A HYMN OF THE THOUGHT GODS Based on V.52-58 The shining host has arisen in my soul, the host of the Thought-gods and, they sing a hymn as they march upward, a hymn of the heart's illumination. March thou on, O my soul, impetuously to their violent and mighty music. For they are drunken with the joy of an inspiration that betrays not to falsehood, because the truth of eternal Nature is its guide. They are the comrades of a firm and blazing Light and in the force of the Light they work out their lofty aggressions; conquerors, violently they march on their path, self-protecting they guard of themselves the soul against falsehood; for they are many and

THE FOURTH HYMN TO AGNI THE DIVINE WILL, PRIEST, WARRIOR AND LEADER OF OUR JOURNEY [The Rishi hymns the Divine Force that knows all the successive births of the soul on its ascending planes of existence and as priest of his upward and onward-journeying sacrifice gives him the purity, the power, the knowledge, the increasing riches, the faculty of new formation and spiritual productiveness by which the mortal grows into immortality. It destroys the enemy, the assailants, the powers of evil, enriches the soul with all they try to withhold, gives the triple peace and the triple fulfilment of the mental, vital and physical being and, labouring in the lig

HYMN TO THE DAWN V. 79 [The Rishi prays for the full epiphany of the Dawn of the light of Truth in all its lavish splendour, with all the bountiful companies of its gods and seers, the shining herds of its thought, the rushing steeds of its force, the luminous impulsions with which it comes — companioned, as they are, by the burning rays of the Sun of gnosis. Let the Dawn arrive and the work will no longer be long and tardy.] 1. O Dawn, come with all thy splendours of heaven, awaken us today to the great felicity, even as once thou awakenedst us, — in the sonhood of the birth of knowledge, in the inspired hearing of the Truth.¹

CHAPTER XX The Hound of Heaven THERE yet remain two constant features of the Angirasa legend with regard to which we have to acquire a little farther light in order to master entirely this Vedic conception of the Truth and the discovery of the illuminations of the Dawn by the primeval Fathers; we have to fix the identity of Sarama and the exact function of the Panis, two problems of Vedic interpretation which are very closely related to each other. That Sarama is some power of the Light and probably of the Dawn is very clear; for once we know that the struggle between Indra and the original Aryan seers on the one hand and the sons of the Cave on the other

CHAPTER XIV The Cow and the Angirasa 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 Angirasa Rishis, on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths. The Vedic hymns, whatever else they may be, are throughout 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 mean physically wealth or pro

THE FOURTH HYMN TO MITRA-VARUNA V.65 THE LORDS OF THE JOURNEY [The Rishi invokes the two great increasers of the truth in our being to lead us in our journey to the plenitudes, to the vastness of our true existence which they conquer for us out of the narrow limits of our present ignorant and imperfect mentality.] He who has awakened to the knowledge, becomes perfect in will; let him speak for us among the gods: Varuna of the vision and Mitra take delight in his words. They are the Kings most glorious in light and most far in their hearing;¹ they are the masters of being in creature and creature

THE NINTH HYMN TO AGNI DIVINE WILL ASCENDENT FROM THE ANIMAL TO MENTALITY [The Rishi speaks of the birth of the divine Will by the working of the pure mental on the material consciousness, its involved action in man's ordinary state of mortal mind emotional, nervous, passionate marked by crooked activities and perishable enjoyments and its emergence on the third plane of our being where it is forged and sharpened into a clear and effective power for liberation and spiritual conquest. It knows all the births or planes of our existence and leads the sacrifice and its offerings by a successive and continuous progress to the divine goal and home.] Th

CHAPTER XVI The Angirasa Rishis THE name Angirasa occurs in the Veda in two different forms, Angira and Angirasa, although the latter is the more common; we have also the patronymic Angirasa applied more than once to the god Brihaspati. In later times Angirasa, like Bhrigu and other seers, was regarded as one of the original sages, progenitors of clans of Rishis who went by their names, the Angirasas, Atris, Bhargavas. In the Veda also there are these families of Rishis, the Atris, Bhrigus, Kanwas, etc. In one of the hymns of the Atris the discovery of Agni, the sacred fire, is attributed to the Angirasa Rishis (V.I 1.6), but in another to the Bhrigus (X.46.9).¹

THE GOD OF THE MYSTIC WINE* I IX.42 Giving birth to the luminous worlds of heaven,¹giving birth to the Sun in the waters,² the Brilliant One clothes himself with the waters and the rays.³ He by the ancient thought flows pressed out in a stream, a god around the gods. For one increasing and swiftly advancing4 there flow for his winning of the plenty the Soma-juices with their thousand strengths. Milked out, the ancient food, he is poured into the strainer that purifies and shouting he brings to birth the gods. ¹The

X THE ASHWINS, LORDS OF BLISS Rig-veda IV.45 Lo, that Light is rising up and the all-pervading car is being yoked on the high level of this Heaven; there are placed satisfying delights in their triple pairs and the fourth skin of honey overflows. Full of honey upward rise the delight; upward horses and cars in the wide-shinings of the Dawn and they roll aside the veil of darkness that encompassed on every side and they extend the lower world into a shining form like that of the luminous heaven. Drink of the honey with your honey-drinking mouths, for the honey yoke your car