The Secret of the Veda

VI

The Divine Dawn

Rig-veda III.61

उषो वाजेन वाजिनि प्रचेताः स्तोमं जुषस्व गृणतो मघोनि ।
पुराणी देवि युवतिः पुरंधिरनु व्रतं चरसि विश्ववारे ॥१॥

1) Dawn, richly stored with substance, conscious cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou of the plenitudes. Goddess, ancient, yet ever young thou movest many-thoughted following the law of thy activities, O bearer of every boon.

उषो देव्यमर्त्या वि भाहि चन्द्ररथा सूनृता ईरयन्ती ।
आ त्वा वहन्तु सुयमासो अश्वा हिरण्यवणाँ पृथुपाजसो ये ॥२॥

2) Dawn divine, shine out immortal in thy car of happy light sending forth the pleasant voices of the Truth. May steeds well-guided bear thee here who are golden-brilliant of hue and wide their might.

उषः प्रतीची भुवनानि विश्वोर्ध्वा तिष्ठस्यमृतस्य केतुः ।
समानमथं चरणीयमाना चकमिव नव्यस्या ववृत्स्व ॥३॥

3) Dawn, confronting all the worlds thou standest high-uplifted and art their perception of Immortality; do thou move over them like a wheel, O new Day, travelling over an equal field.

अव स्यूमेव चिन्वती मघोन्युषा याति स्वसरस्य पत्नी ।
स्वजंनन्ती सुभगा सुदंसा आन्ताद्दिवः पप्रथ आ पृथिव्याः ॥४॥

4) Dawn in her plenitude like one that lets fall from her a sewn robe moves, the bride of the Bliss; creating Swar, perfect in her working, perfect in her enjoying, she widens from the extremity of Heaven over the earth.

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अच्छा वो देवीमुषसं विभातीं प्र वो भरष्वं नमसा सुवृक्तिम् ।
ऊर्ध्व मधुधा दिवि पाजो अश्रेत् प्र रोचना रुरुचे रण्वसंदृक् ॥५॥

5) Meet ye the Dawn as she shines wide towards you and with surrender bring forward your complete energy. Exalted in heaven is the force to which she rises establishing the sweetness; she makes the luminous worlds to shine forth and is a vision of felicity.

ऋतावरी दिवो अर्केरबोध्या रेवती रोदसी चित्रमस्थात् ।
आयतीमग्न उषसं विभातीं वाममेषि द्रविणं भिक्षमाणः ॥६॥

6) By heaven's illuminings one perceives her a bearer of the Truth and rapturous she comes with its varied light into the two firmaments. From Dawn as she approaches shining out on thee, O Agni, thou seekest and attainest to the substance of delight.

ऋतस्य ब्रुघ्न उषसामिषण्यन्वृषा मही रोदसी आ विवेश।
मही मित्रस्य वरुणस्य माया चन्द्रेव भानुं वि दधे पुरुत्रा ॥७॥

7) Putting forth his impulsions in the foundation of the Truth, in the foundation of the Dawns, their Lord enters the Vastness of the firmaments. Vast the wisdom of Varuna, of Mitra, as in a happy brightness, orders multitudinously the Light.

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Commentary

Surya Savitri in his task of illumination follows the progress of the Dawn. In another hymn the movements of the mind have been described as growing conscient and brilliant by the bright power of the continuous Dawns. Throughout the Veda Usha, daughter of Heaven, has always the same function. She is the medium of the awakening, the activity and the growth of the other gods; she is the first condition of the Vedic realisation. By her increasing illumination the whole nature of man is clarified; through her he arrives at the Truth, through her he enjoys the Beatitude. The divine dawn of the Rishis is the advent of the divine Light throwing off veil after veil and revealing in man's activities the luminous godhead. In that light the Work is done, the sacrifice offered and its desirable fruits gathered by humanity.

Many are the hymns, indeed, in which rich and beautiful figures of the earthly dawn veil this inner truth of the goddess Usha, but in this hymn of the great Rishi Vishwamitra the psychological symbolism of the Vedic Dawn is apparent from beginning to end by open expressions and on the surface of the thought. "O Dawn rich of store in thy substance," he cries to her, "conscient cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou who hast the plenitudes." The word pracetas and the related word, vicetas, are standing terms of Vedic phraseology; they seem to correspond to the ideas expressed in later language by the Vedantic prajñāna and vijñāna. Prajnana is the consciousness that cognizes all things as objects confronting its observation; in the divine mind it is knowledge regarding things as their source, possessor and witness. Vijnana is comprehensive knowledge containing, penetrating into things, pervading them in consciousness by a sort of identification with their truth. Usha is to occupy the revealing thought and word of the Rishi as a power of Knowledge conscient of the truth of all that is placed by them before the mind for expression in man. The affirmation, it is suggested, will be full and ample; for Usha is vājena vājini, maghoni; rich is the store of her substance; she has all the plenitudes.

