CHAPTER XV The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows THE conquest or recovery of the Sun and the Dawn is a frequent subject of allusion in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Sometimes it is the finding of Surya, sometimes the finding or conquest of Swar, the world of Surya. Sayana, indeed, takes the word Swar as a synonym of Surya; but it is perfectly clear from several passages that Swar is the name of a world or supreme Heaven above the ordinary heaven and earth. Sometimes indeed it is used for the solar light proper both to Surya and to the world which is formed by his illumination. We have seen that the waters which descend from Heaven or which are conquered and

THE SECOND HYMN TO MITRA-VARUNA V.63 THE GIVERS OF THE RAIN [Mitra and Varuna are by their united universality and harmony the guardians of the divine Truth and its divine Law eternally perfect in the ether of our supreme being; thence they rain down the abundance of the heavens and its bliss upon the favoured soul. Seers in man of that world of Truth, as they are, by their guardianship of its law, rulers of all this becoming, they give us its rain of spiritual wealth and immortality. The Life-powers range with the voice of the truth-seeking thought through earth and heaven and the two Kings come to their cry with the brilliant clouds full of

CHAPTER IX Saraswati and Her Consorts THE symbolism of the Veda betrays itself with the greatest clearness in the figure of the goddess Saraswati. In many of the other gods the balance of the internal sense and the external figure is carefully preserved. The veil sometimes becomes transparent or its corners are lifted even for the ordinary hearer of the Word; but it is never entirely removed. One may doubt whether Agni is anything more than the personification of the sacrificial Fire or of the physical principle of Light and Heat in things, or Indra anything more than the god of the sky and the rain or of physical Light, or Vayu anything more than the d

                 

CHAPTER VI Agni and the Truth THE Rig-veda is one in all its parts. Which- ever of its ten Mandalas we choose, we find the same substance, the same ideas, the same images, the same phrases. The Rishis are the seers of a single truth and use in its expression a common language. They differ in temperament and personality; some are inclined to a more rich, subtle and profound use of Vedic symbolism; others give voice to their spiritual experience in a barer and simpler diction, with less fertility of thought, richness of poetical image or depth and fullness of suggestion. Often the songs of one seer vary in their manner, range from the utmost simplicity to the m

THE TWENTY-FIFTH HYMN TO AGNI A HYMN TO THE LORD OF LIGHT AND CREATOR OF GODHEAD [The Rishi hymns Agni as the Seer-Will whose whole being is the light and the truth and the lavishing of the substance of divinity. He is the son born to the thought of the seers and he gives himself as the godhead born in man who is the son of our works opulent with the divine Truth and the divine Power and as the conquering steed of the journey and the battle. The whole movement of the Seer-Will is upward to the light and vastness of the superconscient; his voice is as if the thunder-chant of those heavens. He shall carry us by his perfect working beyond the siege of dark

IX BRIHASPATI, POWER OF THE SOUL Rig-veda IV. 50 He who established in his might the extremities of the earth, Brihaspati, in the triple world of our fulfilment, by his cry, on him the pristine sages meditated and, illumined, set him in their front with his tongue of ecstasy. They, O Brihaspati, vibrating with the impulse of their movement, rejoicing in perfected consciousness wove for us abundant, rapid, invincible, wide, the world from which this being was born. That do thou protect, O Brihaspati. O Brihaspati, that which is the highest supreme of existence, thither from th

II INDRA, GIVER OF LIGHT Rig-veda 1.4 The fashioner of perfect forms, like a good yielder for the milker of the Herds, we call for increase from day to day. Come to our Soma-offerings. O Soma-drinker, drink of the Soma-wine; the intoxication of thy rapture gives indeed the Light. Then may we know somewhat of thy uttermost right thinkings. Show not beyond us, come. Come over, question Indra of the clear-seeing mind, the vigorous, the unoverthrown, who to thy comrades has brought the highest good And may the Restrainers¹ say to us, "Na

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