On Savitri
THEME/S
I
IN approaching Sāvitrī as a poem we must take note of the — possible difficulty likely to be encountered by foreigners who are not accustomed to certain ideas of Indian culture. It is natural that having a different background of culture they would find it difficult to enter into the spirit of a poem which has been called "a legend and a symbol".¹ In fact, since Dr. J. H. Cousins' book New Ways in English Literature and even before it, there had already begun to collect a considerable body of literature, including poetry, written in English by Indians. For some time it was called "Indo-English literature" but since the popularity and the great triumph of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali which earned him world-recognition, the course of English literature has been more and more influenced—especially after the two world wars—by other cultural currents, from the East and from the new world of America. Today the result is that Englishmen can no longer claim English as the exclusive language of British Islanders. In the words of an eminent Englishman, Ronald Nixon, alias, Sri Krishna Prem, "The English language has been given to the world and its usages and limits can now no longer be determined exclusively by the ears of the Islanders whose tongue it originally was. Those who would remain sole rulers of their language must abjure empire". If an integral world culture is to arise and if English is to be the medium
¹ In this connection an observation of Sri Aurobindo in his The Future Poetry, a book recently published, is interesting. He says, "The work of the poet depends not only on himself and his age, but on the mentality of the nation to which he belongs and the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic tradition and environment which it creates for hire".
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of its expression, then it will have to widen its cultural horizon and include the currents of different cultures in the forms of its literary expression. English has already become the chief language of the commercial world and it has a great chance of becoming a world language on condition that it abjures its linguistic empire and does not want to impose its present limits to prevent its natural growth into a wider sphere.
The foregoing remarks become necessary in the present unsettled state of poetical literature in which it is very difficult to find generally acceptable standards of literary criticism. For instance, here is what Ronald Nixon says about Sāvitrī: "It is an omen of the utmost significance and hope that in these years of darkness and despair such a poem as Sāvitrī should have appeared. Let us salute the Dawn". And here is another estimate,—if it can be so called—by an American Journalist, "Sri Aurobindo is also engaged upon one of the longest and worst epic poems of all time called Sāvitrī". These two opinions indicate how very difficult is the task of evaluating so great a poem.
Sāvitrī has an Indian legendary background. But this background is merely the starring point for the poet's inspiration and the reader is not expected to know all the details of the original legend. But as some acquaintance with the legend may help the reader to enter into the spirit of the poem a short account of the legend is given here
II
ETYMOLOGICAL MEANING OF THE NAMES
The word "Savitri" is derived from the word "Savitru" which in its turn is derived from the root "su"="to give birth to". The word "Soma" which indicates an "exhilarating drink", symbolising spiritual ecstasy or delight, is also derived from the same root "su". It links therefore the creation and the delight of creation. Savitru, therefore, means the Divine Creator, One who gives birth to, or brings forth from himself into existence, the creation. In the Veda, Savita is the God of illumination, the God of creation,
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Usually, he is represented by the material sun which also illuminates the solar system and is its creator and sustainer in the material sense. Savitri therefore would mean etymologically "some one descended from the Sun", "one belonging to the Sun", "an energy derived from the Sun, the Divine Creator". In our poem, Savitri is the princess who embodies Divine Grace descended in human birth to work out with the aspiring soul of humanity his divine destiny. The word "Satyavan" means etymologically "one who possesses,—or wants to possess,—the Truth", or "one who has the Truth".
Aswapathy, the father of Savitri, has been significantly called by the poet "the Lord of Life". (Book II. Canto XV). The name suggests an affinity to Vedic symbolism. In the Veda, Aswa, the horse, is the symbol of life-energy or vital power. Aswa+ paty, Lord, would mean the "Lord of Life". In the poem King Aswapathy is the symbol of the aspiring soul of man as manifested in life on earth.
