiritual enemies are to be slain अस्माकेभिः सत्वभिः शूरैः (वीर्या कृधि यानि कर्त्वानि), हत्वी & their wealth brought. Obviously the Cows etc. & the wealth is to be रयिं सर्ववीरं अपत्यसाचं श्रुत्यं

9 “स सनुत्य” either “trying to conquer” जिघत्नुः or to slay or else “constant” or else “trying to save” but this is improbable द्रुहे रीषंतं परि धेहि राजन् cf v. 7

Why अभिख्याय? Because they are गुह्या रिप आयोः II.32.2

10 ‘अस्माकेभिः सत्वभिः शूर शूरैः’ cf अस्माकेभिर्नृभिः

सत्वभिः like the Angiras Rishis, Indra’s fighters.

अनुधूपितासः. Probably धू to sweep, drive away—“swept along in rout”

11 ‘दैव्यं जनं’ here seems to be “the heavenly people”

रयिं सर्वंवीरं. We have seen that the heroes are the heroic powers which slay the spiritual enemy. This then means a spiritual wealth full of all kinds of heroic energies—all that are needed for the victory. अपत्य must therefore be spiritual offspring of the अपस्, children of our works, & श्रुत्यं “having the श्रुति or divine hearing, inspiration, knowledge”.

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II.30.
1 Savitri—Indra Ahighna, the Waters
2 Vritra, Aditi, the Waters.
3 Indra, Vritra.
4 Brihaspati, Indra, Vritra.
5 Indra
6 Indra, Soma
7 Indra
8 Saraswati Marutvati, Indra
9 Brihaspati or Indra & Brihaspati.
10 Brihaspati.
11 Maruts.

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II.31.
1 Image of the birds around the nest with double meaning वयः—“birds” and “births in the being, souls”

वस्मनः = home, dwelling-place, the nest of the birds, the embodied being of the man.

श्रवस्यवो. श्रवः = the call of the birds (cf हृषीवंतो), their joyous cries, and the voices of the truth; the divine hearing

वनर्षदः “sitting on the trees” and “taking up their abode in the delight”. वन = Lat. venus—cf वनिता etc.

2 वाजयुं—“seeking plenty” of the wealth—cf 3. वाजसातये पाणिभिः feet, hooves of the horses, lit. organ of action—पण् to act, deal—cf Tamil—पण् , Gr. ponos, Lat. penis.
‘पद्या’ = “path” or “trampling”

“उदवत” cannot mean “protect”, it is “advance upward”

3 अवृकाभिरूतिभिः—increasings, not torn to pieces by the enemies, the वृकद्वरसो असुरस्य वीरान् of II.30.

4 भुवनस्य सक्षणिः. S. भूतजातस्य सेवनीयः; but सक्षणिः surely governs भुवनस्य, and is not its object, perhaps it means, he who cleaves to, embraces the world to enjoy it. Twashtri is the Deva as Maker, Lord and Enjoyer of the world through the female energies, ग्नाः—the image of the Vrishabha & the Cows, the Lord and the Wife or Wives always present in the Veda.

“पुरंधिः”. Sayana takes as an epithet of पूषा; but it seems rather to be the wife of the Aςwins, Suryâ. Otherwise there is no meaning in the अश्विनावधा पती; the Aςwins, the two husbands, being a hardly possible locution without any indication of the wife. पुरंधिः may be of either gender. It means either “many-thoughted”, (Suryâ is the daughter or active female power resultant from Surya, the Lord of the Truth, the Light), or “holder of the house”, या पुरं धारयति सा, (the house is the embodied being of man).

5 The next three verses present more than one difficulty of both sense & syntax, but Sayana’s solutions seem to be

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unacceptable. Sayana supposes the hymn to be a prayer to the Viςvadevas to join in and favour with their impelling force an armed expedition with “food” as its object. He takes वाज, चनः, वयः, श्रवः all in the sense of food, but is obliged to take वाजं in 7. not as food, but strength since both वाज & श्रवः cannot convey one & the same idea. This is enough to show that he is wrong either about श्रवः there or about वाज in the two earlier verses. None of these words need have the significance he gives it. वाज as a hundred passages of the Veda prove means wealth, plenty—श्रवः means “knowledge” that comes to the inner hearing. वयः may mean food, from वी to eat, but more naturally “birth, growth, age, manifestation, state of being, wide extension” —cf वियत्, वयुनं, etc—चनः, delight.Wide being, knowledge of the truth, delight (sat, chit, ananda) are the forms of the वाज, the plenty which is the goal of the human journey aided by the divine impulsions जूजुवत्.. अपीजुवा.

स्थातुश्च “वयः त्रिवया” उपस्तिरे. स्थातुः here is opposed to जगतां in the second pada. Day and Night are the goddesses who impel on their journey those who move; their journey in the chariot is the ascent of the hill, पृथिव्याः सानौ, the material world being the first level of the three त्रिषु सानुषु (cf I.10.2. सानोः सानुमारुहत्); the vital and mental worlds follow, when these three open out, are manifested in their wideness रोदसी उर्वी (स्तुषे वां पृथिवि), the soul is त्रिवयाः, it has the wideness of the three births; but there is also the स्थातुर्वयः, the manifested extension or state of being of the Stable, the Divine who presides over the movement of the earth life; that is now spread out, opened out as a basis for the accomplished higher life. The result is चनः, the delight cf वनर्षदः in v. 1.

6 धिया शमि. Possibly शमि is for शम्या or it may be the indeclinable form used adverbially. Thought (word, धी, शंसः) and action (achievement अपस् , दंसः) are the means of the attainment, the chariot.

7 एता उद्यता These activities raised by the labour of the Aryan

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(चर्षणि) to the higher levels—(cf I.10.1, 2. उद् येमिरे— सानोः सानुमारूहत्)

नव्यसे—for something new वाजाय or सुविताय.

अतक्षन् The idea is that of the chariot, the Thought & the Action fashioned into a chariot for the divine journey, a common idea in the Veda. The chariot fashioned is the धिइति, the thought and the divine power has to take possession of it as the horse that attains to the goal सप्तिर्न रथ्यो अह धीतिमश्याः

(1) Mitra, Varuna, Adityas, Rudras, Vasus.
(2) Visve Devah.
(3) Indra and the Maruts.
(4) Twashtri, the “Gna”s, Bhaga, Brihaddiva, Rodasi, Pusha, Purandhi (Suryâ), A¸cwins.
(5) Day & Night, Earth & Heaven.
(6) Ahir Budhnya, Aja Ekapad, Trita, Ribhuksha, Savitri, Apam Napat.
(7) Visve Devah.

त्रिवयाः

[Several blank lines]

शमि

उद्यम् in the sense of rising or raising up.

The Chariot fashioned

The Deva as the Horse सप्तिः रथ्यः

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32.

1 वचसः S. वक्तुः, it should rather be the Word that seeks the truth.

ऋतायतः”. यज्ञमिच्छतः is absurd, either seeking the truth or performing the rite.

ते .. उपस्तुते. Probably with a vocative force, “O you who are they affirmed in whom is our life, it is here enlarging itself; seeking substance I place (establish) your largeness.”

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2 गुह्या रिपः “secret harms” or those who do harm, secret enemies

तस्य S. सख्यस्य—but in reality it means “that” which we seek, beyond earth and heaven, that which comes by ष्टि.

3 “श्रुष्टिं”. S. सुखकरीं—but it is from श्रु, cf शुश्रूषा, and is probably equivalent to श्रुति .. in any case “श्रुष्टी in various passages of the Veda cannot mean शीघ्रं, if “श्रुष्टिं means सुखकरीं or सुखं.

श्रुष्टिं दुहानां धेनुं पिप्युषीमसश्चतं

पिप्युषी active or intransitive—“nourishing” or “growing fat”. Here active.

“वाजिनं” symbolism of the Horse. वचसा हिनोमि.

4 वीरं—as the horse is a figure, so वीर also is a figure—it is the internal “hero” or personal force.

उक्थ्यं the hero who has the उक्थ

राका

6 सिनीवाली

दिदिडि्ढ—S. either दिह् or दिश् in the former case = form.

[8] गुंगूर् From गृ—therefore a creative Shakti of expression, Sinivali possibly of force (सिनं, सेना), राका of joy cf सुभगा. The latter is the giver, the second the producer, the first, the creator by expression, in thought or consciousness, as Sinivali the creator in force.

इंद्राणीं. Not Indra force for increase, Varuna force for the “good-state”

(1) Dyavaprithivi 2.
(1) Indra. 4.
(5) Raka. 6.7. Sinivali
(8) Gungur, Sinivali, Raka, Saraswati, Indrani, Varunani.

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33.
1 सूर्यस्य “संदृशो” clear instance of संदृक् = sight, vision and not form or appearance.

cf स्वर्दृक्, स्वर्दृशे and ज्योतिषः प्रवसथानि

अभि अर्वति क्षमेत not “prevail over the enemy”, but prevail or “put forth his force in” अर्वत् the Horse, the Prana.

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cf v. 7 अभि मा चक्षमीथाः

“प्रजायेमहि प्रजाभिः”. Proof of the sense of प्रजा = may we be born to ourselves in our offspring.

Horse, Hero, Praja together.

2 वितरं—cf आयुः प्रतरं (II.32.1) Either drive away dispersingly cf विषूचीः or adj. of .द्वेषः

विषूचीः of various kinds or scattered various ways or adverse, alien to us.

3 अभीतीः

4 सहूती. Probably “confusion of the offerings”

5 अवदिषीय — अवखंडयामि — पृथिक्करोमि — दो अवखंडने — ष must be as in स्तुषे, गृणीषे

ऋदूदरः

“बभ्रु” Rudra—elsewhere Agni.

मनायै mind or wrath. Probably state of mind, evil or wrong being understood, or simply (inferior) mentality, cause of error in नमस् etc.

6 त्वक्षीयसा वयसा S. दीप्तेन

“विवासेयं” Evidently “dwell in” or “establish everywhere in the दुरोण”

7 अभि चक्षमीथाः D. [Dutt] ক্ষমা কর but it must be the same as in 1.

जलाषः

8 कल्मलीकिनं S. ज्वलंतं—fanciful etymology

10 “निष्कं” यजतं विश्वरूपं

अर्हन् S. अर्चनार्ह.

अभ्वं— either “destroyest all this shapeless force” of the Vritras etc दयसे or “dividest into form the chaos or Night from which the universe is born”

दयसे = to give, to destroy. Cf I.10.6. वसु दयमानः

11 नि वपंतु attack, assail or cast down.

12 कुमारः. Probably Agni.

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सप्ततिं. Here and in I.11.1. associated with wealth—वाजानां सप्ततिं पतिं

14 परि वृज्याः—cf आवृज् .. परावृज्.. I.33.

V. 1. Rudra, Pita marutam, Surya

2 – 5 Rudra. 6. Vrishabha Marutwan. 7 – 11 Rudra

12.Rudra-Kumara. 13 Maruts 14 – 15 Rudra

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34.
1 धारावराः not covering with showers, but probably like ऋतावर etc

“अर्चिनः” not “worshipping”; probably “luminous” or else “chanting the hymn”

“भृमिं”

2 “खादिनो” द्यावो न स्तुभिश्चितयंत खादिनो.

वृष्टयः S. rainers, & अभ्रियाः lightnings

3 “उक्षंते” diffuse, scatter. To sprinkle horses is absurd, so also अश्वान् = व्याप्तान् लोकान्

कर्ण probably “makers” कारक

4 पृक्षे. S. dative—in that case “for satisfaction, pleasure”, or “for the lord who satisfies, gives प्रयः”, even Mitra. It may be locative “in the Priksha, ie the Ananda”

“ऋजिप्यासः” S. अकुटिलं प्राप्नुवंतो गच्छंतः

5 “रप्शदुधभिः” gushing, flowing—cf विरप्शी. S. महोधस्कैः, but रप्शत् is obviously a participial adjective.

7 आपानं. S. आप्नुवंतं!

“इषं” वृजनेषु कारवे and coupled with मेधां & सहः but see 8.

9 चक्रिया. S. शक्त्या (ऋष्ट्या)—why not two wheels or actions? तपुषा—is it used as a noun?

10 “निदे” नवमानस्य

11 विष्णोः. S. व्यापकस्य (सोमस्य)

एषस्य. S. ऐषणीय प्रार्थनीय—rather “desiring”

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Mandala Three

III. 37.
2 वाघतः वहंति यज्ञियां धुरमिति वाघतः स्तोतारः

Close connection of Indra with वाघतः see I.3.

3 नामानि expresses the Truth of the divine Nature, his Powers in consciousness expressed by the name—numina—cf 38.4. & 7.

4 पुरुष्टुतस्य धामभिः शतेन—cf the 100 cities of Shambara

5 भरेषु & वाजेषु —cf 6. where वाज replaces भर—therefore भर is the bringing, वाज is the having.

7 पृतनाज्ये—परकीया सेना. S. तासामजने गमने—charge of the hosts. S.

पृत्सु S. takes = पृतना

साक्ष्व अभिभव

अभिमातिषु —cf 3. S. takes there मातिर्मानो गर्वः . गर्वितेषु

It may mean “obstructors” or simply “hostile”—those who cast their thoughts against

8 जागृविं सोमं पाहि S. says because it keeps people awake! Indication of psychological sense of Soma. Indra is to protect Soma in a battle, a Soma that itself fights.

