MANDALA TWO

GRITSAMADA BHARGAVA

SUKTA 1

1. O Fire, thou art born with thy lights, flaming out on us in thy effulgence; thou art born from the waters and around the stone, thou art born from the forests and born from the plants of the earth. Pure art thou in thy birth, O Master of man and his race.

2. O Fire, thine are the call and the offering, thine the purification and the order of the sacrifice, thine the lustration; thou art the fire-bringer for the seeker of the Truth. The annunciation is thine, thou becomest the pilgrim-rite:¹ thou art the priest of the Word and the master of the house in our home.

3. O Fire, thou art Indra the Bull of all that are and thou art wide-moving² Vishnu, one to be worshipped with obeisance. O Master of the Word, thou art Brahma, the finder of the Riches: O Fire, who sustainest each and all, closely thou companionest the Goddess of the many thoughts.³

4. O Fire, thou art Varuna the king who holds in his hands the

¹ Or, thou art the priest of the pilgrim-rite: ² Or, wide-sung

³ Or, the Goddess tenant of the city.

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law of all workings and thou art Mitra the potent and desirable Godhead. Thou art Aryaman, master of beings, with whom is complete enjoying; O

Godhead, thou art Ansha who gives us our portion in the winning of the knowledge.

5. O Fire, thou art Twashtri and fashionest fullness of force for thy worshipper; thine, O friendly Light, are the goddess-Energies and all oneness of natural kind. Thou art the swift galloper and lavishest good power of the Horse; thou art the host of the gods and great is the multitude of thy riches.

6. O Fire, thou art Rudra, the mighty one of the great Heaven and thou art the army of the Life-Gods and hast power over all that fills desire. Thou journeyest with dawn-red winds to bear thee and thine is the house of bliss; thou art Pushan and thou guardest with thyself thy worshippers.

7. O Fire, to one who makes ready and sufficient his works thou art the giver of the treasure; thou art divine Savitri and a founder of the ecstasy. O Master of man, thou art Bhaga and hast power for the riches; thou art the guardian in the house for one who worships thee with his works.

8. O Fire, men turn to thee the master of the human being in his house; thee they crown, the king perfect in knowledge. O strong force of Fire, thou masterest all things; thou

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movest to the thousands and the hundreds and the tens.

9. O Fire, men worship thee with their sacrifices as a father and thee that thou mayst be their brother by their achievement of works when thou illuminest the body with thy light. Thou becomest a son to the man who worships thee; thou art his blissful friend and guardest him from the violence of the adversary.

10. O Fire, thou art the craftsman Ribhu, near to us and to be worshipped with obeisance of surrender; thou hast mastery over the store of the plenitude and the riches. All thy wide shining of light and onward burning is for the gift of the treasure; thou art our instructor in wisdom and our builder of sacrifice.

11. O Divine Fire, thou art Aditi, the indivisible Mother to the giver of the sacrifice; thou art Bharati, voice of the offering, and thou growest by the word. Thou art Ila of the hundred winters wise to discern; O Master of the Treasure, thou art Saraswati who slays the python adversary.

12. O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of

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our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side.

13. O Fire, the sons of the indivisible Mother made thee their mouth, the pure Gods made thee their tongue; O Seer, they who are ever close to our giving are constant to thee in the rites of the Path; the Gods eat in thee the offering cast before them.

14. O Fire, all the Gods, the Immortals unhurtful to man, eat in thee and by thy mouth the offering cast before them; by thee mortal men taste of the libation. Pure art thou born, a child of the growths of the earth.

15. O Fire that hast come to perfect birth, thou art with the Gods and thou frontest them in thy might and thou exceedest them too, O God, when here the satisfying fullness of thee becomes all-pervading in its greatness along both the continents, Earth and Heaven.

16. When to those who chant thee, the luminous Wise Ones set free thy gift, O Fire, the wealth in whose front the Ray-Cow walks and its form is the Horse, thou leadest us on and leadest them to a world of greater riches. Strong with the strength of the heroes, may we voice the Vast in the coming of knowledge.

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SUKTA 2

1. Make the Fire that knows all things born to grow by your sacrifice; worship him with thy offering and thy body and thy speech. Worship in his kindling Fire with whom are his strong delights, the male of the sun-world, the Priest of the Call, the inhabitant of Heaven¹ who sits at the chariot yoke in our battles.

2. The Nights and the Dawns have lowed to thee as the milch-cows low towards a calf in their lairs of rest. O Fire of many blessings, thou art the traveller of Heaven through the ages of man and thou shinest self-gathered through his nights.²

3. The Gods have sent into the foundation of the middle world this great worker and pilgrim of earth and of heaven, whom we must know, like our chariot of white-flaming light, Fire whom we must voice with our lauds like a friend in the peoples.

4. They have set in the crookedness, set pouring his rain like gold in the beauty of his light,³ in the middle world and in his own home, the guardian of the dappled mother who

¹ Or, who dwells in the Light ² Or, self-gathered thou illuminest his nights.