III
THE LEGEND
The story woven in this epic is based upon the Mahabharata (Aranyak Parva, Ch. 248). This is the story. Aswapathy, the king of Madra, was childless. In order to have a child he resorted to austerities and a life of celibacy, fasting every sixth day. Simultaneously he performed a hundred thousand sacrifices. After a period of these austerities lasting eighteen years, the goddess Savitri, was propitiated and appeared before him out of the sacrificial fire. She declared herself pleased and said that his desire for having an issue would be satisfied by Brahma, the God of Creation. From her own self, as her prasād, her special grace, she bestowed upon him a daughter. In consequence of the boon, a daughter was born to him and as she was a gift of the goddess Savitri, Aswapathy gave her the name of "Savitri". She was beautiful like Laxmi, the Goddess of Beauty and of golden colour, more like a daughter of a god than of man. In course of time, she grew to age and the parents
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found it dufficult to get her married because no prince came forward to ask for her hand as her personality was known to be too strong and brilliant. Aswapathy was pained at this and he asked her to go round the country and choose her own partner. He sent her out to travel with an old minister as an escort. After travelling over the country for more than two years when she returned to her father's place, the great seer, Narad, happened to be there. She disclosed her choice of Satyavan, son of king Dyumatsen who was living in a hermitage in the forest. Dyumatsen was living in exile because his enemies had taken advantage of his blindness and driven him out of his kingdom. The young prince Satyavan was brave, intelligent, generous, forgiving. The parents therefore approved of her choice. But Narad disapproved of the choice because he knew that Satyavan was fated to die after one year. In the face of this reading of the future Savitri persisted in and clung to her choice, saying that one makes the choice once only. The parents consented to her choice and she was accordingly married to Satyavan. Immediately after marriage she betook to the simple and hard life of the hermitage where Satyavan lived. Even though she was extremely happy to have married Satyavan, the man of her choice, she could not for a moment forget the dire prophecy of the great sage, Narad. She was preparing herself for the great crisis and for the last three days of the year she resorted to complete fast, standing at one place all the time.
On the fateful morning, Satyavan wanted to go to the forest in order to bring fuel for the sacrificial fire, Savitri insisted on accompanying him to the forest, as she did not want to undertake the risk of letting him go alone to face his death. Satyavan's parents were obliged to consent to her going by her entreaties. The excuse she had given for accompanying Satyavan was that she wanted to see the forest. In fact, she was so occupied with the idea of Satyavan's fate that while going with him she hardly looked at the forest. They reached a certain place well known to Satyavan and stopped there to cut wood. After cutting some wood, Satyavan complained of a severe pain in the head and Savitri offered her lap for him to rest his head. After a short time, Satyavan fell asleep, and Savitri saw the God of Death standing before her. He declared that he had come to take the life of Satyavan and accordingly took it. Savitri
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followed the spirit of Satyavan separated from his physical body and captured in the noose of the God of Death. She conversed with Yama, the God of Death, while following him, and her conversation so pleased him that he granted her several boons, the last of which was the restoration of the life of Satyavan. Thus Savitri triumphed over Death as well as Fate and returned to her hermitage.
In the Mahabharata legend, Satyavan afterward recovers his father's kingdom and rules happily over it.
This legend has been kept almost intact in its story-part by the poet. But the legend itself can be interpreted as a symbol and the poet has not only interpreted it but, in fact, has transformed it into a living symbol. There are, for instance, portions like the first Canto of the first Book and Canto III, IV and V of the same Book which contain the poet's own experience of the origin of the world -and his conception of Aswapathy's character. The life of the childless king Aswapathy performing tapasyā in order to have a child has been entirely changed by the poet into a symbol of human soul descended on earth from divine heights trying to acquire knowledge of the Self and the world. The entire second Book is, in fact, Aswapathy' s travel over worlds heaped upon worlds in a complex cosmogony mounting from the plinth of the plane of Matter right up to levels of Higher Mind and the plane of the Cosmic Being leading to worlds of greater knowledge. Aswapathy represents the aspiring human soul down the millenniums of evolution in his search for the truth of himself, of the world and of God. He acquires by his tapasyā immense knowledge of the possibilities of the human consciousness, its deeper depths and its higher and the highest heights. In his heart bums the flame of aspiration to create here on earth an image of the perfection which his soul feels is possible for man and earth to attain. The third Book describes Aswapathy's entry into and his experience of Supracosmic planes of consciousness and his meeting face to face with the Supreme Creatrix, the power of the omnipotent Divine. At the end of his spiritual efforts he thus enters not a featureless Infinite and a void Absolute but a divine world of die Spirit—what the poet calls the House of the Spirit—where Truth and Knowledge, Power and Consciousness, divine Delight and Harmony are the constituent
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elements. And he feels the possibility of bringing this Truth- world into the earth so that a new creation, the kingdom of the Divine, would be manifested here. He receives from this Divine Power the direct inspiration to continue his spiritual efforts and struggles for bringing the Truth-world in the midst of human ignorance and against the opposition of the Powers of Darkness, suffering, inertia and Death. She holds out the promise to Aswapathy of the ultimate victory of the Divine in spite of all difficulties and oppositions. But Aswapathy feels that his mere human spirit would find the task very hard and unless the Divine Mother herself comes down on earth, or sends her representative emanation on earth in a human form, it would be impossible to create the world of Truth here, life divine in the midst of life human. The supreme Mother in her infinite grace gives Aswapathy a boon that a human manifestation of her Grace would be born on earth. "A new light shall break upon the earth, a new world shall be born, things that were promised shall be fulfilled." (The Mother.)