9 जनेषु पंचसु इंद्रियाणि या ते. The five worlds: according to Sayana Gandharvas, Fathers, Gods, Asuras, Rakshasas or the five castes.

10 अगत्. गच्छतु S. Can it not be past sense?
उत् तिरामसि Meaning of तृ not to increase as Sayana, but

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pass through in the battle.

[11] उ लोकः S. उत्तमो लोकः. Here distinguished from अर्वावतः & परावतः

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38.
1 दीधया—hold together in thought—not as S. दीप्तां कुरु, but as a carpenter puts a car together—see v. 2.

मर्मृशत् Evidently the Manisha or else Vayu = the Prana.

Enjoy? reach? see 2 where it is solved.

संदृशो. S. संद्रष्टुम्.

2 इना. S. ईश्वरान् गुरुन्. But it is obviously Instr. = By the Lord, possibly Indra, & the subject of तक्षत.

दयां. Proof that मनीषा & द्यौः are the same—see also (5)

मनोवाताः The Life-powers in the Mind.

प्रण्यः S. प्रणीयमानाः but it may = प्रणेतारः.

जनिमा कवीनाम् कवि = Powers of the Truth—see 1.

3 दधानाः. कवयः says S. but perhaps मनोवाताः

समंजन् worked out into perfection or brightened entirely; but S. says संगतामकार्षुः

ममिरे = मात्राभिः = measured—cf also 7 & 8.

मही. S. takes = Dyau & Prithivi—but probably Dyau & Mahas.

4 श्रियो Here seems to equal “splendour”. S. takes पर्यभूषन् = अलमकुर्वन्

5 शुरुधः S. आपः । शुचः पिपासाया रोधयित्र्यो । Rather “Currents” or “Motions” or “Divided streams” or “Forces”

प्रदिव् . दिवः .. प्रदिवः = the mind turned towards sense = mediary बुद्धि—whereas the मनोवाताः have force.

नपाता. S. says Indra & Varuna. Possibly Savita & Indra.

विदथस्य धीभिः

क्षत्रं S. धनं

6 पुरूणि. S. पूर्णानि. Rather = महांति wide—therefore विदथे विश्वानि whole, in their universal wideness

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गन्धर्वान् Angels of Pleasure, therefore वायुकेशान्

Say. quotes Taittiriyika—स्वान भ्राजांघारे बंभारे हस्त सुहस्त कृशानो । एते वः सोमक्रयाणास्तान्रक्षाध्वं मा वो दभन्

7 Indra as at once Male & Female वृषभस्य धेनोः गोः

सक्म्यं S. संभजनार्हं. But it may be सच् = power.

मायिनो ममिरे. S. मायया स्विकृतकामरुपाः. But evidently has the idea of मा to measure, contain.

8 अमतिं. Force. S. दीप्तिम्

मे. S. मम. I take it = measured.

सुष्टुती the same in Padapatha. S. takes as sing. masc.

विश्वमिन्वे. S. takes = संतर्पयित्र्यौ

अपीव योषा. S. as a woman hides her children. Rather “As the Woman Prakriti has concealed the higher births through the two firmaments.”

9 महः S. श्रेयः rather g. with प्रत्नस्य

मायिनः. S. n.plu.

गोपाजिहूस्य S. whose tongue protects by saying “Don’t fear”!

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III. 39.
1 स्तोमतष्टा. S. स्तोमकारिभिः कृता—rather active? or “formed by the hymn of affirmation”. Object of Mantra.

2 दिवश्चित् The interaction of the higher thought & the lower.

3 यमा. S. Usha mother of the Aswins. Perhaps Yama & Yami.
तपुष्= Tapas. S. day.

एता. P.P. आ +इता S. एतावागतौ. Perhaps P.P. wrong & एता = एतौ.

4 निंदिता—blame or limit, obstruct.

दृंहिता = दृंहितानि

5 नवग्वैः .. दशग्वैः. The difference seems to be that the tenth finds Surya.

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अभिज्ञु अभिगतजानुकं. Evidently a double meaning. “In the births”?

6 पदूद् .. शफवद् —footed & hoofed गोधनं.

नमे गोः Saya. “he brought the cows”!

7 वृणीत Indra. विजानन् distinguishing or as S. प्रादुर्भवन् or rather “producing it by separation”?

अभीके. Sy. भयरहिते स्थाने !(?)

पुरुतमस्य पुरुन् शत्रून् ग्लापयतीति!

8 बर्हणावत् समृद्धियुक्तं

तुजतो. S. भूरिप्रदस्य.

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40.
4 चंद्रास इन्दवः Proof of the play on words in Veda.

6 अज्यसे. S. सिच्यसे. Rather “put in action”.

आदातं S. शोधितं—दैप् शोधने!

7 वनिनः यजमानस्य—वनं देवताविषयं संभजनमस्यास्तीति. Material sense “of the plant”

9 From between अर्वावत् & परावत्. Proof of the real sense of the two words.

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III. 41.
1 धुवानः It is धुवानः = हुवानः in the other text.

3 ब्रह्मवाहः used of Indra. Proof of Mentality as Indra’s function. S. स्तोत्राणि स्तुत्यतया वहतीति ब्रह्मणा प्राप्यत इति वा

4 रारंधि रमस्व

5 रिहंति

6 राधसे तन्वा महे. The only reasonable interpretation is “for a vast joy in the body.”

8 हरिप्रिय. प्रिय active = lover.

9 घृतस्नू घृत= some mental entity.

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III. 42.
1 यः अस्मयुः can only refer to सोमः

2 कुविन् S. प्रभूतं यथा भवति. Entirely. In 4. S. says बहुवारं तृप्णवः. तृप्तो भव

3 आवृते आवर्तयितुं

6 वाजेषु दधृषं. S. Battles—but it may be “seizing violently on वाज” cf 37.5.
अधा S. takes = अनंतरं & सुम्नं = धनं. It means “now we seek thy joy, not thy aggressive action”

7 गवाशिरं .. यवाशिरं.

8 स्वे ओक्ये S. in Indra’s own belly! It means “in thy own home”—ie the pure mentality

9 अवस्यवः Protection? or “secure being”?

प्रत्नं

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III. 43.
1 तवेद् अनु प्रदिवः ἀνά—along & from. Note “The Pradiv.”

सखाया S. the two horses समानख्यानौ, but see 4.

2 चर्षणीः S. प्रजाः either “many worlds of creatures” which is impossible, or leaving aside many doers.

3 तूयं S. swiftly

नमोवृधं S. अन्नस्य वर्धकं!! Either “increasing adoration” or “increasing by it”

सजोषा S. सहप्रीतिः cf 44.1. जुषाणः प्रीतिविषयः

4 वंदनानि adorations, wooings.

5 कुविन् obviously not once; but it may be “at once” or “utterly”.

करसे S. कुरु but करसे & शिक्षाः are obviously old forms for करोषि & शिक्षसि

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जनस्य गोपां either जन = मयोलोक or = world.

वस्वो अमृतस्य substance of immortal being.

म. P.P. मा

ऋषिं पपिवांसं सुतस्य Soma drinking & divine knowledge
राजानं. In the same sense as Varuna etc are Kings. सम्राट् शिक्षाः not therefore teach—

6 हरयः Plur. Many horses of Indra—in the same hymn as the two. But they come द्विता

सधमादः

आताः S. दिशः—he derives from अत् to go. Rather आ to be, cover, pervade or अत् d[itt]o.

ऋंजंति S. साधयंति.

मूराः here not = foolish therefore अमूराः not = wise. S.

मारकाः—absurd. Either “protecting”, not probable—or “comprehending, containing”

7 उशते—here undoubtedly = desirer

ते श्येनः The Hawk is sometimes Indra, sometimes Indra’s.

वृषधूतस्य वृष्णः The Mighty One poured forth by the Mighty One.

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III. 44. Hymn decisive for sense of हरि, हरित, हर्यत & Indra as a god of Light.

1 हर्यतः Here = light, तेजः, but may also mean light of joy.

हरिभिः S. takes ग्रावभिः see 5. It means “The luminous powers of the Mind” used as stones

हरितं Decisive for हरित्

2 उषसमर्चयः Decisive for sense of “illuminate” in अर्च्, ऋच् विद्वांश्चिकित्वान्. Association of हर्यश्व, उषा, सूर्य & light generally with knowledge.

श्रियः “splendours” or “forces” or “movements of light”

[3] चरत् S. चरति

वर्पस् body or energy—opposed to धायस् ? or rather each takes on the quality of the other.

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5 हयँतं वज्रं cf 4. Here again we have opposition of हरि & शुक्र अपावृणोत् Revealing of Soma—cf I.23.14

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III. 45.
1 मंद्रैः .. मयूररोमभिः Horses of Indra.

धन्वेव P.P. धन्व इव—as over a desert.

विं न पाशिनः विं = manifestation पाश = παχύς, पाषाण — material powers—so धन्व.

2 वृत्रखादः. Piercing; breaking through—खाद् —cf खन् etc.

अवखाद्.

वलंरुजः Breaking Vala, the wall

अभिस्वरे S. आभिमुख्येन प्रेरणे—I take it in the ordinary sense of स्वर—Indra & the Word.

3 कुल्या—कृत्रिमसरितः The usual covert simile of cows & waters.

4 तुजं putting forth force—force? S. शत्रूणां बाधकं

अंशं न प्रतिजानते S. धनस्य भागं. It seems rather to mean Light & be connected with अंशु of Soma & Surya.

अंकीव अंकुशी यथा. Shake the tree as a man with his hooked stick shakes down a ripe fruit.
संपारणं वसु S. सम्यक् पूरकं वसु. But it may mean “substance adequate for the entire passage”

5 स्वयुः. S. धनवान्. Felicitous, blissful or Self-forceful, self-applying. S. स्वशब्दान्मत्वर्थीयो युः — cf शं योः

स्वराट्. S. स्वर्गस्य राजा in 46.1. धनाधिपतेः

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III. 46.
1 स्थविरस्य. S. चिरन्तनस्य

श्रुतस्य S. प्रसिद्धस्य. Even here it may = having श्रवः or realised through श्रवः

2 महान्.. महिष Connected in sense with महान्

वृष्णयेभिः S. वीर्यैः It follows that वृषन् must be capable of

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meaning वीरः

3 प्ररिरिचे S. अतिरिक्तोऽभूत् Than the mountains (मात्रा)! Either “enriches himself” or “exceeded”.

मात्राभी .. देवेभिः Exceeded all measures, exceeded the gods & was unappalled.

उरोर्महो अन्तरिक्षाद् . This seems to refer to something vaster than heaven & earth & may mean the Antariksha of Mahas.

4 जनुषा—either “from birth” or “जनुषा अभि” intense or forceful (cf ओजः) in his relations with the worlds.

प्रदिवि S. पूर्वैष्वहःसु —either “in the morning”, “on a former day” or “in the foreheaven”—so also प्रदिवः

अवतं. S. रक्षकं—may be “reservoir”, “well”

5 त्वाया त्वत्कामतया

अध्वर्यवः S. अध्वरं यजमानायेच्छंतः—

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III. 47.
1 रणाय .. मदाय. Sense of delight for रण—object of सोमपान

3 Maruts अनु त्वा अहन् वृत्रं ..यानभजः (असोवथाः — for युद्ध. S.).

Relation of Indra & Maruts.

4 विप्राः Marutah etc.

S. takes in 3. अनु अभजंत & अहन् = thou slayedst.

5 अकवारि with शासं shows कव = काव्य

दिव्यं शासं S. शासितारं (हितोपदेशाहितपरिहाराभ्यां). Indra as Divine Expression

अवसे नूतनाय Here not “protection” but new state of being.

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III. 48.
1 कनीनः S. कमनीयः. Rather the Male who goes to the girls (virgins) who are to be enjoyed.
आवत् रक्षतु.

रसाशिरः गोपयोमिश्रणोपेतं—cf साधोः which agrees well with the idea of aspiration

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2 यत्.. तदहः on the day on which you were born

गिरिष्ठाम् गिरि being expressed, पर्वत being completed or high; अद्रिः, being formed into substance.

परि—all round

योषा जनित्री Aditi Anandamayi—Mahah Pitur. The Vijnanamaya Purusha

3 ऐट्ट. S. अयाचत ईड् sought for .. cf अपश्यत् the result of the seeking.

ऊधः a teat of abundance.

4 वशं. कामं

t तुराषाळ् त्वरयाभिभविता— rather तरसाभिभविता

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III. 49.
1 धिषणे. Earth & Heaven. (S.)

विभ्वतष्टं विभुना ब्रह्माणा स्थापितं

2 द्विता तरति either “breaks through by separating” or “breaks through in the double consciousness”

पृथुज्रयाः तीव्रवेगः S. जृ is either “to break, wear away” or “to love, woo, enjoy”

सत्वभिः. S. सीदद्भिः मरुद्भिः. Rather “by powers of being” & “powers of force”.

3 कारे मतीनाम् effecting of the thoughts.

4 क्षपां वस्ता The coverer of night. (S.) Rather “illuminer” in the night or else “dweller”.

पृष्ट. P.P. पृष्टः. Probably corrupt for पृष्ठे. S. सर्वत्र वर्तमानः

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III. 50.
1 स्वाहा. S. स्वाहाकृतं सोमं

तुम्रः. S. हिंसकः the smiter?

मरुत्वान् The Maruts are the conscious energies of man’s mind & the word means sometimes generally a god.

आ ऋध्याः S. सर्वतः पूरयतु

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2 सपर्यू S. परिचारकौ. It is clear from this passage that सपर्या need not mean “adoration or service”. It means then the seeking to reach, obtain or know.