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This dawn moves in her progression always according to the rule of a divine action; many are the thoughts she brings in that motion, but her steps are sure and all desirable things, all supreme boons, the boons of the Ananda, the blessings of the divine existence,—are in her hands. She is ancient and eternal, the dawn of the Light that was from the beginning, purāṇi, but in her coming she is ever young and fresh to the soul that receives her.

She is to shine wide, she that is the divine Dawn, as the light of the immortal existence bringing out in man the powers or the voices of Truth and Joy, (sūnṛtāḥ,—a word which expresses at once both the true and the pleasant); for is not the chariot of her movement a car at once of light and of happiness? For again, the word candra in candrarathā,—signifying also the lunar deity Soma, lord of the delight of immortality pouring into man, ānanda and amṛta,—means both luminous and blissful. And the horses that bring her, figure of the nervous forces that support and carry forward all our action, must be perfectly controlled; golden, bright in hue, their nature (for in this ancient symbolism colour is the sign of quality, of character, of temperament) must be a dynamism of ideal knowledge in its concentrated luminousness; wide in its extension must be the mass of that concentrated force,—pṛthupājaso ye.

Divine Dawn comes thus to the soul with the light of her knowledge, prajñāna, confronting all the worlds as field of that knowledge,—all provinces, that is to say, of our universal being,—mind, vitality, physical consciousness. She stands up lifted over them on our heights above mind, in the highest heaven, as the perception of Immortality or of the Immortal, amṛtasya ketuḥ, revealing in them the eternal and beatific existence or the eternal all-blissful Godhead. So exalted she stands prepared to effect the motion of the divine knowledge, progressing as a new revelation of the eternal truth, navyasi, in their harmonised and equalised activities like a wheel moving smoothly over a level field; for they now, their diversities and discords removed, offer no obstacle to that equal motion.

In her plenitude she separates, as it were, and casts down from her the elaborately sewn garment that covered the truth of

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things and moves as the wife of the Lover, the energy of her all-blissful Lord, svasarasya patnī. Full in her enjoyment of the felicity, full in her effectuation of all activities, subhagā sudaṁsāḥ, she brings into existence in us by her revelations Swar, the concealed luminous mind, our highest mental heaven; and thus from the farthest extremities of mental being extends herself over the physical consciousness.

As this divine Dawn pours out widely its light upon them, so have men by submission to the law of her divine act and movement to bring forward for her the fully energised completeness of their being and their capacities as a vehicle for her light or as a seat for her sacrificial activities.

The Rishi then dwells on the two capital works of the divine Dawn in man,—her elevation of him to the full force of the Light and the revelation of the Truth and her pouring of the Ananda, the Amrita, the Soma-wine, the bliss of the immortal being into the mental and bodily existence. In the world of the pure mind, divi, she rises into the full force and mass of the Light, ūrdhvaṁ pājo aśret, and from those pure and high levels she establishes the sweetness, madhu, the honey of Soma. She makes to shine out the three luminous worlds, rocanā; she is then or she brings with her the beatific vision. By the effectual illuminations of the pure mentality, through the realising Word, divo arkaiḥ, she is perceived as the bearer of Truth and with the Truth she enters from the world above Mind, full of the delight, in a varied play of her multiple thought and activity, into the mental and bodily consciousness, those established limits between which man's action moves. It is from her, as she comes thus richly laden, vājena vājini, that Agni, the divine Force labouring here in body and mind to uplift the mortal, prays for and attains to the Soma, the wine of the Beatitude, the delightful substance.

The supramental world in us, foundation of the Truth, is the foundation of the Dawns. They are the descent upon mortal nature of the light of that immortal Truth, ṛtaṁ jyotiḥ. The Lord of the Dawns, Master of Truth, Illuminer, Creator, Organiser, putting forth in the foundation of Truth, above mind, the impulsion of his activities, enters with them by this goddess into a bodily and mental existence no longer obscured but released from

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their limits and capable of vastness, mahī rodasī. The Lord of Truth is the sole Lord of things. He is Varuna, soul of vastness and purity; he is Mitra, source of love and light and harmony. His creative Wisdom, mahī mitrasya varuṇasya māyā, unlimited in its scope,—for he is Varuna,—appearing, candreva, as a light of bliss and joy,—for he is Mitra,—arranges, perfectly organises, in multitudinous forms, in the wideness of the liberated nature, the luminous expansions, the serene expressions of the Truth. He combines the various brilliancies with which his Dawn has entered our firmaments; he blends into one harmony her true and happy voices.

Dawn divine is the coming of the Godhead. She is the light of the Truth and the Felicity pouring on us from the Lord of Wisdom and Bliss, amrtasya ketuḥ, svasarasya patnī.

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