VISHWAMANAS VAIYASHWA sukta 23 Pray the Fire as he fronts you, worship with sacrifice the knower of all things born. Fire with his driving smoke and his unseizable light, — fire who is like the string of speeding chariots to a competitor in the race; O all-seeing universal mind, laud him with the word. Those on whom he presses, possessor of the word of illumination and seizes on their impulsions and their satisfactions, by their approach to knowledge the Fire finds the Treasure.

UPASTUTA VARSHTIHAVYA sukta 115 Marvellous is the power to upbear of this young, this infant god, for he goes not to his two mothers to drink their milk, even though one without teats of plenty brought him to birth then as now, from the first he did his carrying, performing his mighty embassy. Fire, verily, is established, a giver and mighty doer of works, he clings to the trees with his blazing tusks achieving the pilgrim-sacrifice with his besieging tongue of flame, he is like a snorting bull, master in his pasturage. He is to

The Vamadeva Hymns to Agni INTRODUCTION THE interpretation of the Rig-veda is perhaps the most difficult and disputed question with which the scholarship of today has to deal. This difficulty and dispute are not the creation of present-day criticism; it has existed in different forms since very early times. To what is this incertitude due? Partly, no doubt, it arises from the archaic character of a language in which many of the words were obsolete when ancient Indian scholars tried to systematise the traditional learning about the Veda, and especially the great number of different meanings of which the old Sanskrit words are capable. But there is anot

MANDALA FIVE THE ATRIS BUDHA AND GAVISHTHIRA SUKTA 1 Fire is awake by the kindling of the peoples, he fronts the dawn that comes to him like a fostering milch-cow; like the mighty ones casting upward their branching his lustres spread towards heaven. The Priest of the call is awake for sacrifice to the gods. Fire with his right thinking has stood up high ablaze. The red-glowing mass of him is seen: a great god has been delivered out of the darkness. When he put out the long cord of his troop, Fire in his purity reveals all

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE HYMNS TO THE MYSTIC FIRE, containing translations of hymns to Agni from Mandalas 1, 2 and 6 of the Rig-veda, was first published in 1946 with a Foreword by Sri Aurobindo. An enlarged edition of HYMNS TO THE MYSTIC FIRE was issued in 1952 and contained the following additional material: 1) Revised translations of the “Hymns of the Atrisˮ which had appeared originally in the Arya and subsequently had been published in ON THE VEDA. 2) Translations of other hymns to Agni which had hitherto remained unpublished. A few of these had been found in Sri Aurobindoʼs earlier manuscripts and included as they had stood. Barring some

MANDALA SIX BHARADWAJA BARHASPATYA SUKTA 1 O potent Fire, thou wert the first thinker of this thought and the Priest of the call. O Male, thou hast created everywhere around thee a force invulnerable to overpower every force. And now strong for sacrifice, thou hast taken thy session in the seat of aspiration, one aspired to, a flamen of the call, an imparter of the impulse. Men, building the godheads, have grown conscious of thee, the chief and first, and followed to a mighty treasure. In thee awake, they followed after the Treasure as in the w

KATHA UPANISHAD KATHA UPANISHAD FIRST CYCLE : FIRST CHAPTER Vajashravasa, desiring, gave all he had. Now Vajashravasa had a son named Nachiketas. As the gifts were led past, faith took possession of him who was yet a boy unwed and he pondered: “Cattle that have drunk their water, eaten their grass, yielded their milk, worn out their organs, of undelight are the worlds which he reaches who gives such as these.ˮ He said to his father, “Me, O my father, to whom wilt thou give?ˮ A second time and a third he said it, and he replied, “To

KENA UPANISHAD THE KENA UPANISHAD FIRST PART By whom missioned falls the mind shot to its mark? By whom yoked moves the first life-breath forward on its paths? By whom impelled is this word that men speak? What god set eye and ear to their workings? That which is hearing of our hearing, mind of our mind, speech of our speech, that too is life of our life-breath and sight of our sight. The wise are released beyond and they pass from this world and become immortal. There sight travels not, nor speech, nor the mind. We know It not nor can distinguish how one should teach of

ON TRANSLATING THE UPANISHADS On Translating the Upanishads THIS translation of a few of the simpler and more exoteric Upanishads to be followed by other sacred and philosophical writings of the Hindus not included in the Revealed Scriptures, all under the one title of the Book of God, has been effected on one definite and unvarying principle, to present to England and through England to Europe the religious message of India only in those parts of her written thought which the West is fit to hear and to present these in such a form as should be attractive and suggestive to the Occidental intellect. The first branch o

FOUR Maya: The Principle of Phenomenal Existence Brahman then, let us suppose, has projected in Itself this luminous shadow of Itself and has in the act (speaking always in the language of finite beings with its perpetual taint of Time, Space and Causality) begun to envisage Itself and consider Its essentialities in the light of attributes. He who is Existence, Consciousness, Bliss envisages Himself as existent, conscious, blissful. From that moment phenomenal manifestation becomes inevitable; the Unqualified chooses to regard Himself as qualified. Once this fundamental condition is granted, everything else follows by the rigorous l