Thus, Savitri was born in answer to Aswapathy's intense aspiration for the Divine's help in creating divine perfection here. How far this is from the childless king of the legend performing austerities and sacrifices for a child! ! The whole period of Aswapathy's austerities as reported in the legend has been transformed by the poet into an epic climb of human soul in its journey from the Inconscient to the very gates of the Superconscient and the whole symbol becomes full of a tremendous cosmic significance. Aswapathy's penances are here the trials and tribulations of the evolving Soul of Humanity and his gains are the gains of the human race during its long struggles for attainment of the Truth.
Savitri also ceases to be a mere accomplished princess and becomes the manifestation of the Grace of the Supreme coming down to humanity to share in its burden of suffering and ignorance in order to enable it to achieve the victory over forces of Darkness and Death. Savitri achieved this by facing Yama, the God of Death, at the time when he came to take the life of Satyavan. It is by the extension of her protection, of her own Infinity and Immortality, that she saved Satyavan from the God of Death. The rest of the story,—her growth from childhood to age, her going out to choose the partner for life, her selection of Satyavan in the
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hermitage, her return to her parents and meeting the sage, Narad,— has been kept intact by the poet with the difference that Savitri, throughout, is treated as one conscious of her Divinity and at the same time conscious of her humanity. The episode of Narad's declaration of fate has been raised to a very high pitch of spirituality wherein cosmic purposes and intentions, the destiny of the human being, are brought into play. The delineation of Savitri 's character in Books IV, V, and VI maintains the dignity of the boon of the Supreme Mother given to Aswapaty in Book I Canto IV. In the original legend, as also in the symbol, Savitri faces Yama, the God of Death. But in the legend the conversation which takes place between Savitri and Yama is rather conventional and is only religio-ethical in its manner; where as here, in this epic, Savitri clearly stands not merely as the representative of the race but also as the embodiment of the supreme Grace. Yama, on the other side, puts before her all the opposition that the subtlety, ingenuity and cunning that Ignorance can devise. The whole dialogue moves on a very high plane of inspiration in which brilliant flashes of revelation and overmental lightning occasionally break forth. Here also one sees how far the poet has enriched the original legend,—how far, in fact, he has heightened the Indian myth by turning it into a rich episode full of significance for the human soul and its destiny. He has turned a local legend into a tremendous psychological fact full of significance for the human evolution. It is this transforming power which is the alchemy of the great Master. The originality of the poet scintillates when he deals with the life of Savitri and Satyavan after the conquest, of Death. In the legend, they return to the earth and Satyavan regains his father's kingdom and rules it for many years and is happy ever after. But, in the poet's symbol both Savitri and Satyavan rise from the kingdom of Death to the region of Eternal Day where the Sun of Troth never sets, where Ignorance is unknown and Death has no place. After staying in this region of Truth for some time, they look upon the earth and return to it in order to accomplish their Divine Work—the creation of a new humanity. Thus the legend is completely transformed by the creative vision of the great Master into a cosmic symbol.