³ Or, like a thing of delight in his shining beauty,

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awakens us to knowledge with his eyes of vision, the protector of our path along either birth.

5. Let Fire be the priest of your call, let his presence be around every pilgrim-rite; this is he whom men crown with the word and the offering. He shall play in his growing fires wearing his tiara of golden light; like heaven with its stars he shall give us knowledge of our steps along both the continent-worlds.

6. O Fire, opulently kindling for our peace, let thy light arise in us and bring its gift of riches. Make Earth and Heaven ways for our happy journeying and the offerings of man a means for the coming of the Gods.

7. O Fire, give us the vast possessions, the thousandfold riches; open to inspiration like gates the plenitude; make Earth and Heaven turned to the Beyond by the Word. The Dawns have broken into splendour as if there shone the brilliant world of the Sun.

8. Kindled in the procession of the beautiful Dawns, he shall break into roseate splendour like the world of the Sun. O Fire, making effective the pilgrim-rite by man's voices of offering, thou art the King of the peoples and the Guest delightful to the human being.

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9. O pristine Fire, even thus the Thought has nourished our human things in the immortals, in the great Heavens. The Thought is our milch-cow, of herself she milks for the doer of works in his battles and in his speed to the journey the many forms and the hundreds of the Treasure.

10. O Fire, let us conquer a hero-strength by the War-Horse, or let us awake to knowledge beyond men by the Word;¹ let our light shine out in the Five Nations high and inviolable like the world of the Sun.

11. Awake, O forceful Fire, one to be voiced by our lauds; for thou art he in whom the luminous seers come to perfect birth and speed on their way. O Fire, thou art the sacrifice and to thee the Horses of swiftness come there where thou shinest with light in the eternal son and in thy own home.

12. O Fire, O God who knowest all things born, may we both abide in thy peace, those who hymn thee and the luminous seers. Be forceful for the opulence of the Treasure with the multitude of its riches and its many delights and its issue and the offspring of the Treasure.

¹ Or, wake in ourselves a strength of heroes beyond menʼs scope by the power of the War-Horse or by the Word;

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13. When to those who hymn thee the luminous Wise set free, O Fire, the gift in whose front the Ray-Cow walks and whose formis the Horse, thou leadest us on and leadest them to a world of greater riches. Strong with the strength of the Heroes, may we voice the Vast in the coming of the knowledge.

SUKTA 3

1. The Fire that was set inward in the earth is kindled and has arisen fronting all the worlds. He has arisen, the purifying Flame, the priest of the call, the wise of understanding, the Ancient of Days. Today let the Fire in the fullness of his powers, a god to the gods, do sacrifice.

2. Fire who voices the godhead, shines revealing the planes, each and each; high of ray he reveals, each and each, the triple heavens by his greatness. Let him flood the oblation with a mind that diffuses the light and manifest the gods on the head of the sacrifice.

3. O Fire, aspired to by our mind, putting forth today thy power do sacrifice to the gods, O thou who wast of old before aught that is human. Bring to us the unfallen host of the Life-Gods; and you. O Powers, sacrifice to Indra where he sits on the seat of our altar.

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4. O Godhead, strewn is the seat on this altar, the hero-guarded seat that ever grows, the seat well-packed for the riches,¹ anointed with the Light. O all Gods, sit on this altar-seat, sons of the indivisible Mother, princes of the treasure, kings of sacrifice.

5. May the divine Doors swing open, wide to our call, easy of approach with our prostrations of surrender; may they stretch wide opening into vastnesses, the imperishable Doors purifying the glorious and heroic kind.

6. Milch-cows, good milkers, pouring out on us may Night and Dawn, the eternal and equal sisters, come like weaving women full of gladness, weaving out the weft that is spun, the weft of our perfected works into a shape of sacrifice.

7. The two divine Priests of the call, the first, the full in wisdom and stature, offer by the illumining Word the straight things in us; sacrificing to the Gods in season, they reveal them in light in the navel of the Earth and on the three peaks of Heaven.

8. May Saraswati effecting our thought and goddess Ila and

¹ Or, made strong to bear for the riches,

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Bharati who carries all to their goal, the three goddesses, sit on our altar-seat and guard by the self-law of things our gapless house of refuge.

9. Soon there is born a Hero of golden-red form, an aspirant to the Godheads, a mighty bringer of riches and founder of our growth to wideness. Let the Maker of forms loosen the knot of the navel in us, let him set free the issue of our works; then let him walk on the way of the Gods.¹

10. The Plant is with us streaming out the Wine. Fire speeds the oblation by our thoughts. Let the divine Achiever of works, understanding, lead the offering triply revealed² in his light on its way to the Godheads.

11. I pour on him the running light; for the light is his native lair, he is lodged in the light, the light is his plane. According to thy self-nature, bring the Gods and fill them with rapture. O Male of the herd, carry to them our offering blessed with svāhā. ³

¹ Or, let the way of the Gods come to us. ² Or, triply anointed ³ Or, made into svāhā.

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