प्रदिवः. S. पुरातनः

श्रुष्टिं. S. वेगं — Y. श्रुष्टिति क्षिप्रनाम. अन्वावः अनुगच्छसि. The horses bring Indra through the Pradiv to earth (इह) & he keeps (maintains) their knowledge in the lower world.

सुशिप्र

3 मिमिक्षुं wishing to unite himself with the Rays or to unite the yajamana with the light. But S. takes as from मिह् & गोभिः with दधिरे

4 वाहः

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III. 51.
1 चर्षणि. S. यद्वा आकृषंत्यनेन सर्वमिति चर्षणि बलं तद्धारकं

2 धामसाचमभिषाचं [स्वर्विदं] powerful in the seats, powerful to attain, finder of heaven.

3 आकरे—cf आ चक्रुः .. आ भू etc.

अनेहसः S. अपापा. एहः sin of force, एनः sin of delight.

4 नमो अस्य. S. नमसोऽस्य. अस्य may refer either to Indra or the human soul.

5 निष्षिधो S. अनुशासनानि rather—perfected formations or fulfilments.

जीरयो वनानि. S. जिर्यंत इति जीरयो मनुष्याः

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Mandala Four

Glossary

2.1 अरतिः

Apte. Anger, passion .. 2 Ved. going, moving .. 3 moving flame .. 4 occupying, attacking .. 5 servant, manager, assistant .. 6 master .. 7 an intelligent being.

अर् (ऋ) indicates any strong or laborious movement or action or preeminent position .. eg to climb, to fight, to row, to cultivate.

In the Veda it seems to indicate at least in its surface sense Agni as one who travels between heaven and earth through the mid air.

2 ऋष्व
Sayana. 1. beautiful. 2. great.

Apte. Ved. great, noble, high.

But cf kindred words.

ऋष् = 1. to go, approach, flow, glide —movement
    2. to push —movement, pressure
    3. to kill, injure, pierce —hostile pressure [ऋषभ bull (the gorer), also ऋष्टि double-edged sword—any weapon (sword, lance, spear)]
    It must also have meant
    4. to shine

ऋषिः a sage (1) or (4) .. ray of light (4) (cf सूरिः, विप्र etc)

ऋषु going (1) .. great, powerful, strong (3) .. wise (1) or (4)
    a ray of the sun (4) .. firebrand (4)

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ऋष्य a white-footed antelope .. a kind of leprosy (4?)

रुष्यक a painted or white-footed antelope.

मुष्कः testicle, scrotum
    a muscular or robust man (why not, muscle?)
    mass, heap, quantity, multitude
    thief.

Cf मुष्, मुषक, मुषा मुषी a crucible, मुष्टि

मुष् to hurt, kill .. steal .. break .. destroy .. ruin, undo .. abduct .. dispel, drive off .. eclipse, cover, conceal .. captivate .. surpass, excel.

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Mandala Five

V.1.
(1) यव्हा इव प्र वयामुज्जिहानाः S. like great trees sending up a branch. But there are no trees & वया in the singular is opposed to this interpretation.

(3) यदीं गणस्य रशनामजीगः. S. when he throws out or seizes the darkness which is the rope of the collective world binding its activities.

If रशना can = tongue, then it may be, when he has put out the tongue of his cohorts. Otherwise when he has uncoiled the rope that binds together his hosts.

अड्ंक्ते — shines. S. manifests the whole world.

गोभिः गो in the sense of light—cows impossible.

दक्षिणा—S. increased stream of आज्य is applied & Agni drinks it उपरि विस्तृताम्. Dakshina is the goddess of Viveka increasing the substance of illumined force. It is not here the Dawn.

उत्ताना. Here an epithet of Dakshina.

(4) उषसा. S. with Dawn & विरूपे Heaven & Earth. But rather Night & Dawn.

(5) हितो placed. Can it not mean “helpful, beneficent”?
सप्त रत्ना. For रत्ना—cf हित & वन. Otherwise “Lights” is better.

(6) In the lap of the Mother & in the rapturous other world.

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Explanation of द्विता

सुरभौ S. fragrant with आज्यादि. But रभ् either force or ecstasy.

मध्य between Heaven & Earth, in the Pranic worlds.

(7) In the Madhya he is वाजी the steed.

(8) This is the result of the illumining—in the Tapoloka or Uloka.

तदोजाः. तत् refers to Para, the highest. S. makes it = प्रसिद्धः

(10) क्षितयो may well here be the worlds, near & far from his own home स्वे दमूनाः

(11) समन्तं. S. समीचीनप्रांतोपेतं

(12) मेध्याय S. मेधार्हाय. The connection between मेध, मेधिर, मेधा has to be examined. Here मेध्य with कवि seems to equal मेधिर.

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V.2.
(1) मिनंति contain, limit, diminish or even hold.

समुब्धं S. crushed or entirely hidden.

अनीकं S. रूपं—rather force—cf अनीकिनी

(2) पेषी .. महिषी—cut, ie confined or shaped, defined, & large.

(3) मिमानं. S. निर्मिमाणं

विपृक्कत् S. सर्वतो व्याप्तं ददानो —दातास्मि

अमृतं in sense of Soma.

(5) मर्यकं

अरणः—fighter—effective aspirer.

(6) वसां. S. वसतां प्राणिनाम्

निंदितारो Confiners—cf next verse निंदितं.

अरातयो. Enemies or powers of undelight.

[Incomplete]

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Book V

1 यह्वा .. वयाम् . As puissant forces (or, as streams) that discharge upwards their expansion.

3 रशनाम् tongue or cord .. “put out the tongue” or “uncoiled the cord”. Probably the latter.

अंक्ते becomes bright.

उत्तानाम् either “supine” or “straining upwards”

5 हितो हितेषु —fixed in fixed growths of the world & there active (red) ..

6 सुरभा उ लोके. Decisive against sense of fragrant for सुरभि.

7 मृजंति strengthen or brighten. Probably latter cf 8. मार्जाल्यो मृज्यते स्वे दमूनाः

9 ईळेन्यो one to be sought.

10 भंदिष्ठस्य—man or world?

11 समंतम्

12 मेध्याय .. वंदारु

स्तोमं .. रुक्ममुरुव्यंचम् . Decisive against limitation of the sense of !tom to “praise”.

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2.
1 अनीकं—force or being. अन् to be.

2 पेषी बिभर्षि महिषी जजान

3 आयुधा मिमानं. मा to hold or to form.

ददानो. Pr. P. used as a verb.

4 सनुतश्चरन्तं. Like शश्वत् continuously or else perpetually.

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5 मर्यकं force.

6 वसाम् .. वसतिं. Those who dwell in the substance of being as its Purushas—the Gods.

अरातयो नि दधुः. Enemies or Powers of undelight concealed. निंदितारो निंद्यासो भवंतु referring to नि दधुः must mean binders, confiners—cf निदितं in the next verse.

9 विनिक्षे

10 स्वानासो Sounds, but how are sounds sharp-weaponed?
Perhaps स्व +अन—self-forces. S. sounding flames

भामाः. S. क्रोधा दिप्तयो वा

11 प्रतिहर्याः S. प्रतिकामयेथाः. Why not “rejoice in”? हृ of any emotion, joy, anger—cf 8. etc. Gr. χαίρω
V.11.1.
Agni awake & rightly discerning for a new progress on the good path. जागृविः सुदक्षः सुविताय नव्यसे घृतप्रतीकः ghrita .. dakshah .. suvitam

(2) The perceiving vision in the sacrifice—केतुः but in v. 3 धूमस्ते केतुरभवद् दिवि श्रितः. The smoke of thee, in the obscure nervous activities of the mind & heart, is turned when it reaches the plane of pure intelligence into perceptive vision.

(4) अग्निं वृणाना वृणते कविक्रतुं— vrin.

उप वेतु (yajnam) approach or manifest

(6) Thee, O Agni, the powers of the Strength found placed in the hidden parts of being (the subconscious) established in each object of pleasure; thence by pressure thou art born a mighty force; thee, O Angiras, [they call] the child of Strength.

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Mandala Six

Rig Veda. Mandala VI

(1) मनोता. Cf Greek termination οτƞς (δƞμóτƞς). S. देवानां मनो यत्र संबद्धे भवति. Aitareya Br. अग्निः सर्वमनोताग्नौ मनोताः संगच्छंते
द्रुष्टरितु . Term. ईतु . Passive sense तृ = pierce
सहसे सहध्यै. Vedic construction. Dat. of objective, attraction.
सहध्यै. Old infinitive—of purpose
अकृणोः. V. form from कृ

(2) न्यसीदः. V. form सद्
प्रथमं. S. first before the other gods. It should have the same sense in 1.
चितयंतः This seems to be the अय् form without causal signification.
ग्मन् Vedic form गम्

(3) यन् This form shows या = य
वसव्यैः S. वसुभिः (स्वार्थिकस्तद्धितप्रत्ययः) यजमानानां निवासयोग्यैर्वा.
रयिं S. जागृवांसः = प्रयच्छंतः is wildly impossible. It is better to take a double accusative with अनुग्मन् = “following thee in thy path and in thee following after wealth.” त्वे. V. decl. of त्वं—direct addition of इ.
वपावंतं
विश्वहा. हा termination
दीदिवांसं. V. reduplication & वान् termination—for वांसं cf विद्वान्

(4) पदं. S. आहवनीयस्थानं—but = धाम as in विष्णोः परमं पदं.
आपन् S. आप्नुवंति although he takes पूर्वै यजमानाः

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रणयंत. अय् form without causal sense. S. रमयंति
नामानि S. नमनीयानि वैश्वानरो जातवेदा इत्यादीनि—अथवा नमन- साधनानि स्तोत्राणि धारयंति व्यंतः. V. form रणयंत दघिरे अमृक्तं.
अन्यैरपरिबाध्यमानं

(5) रायः. S. takes acc. पश्वपशुरुपाणि & second त्वां = त्वामुद्दिश्य or धनानि प्राप्तुं त्वां वर्धंति & जनानां—पुत्रादीमर्थाय
त्राता तरणे. S. त्राता = रक्षिता & तरणे—दुःखात्तारक
चेत्यो. S. ज्ञातव्यः स्तुत्यः
V. forms वर्धंति .. चेत्यो N. form उभयासः feminine.

(6) प्रियः. S. कामानां पूरकः मंद्रः. S. मदनीयः
उपसदेम. S. आसादयेम or उपासीदेम
V. forms सपर्येण्य Passive sense निषसाद उपसदेम

(7) नव्यं. S. स्तुत्यं or new?
दिवः. S. दिवः = स्वर्गमगमयः (yet he takes विशः = स्तोतृनस्मान् ) —or गमय—in first case रोचनेन = रोचमानेन तेजसा in latter आदित्येन = आदित्यमार्गेण—but दिवो रोचनेन is a fixed phrase = by or along the vast luminous world of heaven = स्वः Verbal forms ईमहे दीद्यानः देवयंतः (causal form) सुम्नायवः (cf सुम्नयुः Go[tama] Rah[ugana]).

(8) शश्वतीनां. S. नित्यानाम् नितोशनं. S. शत्रूणां हिंसकं
चर्षणीनां. S.takes with प्रेतिषणिं but cf I.7.8 & 9 वृषा यूथेव वंसगः कृष्टीरियर्ति ओजसा & य एकश्चर्षणीनां वसूनामिरज्यति
प्रेतिषणिं etc—S. प्राप्तगमनम् (प्रेति +इषणिं) but take with इषयंतं speeding him who would speed in the forward journey.
यजतं रयीणां. S. लाभाय यष्टव्यं—absurd—then it must be “creator or bringer by sacrifice of riches”—but why not राजंतं रयीणां cf अग्ने वाजस्य गोमत ईशानः (Go. Rah.) V. form इषयंतं (causal with causal sense, shows origin of causal sense)

(9) शशमे. S. स्तौति. शशमान इति स्तुतिकर्मसु पाठादिदमपि स्तुतिकर्म.
आनट् करोति. परि वेद. परितो वेत्ति—ददातीत्यर्थः
Verbal forms ईजे शशमे आनट् दधते. Middle sense Nominal दाति. त्वा = त्वया

(10) महे विधेम—अधिकं परिचरेम. विधेम also with गिर्भिरुक्थैः

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आ यतेम—आगच्छेम । भवेमेत्यर्थः
Verbal forms विधेम—आ यतेम. Nom. वेदी. Syntax. महि विधेम

(11) श्रवस्यः. S. भवसि अस्मे. अस्मदर्थं
Vb forms. ततंथ विभाहि Syn. अस्मे

(12) नृवत् . S. मनुष्यैरुपेतं धनं. अस्मे = अस्मासु —in 11 अस्मदर्थं
पूर्वीः. S. पूरयित्र्यः कामानां बह्व्यो वा
Vb forms धेहि. Nom. पश्व Syn. भूरि .. पश्व (so Sayana)

(13) पुरूधा. गवाश्वादिरूपेण बहुप्रकाराणि. वसुता. वसुतायै वसुमत्त्वाय.
ते with वसूनि Bharatswami सप्तम्यंतं चकार भट्टभास्करमिश्रोऽप्येकपदं संबुद्व्यंतं चकार अश्यां. व्याप्नुयां भुंजीय वा
राजनि. राजमाने त्वे त्वयि—second त्वे = त्वां after विधते
Nom forms त्वाया. Syn. वसुता.
VI. 45

1 तुर्वशं यदुं brought from the Supreme सुनीती.

