The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo

Linguistic Formations and Usages Connected

with the Name "Sri Aurobindo”

A LETTER

I see that you have adopted the adjectival form "Aurobindian" rather than "Aurobindonian" which I employ. Both can be propped up from Sri Aurobindo himself. On p.109 of Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (Second Series) we have the Master writing: "I groan in an unAurobindian despair when I hear such things." On p.154 of Life-Literature-Yoga (Revised and Enlarged Edition) we find: "But even if I had no justification from the dictionary and the noun 'empy'rean' were only an Aurobindonian freak and a wilful shifting of the accent, I would refuse to change it; for the rhythm here is an essential part of whatever beauty there is in the line ['His heart a chaos and an empyrean']."

Perhaps the only thing in favour of "Aurobindonian" as against "Aurobindian" is that it is dated 4.8.1949 while the other is as old as 23.2.1935. I believe it was Dilip Kumar Roy who first used it and we took it up. Possibly our frequent employment of it tilted Sri Aurobindo himself towards it.

Or we may say that the introduction of one or the other should depend for us on the context. "Aurobindonian freak" conveys much better the freakishness than "Aurobindian freak". But I wonder whether from this we should think of the form "Aurobindonian" itself as freakish. My view is that the accord comes of the gesture of sweeping boldness suggested by the longer epithet. "UnAurobindian despair" is also more apt-sounding than if the alternative adjective were there. But "Aurobindian hope" does not somehow have an equally appropriate ring. Although it may suit Sri Aurobindo's own modesty, it seems to cramp the meaning in our mouths, taking away something of the largeness and grandeur of the hope spoken of.

Of course, other possibilities exist: "Aurobindean, Aurobindoan, Aurobindoesque, Aurobindoic, Aurobindovian." But they are somewhat outlandish - and the Master himself never tried them out.

In passing we may note that he designates his own system not

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by a formation from any adjective but directly from the noun. Thus he writes to Dilip: "You can't expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness in comparison with Krishna's. The question itself would be relevant only if there were two sectarian religions in opposition, Aurobindoism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God's greatness. That is not the case..."¹

Then we have the question about the "Sri" in "Sri Aurobindo". I for one never omit the "Sri", but I have no particular attachment to it and I do not think there is anything reprehensible in the use simply of "Aurobindo" by European and American admirers and interpreters of his spiritual philosophy. Indeed, originally his name was just this and so there is no illogic in employing it even now. Moreover, the adjective formed by the Master from the name is without the "Sri". If he had taken the "Sri" to be sheer part and parcel of the appellation, perhaps he would not have detached it in the epithet.

What further leads Westerners to do without the "Sri" is that nowadays this vocable or its equivalent "Shri" has been made by our Government the Indian for "Mr." In India too there is the likelihood that in putting "Sri" before "Aurobindo" we may be assumed to give conventional respect to the Master as to any other Indian. But, against all this, both we and the Westerners must remember the ancient Indian practice of using that honorific as a special mark of spiritual status: we speak of Sri Rama and Sri Krishna but not of Sri Dasaratha (Rama's father) or Sri Arjuna (Krishna's close companion in the Battle of Kurukshetra) - or even, for that matter, of Sri Asoka though the Buddhist emperor happened to be a highly religious figure. And, most of all, we must remember that "Sri" was adopted by our Master himself at a certain point of time in the course of his spiritual career. He used to sign himself "Aurobindo Ghose" or "A.G." Even in the days of the Arya it was like that. I believe it was some time in the middle twenties of the century that "Aurobindo Ghose" became "Sri Aurobindo". The change of signature denoted a change in the personality manifested. Maybe the change came after 24 November 1926, the day of the Overmind's descent into his very body-substance. It is a point worth researching. And it is deeply significant. The new name is

¹. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, p. 136.

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of importance because it emerged out of spiritual realisation. It does not have its origin or ground merely in the veneration paid by disciples. As such, I feel that it should be kept up as far as possible - though we need not make a fetish of it.

Do we make a fetish of "Sri Krishna" or "Sri Rama"? Quite frequently we just say "Krishna" or "Rama". Sri Aurobindo himself does it. In the very explanation of the Victory Day, as 24 November 1926 is called, he writes:

"24th was the descent of Krishna into the physical.

