Writings on the Veda and philology, and translations of Vedic hymns to gods other than Agni not published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime.
On Veda
Writings on the Veda and philology, and translations of Vedic hymns to gods other than Agni not published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. The material includes (1) drafts for 'The Secret of the Veda', (2) translations (simple translations and analytical and discursive ones) of hymns to gods other than Agni, (3) notes on the Veda, (4) essays and notes on philology, and (5) some texts that Sri Aurobindo called 'Writings in Different Languages'. Most of this material was written between 1912 and 1914 and is published here for the first time in a book.
THEME/S
[ ] - Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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?
(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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(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]
(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.
(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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