2 अविप्रे चिद्वयो दधद् —विप्र & वयः connected immediately with अर्वत्—Thought & Nervous System—cf 12

3 ऊति. प्रशस्ति. Vast are his leadings forward, many his manifestations (expressions of being & knowledge) & his increasings waste not. Cf fn ऊति. 14 – 17.

4 Indra ब्रह्मावाहस् & प्रमतिर्मही

5 एक .. द्वयोः. अविता ईदृशे

6.7 उक्थशंसिनः cf 4. उच्चसे .. गीर्भिः ऋग्मियं गाम्

8 द्विता cf 5

9 मायाः विवृह दृढानि

11 हिते धने—cf 2 which settles definitely the sense of हित in this phrase.

12 धिभिरर्वद्भिरर्वतः cf 2.
श्रवाय्यान् cf 10

13 वितंतसाय्यः भरे

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14 ऊति

16 कृष्टीनां विचर्षणिः .. पतिर्वृषक्रतुः

17 आपिः .. शिवः सखा (आपिरुती)

18 गभस्त्योः arms (to take—cf गृभ् also cows—cf गोभिः also rays.) Heaven & Earth.

19 युजं—रयीणाम्. Is it युजं सखायं—comrade & friend or yoke with felicities?

कीरिचोदनं ब्रह्मावाहस्तमं

20 अघ्रिगुः गिर्वणस्तमः गिः & गुः together.

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Mandala Seven

VII.41. Bhaga—

2 आध्रः (आध्रश्चित् .. तुरश्चिद्राजा चित्) S. दरिद्रः
मन्यमानः—either “thinking upon, meditating, mentalising” or “he who thinks himself”
भगं भक्षीति.

3 उदव (इमां धियमुदवा ददत्रः)
प्र जनय cf प्रजायेम in other hymns. S. প্রবৃদ্ধ কর

4 प्रपित्वे. (प्रपित्वे उत मध्ये अन्हाम्)

6 सं नमंत. नमस् = submission शुचये पदाय. S. “let them come to the sacrifice for a pure place”

7 प्रपीताः. S. प्रवृद्धाः.
उषसः गो अश्व वीर घृतं

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42.Viҫwa Devas.

1 The two stones अद्री (Heaven & Earth)
The form of the sacrifice अध्वरस्य पेशः
अंगिरसः (ब्रह्माणः)
The thundering of the Lord of the clouds.
The Cows धेनवः उदप्रुतः

2 The colours of Agni’s horses

3 The births of the Gods.
प्ररिरिचे
अरमतिं अनीक

6 विश्वप्श्न्यस्य (रायस्कामः)

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43.Viςwadevas.

1 इषध्यै. S. for getting you
ब्रह्माणि (असमानि विष्वग्वियंति)

2 हेत्वः (सप्तिः) देवयूनि (ऊर्ध्वा शोचींषि)

3 विभृत्राः. Sy. specially पालनीय
बर्हिः (सानौ बर्हिषः)
अनक्तु (आ विश्वाची विदथ्याम्) Shakti (विश्वाची)

4 ऋतस्य धाराः. ज्येष्ठं मह आ वसूनाम्

5 दशस्य आस्क्रा (? न आस्क्राः.) Sy. अपरित्यक्त

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44.Dadhikra

2 अश्विना विप्रा

3 दधिक्रावाणं .. अग्निं (also 2, 4, 5) उषसं सूर्यं गां
ब्रध्नं (बभुं). मंश्चतोः

5 ऋतस्य पंथाम् . दैव्यं शर्धो अग्निः

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45.Savitri

1 सुरत्नः (cf 3. मर्तभोजनं) भूम—Sy. भूतजातं. (महस्?)

2 The two arms of Surya—बाहू cf 4. गभस्ति
पनिष्ट Conclusive for sense of “labour”
अस्मे this being—S. = Savitri
सूरः Gen. or nom.?

3 अमतिम् S. रूपं

4 गभस्तिम वयः
VII.61.
Surya—स मन्युं मर्त्येष्वाचिकेत. Surya perceives the mentality in man, ie the Vijnana awakes in the mind of man & moulds it into the forms of Truth. He extends (forms) the vision in the seeker after godhead. चक्षुः सुप्रतीकं देवयोस्ततन्वान्. Therefore the man becomes illumined & possessed of the truth &

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with a mind to which inspirations come from all the regions of consciousness. ऋतावा विप्रो मन्मानि दीर्घश्रुदियर्ति.

दीर्घश्रुत्. The clear use of श्रुति for the inspiration since it is used here of the utterer, not the hearer of the prayer.

शरदः. Ye filled the time-periods with the activity of the Will.

क्रतु . Will. Action. Power of Action. Here it means the Will in the action of sacrifice

Mahas described as प्र दिवः ऋष्वादृूहतः

ऋष्व

बृहद् द्यौः

स्पशः éclaireurs. Mitra & Varuna place their powers of illumination who awake consciousness in the growths of earth & in its peoples.

रुधग्यतो

प्र वृजनं तिराते. Here वृजनं seems to mean the same as वृजिनं, but it may also mean strength or abundance. In that case प्रतिराते has to be fixed in some other meaning.

निण्यानि as opposed to अनृता

यज्ञमन्मा Whose thinking is a sacrifice to the gods or whose thought is for the sacrifice

मन्मानि ऋचसे नवानि कृतानि ब्रह्म. Here ब्रह्म seems to mean the soul—otherwise it has a special sense different from मन्मानि.

ऋचस् Throws light on ऋच्. Not worship, but illumination.

VII.62.
Surya made by ऋतु, the Will in action & perfected by the doers.

उपममकँ,. Arka, Archis, Rich.

Mitra मित्रस्य प्रियतमस्य नृणां । The most loved or the most loving of the Purushas.

Aditi different from Earth.

गव्यूतिमुक्षतं घृतेन

VII.63.
समानं चक्रं साधारणः मानुषाणाम् समानं न प्रतिनाति धाम— All referring to the Mahas or Vijnana which is the same for all mortals.

रेभैरनुमद्यमानः—Proof of रेभ in the sense of joyous or lords of joy.

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Surya is the eye or vision of Mitra & Varuna—see 61.1.

Artha—the goal. दूरेअर्थस्तरणिः

अयत्रर्थानि कृणवत्रपांसि

पाथः the goal.

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Mandala Eight

1.Pragatha Ghaura or Kánwa etc.

(1) रिषण्यत—
सचा सुते one expression or सचा with स्तोत

(2) अवक्रक्षिणं—with straight horns? क्षिण from क्षि to pierce, hurt .. or who strikes straight—or of the straight track

यथाजुरं rightly smiting or destroying—otherwise, rightly enjoying

गां—earth or cow.

विद्वेषणं—destroying .. or dividing

(3) यच्चिद्वि—either “whenever” or “for whatever”

च—either emphatic with विश्वा, “become that & an increaser
of all forces or manifestation”.

(4) ऊतये
Eighth Book: Words.

76
1 वृंजस् শত্রুচ্ছেদন

2 पर्वन् वज्रेण शतपर्वणा (সন্ধি)

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4 स्वर्—Swarga.

5 ऋजीषिणं. Associated with ओजस्वी and विरप्शी.
विरप्शिनं

9 दिविष्टिषु—শ্বর্গপ্রাপ্তিহেতু যজ্ঞে
शिशानः—তীক্শ্ন কর

10 अवेपयः—হনুদ্বয় কম্পিত কর

? 11 क्रक्षमाणं—destroying the enemy
अकृपेतां তোমার কল্পনা করে

? 12 नवस्रक्तिं অষ্টদিক ও নবদিকব্যাপী স্তুতিও ইন্দ্রাপেক্ষা ন্যুন | আমি সেই স্তুতি সম্পাদন করিতেছি |

77
1 शृण्विरे

2 निष्टुरः. তাহাদের নিস্তার করা উচিত.

? 3 खेदया রজ্জুদ্বারা
सम् अखिदत् যুগপৎ আকর্ষণ করিলেন.
खे

? 4 एकया प्रतिधा. যুগপৎ
? काणुका. কমনীয় with सरांसि = পাত্র

? 5 गन्धर्वं—মেঘকে হিংসা করিলেন

? 6 बुंदं—বান

? 7 ब्रध्न—সতাগ্রবিশিষ্ট

8 नृभ्यो नारिभ्यः—स्त्रीपुरुष
ऋभुष्ठिर—প্রভূত এবং স্থির

? 10 एमुषं

11 तुविक्षं বাহুবানক্ষেপী
सूमयं সুখকর
? ऋदूपे মর্ম্মভেদী ?
ऋदूवृधा যজ্ঞ বর্দ্ধক

78
2 व्यंजनं अभ्यंजनं ? অলংকার?
मना—মনোহর

3 शृण्विषे—(कर्णशोभना) cf 77.1

4 वृधीकः increaser (like thee)

5 Indra scorns no one, is not overcome!

? 6 चिकीषते—স্থান দেন না
Indra is not hurt by men, does not get angry; it is before

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blaming that he does not get angry.

7 उदरं. Indra’s stomach is full of the work of his servant

8 सोम. Soma drinker?!
सुदातु . সুদান সর্ব্বদাই কুটিলতারহিত

9 एषते goes

10 आशसा—আশায়
दात्रं scythe
? दिनस्य পুর্ব্বছিন্ন অথবা পূর্ব্ব সংগৃহিত
काशिना—মুষ্ঠি

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Eighth Book: Ideas

76
1 Indra the Mayin with the Maruts.

2.3 Indra, the Maruts, Vritra. Breaking head, cleaving Vritra asunder, loosing the waters. Hundred-limbed Vajra

समुद्रिया अपः Waters of the Ocean.

4 Winning of Swar by Indra & Maruts for Soma-drinking.

5 Indra Rijishin, Ojaswin, Marutwan.

6 The Ancient Thought

8 हृदा हुयंत उक्थिनः

9 Soma drunk दिविष्टिषु while sharpening the Vajra

11 The Rodasi lighten in response to Indra

12 The eight footed word ऋतस्पृशं

Creation of body & word

Rodasi and Rita

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77
2 ҫavasî as name of Aditi—Indra son of Çavas Aurnavabha Ahiҫuva

4 Three hundred lakes of Soma.

5 Gandharva. अबुध्नेषु रजःसु

6 Food taken out from the Mountains

7 Arrow of Indra & 11 Bow

8 Indra Ribhusthira

9 Mountains held with all encompassing hearts

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10 Vishnu & Indra.
A hundred Buffalos. Kshira & Food
The Boar

11 The Arms of Indra.
VIII.82.
1 Indra both brings down the nectar & drinks it
प्रभर्मणि—cf भृमिं. Bringing or Filling—cf 83.8.

2 दधृग्यथोचिषे.

[3] वराय मन्यवे. The highest mentality—cf उपमे रोचने दिवः in 4.

also 84.4.

4 Thou art called to enter into the hymns (expressions)

नि उक्थानि च हूयसे—cf प्र सोम इन्द्र हूयते

Sense of द्योः= mind.

5 गोभिः श्रीतः mixed with or made splendid by—cf चन्द्रमा इव ददृशे.

7 चमसेष्वा & चमूषु

8 Soma in the vessels as the Moon in the Waters.

9 The Hawk brings nectar for Indra

अस्पृतं

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83.
1 अवः .. ऊति presence .. for increase.

3 अति नो विष्पिता पुरु

You are the charioteers of Truth.

5 नेमादित्या अघस्य यत्

6 सुदानवः effective or powerful. You perfect in capacity.

7 एषां सजात्यानाम् . Kinship of Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman.

8 Bhratritwa —

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84.
[1] अग्निं रथं न वेद्यं

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2 Agni doubles in knowledge in mortals as Kavi & Prachetas, so set by the gods

3 रक्षा तोकमुत तमना

5 Agni Master of Force सहसो यहो

The sacrifice offered by the mind—दाशेम कस्य मनसा यज्ञस्य

6 नस्करो गिरः सुक्षितीः

7 गो परीणसो धियः .. गोषाता गिरः

8 मर्जयंत सुक्रतुं

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85.
5 छर्दियँतमदाभ्यं

7.8 The Ass of the Aswins (रासभ) & their triple car with the three fronts.

9 गिरः .. प्रावतं

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86.
1 दस्रा—fulfilling the Karma; दस्रा भिषजा मयोभुवा
दक्षस्य वचसः either the discerning Word or the expressive Discernment.
तनु—तनुकृथे

2 वस्यइष्टये also 3.

3 विष्णाप्वे

4 अवसे—दूरे चित्संतमवसे—but also धनसां
पितुः of the father. (Accentuation)

5 शमायते not here “sacrifice”

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87.
1 इरिणा see 4.
क्रिविः
सेकः
स दिवि प्रियः. Is स here = यः, old idiom?

2 घर्मं मधुमंतं

Manifestation protected by Knowledge.
वयः

3 ऊतिभिः here neither protection nor favour, though both are possible; but cf वयः in the previous line.

5 प्रुषितप्सुभिः प्सु either “form” or “colour” unless प्रुषित is as in घृतप्रुषः

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6 वल्गू दस्रा पुरुदंससा
धिया श्रुष्ट्या

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88.
1 ऋतीषहं. Journey, movement?

2 सुदानु = effectivity, capacity.
क्षुमंतं वाजं full of contents?