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IV
TIME-SEQUENCE IN THE EPIC
Some readers have found it difficult to follow the time-sequence in the arrangement of Books and Cantos of Savitri, Really speaking, there is no discrepancy in the time-sequence because the story in the symbol follows the same course as the story in the legend. Only, the poet of the epic has made a rearrangement of the subject matter in his presentation. The poem has definitely gained in its power of gripping the attention of the reader. The poem opens with the Symbol-Dawn that simultaneously ushers in the outbreak of the Spirit in Matter as that of the Sun from the dark Night. We see here Savitri face to face with the crucial problem of her life, the death of Satyavan. We see her face to face with Earth, Love and Doom, with universal pain in her heart gathering her calm and supreme strength to meet the forces of Nescience concentrated in the God of Death. The second Canto gives us a picture of Savitri 's own inner workings before she faces the supreme test of her human life. The remaining Cantos of the first Book (HI, IV and V), take us back to Aswapathy before the birth of Savitri. After the first two Cantos the poet goes back upon the story to connect it up with the central incident by creating the vast background of Aswapathy's inner life, its struggles, its achievements and the circumstances under which the birth of Savitri becomes possible. The results of his individual sadhana lead him to the knowledge of the planes of being, the levels of consciousness, below and above the human range. Having completed his ascension almost to the top of the created cosmos, he is led to supra-cosmic planes and worlds whence he descends back to the earth with a command to pursue his labour for the spiritual perfection of mankind and a promise of help of the supreme Grace that would ultimately solve the problem of man and achieve the victory for the Divine. This cosmic and supra-cosmic voyage occupies Books II and III.
Book IV brings us to the birth of Savitri, her growth and her going out to choose the partner of her life. Book V, the Book of Love, deals with her meeting Satyavan, their falling in love with each other, and her promise to return to him after once going
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back to her father. Book VI, the Book of Fate, describes the meeting between Savitri, her parents and Narad when Satyavan's fate and Savitri 's choice are affirmed. Savitri returns to Satyavan and the story goes up to their marriage, one year's married life and the death of Satyavan.
So, when Book VII, the Book of Eternal Night, opens, the day that dawns in the first Canto of the first Book has arrived and we have to resume the thread of the story from the seventh Book onward as if it were passing in consciousness, and not on earth. For, when Yama, the God of Death, has taken Satyavan, Time has already ceased to be. Again, when Savitri and Satyavan, free from Death, rise to the Higher Consciousness, it is also the realm of the Eternal Day where human time does not exist. So, when they both return to the earth to begin their Divine Work, the day that dawned in the first Canto of the first Book has hardly ended. Perhaps they resume their work even on earth in the presence of the Eternal Day. So far as the time-sequence of the story is concerned, it is perfectly understandable.
V
SYMBOLS
"All language is symbolic"
LASCEILES ABERCROMBIE.
As Sāvitrī is a symbol it might be helpful to understand the place of symbols in life and in literature. One has only to turn to the most ancient scriptures of the world like the Veda and the Bible to find that symbols have been used profusely by men from the earliest times to convey their meaning. To men in those times everything seemed symbolic. Mr. H. W. Garrod is right when he says, "Once upon a time the world was fresh, to speak was to be a poet, to name objects an inspiration; and metaphor dropped from the inventive mouths like some natural exudation of the vivified senses". Before man began to think he perceived with his soul.
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The first naming of objects was certainly an act of inspiration or intuitive perception, for, there is no logical reason for names given to objects in languages, e.g., the sound "Cow" has nothing inherent in it, nothing rational in it, to indicate the quadruped known by that name. Even when he developed the intellect, symbols seem to have occurred to man in the form of metaphors. Metaphor does not rise in the mind as a result of rational thinking but wells up in the consciousness as an intuitive flash. Natural objects, like the sun, the moon, the sky, rivers, phenomena like the dawn were perhaps the first, to be intuitively perceived as symbols. The sun and the light were symbols of knowledge, night and darkness of ignorance. The ocean and the sky symbolise wideness and infinity in all literatures of the world. Birds like the eagle, the swan and the dove, animals like the lion and the ass, flowers like the lotus and the rose have been used as symbols. Even signs like the cross and the swastik have been symbols. Apart from symbols that can be called universal there are others valid for the individual as also there are symbols created or rather constructed by the intellect of man. We find these most profusely in mathematics where they are very useful for the sake of their brevity, economy and power of generalisation. Besides these, man uses symbols in religious ceremonies, in mystic rites, even in expressing his political ideology, party emblems and national spirit. In Hebrew each letter of the alphabet is a symbol.