"Krishna is not the supramental Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards the Ananda."²

Elsewhere, in one and the same context Sri Aurobindo has "Krishna" and "Sri Krishna":

"Sri Krishna never set out to arrive at any physical transformation, so anything of the kind could not be expected in his case.

"Neither Buddha nor Shankara nor Ramakrishna had any idea of transforming the body. Their aim was spiritual mukti and nothing else. Krishna taught Arjuna to be liberated in works, but he never spoke of any physical transformation... "³

The same practice by Sri Aurobindo we find in relation to another spiritual Figure who stood very high in his eyes:

"I would have been surprised to hear that I regard (in agreement with an 'advanced' Sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pygmy if I had not become past astonishment in these matters.... Is it necessary for me to say that I have never thought and cannot have said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Sri Ramakrishna."⁴

Yes, we may thus cite Sri Aurobindo in support of our employing, if we like, merely "Aurobindo". But here we may advert to what the Mother said apropos of the foreigners' practice of omitting the "Sri". She commented that they do so because they think the name "Auroville" which she had coined for the new model-city contains as its opening portion the sound

². Ibid., p. 136.

³. Ibid.

4. SABCL Vol. 26, p. 134.

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"Auro" as short for "Aurobindo". She made it plain that "Auro" was from the French "aurore" meaning "dawn", so that "Auroville" stands for "Dawn-city". She added that "Sri" is an integral part of the name by which we know our Master. This implies that she would like all of us - Westerners no less than Indians - always to use the form "Sri Aurobindo".

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Sri Aurobindo and the Veda

Abbé Jules Monchanin, in his long article La Pensée de Shri Aurobindo in the Paris periodical L'Eglise Vivante,¹ often shows himself to be a perceptive admirer, especially where "Sri Aurobindo the Philosopher and Prophet" is concerned. But he finds himself completely at odds with Sri Aurobindo over the Veda.

Walking in the steps of Indologists like Louis Renou, he subscribes to the theory that the Veda is, as the mediaeval Indian commentator Sayana held, a manual of ritual practices and that in it natural phenomena are invested with life and worshipped as superhuman powers and that its terms are to be taken literally as part of a primitive hymnal. The mentality behind it is considered as being grossly down-to-earth and preoccupied with purely physical objects, events and relationships.

Monchanin suggests that Sri Aurobindo, when he interpreted the Veda spiritually and symbolically, indulged in loose amateurish fancy, unmindful of historical data and scholarly linguistics. Monchanin does not realise that here was a master of languages. Sri Aurobindo was expert in Greek and Latin, intimate with French, sufficiently familiar with Italian and German, besides being a supreme specialist in English. He was acquainted with several modern Indian tongues, including Tamil. His knowledge of Sanskrit was consummate and was further enlightened by his direct Yogic experience of all that the Sanskrit scriptures of India express of the highest and widest spirituality. Further, his was a most sensitive literary sensorium, capable of insight into the fountainheads of inspiration as well as alert to the various layers of being from which utterance could spring. And the conclusions at which he has arrived about the matter and manner of the Veda are set forth after a scrupulous review of old and current theories and follow a clear chain of philological, historical and psychological arguments.

Sri Aurobindo demands, as a background to the Upanishads and to the later developments of Indian religion and philosophy, an Age of the Mysteries such as preceded in European antiquity

¹. No. 4, 1952, pp. 312-36.

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the emergence of systematic and discursive thought. The Veda is to him the full articulate scripture of an epoch resembling the one whose failing remnants survived in Greece in practices like the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Age of the Mysteries, "the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated."² According to Sri Aurobindo the Veda is composed on a double plane of esoteric and exoteric.

On general grounds what we may term the psychologico-historical argument is the strongest in Sri Aurobindo's favour. He³ writes: "Such profound and ultimate thoughts, such systems of subtle and elaborate psychology as are found in the substance of the Upanishads, do not spring out of a previous void. The human mind in its progress marches from knowledge to knowledge, or it renews and enlarges previous knowledge that has been obscured and overlaid, or it seizes on old imperfect clues and is led by them to new discoveries. The thought of the Upanishads supposes great origins anterior to itself, and these in the ordinary theories are lacking. The hypothesis, invented to fill the gap, that these ideas were borrowed by barbarous Aryan invaders from civilised Dravidians, is a conjecture supported only by other conjectures. It is indeed coming to be doubted whether the whole story of an Aryan invasion through the Panjab is not a myth of the philologists⁴.... Much indeed of the forms and symbols of thought which we find in the Upanishads, much of the substance of the Brahmanas supposes a period in India in which thought took the form or the veil of secret teachings such as those of the Greek Mysteries."