3 मावते—part. not “like me”

4 ऋत्वा शवसा दंसना .. मज्मना

6 परिष्टिः

4 अर्क ऊतये

5 रजः पार्थिवं

---

89.
2 अभिशस्तीरशस्तिहा.
अपाधमद्

4 धृषन्मनः

6 हस्कृतिः

7 सामन् .. सुवृक्तिभिः

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90.
1 परमज्याः ऋचीषमः

3 अनतिद्भुता
योजना—(युग [    ]

4 वृत्रा न्यृजसे (Probably ऋज् root of ऋजु)

5 अनुत्ता

6 इव = and —
कृत्तिः (महीव शरणा ते)

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91.
1 वारवायती 2 विचाकशत् (विकाशः) वीरकः

2 जंभसुतं ..

3 नेमसि शनैः शनकैः

4 पतिद्विषो यतीः (the Apas?) 6 तनू ततस्य

7 रथ .. अनस्.. युग खे .. अपालाम्

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Mandala Nine

Critical Notes

1 पवस्व । There seems always to be a double sense in the use of पू throughout this book, to flow or pour and to be purified or to purify. “Flow so as to be purified” seems to be the sense, intransitively; “pour it in its purity” the sense of the transitive. Cf v. 6. The Sun’s daughter sends thee flowing (down) pure by her supreme extension; the ten sisters receive thee.”

2 द्रु —perhaps the चमू —the body

सधस्थं. The place of sadhana (self-development & self-perfection); one of the three, mind, vital parts & body, perhaps the physical consciousness. Perhaps the three taken together as one. Cf the epithet.

3 पर्षि Carry over to its goal—cf पार्ये दिवि. The wealth of divine delight is to be brought into the body, the physical consciousness.

4 Having manifested in the body, the Ananda is to bring the consciousness to the divine manifestation.

5 अर्थं—the field of movement—cf [    ]

The object of चरामसि

8 बाकुरं perhaps = of the goat or sheep.

9 श्रिणंति—brighten? enter in? Here we reach the streams of the Infinite Consciousness. अन्ध्या धेनवः ।

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Soma

मदः 1.1. sweetness and intoxication—1.10 .. 2.7, 8

The stream of Soma
धारा 1.1 .. 2.3, 9 .. 3.7, 10 ..

योनि 1.2 (अयोहतं) .. 2.2

द्रु 1.2

Epithets
रक्षोहा 1.2
विश्वचर्षणिः 1.2
वरिवोधा 1.3
मंहिष्ठः 1.3
वृत्रहा 1.3
शिशु 1.9
वृषा 2.1, 2, 6
द्युम्नवान् 2.2
धर्णसिः 2.2
धरुणो दिवः 2.5
प्रिय 2.3
वेधाः 2.3
सुक्रतुः 2.3
महान् 2.4, 6
अस्मयुः 2.5
हरिः 2.6 .. 3.3, 9
उ लोककृत्नु 2.8
वाजसा 2.10 (1.4)
अश्वसा 2.10
नृषा 2.10
शूरः 3.4
अमर्त्यः 3.1
स्वध्वरः 3.8

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पुरुव्रतः 3.10
अदाभ्यः 3.2
अस्पृतः 3.8

सूर्यस्य दुहिता 1.6

वार 1.6

दृति (cowskin over wood above hole?)

दश स्वसारः
अण्वीः 1.7

हिन्वंति सोमं 1.8

त्रिधातु मधु 1.8

श्रीणंति 1.9

Cows and Soma 1.9
श्रीणंति 1.9
गोभिर्वासयिष्यसे 2.4
गोषा 2.10

Journey of Soma 1.4, 5 .. 2.4
अति हूरांसि 3.2
Journey a battle 3.4, 5

पवस्य 1.1; 2.1, 9

Indra and Soma 1.1, 9, 10 .. 2.1, 9

पवित्र 2.1 .. 3.9 ..

Purifying of Soma 1.6

Enjoyment
महि प्सरः 2.2

Sweetness
स्वादु 1.1 .. अधुक्षत प्रियं मधु 2.3

Soma and Waters
अपो वसिष्ट 2.3
अर्षंति महीरापः 2.4

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अप्सु मामृजे 2.5
अपो विगाहते 3.6

Soma and Surya
सं सूर्येण रोचते 2.6

Soma and Mitra
मित्रो न दर्शतः 2.6

Cry of Soma
2.6 .. 3.7 ..

Soma and गिरः
2.7

Soma and Rain
2.9

Phrases about Soma
विष्टंभो धरुणो दिवः 2.5
आत्मा यज्ञस्य पूर्व्यः 2.10

The Bird
Like the bird. 3.1

द्रोण 3.1

Soma, Truth and Knowledge
विपा कृतः etc 3.2, 3 ..
ऋतायुभिः मृज्यते 3.3 ..

Soma and the worlds
2.8 .. 3.7, 8, 9 ..

Soma and boons
1.3, 4 .. 2.10 .. 3.3, 4, 5, 6, 10 ..

Ideas
Daily progress in the journey 1.5
Indra in मद gives wealth 1.10
Indra in मद slays वृत्राणि 1.10
The goals of the journey 1.4, 5

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Forms
रंह्या 2.1

Phrases
तदर्थं 1.5
देवानां वीतिः 1.4
पार्ये दिवि 1.7
अन्ध्या धेनवः 1.9
देववीः 2.1
महीरापः सिंधवः 2.4
प्रत्नेन जन्मना 3.9

Doubtful words
आशसः 1.5
पर्षि 1.3
धमंति 1.8
बाकुरं दृतिं 1.8
वारण 1.8
मर्मृज्यंते 2.7, 5 .. 3.3
शुंभसे 2.7
प्रशस्तिः 2.8
घृष्वि 2.8
पर्णवीः 3.1
विपन्यु 3.3
सत्वन् 3.4
जज्ञानः 3.10
सा 3.4
दशस्यति 3.5
वग्वनुं 3.5
दीयति 3.1
अस्पृतः 3.8

Fixed words
सधस्थ 1.2
पवस्य 1.1
राधः 1.3
मघवान् 1.3
अंधः 1.4

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वाजः 1.4 .. 2.10 .. 3.3 ..
श्रवः 1.4
तना 1.6
अग्रुवः 1.8
त्रिधातु 1.8
प्सरः 2.2
नृ 2.10
अश्व 2.10
विपा 3.2
हूरः 3.2
रत्न 3.6
वार्य 3.4
स्वध्वरः 3.8
इष् 3.10
द्यौः 3.7, 8 ..
रजस् 3.7, 8 ..

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Mandala Ten

[1.]
1.बृहन् in the vast? S. n. [nominative] agreeing with अग्निः
[text missing] = world or other seats?
2.प्र मातृभ्यो अधि कनिक्रदद्गाः
3.सचेतसः समानचेतसः (S.) or चेतोयुक्ताः
4.पितुभृतो जनित्रीः. S. ओषधयः
5.प्रत्यधिँ—प्रति अधिँ, or one word?
6.पेशनानि (वस्त्राणि)
7.उशतः D. [Dutt] भक्तान्—rather gods—cf X.2.1 पिप्रीहि देवाँ उशतः

[2.]
1.ऋतूँ यज. সময় বুঝিয়া যজ্ঞ কর ?
2.मंधाता. D. মেধাবী
अर्हन् . D. পূজনীয়—labouring, putting forth his energy.
3.प्रवोळ्हुं. D. যজ্ঞানুষ্ঠান করিতে!! to carry forward on the path—अध्वर
कल्पयाति—3.4. in 4 D. দেবার্চ্চনা করিয়া থাকেন
4.प्रमिनाम आ पृणाति—proof that प्रमि = to diminish, make defective. पृष्ट = पूर्णं कृ
येभिः .. ऋतुभिः. D. যে যে সময়ে—in 5 ऋतुशः—যথা সময়ে
ऋतुभिः ऋतु = law of the truth
5.पाकत्रा मनसा. D. মণ অপরিণত
दीनदक्षा—दक्ष = mental capacity
मन्वते. D. remember!! क्रतुविद्विजानन्
6.केतुं यजस्व = knower or knowledge

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7.सुजनिमा যিনি উত্তম নির্মাণ করিতে পারেন—not in loose apposition?

[3.]
1.सुषुमाँ D. সুন্দর
रुशतीं—acc. after एति. D. takes otherwise

2.वर्पसा = वर्चस् —it cannot be body.
दिवो वसुभिः. Probably the gods—वया इदग्नयो अन्ये.

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The Origins of Aryan Speech

In that pregnant period of European knowledge when physical Science, turned suddenly towards its full strength, was preparing to open for itself the new views, new paths and new instruments of discovery which have led to the astonishing results of the nineteenth century, an opportunity was offered to the European mind for a similar mastery of sciences other than physical. The Sanscrit language was discovered. It was at first imagined & expected that this discovery would lead to results as important as those which flowed from the discovery of Greek literature by Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople. But these expectations have remained unfulfilled. European knowledge has followed other paths and the seed of the nineteenth century has been Newton’s apple and not Sir William Jones’ Shakuntala or the first edition of the Vedas. The discovery of Sanscrit has, it is true, had a considerable effect on the so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, Science of Religion, ethnology and sociology; but these branches of knowledge are not sciences, they are systematised speculations. Their particular conclusions often change from generation to generation and none of them, not even the most certain, have the same cast of certainty as a scientific generalisation in the domain of physical inquiry. The law of gravitation is a permanent truth of science; the law that all myths start from the sun, the law of Solarisation, if I may so call it, is an ingenious error which survives at all only because it pleases the poetic imagination.

So great has been the failure that the possibility, even, of a Science of speech has been too readily scouted. But this is an excessive deduction, the reaction of disappointed expectation has exaggerated the meaning of the failure. To say that there can be no Science of speech is to say that the movements of the mind are not governed by intelligible processes, but rather by

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an incalculable caprice—a supposition that cannot be admitted. Intelligible processes there are for all natural action, and therefore also for mind & its instrument speech; the difficulty is to discover their precise lines of action. We need sufficient material and the right material; we need also the right way of approaching the material. Once that is discovered, the processes also will be discovered & the Science of speech founded.

In this volume I give the result of certain attempts I have made to approach the problem from a new standpoint. Sanscrit, I hold, is the key to the problem. In most other languages, we have a secondary or tertiary speech formation; we have to go beyond the actual form before us & reconstruct its parent tongue, to find again perhaps that the parent tongue has to be subjected to a similar reconstructive process. We have not sufficient materials for such a task; no instruments we possess can go deep enough. But Sanscrit, by a peculiar fidelity to its origins, presents us with a true primary form of speech, in which the vocabulary indeed is late,—a new structure of word flesh & tissue,—but the base of the structure is primitive, reveals the roots of its being and betrays the principles of its formation. The failure of the comparative philologists to make use of their opportunity has been signal; it has even obscured the issue by creating a false system; but it is no more fatal or final than the failure of Aristotle to discover the law of gravitation, although he must have seen many fruits falling from many boughs. Sanscrit still stands there offering to us its secret.

The fundamental mistake of the philologists is contained in their famous original formula, pitā, patēr, pater, Vater, father, and the hasty conclusions they have drawn from it which have prevented a deeper scrutiny of the roots of language. An identity of words between various languages can never in itself lead to any fundamental discovery. It does not even prove that the languages thus agreeing are of a single stock. In many of the most common domestic terms Tamil and Sanscrit agree, but they are still held to be of different families. All therefore that is proved is not the identity of these tongues but their contact—so close a contact of one with the rest that a number of the commonest

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ideas & relations came in all to be expressed by terms borrowed from one. Nothing more is proved; we have not advanced a single step towards a science of languages. Even the classification of tongues as Aryan, Dravidian, Semitic cannot be called scientific; it is empirical and depends upon identities which may not be fundamental. We must go deeper. European philology has started from word-identities and identities of final word meaning. I propose to start from root-identities and identities of original & derivative root-meaning and even from sound-identities and identities of fundamental and applicatory sound meaning. It is, I believe, possible in this way to establish the unity of the Aryan tongues and some at least of the laws governing the birth & development of Aryan speech.My inquiry does not carry me farther. I do not pretend as yet to inquire into the laws of speech itself, but only to establish from data, some facts of Aryan speech which may eventually help in solving the wider problem.

In another respect, also, the philologists seem to me to have misunderstood the conditions of their inquiry. They have been not rigid enough and yet too rigid. They have been too rigid in not allowing for the flexibility of mind movements. They have sought for the same invariable sequence which we observe in the physical world and admitted a law only where such sequence seemed to occur. The laws of physical formation follow a fixed line and their variations even are after a fixed fashion. But with the growth of life in matter there comes a growing element of freedom, of a more elusive principle & a more elastic variation; for this reason Science has found life more difficult to fathom & analyse than matter and her triumphs here have been far less notable than in the pure physical domain. Mind brings with [it] a still freer play, a still more elusive principle and flexible application. A general law always obtains, but the application, the particular processes vary more subtly and are more numerous.Science, not taking into account this law of increasing freedom, has in the domain of mind accomplished little or nothing.When we deal with the laws of speech, we must remember this flexibility of all mind-processes. We must ourselves keep a flexible mind to follow it and an open eye for all variations. It is for

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regularity in irregularity that we must always be on the watch, not for a fixed, a cast-iron regularity. On the other hand the few laws which Philology has admitted, have been, by a sort of false compensation for their original narrowness, used with too free and even lax a play of fancy. Often indeed instead of working as a law, the philological principle presents itself as an ingenious means for inventing word-identities.

