Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

SRI AUROBINDO'S INTERPRETATION

OF THE RIG-VEDA

A CRUCIAL QUESTION AND ITS POSSIBLE ANSWER

Sri Aurobindo has given a symbolic interpretation to the Rigveda with a great deal of penetrating analysis, showing it to be a powerfully imaged story of the soul's adventure towards Light, Freedom, Infinity, Immortality — a mystical adventure in which Gods are helpers and Demons hinderers. Objects of the physical world are spoken of in such a way that to the initiates they represent realities of the inner life while to the common herd they appear in a literal sense.

This sense is associated with a ritualistic religion devoted to a worship of personified Nature-powers by means of an elaborate "sacrifice" and invocatory chant. But the hymnody of ritual remains at best a semi-clear semi-obscure utterance. Hardly a consistent interpretation is possible of the imagery and phraseology employed. The mind bent on an understanding of this poetry on the basis of a primitive humanity's outer existence is bound to be baffled again and again and driven — as is the greatest traditional commentator, Sayana — to give different meanings to recurring turns of speech in order to make some head or tail of the strangely moving body of an antique religious poetry. Thus Sayana explains one of the key-words, rtam, which connotes "truth" or "right", as "truth", "sacrifice", "water", "one who has gone", even "food", not to speak of a number of other meanings.¹ The reading that Sri Aurobindo has proposed brings clarity, order and cogency as well as a persistent high-seriousness of significance into the Rig-veda, doing justice both to its intrinsic mantra-quality and to its reputation as a divinely inspired revelatory scripture.

Once we admit this reading, not only the cows, horses, rivers, mountains, treasures and booties of the hymns become symbolic but also the sacrificial gestures, journeys

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and wars as well as the heroes, sons, kings, nations and men in general. Yes, even men in general are symbols — for collective powers affined in the occult realm to human psychology. But here a crucial question arises. The evil forces of supernature are fought at the same time by the Gods and by the Aryan seers and workers in whom the Gods progressively take shape. If so, would there not be anti-Aryan human beings too, who are opposed to the Gods and the Aryan seers and in whom the demonic powers have progressively found embodiment?

Sri Aurobindo's answer in one place is that, though he has established a very strong prima facie case on a large scale, nothing except a complete and thorough examination in detail of the whole Rig-veda can finally decide whether those who figure as human-looking antagonists in the events and incidents pictured in the Rig-veda are entirely or only partly symbolic.² At another place he is quite confident and writes: "We may, if we like, suppose that there was a struggle between two different cults in India and that the Rishis took their images from the physical struggle between the human representatives of these cults and applied them to the spiritual conflict, just as they employed the other details of their physical life to symbolise the spiritual sacrifice, the spiritual wealth, the spiritual battle and journey. But it is perfectly certain that in the Rig-veda at least it is the spiritual conflict and victory, not the physical battle and plunder of which they are speaking."³ A third context in Sri Aurobindo seems to allow room for a dissimilar conclusion: "The one thing that seems fairly established is that there were at least two types of culture in ancient India, the 'Aryan' occupying the Punjab and Northern and Central India, Afghanistan and perhaps Persia and distinguished in its cult by the symbols of the Sun, the Fire and the Soma sacrifice, and the un-Aryan occupying the East, South and West, the nature of which it is quite impossible to restore from the scattered hints which are all we possess."⁴

Synthesising the three statements, we may say: "Accord-

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ing to Sri Aurobindo, there were two different cults in ancient India and there may have even been a conflict between them but from what he has studied and expounded of the Rig-veda we are led to affirm that whatever the theoretical uncertainty until the whole Rig-veda is analysed, the actual practical upshot is absolutely definite: we may generalise that the possible conflict does not appear directly at all in the Rig-veda. Everything there is symbol and apologue of the inner spiritual development."

However, there is one extremely taxing point. And here some remarks by Sri Aurobindo at an earlier period of his Vedic study gives us pause. Repeatedly in the Rig-veda we come across expressions like the following:

"...whatsoever mortal being exceeds us by the keenness of his actions, may he not as our enemy have mastery over us"(I.36.16).⁵

"...may we overcome the battle-hosts of mortals" (V.4.1).⁶ "The mortal of evil movements who gives us over to the stroke, guard us, O Fire, from him and his evil" (VI.16.31).⁷

"Protect us, deliver us not, O knower of all things born, to the mortal, the evil-thoughted one who would bring on us calamity" (VIII.71.7).⁸

What is more, a prayer like the last one is preceded immediately by the declaration: "Thou bringest, O Fire, the wealth in which are the many strengths to the mortal giver...."⁹ The same word "mortal" is applied to the Aryan Rishi and to an enemy of his. In numberless instances the Aryan Rishi is called "mortal" as distinguished from the Gods. Most often occurs the great phrase about the in-dwelling Agni: "the Immortal in the mortal" (e.g., 1.77.1; IV.2.1). Is then the word used in two different senses, one literal and the other symbolic?

Again, what are we to make of consecutive verses like:

"O Fire, consume utterly the demon magicians...

