Chapter XXIII   Summary of Conclusions   WE HAVE now closely scrutinised the Angiras legend in the Rig Veda from all possible sides and in all its main symbols and are in a position to summarise firmly the conclusions we have drawn from it. As I have already said, the Angiras legend and the Vritra mythus are the two principal parables of the Veda; they occur and recur everywhere; they run 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 are two main pillars of this ancient structure. When we determine

Chapter XX   The Hound of Heaven   THERE yet remain two constant features of the Angiras legend with regard to which we have to acquire a little farther light in order to master entirely this Vedic conception of the Truth and the discovery of the illuminations of the Dawn by the primeval Fathers; we have to fix the identity of Sarama and the exact function of the Panis, two problems of Vedic interpretation which are very closely related to each other. That Sarama is some power of the Light and probably of the Dawn is very clear; for once we know that the struggle between Indra and the original Aryan seers on the one hand and the sons of the Cave on the other is no str

The Twenty-Sixth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF THE PRIEST AND SACRIFICIAL FLAME   [The Rishi invokes the Divine Flame in all its usual attributes as the sacrificer, the luminous seer who has the vision of the luminous world, the bringer of the gods, the carrier of the offering, the envoy, conqueror, increaser of the divine workings in man, the knower of the Births, the leader of the march of the sacrifice with its progressive epiphany of the godheads.]     1. O Flame, O purifier, bring to us by thy tongue of rapture, O god, the gods and offer to them sacrifice.     2. Thou who drippest the

Chapter XVII   The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas   THE LANGUAGE of the hymns establishes, then, a double aspect for the Angiras Rishis. One belongs to the external garb of the Veda; it weaves together its naturalistic imagery of the Sun, the Flame, the Dawn, the Cow, the Horse, the Wine, the sacrificial Hymn; the other extricates from that imagery the internal sense. The Angirases are sons of the Flame, lustres of the Dawn, givers and drinkers of the Wine, singers of the Hymn, eternal youths and heroes who wrest for us the Sun, the Cows, the Horses and all treasures from the grasp of the sons of dar

A Hymn to Savitri   [The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine knowledge 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 knowledge; 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 out for

The Sixteenth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN TO THE BRINGER OF ALL DESIRABLE GOOD   [The Rishi affirms the Divine Will in man as the offering and representative priest who brings light and strength and inspired knowledge and every desirable good; for he is the aspirer by works in whom is the puissance of all the gods and the full plenitude of their force.]     1. Sing thou out by the word a vast manifestation for the shining Light, for the divine, for the Will whom mortals by their expressions of his godhead as the Friend1 put in their front.     2. The Will is the priest of of

The Twentieth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF THE WORK AND THE ATTAINMENT   [The Rishi desires a state of spiritual wealth full of the divine working in which nothing shall fall away to the division and the crookedness. So, increasing by our works the divine Force in us daily, we shall attain to the Bliss and the Truth, the rapture of the Light and the rapture of the Force.]     1. O Will, O conqueror of our plenitude, the felicity which thou alone canst conceive in the mind, that make full of inspiration by our words and set it to labour in the gods as our helper.     2. They who are powers

A Hymn of the Thought-Gods   The shining host has arisen in my soul, the host of the Thought gods and they sing a hymn as they march upward, a hymn of the heart's illumination. March thou on, O my soul, impetuously to their violent and mighty music. For they are drunken with the joy of an inspiration that betrays not to falsehood, because the truth of eternal Nature is its guide. They are the comrades of a firm and blazing Light and in the force of the Light they work out their lofty aggressions; conquerors, violently they march on their path, self-protecting they guard of themselves the soul against falsehood; for they are many and march without

Chapter XIII   Dawn and the Truth   USHA IS described repeatedly as the Mother of the Cows. If then the cow is a Vedic symbol for the physical light or for spiritual illumination the phrase must either bear this sense that she is the mother or source of the physical rays of the daylight or else that she creates the radiances of the supreme Day, the splendour and clarity of the inner illumination. But we see in the Veda that Aditi, the Mother of the gods, is described both as the Cow and as the general Mother; she is the Supreme Light and all radiances proceed from her. Psy