I have disregarded as another error of imperfect inquiry the rigid philological divorce of the Dravidian & Aryan languages. Whether there be a separate Dravidian stock or no, it is to me a certainty that Tamil owes not only many of its most common terms, but whole families of words to the original Aryan speech. Its evidences cannot be neglected in such an inquiry as I have undertaken, for they are of the greatest importance. Indeed the theory worked out by me, took its rise originally not from any analysis of the Sanscrit word-system, but from an observation of the relations of Tamil in its non-concretised element to the Greek, Latin & Northern Indian languages. At the same time it is on an analysis of the Sanscrit word-system that I have chiefly relied. I have omitted from that system most of its Vedic elements. The meanings of Vedic words are often extremely disputable & it would be unsafe to rely whether on the significances fixed by the European scholars or on those fixed centuries ago by Sayana or even by Yaska. It is better, & quite sufficient for the immediate purpose, to rely upon the classical tongue with its undoubted & well-ascertained meanings.

These are the lines upon which I have conducted my enquiry. The full proof of the results arrived at depends upon a larger labour of minute classification both of root families and word families in all the greater Aryan tongues,—a labour which is already in process, but not yet complete. What I have written in this book, will, I hope, be judged sufficient for a secure foundation. If it does no more, it may possibly lead to a deeper & freer approach to the problem of the origin of speech, which, once undertaken in the right spirit and with an eye for the more subtle clues, cannot fail to lead to a discovery of the first importance to human thought & knowledge.

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Chapter II

In an ordinary language which has not preserved the evidence of its origins, we are compelled to start with the full-formed word as our first & earliest document. We then find words existing in very small, unconnected families, little individualistic groups which seem to have started life on their own account without any observable growth from a common stock with other words that have, physically, a race-resemblance to them.We can all see that doceo, doctrina, doctor, docilis, documen, doctus, docte are one family. They acknowledge their kinship openly. From this acknowledged kinship we can draw certain important conclusions; especially the law of development from a common root & certain fixed forms by the accretion of which to the root this development was effected. It is a beginning, but it does not carry us beyond the surface-strata of our subject of enquiry.

For when we look farther, we are confronted with a serious difficulty. We find a certain number of words which, in their formation, would seem to be connected like the family we have glanced at above though not so strictly connected:—doleo, I grieve, dolenter, painfully, dolor, grief are obviously so interconnected; dolus, fraud, dolosus, deceitful, dolose, deceitfully, are so interconnected; dolo, I hew, cut or break, dolabra, an axe, are so interconnected. But between these three families we have in Latin itself no proof of any connection. In languages which have so far worn away their original phonetic moulds that entirely unconnected words wear the same or a similar dress, this want of connection would not lead to any farther conclusion beyond our mere inability to establish a connection. But Latin is a language which has preserved its phonetic moulds to a considerable extent. If then these three little families are entirely unconnected, then any hope of establishing an effective Science of Speech-Origins or even a Science of Aryan Speech- Origins must be abandoned. For by the supposition to which we would then be inevitably led, there must have been three original roots, dol, to grieve, dol, to cut or split, and dol, to deceive, unconnected with each other in origin. How then did

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their significances come to be attached to them? By chance? by caprice? by arbitrary choice? by some obscure psychological law we cannot trace? We can no longer hope to decide.

The hypothesis I shall start from,—and every attempt to connect the superficially unconnected without which there can be no science, must start with hypotheses,—is that there can be no such want of connection, that dol, to grieve, dol, to split and dol, to deceive must have been & are one root and not three and the three different significances now attached to them, have been developed not by caprice, chance or arbitrary selection, but have a natural connection and were developed in intellect by an intelligible psychological movement behind intellect from an original common meaning or mind-impression created in the Aryan mind by the sound dol. For I hold it to be obvious that speech must have started from what we in India would call the guna of sound, some natural property of particular sounds to create under given conditions a particular kind of impression on the mind which, constantly associated with that sound, became the basis of a number of special intellectual significances, called by us the meaning of words, much more variable, much less fixed than the basic mind-significance. Afterwards the intellect playing consciously with the sound, by association, by analogy, by figure, by metaphor & simile, by transference, by a number of means, may carry the intellectual significance far outside the bounds of the original mental impression. Still, if we have some evidence, clues may be found & then the vagrant word may be traced back to its parent mind-impression. For this reason we have to catch a primitive language when it is young or else find one which even in its maturity is more faithful than others to its primitive mould and preserves on its face much of its ancient history. Such a language is Sanscrit; it is, in fact, almost the only language which at all answers to our need.

But a sound like dol is not & cannot be a pure, primary & isolated sound. It has congeners, at least in form, brothers, cousins, more distant relatives. Does this kinship in form involve an original kinship in mind-impression and therefore in history of significance? If the theory of guna is correct, there must be

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some such kinship. Turning from Latin to the more fruitful field, the more copious evidence of Sanscrit, we find this root dol in the form dal (a sounded like the English u in dull and represented both in Greek & Latin by either a, u or o) meaning also to split, burst, & then to bloom, open. We find dala, a fragment; a blade, petal or leaf; we find dalapa, a weapon, that which splits, just as we have dolabra, an axe, from dolo; dalmi, Indra’s thunderbolt, also the god Shiva; dalika, a piece of wood, that which is split. We find also dalbha, meaning fraud, dishonesty, sin, and we have this established that in Sanscrit also, the root dal meant to deceive as well as to split. We find also the reason why dal came to mean to deceive; for the word dala means not only the blade of a weapon, but the sheath of a weapon. In other words, dal must have borne the significance, to cover or to contain. We find from other Sanscrit instances that the idea of covering or hiding led naturally in the Aryan mind to the idea of fraud or deceit, as in chad, to cover, chadma, a disguise, pretext, fraud, dishonesty, trick. But how are the two significances, cover & split, connected? That they are connected, is established as a strong probability at least by the word, cha, cutting, dividing, a fragment or part, which in its feminine form chā means covering, concealing and the neuter cham, a house, that which covers. If they are connected, the idea of cutting must have led to that of cutting off, separating, screening and thence to the significance we find in chadman, covering, disguise, fraud. There is no distinct significance of pain attached to the root dal either in Sanscrit or Greek; but we do find that the word dalita in Sanscrit meant crushed, oppressed, trampled, and, more curiously & significantly, we find dālanam in the sense of toothache. It is easy to see how the idea of cutting, tearing, rending must have led easily to the sense first of a special kind of pain and then by detrition of force to that of pain generally. But we find more. We find not only dal, we find other roots kindred in sound, having something of the same history. For instance, dambh means to kill, destroy, strike down; but dambha, the noun proper to this verb, means deceit, fraud, trickery, sin, ostentation, pride (we see how starting from the idea of fraudulent

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intention or hypocrisy we come to the very different idea of ostentation without fraud or pride,—again by detrition of special force); we find dambha & dambholi meaning like dalmi Indra’s thunderbolt, and dambha means also, like dalmi, the god Shiva. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that to the Aryan mind dambha & dalmi were words so closely akin that they carried easily the same impressions to the mind and the same significance to the intellect. But what is then common to these two roots? It is the sound da, which must, therefore, by my theory have had a guna or mind-impression which naturally adhered in common to the two roots dal and dambh.

It is the second step of my theory, therefore, that not only must the three dal families be one family, not only must one root-sound have had originally one root-meaning, but that all kindred root-sounds must also be of one family and have proceeded from the simple sound, consisting of consonant & vowel, which is common to all of them, and the guna or natural mind-impression belonging to that simple sound must have been the basis not only of the intellectual significances common to its progeny, but of those even which vary most from each other. Da is the simple root-sound,—the primary root; dal, dambh, dabh, daś, dah, dakṣ, daṁś, das, daṁs, dagh, daṅgh, daṇḍ, dad, dadh, dan, dam, day, roots which we find or can trace in Sanscrit, are its derivative, secondary or tertiary root-sounds. The simple sound contains in itself the seed significance which it imparts to its descendants, whether sons, grandsons or remote progeny.We have thus immensely widened our basis and approached much nearer to a scientific consideration of language.

Let us see whether the hypothesis finds any farther support in the facts of the Sanscrit language. We take the senses to split, burst open, cut, tear, crush, destroy, cheat, belonging to dal; we find the same senses or kindred senses such as hurting, as in dolor and doleo, not only in dambh, but in dabh, to injure, hurt, deceive, cheat and its Vedic derivatives dabdhi, hurt, & dabha, fraud,—if these be the right senses; & in dabhra, little, small, from the sense evidently of cutting, a slice, or small part.We find them in dam, to crush, afflict, & so to subdue, overpower, tame,

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conquer, restrain and its derivatives, dama, damaka, damathu, damana, damin, damya, dānta; the last containing a lengthening of the vowel, to which we shall have occasion to return.We also find in dama, damathu, damana, damya the kindred sense of punishment, & we find in the Vedic sense of dama, the significance house, as in Latin domus, Greek δóμoς,δῶμα (again we notice the lengthening of the vowel), from which at once we return to the idea of covering we had to infer in dal. All these are evidently kindred roots belonging to the labial variety of the da family, formed that is to say by accretion of the sounds p, ph, b, bh, m (labio-nasal) or any combination of which they are the base to the simple sound.

We turn to other subfamilies. We find in the guttural subfamily daks., to hurt or kill, dakṣāyya, a vulture (tearer of carrion); dagh, to kill, hurt; dāgha, burning; daṅgh, to abandon or leave, which I trace to the sense of cutting off, separating, casting away; an association of ideas we shall find again in Sanscrit.We find in the cerebral subfamily, daṇḍ, to punish, fine or chastise; daṇḍa, a cudgel, staff or sceptre,—afterwards any trunk, stalk or thing standing; fine, chastisement as in dama, damathu, damana; assault; subjection, control, restraint, as in dama; pride, as in dambha; a corner or angle, apparently from the sense of cutting off, separating & so containing, which mates it in its roots to dama, a house & dal, to feign or deceive. A number of derivatives from daṇḍ & daṇḍa repeat the same senses. We find also dāḍaka, a tooth or tusk and dāḍhā, a large tooth or tusk.We find in the dental subfamily danta, a tooth; also bower, arbour (to cover, screen, shelter); dān, to cut or divide, & its derivatives dānava, a Titan, dānu, a demon, also supposed to mean conquering or destroying, like damana; dadhi, a garment (to cover). We find in the liquid subfamily, along with dal, day, to hurt & dāya, loss, destruction, a part, share or gift. We find in the sibilant subfamily das, to destroy, bite, overpower (dam); to decay, waste, perish; to cast away (cf daṅgh, to abandon) & its derivatives, notably dasyu, an enemy; daśana, tooth & daṣṭa, bitten; daṁś, to bite, sting; daṁśa, bite, sting, cutting, tearing, tooth, pungency; a limb or joint; dandaśa, a tooth; daṁṣṭrā

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& other derivatives varying these senses; daśā, a division or period of time, afterwards a state or condition, age etc; but we find also daṁśana, daṁśa and daśana in the sense of armour; daṁśita, mailed or protected; dantura, covered, overspread,— which bring us back to the idea of covering. The idea of protection once ascertained & traced, we turn back and find it recur in dagh, daṅgh, in dānam, protection (as well as gift), day, to protect, have pity, with its derivatives. The sense of giving which we find in dāya & can trace to the idea of cutting up, distribution or casting away, abandoning, handing over—but it can be shown to result really from the former—we get in dā, to give, dānam, a gift & many other derivatives; dakṣiṇā, a gift; in dad & dadh, to give, dasma, a sacrificer and in day, to grant, divide, allot. We have, in addition, dah, to torment, grieve, burn & its derivatives in the same sense; dahara, small, fine, young (cf dabhra),—a mouse or rat (the gnawer); dahra, small, fine, thin, a fire. Lastly we have, proving the previous existence of an obsolete root da, the adjective da in the sense of giving, destroying, cutting off; the noun da, a gift or donation and the feminine dā in the sense of heat (dah) and of repentance (dolor). The evidence is almost of an oppressive conclusiveness. It is a family of words, which bear the same or kindred meanings and seem all to go back to the root meaning to divide, usually with some idea of completeness, force, or even violence.

There are, we must note, a certain number of significances which do not at once trace themselves to or apparently connect themselves with the original sense. Some of these can on a moment’s reflection be so traced & evidence of the particular association of meaning on which we have to proceed, can be found in other root families. Thus we have daśā in the sense of mind or understanding; dakṣ, to be competent or able; dakṣa & dakṣiṇa, expert, able, fit which connect themselves with the Latin doceo, to teach, the Greek δoχέω, I think, seem & δóξα, opinion, idea, judgment; but the sense here is evidently that of discrimination or analysis as in the Sanscrit roots ci & cit, cetas, mind, citta etc; and this brings us back to the idea of division and distribution. We may compare dambh, to arrange & so collect, and ci bearing

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the same senses as well as to heap up, increase which we find again in dakṣ., to grow, increase (cf dānam, addition). There are other common senses, mostly connected with the idea of moving or of shining, daṁś, to shine (also, to speak?); dakam, water (to flow); dakṣ., to go or move; dagh, to go, leap, flow, attain; dānu, a fluid or drop; dabh, to go, push, impel; dabhram, the ocean (to flow); das, to shine, dasma, beautiful (bright, shining). These dissociated meanings are very few in number & rare in occurrence. Such as they are, they occur in different parts of the family, guttural, labial, dental and sibilant, and their presence & distribution proves yet more powerfully the now apparent & established truth that all Sanscrit words having for their basis the sound da are of one family, go back to the simple sound da as their simple root of being and derive from it all their varying senses. We have to add this fact, important for the particular family & as we shall see for the whole theory but not affecting our general conclusion, that we must seek in the original mind impression of the sound da some force of guna which gives rise directly to the idea of dividing with force or completeness and also can enter into ideas of motion & shining.

