II THE SCHOLARS The text of the Veda which we possess has remained uncorrupted for over two thousand years. It dates, so far as we know, from that great period of Indian intellectual activity, contemporaneous with the Greek efflorescence, but earlier in its beginnings, which founded the culture and civilisation recorded in the classical literature of the land. We cannot say to how much earlier a date our text may be carried. But there are certain considerations which justify us in supposing for it an almost enormous antiquity. An accurate text, accurate in every syllable, accurate in every accent, was a matter of supreme importance to the Vedic ritualists; for on scrupu

CHAPTER III Modern Theories IT WAS the curiosity of a foreign culture that broke after many centuries the seal of final authoritativeness which Sayana had fixed on the ritualistic interpretation of the Veda. The ancient Scripture was delivered over to a scholarship laborious, bold in speculation, ingenious in its flights of fancy, conscientious according to its own lights, but ill-fitted to under- stand the method of the old mystic poets; for it was void of any sympathy with that ancient temperament, unprovided with any clue in its own intellectual or spiritual environment to the ideas hidden in the Vedic figures and parables. The result has been of a double char

The Guardians of the Light SURYA, LIGHT AND SEER The Rig-veda rises out of the ancient Dawn a thousand-voiced hymn lifted from the soul of man to an all-creative Truth and an all-illumining Light. Truth and Light are synonymous or equivalent words in the thought of the Vedic seers even as are their opposites. Darkness and Ignorance. The battle of the Vedic Gods and Titans is a perpetual conflict between Day and Night for the possession of the triple world of heaven, mid-air and earth and for the liberation or bondage of the mind, life and body of the human being, his mortality or his immortality. It is waged by the Powers of a supre

THE EIGHTH HYMN TO AGNI DIVINE WILL, THE UNIVERSAL FULFILLER [The Rishi having declared the continuity of the great effort and aspiration from the earliest times hymns divine Will harboured in us, inmate, priest of the sacrifice, master of this dwelling, who fulfils the universal impulse in all its multiplicity and both stimulates and leads it in act and knowledge.] Will, who art by force created in us, thee the pristine Power the pristine seekers of the Truth kindled entirely that they might grow in their being, the god in the sacrifice, who because he has the multitude of his delights establishes the all,¹ domiciled in us, master of the dwelling,

A HYMN TO SAVITRI V. 81 [The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine know- ledge and the creator of the inner worlds. To him, the Seer, the seekers of light yoke their mind and thoughts; he, the one knower of all forms of knowledge, is the one supreme ordainer of the sacrifice. He assumes all forms as the robes of his being and his creative sight and creates the supreme good and happiness for the two forms of life in the worlds. He manifests the heavenly world, shining in the path of the dawn of divine know- ledge; in that path the other godheads follow him and it is his greatness of light that they make the goal of all their energies. He has measured ou

THE TWELFTH HYMN TO AGNI A HYMN OF MAN'S ASPIRATION TO THE TRUTH [The Rishi invokes this flame of the Divine Force, this vast Lord of the superconscient Truth, this Truth-conscious One, to accept thought and word into himself, become Truth-conscient in man and cleave out the many streams of the Truth. Not by mere force of effort nor under the law of the duality can the Truth be attained, but by the Truth itself. But there, are not only powers of this Force that battle with the falsehood and guard and conquer, there are others also who have helped so far in the march, but who would keep to the foundation of the falsehood because they cling to the present

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 Agni is the

A VEDIC HYMN 1.3 O Ashwins, to him who striveth¹ towards Yajna² swift-footed lords of bliss,³ O much-enjoying Ashwins, become4 delight. O strong, much-destroying5 Ashwins, with the firm and brilliant6 understanding take7 joy in my words. O wasters,8 O sons of Nasata, arrive, ye fierce of deed, for I have put myself in Yoga,9 I have manifested the flame.10 Come, O Indra, of manifold brilliance, here are these vital juices11 put forth, extend them with the Powers of being, O thou of purified strength.12 ¹Riṣ is

V SURYA SAVITRI, CREATOR AND INCREASER Rig-veda V.81 Men illumined yoke their mind and they yoke their thoughts to him who is illumination and largeness and clear perceiving. Knowing all phenomena he orders, sole, the Energies of the sacrifice. Vast is the affirmation in all things of Savitri, the divine Creator. All forms he takes unto himself, the Seer, and he creates from them good for the twofold existence and the four fold. The Creator, the supreme Good, manifests Heaven wholly and his light pervades all as he follows the march of the Dawn. In the wake of his march the

CHAPTER IV The Foundations of the Psychological Theory A HYPOTHESIS of the sense of Veda must always proceed, to be sure and sound, from a basis that clearly emerges in the language of the Veda itself. Even if the bulk of its substance be an arrangement of symbols and figures, the sense of which has to be discovered, yet there should be clear indications in the explicit language of the hymns which will guide us to that sense. Otherwise, the symbols being themselves ambiguous, we shall be in danger of manufacturing a system out of our own imaginations and preferences instead of discovering the real purport of the figures chosen by the R