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

THE EIGHTEENTH HYMN TO AGNI A HYMN OF THE LORDS OF THE PLENITUDE [The Divine Will is invoked to complete the manifestation of the divine powers after the second state of the soul when it has passed beyond the mere physical being and is full of the perfect energy of the vital plane, for the gods have given all the life's fifty steeds of swiftness; Agni is there as the light and flame of its far-extended existence which has broken the limitations of the material being and he is full of the joys of this new and rich supra-physical life. Now the third state, the free mental being, is to be perfected by a richly varied and luminous play of thought and word e

HYMN TO INDRA VIII. 54 This is that might of thee, O Indra, which doers of the action speak of in their Words. They praise and guard thy energy dripping with light; the people of the city come (reach) to thee by their thinkings. They by their good action come (reach) to Indra and have his guard, they in whose wine-offerings thou hast delight: even as I approach thee empty of delight, even as I come to thee in my leanness, so in us take thy delight, O Indra. With that opulent pleasure which is thine, O Indra most full of the plenitudes, awake in us as our companion

CHAPTER XXII The Conquest over the Dasyus THE Dasyus stand in opposition to both the Aryan gods and the Aryan seers. The gods are born from Aditi in the Supreme Truth of things, the Dasyus or Danavas from Diti in the nether darkness; they are the Lords of Light and the Lords of Night fronting each other across the triple world of earth, heaven and mid-air, body, mind and the connecting breath of life. Sarama in X.108, descends from the supreme realm, parākāt; she has to cross the waters of the rasā, she meets the night which gives place to her for fear of her overleaping it, atiṣkado bhiyasā; she arrives at the home of the Dasyus, dasyor oko na sadanam

CHAPTER XXIII Summary of Conclusions WE HAVE now closely scrutinised the Angirasa legend in the Rig-veda from all possible sides and in allits main symbols and are in a position to summarise firmly theconclusions we have drawn from it. As I have already said, theAngirasa legend and the Vritra mythus are the two principalparables of the Veda; they occur and recur everywhere; theyrun through the hymns as two closely connected threads of symbolic imagery, and around them all the rest of the Vedic symbolism is woven. Not that they are its central ideas, but they aretwo main pillars of this ancient structure. When we determinetheir sense, we have determined the s

HYMN TO INDRA 1.7 Indra the Udgathins, Indra the masters of Rik with their thoughts of substance, Indra the voices desired. Indra is made one with our being by the love of the two Bright Ones yoked to speech, Indra of the brilliance, the wielder of the thunderbolt. Indra for far vision ascends in Heaven up to the sun, he manifests the mountain to all sides with those lustres. Indra protect us in our store of strength and in our strong possessions, fierce with fierce raptures.¹ Indra we call in great wealth, Indra in little, the thunderer assailing th