But we have not yet finished with this sound da. For just as the derived sound dal had its congeners, sounds kindred to it in form, so has the simple sound da other simple sounds by its side which are kindred to it in form and ought therefore to be congeners. These sounds are dā, di, dī , du, dū, dṝ & dṝ. The vowel sounds e and o, ai and au are in Sanscrit merely modifications of i and u, so that these seven roots with the lost root da form the whole original family of simple sounds depending on and having for their common base & element, the consonant sound d. If these roots are found to be one original family, we have gained another step and come yet nearer to the foundations of speech. My third step in the hypothesis is to accept this supposition and to lay down the rule that all simple roots formed in sound by the accretion of a vowel to the consonant sound d are one family having the guna of that sound as their seed of meaning, just as they themselves are separately the seed of meaning to their own descendants. We get therefore

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a seed-sound in addition to the primitive root-sound and their descendants the secondary & tertiary root-sounds.

Let us see how this hypothesis fares when confronted with the facts of the Sanscrit language. We have seen in passing that da & dā are the same root, one the short form, the other the long form. Dā has the same sense as da, dāś, like daś, means to hurt, kill, it means also, to give. There are no senses of the dā roots which are not shared by or traceable to the da roots. We must therefore proceed to the other vowels as forming three & not six classes of roots; we may treat in the absence of any opposing facts dī as a lengthening of di, dū of du, dṝ of dṝ. From the da family I have omitted the words which have for their basis the syllables dar & dav; yet these words are of great interest. For we find dara, in the sense of tearing, rending and also, like dabhra and dahara, of little, small. This sense of tearing, breaking, hurting we get again in daraṇam, daraṇi, darita, dardara, darma, darva (injury, mischievous person, goblin, as in dānu), in dāra, a rent, hole, ploughed field extending itself to dārāḥ, a wife, dāraka (also a child, infant, young animal, sense belonging also to dahara), dāraṇam, dārikā, dāri, dārī, dārita, dārin, darbha, the sharp Kusha grass, dardura, a district, province, dāru (tearing, rending, also a piece of wood, wood or pine-tree), & dāruṇa, terrible, rough, cruel, frightful, sharp, severe, violent or agonising (of grief & pain), a word of great interest as it shows us how moral senses developed from the physical idea. We find too dara, a cave, daratha and darī (also a valley) in the same sense, from the idea of cleft or hole which we have already had in dāra & dārikā. Again we have the same word dara in the sense of a stream, daraṇi, an eddy, current or surf, daratha, fleeing, flight, scouring for forage, dārdura, water. Connected perhaps with the sense of flight but really expressing the oppressive troubling feeling of fear, we have dara, darad and darada, fear, daratha & darita, timid or frightened. We have daridrā, to be poor or needy, with its derivatives, connecting this family with the sense of suffering, oppression, distress, wretchedness, burning (cf dagdha, distressed, famished, dry, insipid, wretched, vile, accursed) we find in the da family.We have again dāru in the

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sense of liberal, a donor, kind (cf dakṣiṇa, also meaning kind). There are more curious identities. Darad means, among other senses, heart; now dahara and dahra also mean “the cavity of the heart or the heart itself”. Darad means also a mound, mountain or precipice; dardara, dardura, likewise means a mountain; but in the da family we have also da, a mountain, daśana, the peak of a mountain, danta, the peak, side or ridge of a mountain. The identification in sense of this dar basis in its stock with the da family is complete. Their only senses, not traceable to the common original meanings, which find no parallel in that family are those which spring from the idea of sound, dardura, dardarīka, a musical instrument; but we have in the Aryan vernaculars the word. damaru, a kind of drum, which may represent an original Aryan word not preserved in the literary language.

Now the question arises. Do all these words belong to the roots dṛ & dṝ or are they from an original root dar? There can be no doubt as to the answer. Nearly all, if not all, are avowedly children of the dṛ stock. It follows then that the roots of the dṛ family are one race with the roots of the da family, cousins perhaps, but members of a joint family who hold the same property in common & use it with a more than socialistic indiscriminateness. Dṛ. itself means to hurt or kill, dṝ means to tear, rend, split, separate, disperse, and to fear; dṛti, a skin, hide, or bag; dṛka, a hole or opening; dṛnphū , a snake, thunderbolt (dambha, dambholi, dalmi), wheel (dalbha also means a wheel), the shining or burning sun. Dṛp is to inflame, kindle or to pain, torture; dṛmp also means to torture, afflict, distress, dṛbh, to fear, & dṛbdham, fear, finally dṛś, to see with all its derivatives. That this sense of seeing which we find also in dṛp (darpaṇa, a mirror, darpaṇam, the eye) comes not from the idea of light in reflection but from the original physical idea of discerning, separating with the eye, is evident from the fact that das also means to see. There are two sets of associations in this word which are of considerable help to us in fixing the exact history of certain developments in this family. The word dṛp expresses any violent troubling emotion; it means to be greatly delighted, wild, extravagant, mad or foolish, proud or arrogant (without

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anything of that idea of ostentation attached to dambha); darpa means pride, insolence, rashness, heat, musk (from the strong, oppressive scent); dṛpta means proud. Dṛ* again means to care for, mind, desire, & so to worship or respect—its root sense is evidently care, anxiety or excitement of love or other favourable feelings. We see more clearly now why words of this root bear the sense of grief, fear, pain. The mind-impression of the seed-sound carries with it this possibility of expressing any emotion or sensation which is oppressive, troubling, disintegrating to the peace of the mind. To the pervasive root idea of strong division, we have to add the idea of oppression tending to division which is thus revealed to our observation.

But dṛpta also means strong and this sense is found again in dṛṁh, to strengthen, fortify, fasten, be firm, grow or increase; dṛḍha is firm, fixed, solid, dense, strong, hard; dṛḍham means iron, a fortress or abundance; dṛbh, to tie, fasten, arrange, string together; dṛṣad, a stone or rock; dṛh, to be fixed or fasten, to grow, increase or prosper. We have met some of these meanings in the da family. We have found words there which mean a mountain, and these may now be attributed to this root meaning of firmness, solidity, size and density. We may notice also a group of words which we have hitherto omitted; dāman, a string, thread or rope, a bandage, a girdle, which also means a line or streak (from the idea of cutting); dāmanī, a foot-rope, dāmā, a string or cord and dāminī, lightning, from the idea of shining. We may also note, as it now appears, that the kind of light indicated by this family, is only an oppressive or a sharp piercing light as in dāminī, dṛnphū, das, to shine, and the words which mean fire or to burn. I have to suggest that this idea of firmness, solidity, compactness comes similarly from a sense of close, heavy contact, pressing things together into firm cohesion.

What, then, is the result of this detailed examination of the dṛ family of roots? Always the same; first, that, whatever their varieties of meaning, there is no sense the words of this house-hold bear which cannot be paralleled from the roots of the da & dā household & does not either explain or get explained by them and, secondly, that these varieties resolve themselves to & derive

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from a common guna or mind impression variously applied.

Again, there are a certain number of compound roots with a base combined of d and r which it would be as well to examine here as possibly kindred to the dṛ roots. We find drakaṭa, a kettle drum; drāṅkṣ, to croak; druta, a scorpion (to sting); dru, wood, tree or branch (dāru); druma, a tree; druha, a deep lake; drāgh, to vex, torment, exert oneself, be weary, stretch, also to be able (cf dakṣ); drākh, to be able, to become dry (dagdha; dal, to wither), to adorn, grace (to shine); drād. , to split, divide or be pulled to pieces; drāpa, mud, mire (which recalls a meaning of dama, mud, mire), a small shell (dara also means a conch-shell); drāva, heat; druḍ, to sink or perish; druṇ, to hurt, injure, twist, bend; druṇa, a scorpion or rogue; druṇam, a sword or bow; druh, to hurt, bear malice; dru, to hurt or injure; drū, gold, from the idea of brilliance; drek, to sound (originally, a discordant sound as in drāṅkṣ), to grow or increase, to be exhilarated (dṛp); droṇa, a scorpion, a tree, a bucket. We have the idea of desire, wish or longing in draviṇam, wish, desire. We have the idea of solidity or density in dravya, substance, material, wealth, strength, draḍhiman, tightness, firmness, heaviness, & in drākh, to obstruct. All these form a goodly array of evidences, showing the family identity of these roots with the da and dr. groups.

There are a few isolated meanings whose connection is not so immediately clear, such as drā or drai, to sleep, drāṇam, sleep (cf nidrā); but this is probably connected in sense with drāgh, to be weary or heavy from exertion, & will then contain the common idea of heaviness or oppression; drāh, to wake; drāpa, heaven, either from shining or from the idea of covering; and one or two others of the kind. But these may all be traced with a little difficulty to the common significations and are extraordinarily few in number. One would expect in so ancient & long-lived a tongue as Sanscrit a far greater number of meanings which have wandered too far outside or too near to the farthest permissible verges of the country occupied by their race to be easily identifiable or exactly paralleled among their kindred.

Then we have a number of significations resulting from the root sense of motion which are of some importance to us. They

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start mainly from the two ideas of running and flowing. Dru, the most characteristic, means to run, flow, rush, attack, melt, ooze or simply by detrition of special force, to go or move. This root also means to hurt and to repent. We have also druṇ, to go, move; drū in the same sense; dram, to go or run about (Gr.δρóμoς); drapsa, a drop; drava, speed, etc, the noun proper to dru, but meaning also play, amusement (cf div, later); drāva, liquefaction, melting, running, flowing, flight, speed; drāvaṇam, distilling; dravantī, a river; drā, to run, make haste, fly (the same word which means to sleep); drāk, quickly, instantly etc; drāgh, to wander about. We shall find that the idea of motion is common to all Sanscrit root families but that in each case there are certain special significances kept in the words, where their special force has not suffered detrition, which tend to show that they originally indicated a particular kind of motion. It is possible & probable that swift, overcoming, forceful motion, “darting, dashing”, kindred to the idea of pressure & division, is the proper sense of motion in the roots of this family. It is even possible that the words drāva & drāvaṇam from dru—distilling, liquefaction by heat, etc—dakṣ, to do, go or act quickly, keep the original force, & that the other shades of sense under this head show the gradual force of the influence of detrition, a phenomenon whose study is of as great an importance in the history of language as the study of detritions of sound rightly so much insisted on in Comparative Philology.

After such consistent & conclusive results a very cursory examination of the di & du families might be held sufficient. Nevertheless, in order that the full force of the evidence may be appreciated, I shall devote an equal care to these two households, fortunately not very numerous in their population, as well as to the compound bases, dy & dv & the modified forms de (dai) and do (dau). We start as in the dra roots with diṇḍi, a kind of musical instrument, & then come to dita, cut, torn, divided; diti, cutting, dividing, liberality; ditya, a demon (also daitya, cf dānu, dānava); dinv, to gladden, please (dṛp); dimp, dimbh, to accumulate (dambh), also to order, direct; div, to shine, play, sport (cf drava); squander (from the sense of waste, scatter);

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to throw, cast; be glad; be sleepy (drā, drai); be mad or drunk (dṛp); to wish; to vex, torment, lament, suffer pain; & two new meanings, to sell & to praise,—the one associated with the idea of giving, delivering, distributing; the other with the idea of love, respect, homage (dṛ). Proceeding we find div, diva & divan, heaven, sky (which helps, perhaps, to solve our former difficulty drāpa, though I believe that to be connected with Vedic drāpi, a cloth or robe), day (also dinam), light, brilliance (the original meaning); divya, divine etc; deva, divine, a god, quicksilver, a sense we have also in [    ], a lover; sport, play; dev, to sport, gamble, lament, shine, throw or cast; devanam in connected senses, but also meaning praise, motion, beauty, and an affair or business which connects it with dakṣ & perhaps with the Gr δράω , I do & δρμα; diṣṇu, a giver, donor; dih, to increase, augment, and to smear, from the idea of rubbing, pressing; de, to protect, cherish; deha, anointing; body (to contain); dehī, rampart, wall (to cover or to strengthen); dai, to protect, brighten, cleanse, purify; dī, to perish, waste; dī, decay, ruin; dīti, dīditi, splendour, lustre; dīna, poor (daridra), distressed, wretched, sad (dagdha), frightened, timid (dara, darita); dīp, to shine & its derivatives; dīrgha, long (cf drāgh), dīrghikā, a lake, big pond or well. Finally we have diś, to give, grant, pay, assign, allot, show, point out, teach, direct or order (cf dimp above); diṣṭa, deśa,diśā, a direction, quarter. The last root, identically with Gr δείχνυμɩ , at once throws a light on daśā, understanding, dakṣa, Grk δóξα,δoχέω Latin doceo, I teach. It is the same idea of discernment, discretion or separation, allotting things to their place, showing, teaching—the family of special significances which have since had so important & brilliant a history.

Once again what is the upshot of this substantially exhaustive statement of the significances in Sanscrit of the di family? Once again the result never varies. It is precisely the same. It is as if this particular family in Sanscrit, at any rate, were insistent on proving the theory with which we started, on declaring themselves all one family, with the same spirit, the same temperament, the same intellectual equipment, the same physical features. Absolutely, we have arrived at hardly a single new significance &

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none which can be isolated from the rest of the family.