In poetry symbols come naturally as very effective means for expressing the poet's experience, besides being economical. According to C. Day Lewis, the special faculty of the poet is the "power of creating images". These "images" that a poet creates are a kind of sign-language which forces itself on him under the stress of the creative impulse or in the moments of intensity of his creative faculty. The "image" created by the poet is effective and therefore authentic in proportion as it conveys the experience or the state of his consciousness, without diminution or distortion. When the image is authentic it is a symbol, that is to say, it does not merely represent the experience but conveys the experience and is the most effective expression of it in language. Sri Aurobindo calls this "the finding of the inevitable word" and "inspired phrase". AE in the Candle of Vision speaks of his experience of visions and rightly calls in
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question all the modem theories of psychology that try to explain them or rather explain them away on a materialistic basis. AE finds that the visions he saw had the character of self-existent forms made available to his inner-subtle sight under certain inner conditions.
Sri Aurobindo is even more definite about this matter. He says, "Vision is the characteristic power of the poet, as is discriminative thought the essential gift of the philosopher and analytic observation the natural gift of the scientist".
It is the faculty of vision, the power of seeing the truth of one's experience or even some supra-intellectual Truth embodied as a symbol that gives the poet his special expressive power. It is true that a poet can create, or rather construct with the help of his imagination, an intellectual symbol which conveys his import to other people by a figure of symbol which represents rather than is the experience. Kalidas can use the "Cloud" as a "messenger" and Shelley convey the poet's Truth through the "Skylark".
The question how these symbols arise has been a great puzzle to poets, critics and even psychologists. The explanation of the creative activity of the poet offered by the psychologists by referring it to the "subconscious" and the "collective inconscient" is most unconvincing and at best partial. Day Lewis in his Poetic Image states that the process of creation of a poem is more or less a mystery. The difficulty in tracing the origin of a poem arises from the fact that the consciousness of the poet as of all men is complex and there are therefore several planes of consciousness as possible sources of poetry in him. The poetical symbols are also of various kinds and can be seen on various planes of being. All symbols are true—i.e. effective—as far as they go. The higher the plane from which a symbol is seen the greater is the authenticity it carries. Sri Aurobindo in reply to a correspondent writes about symbols as follows: "Symbols may be of various kinds, there are those that are concealing images capable of intellectual interpretation but still different from either symbolic or allegorical figures". Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory. Arthurian legends may be the type of concealing images capable of intellectual interpretation. Prometheus Unbound of Shelley can be taken as a symbolic figure.
With regard to the function of the symbol in expression Sri Aurobindo says in another letter: "A symbol expresses not the play
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of abstract things or ideas put into imaged form but a living Truth or inward vision or experience of things, so inward, so subtle, so little belonging to the domain of intellectual abstraction, and precision that it cannot be brought out except through symbolic images—the more these images have a living truth of their own which corresponds intimately to the living truth they symbolise, suggests the very vibration of the experience itself, the greater becomes the art of the symbolic expression. When the symbol is a representative sign or figure and nothing more, then the symbolic approaches nearer to an intellectual method, though even then it is not the same thing as an allegory."
It has been sometimes assumed that the symbol is a more appropriate form for poets of early times and that it is not in keeping with the modernist spirit. This belief goes against facts, for, even a bird's eye-view of English poetry reveals that not only poets like Blake and others in the past have resorted to the symbol but that many of the modem poets have used it effectively. Francis Thom- son's The Hound of Heaven is symbolic of the Divine Love pursuing insistently its victim, the human soul. W. B. Yeats and AE in their poems and dramas make profuse use of ancient Irish legends which are symbolic: Deirdre, Countess Catheleen, Unicorn from the Stars, Cuchulain. C. Day Lewis' Magnetic Mountain and Herbert Reads' Mutations of the Phoenix are avowedly symbolic. The 'Phoenix' stands for the finite mind of man which moves in its nest of light towards the Infinite.