The Upanishads are at present regarded as a movement breaking away from Vedism. In the words of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan,⁵ they evince "a protest against the externalism of the

² . The Secret of the Veda. SABCL Vol. 10, p. 6.

³ . Ibid., pp. 3-4.

4. Editor's Note: Even fifty-two years after this was penned, the well-known American archaeologist, George F. Dales, familiar with excavations in the Indus Valley, could write in the Scientific American (May 1966, p. 95) about the supposed Aryan invaders: "They have not yet been identified archaeologically."

5. Indian Philosophy (Indian Edition, 1941), p. 144.

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Vedic pratices and an indifference to the sacredness of the Veda". True, a ritualistic cult based on the Veda, a ceremonial of religious Works as distinguished from what the Upanishads came to consider spiritual Knowledge, is an object of strong revulsion in the Upanishadic period. But does not Radhakrishnan⁶ himself tell us that the Upanishads "adopt a double attitude towards Vedic authority"? Here surely is a puzzle. Why should Radhakrishnan⁷ have to go on to say that in places the Upanishads "concede the scriptural origin of the Veda"?

The fact is that these Upanishads, which condemn the form popularly taken by Vedism and which are said to have borrowed their spirituality from "Dravidian" sources, profess again and again to bring out the truth of the Riks, the Mantras, the Verses of the Vedic Rishis. As M.P. Pandit⁸ reminds us, "They quite often quote the Riks as seals of approval for their own findings." As examples⁹ we may pick out: "This is said by the Riks" from the Mundaka Upanishad (III. 2.10) - "That is said by the Rishi" from the Aitareya (IV.5) - "So also says the Verse" from the Prashna (1.10) - and "Seeing this the Rishi said..." from the Brihadaranayaka (II.5.18).

A fact even more directly significant is the clear Upanishadic echoes of Rig-vedic religious figures. Thus the Isha has an appeal to Surya, the Sun, as a god of revelatory knowledge by whose action we can arrive at the highest Truth. Sri Aurobindo¹⁰ points out: "This, too, is his function in the sacred Vedic formula of the Gayatri which was for thousands of years repeated by every Brahman in his daily meditation; and we may note that this formula is a verse from the Rig-Veda, from a hymn of the Rishi Vishwamitra" (III. 62.10) - and in it "the Sun in its highest light... is called upon... to impel our thoughts".¹¹ Actually, as Sri Aurobindo¹² has shown, the very verses of the Isha about Surya are a recasting of an invocation in the Rig-Veda. The Isha (15-16) cries: "The face of the Truth is covered with a golden lid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.. p. 149.

8. Mystic Approach to the Veda and the Upanishads (Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1966), p. 110.

9. Ibid.

10. Op. cit., p. 5.

11. Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL Vol. 11, p. 14.

12. Ibid.

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O Pushan, that remove for the vision of the law of the Truth. O Pushan (Fosterer), Seer, O Yama, O Sun, O Child of the Father of beings, marshal and gather together thy rays; I see the Light which is that fairest (most auspicious) form of thee; he who is this Purusha, He am I." Sri Aurobindo asks us to mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates into his own later style, keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in sense, a mystic thought or experience in a passage of the Rig-veda. "Pushan", "Kavi", "Yama", "Prajapati" are also Rig-vedic names though not present in that passage itself. The earlier formulation (V.62.1) runs: "There is a Truth covered by a Truth, where they unyoke the horses of the Sun; the ten hundreds stood together, there was That One. I saw the best of the bodies of the Gods." The basic parallelism is unmistakable.