We turn to the du roots. We start with du, to burn, torment, afflict, give pain, be pained; also to go or move! Then there is dūna , pained, burned, agitated (the essential idea in all emotional senses in this family, good or bad); duḥkh, to pain, afflict, distress & duḥkha, pain, grief, trouble, difficulty, unpleasant, difficult, uneasy, with its derivatives; duḍi, a small tortoise (duli also means tortoise); duṇḍuka, dishonest, fraudulent, bad-hearted; dundama (but probably from Rt ḍam, cf ḍamaru), dundubhi, dundu, dundubha, a drum; dundumā, the sound of a drum; dudh, to kill, hurt, injure, propel, with its derivatives; dur, a particle prefix with the sense of hard, bad; durv, to hurt or kill; duvas, active (cf dakṣ, devanam,δράω ); dul, to toss up, swing; duṣ, to corrupt, spoil, destroy; to censure, annul; to be bad, impure, sinful, & its derivatives (cf daṁśa, a fault or defect); dūṣikā, a paint brush (cf dih, to smear), rheum of the eyes; dūṣya meaning corruptible, pus, or poison, but also cotton, a garment, a tent,—the common root sense to cover suddenly turning up in this unexpected quarter as if to point out the entire identity of these families; duh, to milk or squeeze out (here we have the original sense of violent pressure), to yield or grant, to enjoy, to hurt, pain, distress, & its derivatives (cf also dogdhṛ & doṣaka, both meaning a calf); dū, to afflict, be in pain; dūrvā , kusha grass (cf darbha); dūra, far, distant (cut off, separated); dūśyam, a tent; and finally dūta, a messenger, which must derive from the sense of impelling, sending we have already found in this family. We have also do, to cut, divide, mow, reap; dora, a rope; doṣas, doṣā, night, darkness (to cover, hide); dos, doṣā, doṣan, the arm, forearm, the side of a figure (probably, to cover, contain, ewmbrace); doha.... Once more, we receive nothing but confirmation of our theory.

There are, finally, two connected families, connected, as we might say, by marriage with the seed sounds y and v. In the first we have dyu, to encounter, attack; dyu, day, sky, brightness, heaven, sharpness, fire, with a number of kindred words, dyauḥ , dyumat, dyumna etc; dyut, to shine, elucidate, express, with its derivatives; dyūta, gambling, play, battle; dyūna, sportive, sorry;

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dyai, to disfigure, despise (cf div, to make sport of, squander, make light of). In the second we have dvi, two (to separate) & its derivatives; dvandva, a couple, strife, duel, fortress (to strengthen), secret (to hide); dvār, dvāra, door, gate, aperture; dviṣ, to hate, dislike (cf druh etc) with its derivatives; dvīpa, shelter, protection, refuge, an island (to divide, cut off, separate), a division of the world, continent; dvīpin, a tiger, leopard (to tear, rend); dvṛ, to cover, hinder (obstruct), disregard, misappropriate (cf dasyu, a robber). Again, an absolute confirmation.

We have completed our survey of this great D clan of Aryan words, so far as the Sanscrit language holds them & introduces them to us in its classical form. No one, I think, can regard this evidence without being driven inevitably to the conclusion that here we have no chance aggregation of words, no language formed by chance or arbitrarily, but a physico-mental growth as organic, as clearly related in its members, species, families, subfamilies as any particular species of physical fauna & flora. The words claim each other for kinsmen at every step. Not a single family, not one small group fails to bring forwards its claim, its documents, its oral evidence. All stand together, shoulder to shoulder, as closely as any Highland clan or savage tribe. The most opposite meanings meet in a single word, but always there is the evidence borne by the rest of the family to their common origin not only in body but in spirit, not only in physical sound form, but in mental sense origin & development. The proof is complete.

We have then a single great family with a common store of sense-property which each uses according to his needs.We have a number of meanings all going back to a few radical significances. What are those significances? First, forceful, effective or violent division or separation; second, swift oppressive overbearing motion; third, heavy pressure or oppression; fourth, violent, oppressive, strongly agitated or simply emphatic emotion; fifth, strong, heavy sound; sixth, strong, overpowering scent; seventh, strong or swift action; eighth, strong, brilliant or oppressive heat or light; ninth, close, solid & heavy contact or cohesion. I have stated them at random, but I think a little reflection will

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show us that these nine fundamental ideas resolve themselves into the single idea of a heavy, decisive pressure, sometimes the idea of weight, sometimes the idea of decision predominating, applied to the fundamental experiences which would recommend themselves to the newly awakened and virgin observation of mankind; viz sound, contact or touch, (form), light, (taste), smell, motion & action, sensation objective & subjective. From the da family form & taste seem to be absent; either they have lost it or never applied themselves to these provinces of human observation. But we cannot yet say this precisely; for we have the word deha, body, the Greek δέμας, shape, body; δέμω, to build. It is obvious also that words expressive of taste must necessarily be fewer & more limited than the words expressing sound or touch. It is possible that words of form & taste were drawn by a figure from other primary senses & were not in themselves a primary application of the original mind-impression to the terms of intellectual appreciation.We shall have to examine languages more widely before this question can be decided. Another idea that hardly appears in this clan is that of human speech itself as distinguished from sound in general.

I, therefore, add an additional hypothesis to those I have already formulated, viz that the original guna or mind-impression created naturally & automatically by the seed sound (in this case the consonantal sound d) was applied primarily to the simple categories of sense observation, contact, sound, light, motion & action, including speech, sensation, and perhaps taste & form. It is no more than a hypothesis at present; for other sound families will have to be examined before this hypothesis can be either established or dismissed as untenable. I put it forward here for the sake of completeness.

It is not necessary to suppose that this perception of mental or sensational sound values, of the particular impression on mind-sensation of a particular inarticulate sound defining & separating itself on the human tongue or even its systematic application to the categories of sense observation was willed, conscious or intellectually reasoned out in the men who first framed their utterance into the vocables of Aryan speech.

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Nature, whatsoever Nature may be, guides the unconscious tree & flower, the unreasoning insect & animal to self-expression, to self-organisation, to self-evolution, & the result exceeds the best efforts of the deliberate human intellect. Why should she not have done the same for human speech? Instead of saying that men applied the guna of the particular sound to the sensations they wished to express, let us say that as in plant & tree & animal the sound itself, by the force of Nature, by the law of its own activity, svadhām anu,ṛtūn anu, “according to its own self-arrangement, in the straight line of the truth of things inherent in it,” and helped by the half conscious responsive awakening mind, applied itself in the service of mind to the various classes of sense observation which his awakening mentality demanded. I do not say this is the final & complete truth of the matter. But it is the only part or aspect of the truth of it at all consonant with our present way of approaching Nature as a blind force working in matter out of unconscious through half conscious into fully conscious action. It is the only theory which, provided it can establish itself, deserves, as it seems to me, to be called in the modern sense, rational & scientific; for it takes its stand on the two natural movements which constitute speech, the physical movements of articulation & the mental movement, partly sensational, partly discriminatory which attends the physical movements. And it seeks to establish itself by reducing the relation between these two motions to classified order & ascertained rule.

Chapter III

We have not, however, approached even yet the last step of our theory. For as there are families of words, families [of] root sounds, families of simple sounds, so also are there families of seed-sounds. These families are known to all grammarians & in Sanscrit they have been distinguished with a faithful & peculiar care & related to those parts of the organ of speech which play the decisive part in their articulation; but their relations to

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meaning seem never to have been studied. The seed sound D belongs to the group called dentals, which consists in Sanscrit of the hard t, the soft d, the aspirates th & dh & the dento-nasal n—for every consonant group except the liquids, the sibilants and the isolated aspirate h is composed of these five members, the hard consonant leading, the soft following, each attended by its corresponding aspirate and a nasal bringing up the rear.Sanscrit has three sibilants & even these it attributes to the complete groups; s to the dental, ś to the palatal and ṣ. to the cerebral family. The question then arises, are these groups only related in sound? or are they related also in guna and therefore in signification tendency? If there is any soundness in the theory I have been advancing, then as we have found the word-families united in a single root family with a single paternal root (as, dal, dah, dabh etc), these root families united through the paternal roots in a single primitive root family, phratria or brotherhood (as, the da family) with one paternal simple root, & these primitive brotherhoods united through their paternal root (da, di, du, dṛ) in a single clan with one paternal seed sound (d), so also we ought to find kindred clans united through their ruling sound into a single tribe based on the kinship of the paternal seed sounds. The sound d being closely related to the sound dh, must hold a similar guna and therefore carry with it similar intellectual significances, and, though they may coincide in a less degree, t, th and even perhaps n, though this is more doubtful, ought to be not far in guna & sense from the d & dh word clans. We must now proceed to examine the facts & perceive how the theory fares in this last & final test.

We will take first the aspirated soft dental dh. In the last chapter I have taken the reader very much at random through the word-jungle, pointing out as we went, how the different trees fell into groups, all belonging to families of one species. In this chapter, the theory having once been found, springing up of itself as we progressed, we can afford to proceed with more order & method; we can collect our specimens and present them ready assorted for examination & even speak with greater confidence about the precise nature of their connections.

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The commonest sense of the d roots, a significance which we found so pervasive that we were first inclined to take it as the root significance,—was the idea of violent dividing or rending pressure, especially in the senses “to hurt, kill, injure, destroy; to afflict, distress, give pain; to burst open, cleave, split; to deceive, cheat, etc.” Do we find the same senses or the same tendency in the dh family? We find dhrāḍ , to divide, split or pluck (flowers); we find dhvāṇkṣa, a carpenter; but we do not find any other words with the precise idea of splitting or breaking open or cutting—a deficiency of some importance for the proper appreciation of the guna of the seed sound dh. On the other hand the sense of hurting, injuring, killing, giving pain, is sufficiently common. We have dhakk, to destroy, annihilate; dhanus (dhanu), a bow or an archer (Nb dharma also occurs in this sense, but this does not prove that the idea of bow is “the thing held”, for dhṛ has other senses, “to drink, to flow”, & its secondary roots mean to hurt, kill, injure); dhṛs. & its derivatives, to hurt, injure, offend, outrage, attack, violate; dhāṭī, attacking, assaulting; dhū, to treat roughly, injure; dhur, distress or affliction; dhurv & dhūrv, to hurt, injure, kill; dhūr, to hurt, kill; dhūrta, dhattūra, dhustura, the white thorn-apple (with its intoxicating & stupefying drug); dhūlaka, poison; dhorita, injuring, hurting, striking; dhru & dhvṛ, to kill; dhvaṁs & its derivatives, to perish, fall, sink; also to scatter or sprinkle. We find dhiks., to be harassed, weary; dhyāma, soiled or unclean (spoiled, withered); dhrākh, to be dry or arid; dhūka & dhava, a rogue or cheat; dhipsu, deceptive; and dhī, dhīti, to disregard, disrespect. We find the simple sense of heavy or strong pressure in dhāv and its derivatives, to rub, brighten, polish; & in dhvṛ, to bend, which we have already had with the sense of killing. This harvest is not so plentiful, and that has its significance, but neither is it entirely scanty. We may notice also the sense of giving in dhartram, a sacrifice, dhāyu, liberal, and dhenu, a gift, present, but we must also notice that the impression here seems rather to be that of placing than of distributing.

But then we observe that the sense of pressure so scanty otherwise gives more liberal results in two special senses, two

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particular kinds of strong & insistent pressure,—to shake or agitate and to blow. We have dhū & dhu with many derivatives meaning to shake, agitate, shake off, blow away to kindle or excite &, directly from the sense of pushing, to resist or oppose; we have dhūnana, dhūka & dhavāṇaka in the sense of wind; dhūli, the driven dust or ground powder & derivative senses of smoke, fog, incense etc in dhūpa, dhūma & their derivatives,— dhūma meaning also eructation and dhūp, to obscure or eclipse; dhmā, to blow, with its derivates &, connecting these roots with the sense of hurting or giving pain, we have dhamana, cruel. A certain idea of action, labour or effort appears vaguely as in the d family, in dhmā, to manufacture & dhūma, a place prepared for building (cf Greek ίδρύω, I build), but as in the da family, the sense does not prominently emerge. We seem to have also the sense of covering, cutting off in dhārā, night (also meaning edge) & perhaps dhvāntam, darkness. But dhvāntam may also come from the idea of thickness, crassness more proper to this family. Here again we find a difference between dh & d.

Another class of meanings which we noticed in the da family were those which expressed some kind of motion & we perceived that a swift, overpowering pressure of motion was the original idea in that family. In the dha clan also there are a number of words conveying directly or indirectly the idea of motion. As we have dru, to run, there, so here we have dhāv, to run, glide, charge, to flow, to give milk, to wash. We have dhunayati, flows; dhuni & dhenā, meaning river; dhena and dhīra, the ocean; dhārā, meaning a stream, current, shower, the pace of a horse, a wheel (cf dalbha etc); dhūma, a meteor; dhor, to run or trot (of a horse) with its derivatives; dhoraṇi, series, tradition; dhārā, tradition, fame or rumour, line, series (but here the idea of continuing may be the source); dharuṇa, water; dhras, to toss up; dhūr, dhvaj, dhrā, dhṛj, all in the sense of going or moving; dhraj, to go or move; dhraji, a gliding, persistent motion; dhrāji, impulse, storm or wind. It is evident that here there is a great stress not on the force of the motion, though this sometimes emerges, but on its persistence.

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