"Not even by magic can the mortal foe master the man

who offers worship to the Fire with his gifts of the oblation"

(VIII.23.14-15).¹⁰

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A distinction seems to be made between "demon magicians" — beings that in the Sanskrit original are named as rakshasas employing their power of maya — and the "mortal foe" employing such a power. A comparable cleavage appears to be driven between two categories when we read: "O Fire, guard us by thy lights from every hostile force and from mortal foe" (VIII.71.1).¹¹

Further, apropos of the verse — "Let not mortal men do hurt to us, O Indra who delightest in the mantra; be the lord of our bodies and give us to ward off the stroke" (I.5.10)¹² — Sri Aurobindo, at a time earlier than his Arya-series, The Secret of the Veda, has the note: "The Rishi has already prayed for protection of his spiritual gains against spiritual enemies; he now prays for the safety from human blows on the physical body."¹³ Then Sri Aurobindo adds that, though the Sanskrit marta undoubtedly means "mortal" in the Rig-veda, the termination ta may have either a passive or an active force so that the word may be like the English "mortal" itself which means either subject to death or deadly. Here he is inclined to accept an active rather than a passive sense and to understand "slayer, smiter, deadly one". Then the translation would be: "Let not the slayers of the body do hurt towards us, Indra who delightest in the mantra; govern them (our bodies with thy mental force) and give us to ward off the stroke."

Taking our cue from all this gloss of Sri Aurobindo's of an earlier phase when he clearly admits outer human enemies no less than inner spiritual ones, we may come to the aid of his later outlook by holding that "mortal" when applied to the enemies of the mortal Rishi connotes "body-slayer" without implying a human agency. Thus there may be, on the one hand, inner enemies who could hurt the inner being of the Rishi and, on the other hand, those who could destroy his outer being by an occult power. In that case the "mortal foe" employing "magic" would be the sort of supernatural demonic agency that can kill the body of the Rishi.

But is it possible to equate "mortal" to "body-slayer" in

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all contexts? What about the verse: "O God, repulse on every side with thy tongue of flame that doer of wickedness; oppose the mortal who would slay us" (VI.16.32)?¹⁴ Now the sense of slaying is differentiated from the meaning of "mortal". The latter word emerges as signifying no more than one who is subject to death — like the Rishi himself — unless we can light upon a connotation which would not be tautologous with the slaying-phrase.

Some translations of Sri Aurobindo's at another time may be looked at for help. Thus V.4.1, which we have already quoted as "...may we overcome the battle-hosts of mortals", is now rendered: "...may we...overcome the embattled assaults of mortal powers."¹⁵ The hymn preceding this has the phrases: "The creature of whom thou becomest the guest, O godhead, prevails by sacrifice over all that belong to the mortality"(5) — "...we by the felicity, O son of Force, overcome all that are mortal"(6).¹⁶ We might resort to the idea that the elements of weakness and obscurity in our nature are what the last-named hymn, mentioning the worshippers of Agni, names "mortal dwellers in this substance" (8),¹⁷ but will this idea suit the description: "all that are mortal"? Beings loom out of these words.

The connotation we need does not yet emerge. But it is surely to hand in the very set of terms Sri Aurobindo has offered on the strength of the double edge of the termination ta. If we choose the last term out of the three, our problematic verse will end with "...the deadly one who would slay us." There is emphasis here but no tautology. And a way- is opened to pass beyond the human world into the supernatural.

We may well regard this particular active aspect of marta as evident only to the initiate and as helping — by the mask it wears of the apparent passive aspect in consonance with the Rishi's own case — to put the layman off the esoteric track of the hymns.

Perhaps a further shade needs to be added in order to lend full substance to the term's esotericism. "Mortal" calls

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for an implication exceeding the mere vocable "man" which too occurs for the occult enemy the Rishi meets with, as in the verse: "O Fire,... may Atri overcome the destroyers who satisfy thee not, may he overcome forces and men" (V.7.10).¹⁸ We may consider "mortal", when applied to the Rishi's occult enemy, as pointing to a hostile supernatural power which not only brings a deadliness towards the Rishi's body but also looks to his inner eye like an embodied human being subject to death such as his own outer physical self.

Thus, to my mind, the challenging "mortal" may be seen as falling into line with the symbolic character of the Rig-veda's heroes, sons, kings, nations and men in general.

Notes and References

1.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Vol. 11 of the Birth Centenary Edition (Sri Aurobindo Ashram), p. 9.

2.The Secret of the Veda, Vol. 10 of the Birth Centenary Edition, p. 237.

3.Ibid., p. 215.

4.Views and Reviews (Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras), p. 47.

5.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, p. 49.

6.Ibid., p. 209.

7.Ibid., p. 281.

8.Ibid., p. 358.

9.Ibid.

10.Ibid., p. 332.

11.Ibid., p. 357.

12.The Secret of the Veda, p. 500.

13.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, pp. 500-01.

14.Ibid., p. 281.

15.The Secret of the Veda, p. 373.

16.Ibid., p. 371.

17.Ibid., p. 372.

18.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, p. 217. The last part of this verse Sri Aurobindo elsewhere translates interpretatively: "...these souls that rush upon him with their impulsions may he overcome" (The Secret of the Veda, p. 383). No clue is afforded to the status and nature of "these souls".

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