Chapter  XI Chapter  XI   The Seven Rivers   THE Veda speaks constantly of the waters or the rivers, especially of the divine waters, āpo devīḥ or āpo divyāḥ, and occasionally of the waters which carry in them the light of the luminous solar world or the light of the Sun, svarvatīr apaḥ. The passage of the waters effected by the gods or by man with the aid of the gods is a constant symbol. The three great conquests to which the human being aspires, which the gods are in constant battle with the Vritras and Panis to give to man are the herds, the waters and the Sun or the solar world

The Seventeenth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF ENLARGEMENT AND ULTIMATE ASPIRATION   [A state arrives in which man goes beyond the mere subtlety and fineness of the intelligence and reaches to a rich and manifold largeness of soul. Even then though he has now the wide law of his being which is our right foundation, he needs a force greater than his to lead him; for largeness and multiplicity of soul-force and knowledge are not enough, there must be the divine truth in thought, word and act. For we have to attain beyond the enlarged mental being to the beatitude of a state beyond mind. Agni has the light and the forc

VIII   Vayu, the Master of the Life Energies   Rig Veda IV.48       1. Do thou manifest the sacrificial energies that are unmanifested, even as a revealer of felicity and doer of the work; O Vayu, come in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.     2. Put away from thee all denials of expression and with thy steeds of the yoking, with Indra for thy charioteer come, O Vayu, in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.       3. The two that, dark, yet hold all substances, shall observe thee in their labour, they in w

Hymns to Agni   Agni, the Divine Will-Force   THE NAME of this flaming godhead, Agni, derives from a root whose quality of significance is a pre-eminent force or intensity whether in state, action, sensation or movement; but the qualities of this essential significance vary. It means a burning brightness, whence its use for fire; it means movement and especially a curving or serpentine movement; it means strength and force, beauty and splendour, leading and pre-eminence; it developed also certain emotional values which have perished in Sanskrit, but remain in Greek, angry passion on one side, on the other delight and love. The Vedic deity Ag

Note on the Texts     Note on the Texts   In August 1914, Sri Aurobindo began to publish The Secret of the Veda in the first issue of the philosophical review Arya. This series was accompanied by a related one, Selected Hymns. Selected Hymns was followed a year later by Hymns of the Atris. These works, written and published in monthly instalments between 1914 and 1917, form Parts One to Three of the present volume. Besides Selected Hymns and Hymns of the Atris, other Vedic translations appeared in the Arya at various times between 1915 and 1920. They were usually introduced when a page or two had to b

III   Indra and the Thought-Forces   Rig Veda I.171       1. To you I come with this obeisance, by the perfect Word I seek right mentality from the swift in the passage. Take delight, O Maruts, in the things of knowledge, lay aside your wrath, unyoke your steeds.     2. Lo, the hymn of your affirmation, O Maruts; it is fraught with my obeisance, it was framed by the heart, it was established by the mind, O ye gods. Approach these my words and embrace them with the mind; for of submission1 are you the increasers.     3. Affirmed let the Maruts be beni

The Twenty-Seventh Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF THE STRENGTH AND ILLUMINATION   [The Rishi under the figure of the demigod, Traivrishna Tryaruna Trasadasyu, and the seer Ashwamedha, symbolises the fulfilment in the human mentality of the illumination of the God-Mind Indra, and the power of the God-Will, Agni, in the vitality. The Mind-Soul, destroyer of the demons, awakened to knowledge as the human-born Indra, has given to the seer his two cows of light that draw his wain, his two shining horses that draw his chariot and the ten times twelve cows of the dawn of knowledge. He has assented to and confirmed the desire with which

' ' by Sri Aurobindo Page 1 of 50 XI   The Ribhus, Artisans of Immortality   Rig Veda I.20     1. Lo, the affirmation made for the divine Birth with the breath of the mouth by illumined minds, that gives perfectly the bliss;     2. Even they who fashioned by the mind for Indra his two bright steeds that are yoked by Speech, and they enjoy the sacrifice by their accomplishings of the work.     3. They fashioned for the twin lords of the voyage their happy car of the all-pervading movement, they fashioned the fostering cow that yields the swe

Chapter XIV   The Cow and the Angiras Legend   WE MUST now pursue this image of the Cow which we are using as a key to the sense of the Veda, into the striking Vedic parable or legend of the Angiras Rishis, on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths. The Vedic hymns, whatever else they may be, are through out an invocation to certain "Aryan" gods, friends and helpers of man, for ends which are held by the singers, —or seers, as they call themselves (kavi, ṛsi, vipra), —to be supremely desirable (vara, varā). These desirable ends, these boons of the gods are summed up in the words rayi, rādhas, which may me

IX   Brihaspati, Power of the Soul   Rig Veda IV.50     l. He who established in his might the extremities of the earth, Brihaspati, in the triple world of our fulfilment, by his cry, on him the pristine sages meditated and, illumined, set him in their front with his tongue of ecstasy.     2. They, O Brihaspati, vibrating with the impulse of their movement, rejoicing in perfected consciousness wove for us abundant, rapid, invincible, wide, the world from which this being was born. That do thou protect, O Brihaspati.