Before he wrote the great symbol-epic Sāvitrī Sri Aurobindo had written many shorter, poems in which he has used symbols with marvellous success. His poems The Bird of Fire, The Rose of God, and Thought, the Paraclete are only a few of the shorter poems and Ahanā is a longish poem in which his remarkable power of creating, or rather seeing, symbols has already found expression.
VI
Sāvitrī is symbolic and the poetic genius of Sri Aurobindo has been saturated not only with English, Greek and Latin poetry but it has dived deep into the earliest poetry of humanity, the Rig
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Veda. How the Veda is living poetry and how Sri Aurobindo makes it live again in his translations of the hymns of the Veda is well known to those who have seen his epoch-making researches in the realm of Vedic interpretation embodied in his published book Hymns to the Mystic Fire and the still unpublished work Secret of the Veda. His thesis is that the Rig Veda is symbolic poetry embodying the spiritual wisdom of the early mystics. He himself has been a mystic all along his life and because of his affinity with the spirit of mystic expression it is natural that in Sāvitrī there are passages and lines which echo in their proper setting some of the poetic forms of the Vedic symbolists. A list is given below on some analogies which is by no means exhaustive.
( i )
"The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried the seed of grandeur in the hours."
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto I.
( 1)
Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead....
(a) projecting forward her illumination, she enters into communion with rest that are to come.
Rig Veda, I. 113, 8, 10.
(b) Lo, Dawn, queen of the plenitudes,...she has created her host of ruddy cows.
Rig Veda, I. 124. II.
(c) "Lo! in front of us that Supreme Light full of the knowledge has arisen out of the darkness; daughters of heaven shining wide
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the Dawns, stand in front of us like pillars in the sacrifices; breaking out pure and purifying they have opened the doors of the pen, the darkness".
Rig Veda, IV, 51. 1—2.
(2)
"And the Animal browses in the sacred fence
And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more."
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 2.
(a) He moves like a beast that wanders at will and has no keeper.
Rig Veda, IX. 96-19.
(b) Like a Hawk, a kite. He settles on the vessel and upbears it.
Rig Veda, II. 4-7.
(3)
"A spirit that is a flame of God abides.....
Immortal in our mortal poverty." .
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3.
That which is Immortal in mortals and possessed of the Truth, is a God and established inwardly as an energy working out in our Divine Powers.
Rig Veda, IV. 2.-I.
(4)
"A seer was born; a shining Guest of Time"
Sāvitrī, Book 1, Canto 3.
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(a) The guest of all the human beings, may the Fire draw to us the protection of the Gods.
Rig Veda, IV. 1-20.
(b) The purifier he is rubbed bright and pure and our benignant guest.
Rig Veda, VI. 8.
(c) He is wide in his light like a seer of the day;...he is the immortal in mortals; he is the waker in the dawn, our guest,...
Rig Veda, VI. 4-2.
(5)
"All the grey inhibitions were torn off,
And broken the intellect's hard and lustrous lid;"
The face of Truth is hidden by a golden lid: that remove O! fostering Sun, for the Law of the truth, for sight.
Iśa Upanisad, 15.
s mortals add possessed of the Truth, ardiy as an energy working out in our
(6)
"Where the God-child lies in the lap of Night and Dawn"
(a) A son of two mothers...
Rig Veda, III. 55-7.
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(b) Two are joined together, powers of truth, powers of Maya, —they have built the child and given him birth and they nourish his growth.
Rig Veda, X. 5-3.
(c) "Two mothers of differing hues move and nourish alternately the child for common good."
Rig Veda, I. 95-1.
(7)
"A darkness carrying morning in its breast
Looked for the eternal wide returning gleam,
the advent of a larger ray
And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.
There is a permanent, a truth hidden by a truth where the Sun nyokes his horses.
Rig Veda, V. 62-1.
(8)
(a) "In the deep subconścient glowed her jewel-lamp;
Where, by the miser traffickers of sense unused"
(b) "The trogdolytes of the subconscious Mind,
Ill-trained slow stammering interpreters,
Only of their small task's routine aware,
And busy with the record in our cells,
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 5.
