MANDALA FIVE

THE ATRIS

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BUDHA AND GAVISHTHIRA

SUKTA 1

1. Fire is awake by the kindling of the peoples, he fronts the dawn that comes to him like a fostering milch-cow; like the mighty ones casting upward their branching his lustres spread towards heaven.

2. The Priest of the call is awake for sacrifice to the gods. Fire with his right thinking has stood up high ablaze. The red-glowing mass of him is seen: a great god has been delivered out of the darkness.

3. When he put out the long cord of his troop, Fire in his purity reveals all by the pure herds of his rays; the goddess of understanding is yoked to her works, she supine he standing high, he has drunk from her breasts with his tongues of flame.

4. The minds of men who seek the godhead converge towards the flame even as their seeings converge in the sun; when two dawns of different forms give birth to this Fire the white Horse is born in front of the days.

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5. He was born victorious in front of the days, established in established things, ruddy-bright in the woodlands of our pleasure; in house and house founding the seven ecstasies the Fire took up his session as a Priest of the call strong for sacrifice.

6. Strength has taken his seat as the Priest of the offering mighty for sacrifice in the lap of the Mother, in that rapturous other world, the youth, the seer, manifold in his fixed knowledge, possessed of the Truth, the upholder of the peoples; in between too, is he kindled.

7. Men pray with their prostrations of surrender that illumined seer, who achieves perfection in the pilgrim-sacrifices. Fire, the Priest of the call, for he has extended earth and heaven by the Truth, they rub bright with the Light the eternal Horse of power.

8. The purifier he is rubbed bright and pure, he who is proclaimed by the seers, one who is the dweller in his own house, and is our benignant guest; the bull of the thousand horns because thou hast the strength of That, O Fire, thou precedest in puissance all others.

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9. At once thou goest forward, O Fire, and. overpassest all others in whomsoever thou hast become manifest in all the glory of thy beauty; adorable, great of body, wide of light thou art the beloved guest of human beings.

10. To thee, O ever youthful Fire, all the worlds and their peoples bring the offering from near and from far; awake to that right-mindedness of manʼs happiest state: vast and great and happy is that peace of thee,¹ O Fire.

11. Today, O luminous one, mount the luminous wholeness of thy car with the lords of sacrifice, thou knowest the wide mid-world with all its paths, bring here the gods to partake of our sacrifice.

12. To the seer, the understanding one, we have uttered the word of our adoration, to the Bull, the male; the Steadfast in Light has taken refuge, in his laud as in a far-reaching mass of gold.

¹ Or, is thy house of refuge,

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