Canto 2Foreword

Book 2. cover for HMF=16.pdf

N ANCIENT times the Veda was revered as a sacred book

of wisdom, a great mass of inspired poetry, the work of

Rishis, seers and sages, who received in their illumined minds

5rather than mentally constructed a great universal, eternal and

impersonal Truth which they embodied in Mantras, revealed

verses of power, not of an ordinary but of a divine inspiration

and source. The name given to these sages was Kavi, which

afterwards came to mean any poet, but at the time had the sense

10of a seer of truth, — the Veda itself describes them as kavayah.

satya´srutah., “seers who are hearers of the Truth” and the Veda

itself was called ´sruti, a word which came to mean “revealed

Scripture”. The seers of the Upanishad had the same idea about

the Veda and frequently appealed to its authority for the truths

15they themselves announced and these too afterwards came to be

regarded as Sruti, revealed Scripture, and were included in the

sacred Canon.

This tradition persevered in the Brahmanas and continued

to maintain itself in spite of the efforts of the ritualistic com-

20mentators, Yajnikas, to explain everything as myth and rite

and the division made by the Pandits distinguishing the sec-

tion of works, Karmakanda, and the section of Knowledge,

Jnanakanda, identifying the former with the hymns and the latter

with the Upanishads. This drowning of the parts of Knowledge

25by the parts of ceremonial works was strongly criticised in one

of the Upanishads and in the Gita, but both look on the Veda as

a Book of Knowledge. Even, the Sruti including both Veda and

Upanishad was regarded as the supreme authority for spiritual

knowledge and infallible.

30Is this all legend and moonshine, or a groundless and even

nonsensical tradition? Or is it the fact that there is only a scanty

element of higher ideas in some later hymns which started this

theory? Did the writers of the Upanishads foist upon the Riks a

meaning which was not there but read into it by their imagina-

35tion or a fanciful interpretation? Modern European scholarship

insists on having it so. And it has persuaded the mind of modern

India. In favour of this view is the fact that the Rishis of the

Veda were not only seers but singers and priests of sacrifice,

that their chants were written to be sung at public sacrifices and

40refer constantly to the customary ritual and seem to call for the

outward objects of these ceremonies, wealth, prosperity, victory

over enemies. Sayana, the great commentator, gives us a ritu-

alistic and where necessary a tentatively mythical or historical

sense to the Riks, very rarely does he put forward any higher

45meaning though sometimes he lets a higher sense come through

or puts it as an alternative as if in despair of finding out some

ritualistic or mythical interpretation. But still he does not reject

the spiritual authority of the Veda or deny that there is a higher

truth contained in the Riks. This last development was left to

50our own times and popularised by occidental scholars.

The European scholars took up the ritualistic tradition, but

for the rest they dropped Sayana overboard and went on to

make their own etymological explanation of the words, or build

up their own conjectural meanings of the Vedic verses and give

55a new presentation often arbitrary and imaginative. What they

sought for in the Veda was the early history of India, its society,

institutions, customs, a civilisation-picture of the times. They

invented the theory based on the difference of languages of an

Aryan invasion from the north, an invasion of a Dravidian India

60of which the Indians themselves had no memory or tradition and

of which there is no record in their epic or classical literature.

The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of Nature-

Gods full of solar myths and consecrated by sacrifices and a

sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and

65it is these barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed

and apotheosized Veda.

There can be no doubt that in the beginning there was a wor-

ship of the Powers of the physical world, the Sun, Moon, Heaven

and Earth, Wind, Rain and Storm etc., the Sacred Rivers and a

70Foreword

number of Gods who presided over the workings of Nature.

That was the general aspect of the ancient worship in Greece,

Rome, India and among other ancient peoples. But in all these

countries these gods began to assume a higher, a psychological

75function; Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-

Goddess springing in flames from the head of Zeus, the Sky-God,

Dyaus of the Veda, has in classical Greece a higher function and

was identified by the Romans with their Minerva, the Goddess

of learning and wisdom; similarly, Saraswati, a river Goddess,

80becomes in India the goddess of wisdom, learning and the arts

and crafts: all the Greek deities have undergone a change in

this direction — Apollo, the Sun-God, has become a god of po-

etry and prophecy, Hephaestus the Fire-God a divine smith, god

of labour. In India the process was arrested half-way, and the

85Vedic Gods developed their psychological functions but retained

more fixedly their external character and for higher purposes

gave place to a new pantheon. They had to give precedence

to Puranic deities who developed out of the early company

but assumed larger cosmic functions, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahma

90— developing from the Vedic Brihaspati, or Brahmanaspati, —

Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga. Thus in India the change in the gods was

less complete, the earlier deities became the inferior divinities of

the Puranic pantheon and this was largely due to the survival

of the Rig Veda in which their psychological and their external

95functions co-existed and are both given a powerful emphasis;

there was no such early literary record to maintain the original

features of the Gods of Greece and Rome.

This change was evidently due to a cultural development in

these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised

100and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civil-

isation and needed to read into their religion and their deities

finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly

mentalised concepts and interests and find for them a true spiri-

tual being or some celestial figure as their support and sanction.