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(a) They who are conscious of the much falsehood in the world...
Rig Veda, VII. 60-5
(b) Panis who make the knot of the crookedness, who have not the will to works, spoilers of speech who have no faith—He has broken down by his blows the walls that limit.
Rig Veda, VII. 6-3.
(9)
"An eye awake in the voiceless heights of trance".
That is the highest place which is seen ever by the seers like an eye extended in heaven.
Rig Veda, I. 22-20.
(10)
"Matter smitten by matter glimmered to sense".
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 4.
By the truth they hold the truth that holds all.
Rig Veda, V. 12-2
(Here there is similarity of the way of expression, not of substance).
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(11)
"The dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable law of Chance and Death"
Sāvitrī, Book III, Canto 4.
"Who are they that protect the foundation of falsehood? Who are guardians of the unreal word"?
Rig Veda, V. 12. 2-4.
(12)
(a) "Its gold-homed herds trooped into earth's cave-heart."
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10.
(b) "And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun."
(1) The hill parted asunder.
Rig Veda, V.
(2) "He found them. Radiant-ones of the arriving dawn went abroad, he uncovered those that were in the pen."
Rig Veda, V. 45.1-2.
(3) "When thou didst tear the waters out of the hill, Sarama became manifest before thee; so do thou as our leader tear out much wealth for us, breaking the pens, hymned by the Angirasa".
Rig Veda, IV. 16-8.
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(13)
"The python-coils of restricting Law
Could not restrain the swift arisen God".
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 5.
The "python-coils" reminds us of Ahi-Vritra of the Rig Veda where it is symbolic of the coils of Ignorance enveloping the human being restricting his freedom and knowledge.
Rig Veda.
(14)
"The divine-Dwarf towered to unconquered worlds".
The "Dwarf" here brings to our mind the Vamana—"The divine Dwarf", an incarnation of Vishnu who measured the three worlds—the material, the vital and the mental—in his three steps. In die Rig Veda there is a symbolic reference to this which is enlarged as usual, in the Puranas.
Rig Veda, I. 22. 17-18.
(15)
"Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes
Entered in currents or in pouring waves
Into the immobile ocean of his calm."
Compare, Gita: "As the waters enter the ocean, filling it but with its base unshaking, even so do desires enter into him,—he the sage attains peace, not the one who entertains desires."
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(16)
"In darkness' core she dug out well? of light"
"In the hill there are dug out the abounding wells of sweetness''
Rig Veda, IV. 50-3.
(17)
"She broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And plundered the Unknowable's vast estate."
This recalls the vedic image of Brihaspati and Angirasa breaking open the hill of the Panis by the inspired word.
(a) "Their cry heated all the earth and heaven".
Rig Veda, III. 36-10.
(b) "Severing the hill of heaven by die words"
Rig Veda, V. 45-1.
(c) "Let the word come forward from the seat of the Truth".
Rig Veda, VII. 36-1.
(18)
"Pursuing all knowledge like a questing hound."
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"When Sarama found the broken places of the hill,
She made continuous the great and supreme goal
She, the fair-footed, led him to the front of the imperishable ones"
Rig Veda, III. 31-6.
( l9)
(a) For Vrishabha, The Bull, roaring aloud:
* * *
USHA IN THE RIG VEDA
(b) This is the awakening of the Light of consciousness from the mass of darkness of the Night of the Inconscient. In Man's life Usha is his awakening to the need of spiritual life from his state of normal human Ignorance.
"Usha is the divine illumination. The result of the birth of divine vision is that man's path manifests itself to him and those journeyings of the gods or to the gods which lead to the infinite wideness of the divine existence".
"The eye of Dawn has come into being in front. The path of man is that of his journey to the Supreme plane. There is a divine law of the life into which soul has to grow".
The Dawn leads to the "level wideness" Samāne ūrvé. This is the vast Truth and the infinite being of Aditi.
The error, the crookedness, falsehood by which men violate the workings of the Gods and by which different principles of their being, consciousness and knowledge enter into confused conflict with each other, have been removed by the eye or vision of the divine Dawn".
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