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

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