105But the largest part in determining and deepening this inward

turn must be attributed to the Mystics who had an enormous

influence on these early civilisations; there was indeed almost

everywhere an age of the Mysteries in which men of a deeper

knowledge and self-knowledge established their practices, sig-

110nificant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of

the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms

in different countries; in Greece there were the Orphic and

Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their

occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis.

115The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and

a profounder world-knowledge; they found out that in man

there was a deeper self and inner being behind the surface of

the outward physical man, which it was his highest business to

discover and know. “Know thyself” was their great precept, just

120as in India to know the Self, the Atman became the great spiritual

need, the highest thing for the human being. They found also

a Truth, a Reality behind the outward aspects of the universe

and to discover, follow, realise this Truth was their great as-

piration. They discovered secrets and powers of Nature which

125were not those of the physical world but which could bring

occult mastery over the physical world and physical things and

to systematise this occult knowledge and power was also one

of their strong preoccupations. But all this could only be safely

done by a difficult and careful training, discipline, purification

130of the nature; it could not be done by the ordinary man. If

men entered into these things without a severe test and training

it would be dangerous to themselves and others; this knowl-

edge, these powers could be misused, misinterpreted, turned

from truth to falsehood, from good to evil. A strict secrecy

135was therefore maintained, the knowledge handed down behind

a veil from master to disciple. A veil of symbols was created

behind which these mysteries could shelter, formulas of speech

also which could be understood by the initiated but were either

not known by others or were taken by them in an outward sense

140which carefully covered their true meaning and secret. This was

the substance of Mysticism everywhere.

It has been the tradition in India from the earliest times that

the Rishis, the poet-seers of the Veda, were men of this type,

men with a great spiritual and occult knowledge not shared by

145Foreword

ordinary human beings, men who handed down this knowledge

and their powers by a secret initiation to their descendants and

chosen disciples. It is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that

this tradition was wholly unfounded, a superstition that arose

150suddenly or slowly formed in a void, with nothing whatever

to support it; some foundation there must have been however

small or however swelled by legend and the accretions of cen-

turies. But if it is true, then inevitably the poet-seers must have

expressed something of their secret knowledge, their mystic lore

155in their writings and such an element must be present, however

well-concealed by an occult language or behind a technique of

symbols, and if it is there it must be to some extent discoverable.

It is true that an antique language, obsolete words, — Yaska

counts more than four hundred of which he did not know the

160meaning, — and often a difficult and out-of-date diction helped

to obscure their meaning; the loss of the sense of their symbols,

the glossary of which they kept to themselves, made them unin-

telligible to later generations; even in the time of the Upanishads

the spiritual seekers of the age had to resort to initiation and

165meditation to penetrate into their secret knowledge, while the

scholars afterwards were at sea and had to resort to conjecture

and to concentrate on a mental interpretation or to explain

by myths, by the legends of the Brahmanas themselves often

symbolic and obscure. But still to make this discovery will be

170the sole way of getting at the true sense and the true value

of the Veda. We must take seriously the hint of Yaska, accept

the Rishi’s description of the Veda’s contents as “seer-wisdoms,

secret words”, and look for whatever clue we can find to this

ancient wisdom. Otherwise the Veda must remain for ever a

175sealed book; grammarians, etymologists, scholastic conjectures

will not open to us the sealed chamber.

For it is a fact that the tradition of a secret meaning and

a mystic wisdom couched in the Riks of the ancient Veda was

as old as the Veda itself. The Vedic Rishis believed that their

180Mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of conscious-

ness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the

Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who

was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld

their hidden knowledge. In one of Vamadeva’s hymns in the

185fourth Mandala (IV.3.16) the Rishi describes himself as one

illumined expressing through his thought and speech words

of guidance, “secret words” — nin.y¯a vac¯a ˙msi — “seer-wisdoms

that utter their inner meaning to the seer” — k¯avy¯ani kavaye ni-

vacan¯a. The Rishi Dirghatamas speaks of the Riks, the Mantras

190of the Veda, as existing “in a supreme ether, imperishable and

immutable in which all the gods are seated”, and he adds “one

who knows not That what shall he do with the Rik?” (I.164.39)

He further alludes to four planes from which the speech issues,

three of them hidden in the secrecy while the fourth is human,

195and from there comes the ordinary word; but the word and

thought of the Veda belongs to the higher planes (I.164.45).

Elsewhere in the Riks the Vedic Word is described (X.71) as that

which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and

the most faultless. It is something that is hidden in secrecy and

200from there comes out and is manifested. It has entered into the

truth-seers, the Rishis, and it is found by following the track of

their speech. But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those

who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not,

hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring

205him like a beautifully robed wife to a husband lays open her

body. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the Word,

the Vedic cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to

him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite

clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then

210while the Rig Veda was being written the Riks were regarded as

having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an

occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this

knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to

a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held,

215probably, by all and evidently by some of the greatest Rishis

such as Dirghatamas and Vamadeva.