Sri Aurobindo¹³ has taken the trouble to elucidate it. "The golden lid is meant to be the same as the inferior covering of truth, rtam, spoken of in the Vedic verse; the 'best of the bodies of the Gods' is equivalent to the 'fairest form of the Sun', it is the supreme Light which is other and greater than all outer light; the great formula of the Upanishad, 'He am I', corresponds to That One, tad ekam, of the Rig-vedic verse; the 'standing together of the ten hundreds' (the rays of the Sun, says Sayana, and that is evidently the meaning) is reproduced in the prayer to the Sun 'marshal and mass his rays' so that the supreme form may be seen. The Sun in both the passages, as constantly in the Veda and frequently in the Upanishad, is the Godhead of the supreme Truth and Knowledge and his rays are the light emanating from that supreme Truth and Knowledge. It is clear from this instance - and there are others - that the seer of the Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind of the European scholars."

Unlike the opinions of that commentator and these scholars, Sri Aurobindo's view of a double plane of esoteric and exoteric is not single-tracked but allows the co-existence of several approaches while stressing one of them. He¹⁴ writes: "The ritual system recognised by Sayana may, in its externalities, stand; the

¹³. Ibid., pp. 14-15.

14. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL VoL 10, p. 6.

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naturalistic sense discovered by European scholarship may, in its general conceptions, be accepted; but behind them there is always the true and still hidden secret of the Veda, - the secret words, ninyā vachāmsi, which were spoken for the purified in soul and the awakened in knowledge." Indeed, Rishi Vamadeva himself, who in the fourth Mandala (3.16) uses these two vocables, follows up with: Kāvyāni kavaye nivachanā - "seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer."¹⁵

The very name given to Vamadeva and his likes - Kavi - which subsequently came to mean any poet but has the connotation of "seer" in the Veda is quite evidently connected with messages from a divine source, for the Rishis are described in the Veda itself as kavayah satyaśrutah, "seers and hearers of the Truth".

Pointers to the esoteric plane are not only in this phrase and in that sentence of Vamadeva's, but also in what Rishi Dirghatamas has to tell us in the very first Mandala. In I.164.46 we have one of the most spiritual declarations of India: "The Existent is One, but the sages express It variously; they say Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni..." The same hymn (I.164.39) openly speaks of the Riks as "existing in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable, in which all the Gods are seated", and Dirghatamas adds: "one who knows not That, what shall he do with the Rik?" (The answer, of course, is: "He will make the mess which Monchanin, following Renou's lead, approves and encourages.")

Thus it is not only in the tenth and final Mandala, which is later in time and is acknowledged to have philosophical contents, that we have direct links with the explicit spirituality of the Upanishadic and post-Upanishadic eras. From the earliest Vedic utterances we get support for Sri Aurobindo's vision of the oldest Indian book of worship. And in the last Mandala itself (X.71) "the Vedic Word is described as that which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and the most faultless.... But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not, hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring him like a beautifully robed wife to a husband lays open her body [X.71.4]. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the

15. SABCLVol. 11, p. 5.

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Word, the Vedic Cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig-veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all."¹⁶

Sri Aurobindo¹⁷ continues: "The tradition, then, was there and it was prolonged after the Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation, the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explanation by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge [ādhi-yajñika], a knowledge of the gods [ādhi-daivika] and finally a spiritual knowledge [ādhyātmika]; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and subordinate. He says further that 'the Rishis saw the truth, the true law of things, directly by an inner vision'; afterwards the knowledge and the inner sense of the Veda were almost lost and the Rishis who still knew had to save it by handing it down through initiation to disciples and at a last stage outward and mental means had to be used for finding the sense such as Nirukta and other Vedangas. But even then, he says, 'the true sense of the Veda can be recovered directly by meditation and tapasya', those who can use these means need no outward aids for this knowledge. This also is sufficiently clear and positive."

