The origin of the word shudra
The deeper truth of these
things
was reserved for the initiates, for those who were ready to
understand and practise the inner sense, the esoteric meaning hidden
in the Vedic scripture. For the Veda is full of words which, as the
Rishis themselves express it, are secret words that give their inner
meaning only to the seer, /kavaye nivacan/ā/ni niny/ā/ni
vac/ā/msi. / This is a feature of the ancient sacred hymns which
grew obscure to later ages; it became a dead tradition and has been
entirely ignored by modem scholarship in its laborious attempt to
read the hieroglyph of the Vedic symbols. *Yet its recognition is
essential to a right understanding of almost all the ancient
religions; for mostly they started on their upward curve through an
esoteric element of which the key was not given to all*. In all or
most there was a surface cult for the common physical man who was
held yet unfit for the psychic and spiritual life and an inner secret
of the Mysteries carefully disguised by symbols whose sense was
opened only to the initiates. *This was the origin of the later
distinction between the Shudra, the undeveloped physical-minded man
and the twice-born, those who were capable of entering into the
second birth by initiation and to whom alone the Vedic education
could be given without danger.* This too actuated the later
prohibition of any reading or teaching of the Veda by the Shudra. It
was this inner meaning, it was the higher psychic and spiritual.
truths concealed by the outer sense, that gave to these hymns the
name by which they are still known the Veda, the Book of Knowledge.
Only by penetrating into the esoteric sense of this worship can we
understand the full flowering of the Vedic religion in the Upanishads
and in the long later evolution of Indian spiritual seeking and
experience. For it is all there in its luminous seed, preshadowed or
even prefigured in the verses of the early seers. |