Modern scholarship, which dates the Rigveda to c. 1500 B.C., computes that Yaska compiled his Nirukta in the period c. 700-400 B.C. His status as an authority is therefore fairly ancient even by the rather over-short modern chronology. Nor is it Yaska alone who has pressed the adhyatmic view. In the 13th century A.D., a hundred years before Sayana, Anandatirtha, more popularly known as Madhwacharya, wrote in a spiritual vein on the first 40 hymns." Sayana himself yields evidence of a spiritual, philosophical or psychological interpretation. "He mentions, for instance, but not to admit it, an old interpretation

16. Hymns to the Mystic Fire. SABCL Vol. 11, p. 6.

17. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

18. Mystic Approach to the Veda and the Upanishads, p. 27.

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of Vritra as the Coverer who holds back from man the objects of his desire and his aspirations. For Sayana Vritra is either simply the enemy or the physical cloud-demon who holds back the waters and has to be pierced by the Rain-giver."¹⁹. After Sayana we have Raghavendra Swami amplifying Madhwacharya and even quoting an ancient Puranic text which declares the Vedas to have three meanings - trayorthāḥ  sarvavedaṣu.²⁰ In our own times Swami Dayananda, founder of the Arya Samaj, made a remarkable attempt to re-establish the Veda as a living religious scripture.

So Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Veda cannot be looked askance at as quite unnatural or quite new-fangled. It differs from the earliest ones, which are affined to it in principle, by its thoroughness, its flexibility and its insight. He has used penetrative scholarship of the highest order as well as the "meditation and tapasya" recommended by Yaska to reach it.

And it is not only a number of learned commentators who have anticipated Sri Aurobindo in their own inadequate ways. He²¹ has noted about the hymns: "In the fixed tradition of thousands of years they have been revered as the origin and standard of all that can be held as authoritative and true in Brahmana and Upanishad, in Tantra and Purana, in the doctrines of great philosophical schools and in the teachings of famous saints and sages. The name borne by them was Veda, the knowledge, - the received name for the highest spiritual truth of which the human mind is capable."

Then Sri Aurobindo²² notes a supreme irony: "But if we accept the current interpretations, whether Sayana's or the modern theory, the whole of this sublime and sacred reputation is a colossal fiction. The hymns are, on the contrary, nothing more than the naive superstitious fancies of untaught and materialistic barbarians concerned only with the most external gains and enjoyments and ignorant of all but the most elementary moral notions or religious aspirations."

Surely here is a strange state of affairs but the Veda itself must bear the responsibility for it. And Sri Aurobindo does not ignore

19. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10, p. 19.

20. Mystic Approach..., pp. 27-28.

21. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10, p. 3.

22. Ibid.

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whatever lends itself to gross interpretations: references to food, wine, gold, children, servants, cows, horses, travel, forts, enemies, war, plunder on the one hand, and night, dawn, fire, water, rivers, hills, forests on the other. By his double outlook - esoteric and exoteric - he does full justice to the paradox that is the Veda. He is also aware that²³, even in the past, side by side with the extreme veneration accorded to this manual of Mantras a censorious eye was turned upon it by mystics for its earthy-seeming concerns. Not only the Upanishads but the Gita too criticises the champions of Vedism, saying²⁴ that all their flowery teachings were devoted solely to material wealth, power and enjoyment. Yet, with apparent inconsistency, the Gita,²⁵ like the Upanishads, does not hesitate to regard the Veda always as divine knowledge. Nothing except Sri Aurobindo's double outlook can have validity. Those who deny the esotericism fly in the face of all indications in its favour and, when despite Sri Aurobindo's masterly treatment of these clues they cling to their pet prejudices, one despairs of academic qualifications.

Sri Aurobindo has no difficulty in demonstrating that in some cases of reference to external objects the Veda has dropped definite hints of their symbolic usage. "Cows" occurs very frequently. There is no doubt that the Vedic word gau means both "cow" and "ray" (or "light"). In the Vedic hymns to the Dawn "Sayana himself is obliged... to interpret the word sometimes as cows, sometimes as rays, - careless, as usual of consistency..."²⁶ Sri Aurobindo adds that twice the Veda removes the veil of the image entirely. In the one instance a synonym for "rays" is used and the word "gau" comes in as a simile, indicating the true Vedic content of this word: prati bhadrā adṛkṣata gavāṁ sargā na raśmayaḥ (IV.52.5) - "her happy rays come into sight like the cows released into movement."²⁷ Still more conclusive is the verse: saṁ te gāvas tama ā vartayanti, jyotir yacchanti (VII.79.2) - "Thy cows (rays) remove the darkness and extend the light."²⁸ Similarly, the Veda discloses the true sense of ghṛita meaning

23. Ibid., p. 20.

24. Gita. II. 42.

25. Gita, XV. 15.

26. The Secret of the Veda. SABCL Vol. 10, p. 119.

27. Ibid.. p. 121.

28. Ibid.

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ghee or clarified butter. This word can also mean light, from the root ghṛi to shine. In a Vedic expression like dhiyaṅ ghṛitācīm the thought is compared to pure clarified butter and we can only speak of "luminous thought",²⁹ just as ghṛitapruṣā manasā, "a mind pouring ghee", has to be translated a "mind pouring the light".³⁰ Again, when the Rishi asks Agni (Fire-God) to "hearken to the anthem our thoughts strain out pure to the godhead like pure clarified butter" (VI. 10.2), we have in the comparison the clue to the symbol of ghṛita in the sacrifice.³¹ Ghṛita is "the light-offering", the labour of the clarity of an enlightened or illumined mind.

Perhaps the easiest way to rout Renou and his tribe of modern expositors, on whom Monchanin leans so confidently, is to employ the argument Sri Aurobindo brings to bear on the nature of the Panis, a certain type of enemy of the aspirants to Aryanism, the cult of Light. The general term for the enemies of Aryanism is Dasa-Dasyu and, as not only Sri Aurobindo but even Western authorities like A.A. Macdonell and A.B. Keith"³² inform us, the Panis are also designated as Dasas and Dasyus in some passages. Hence what Sri Aurobindo says in connection with the Panis must hold throughout the Rig-veda, and Sri Aurobindo himself intends it to hold when he" writes apropos of the Panis: "It is either an uncritical or a disingenuous method to take isolated passages and give them a particular sense which will do well enough there only while ignoring the numerous other passages in which that sense is patently inapplicable." The situation which arises when we take as a whole all the references in the Veda to the Dasa-Dasyus and adopt the conclusion which issues from all the passages thus taken together - the total situation may be formulated with indications from Western scholarship itself. Macdonell and Keith" state: "Dasyu, a word of somewhat doubtful origin, is in many passages of the Rig-veda clearly applied to superhuman enemies... Dasa, like Dasyu, sometimes denotes enemies of a demoniac character in the Rigveda." About the Panis the same savants³⁵ say: "In some

29. Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL Vol. 11, p. 12.

30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., p. 264.

32. The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (London, 1912), I, pp. 471, 472.

33. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10, pp. 215-16.

34. Op. cit., I, pp. 347, 356.

35. Ibid., I, pp. 471,472.

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passages the Panis definitely appear as mythological figures, demons who withhold the cows or waters of heaven." With this fact established from non-Aurobindonian expositors about the anti-Aryans, we may quote Sri Aurobindo³⁶ on what the Panis must turn out to be throughout the Veda in consequence of the comprehensive method he has proposed:

"When we follow this method we find that in many of these passages the idea of the Panis as human beings is absolutely impossible and that they are powers either of physical or of spiritual darkness; in others that they cannot at all be powers of physical darkness, but may well be either human enemies of the god-seekers and sacrificers or else enemies of the spiritual Light; in yet others that they cannot be either human enemies or enemies of the physical Light, but are certainly the enemies of the spiritual Light, the Truth and the Thought. From these data there can be only one conclusion, that they are always and only enemies of the spiritual Light."

Perhaps sympathisers with Monchanin's stricture on the Aurobindonian attitude may try to make a dent in the latter by asking: "Are there not any passages where the Dasa-Dasyus are definitely something else than demons?" - and then by citing Macdonell and Keith's opinion³⁷ about their being human: "this may be regarded as certain in those passages where the Dasyu is opposed to the Aryan, who defeats him with the aid of the gods." But surely if a Dasyu or Dasa is a demon-enemy, he is hostile both to the gods and to the Aryan who worships the gods and is favoured by them: it can make little difference to the enemy's essential character whether the gods fight him directly in the inner occult world or through the aid they give to the soul of the worshipper fighting him there.

No, Sri Aurobindo's case is unassailable. And we may well conclude with him:³⁸ "The whole Rig-veda is a triumph-chant of the powers of Light, and their ascent by the force and vision of the Truth to its possession in its source and seat where it is free from the attack of the falsehood."

(1974)

36. SABCL Vol. 10, p. 216.

37. Op. cit., 1, p. 347.

38. Op. cit., SABCL Vol. 10, p. 223.

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