The tradition, then, was there and it was prolonged after the

Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of

the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation,

220Foreword

the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explana-

tion by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a

spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a

triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic

225hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a knowledge of the

gods and finally a spiritual knowledge; but the last is the true

sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away.

It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and

subordinate. He says further that “the Rishis saw the truth,

230the true law of things, directly by an inner vision”; afterwards

the knowledge and the inner sense of the Veda were almost

lost and the Rishis who still knew had to save it by handing it

down through initiation to disciples and at a last stage outward

and mental means had to be used for finding the sense such as

235Nirukta and other Vedangas. But even then, he says, “the true

sense of the Veda can be recovered directly by meditation and

tapasya”, those who can use these means need no outward aids

for this knowledge. This also is sufficiently clear and positive.

The tradition of a mystic element in the Veda as a source of

240Indian civilisation, its religion, its philosophy, its culture is more

in consonance with historical fact than the European scouting of

this idea. The nineteenth-century European scholarship writing

in a period of materialistic rationalism regarded the history

of the race as a development out of primitive barbarism or

245semi-barbarism, a crude social life and religion and a mass of

superstitions, by the growth of outward civilised institutions,

manners and habits through the development of intellect and

reason, art, philosophy and science and a clearer and sounder,

more matter-of-fact intelligence. The ancient idea about the Veda

250could not fit into this picture; it was regarded as rather a part

of ancient superstitious ideas and a primitive error. But we can

now form a more accurate idea of the development of the race.

The ancient more primitive civilisations held in themselves the

elements of the later growth but their early wise men were not

255scientists and philosophers or men of high intellectual reason

but mystics and even mystery-men, occultists, religious seekers;

they were seekers after a veiled truth behind things and not of

an outward knowledge. The scientists and philosophers came

afterwards; they were preceded by the mystics and often like

260Pythagoras and Plato were to some extent mystics themselves or

drew many of their ideas from the mystics. In India philosophy

grew out of the seeking of the mystics and retained and devel-

oped their spiritual aims and kept something of their methods in

later Indian spiritual discipline and Yoga. The Vedic tradition,

265the fact of a mystical element in the Veda fits in perfectly with

this historical truth and takes its place in the history of Indian

culture. The tradition of the Veda as the bed-rock of Indian

civilisation — not merely a barbaric sacrificial liturgy — is more

than a tradition, it is an actual fact of history.

270But even if an element of high spiritual knowledge, or pas-

sages full of high ideas were found in the hymns, it might be

supposed that those are perhaps only a small factor, while the

rest is a sacrificial liturgy, formulas of prayer and praise to the

Gods meant to induce them to shower on the sacrificers material

275blessings such as plenty of cows, horses, fighting men, sons, food,

wealth of all kinds, protection, victory in battle, or to bring

down rain from heaven, recover the sun from clouds or from

the grip of Night, the free flowing of the seven rivers, recovery

of cattle from the Dasyus (or the Dravidians) and the other

280boons which on the surface seem to be the object of this ritual

worship. The Rishis would then be men with some spiritual or

mystic knowledge but otherwise dominated by all the popular

ideas proper to their times. These two elements they would then

mix up intimately in their hymns and this would account at least

285in part for the obscurity and the rather strange and sometimes

grotesque jumble which the traditional interpretation offers us.

But if on the other hand a considerable body of high thinking

clearly appears, if there is a large mass of verses or whole hymns

which admit only of a mystic character and significance, and

290if finally, the ritualistic and external details are found to take

frequently the appearance of symbols such as were always used

by the mystics, and if there are many clear indications, even some

explicit statements in the hymns themselves of such a meaning,

then all changes. We are in the presence of a great scripture of

295Foreword

the mystics with a double significance, one exoteric, the other

esoteric; the symbols themselves have a meaning which makes

them a part of the esoteric significance, an element in the secret

teaching and knowledge. The whole of the Rig Veda, a small

300number of hymns perhaps excepted, becomes in its inner sense

such a Scripture. At the same time the exoteric sense need not

be merely a mask; the Riks may have been regarded by their

authors as words of power, powerful not only for internal but

for external things. A purely spiritual scripture would concern

305itself with only spiritual significances, but the ancient mystics

were also what we would call occultists, men who believed that

by inner means outer as well as inner results could be produced,

that thought and words could be so used as to bring about

realisations of every kind, — in the phrase common in the Veda

310itself, — both the human and the divine.

But where is this body of esoteric meaning in the Veda? It

is only discoverable if we give a constant and straightforward

meaning to the words and formulas employed by the Rishis,

especially to the key-words which bear as keystones the whole

315structure of their doctrine. One such word is the great word,

Ritam, Truth; Truth was the central object of the seeking of the

mystics, a spiritual or inner Truth, a truth of ourselves, a truth

of things, a truth of the world and of the gods, a truth behind

all we are and all that things are. In the ritualistic interpretation

320this master word of the Vedic knowledge has been interpreted

in all kinds of senses according to the convenience or fancy

of the interpreter, “truth”, “sacrifice”, “water”, “one who has

gone”, even “food”, not to speak of a number of other mean-

ings; if we do that, there can be no certitude in our dealings

325with the Veda. But let us consistently give it the same master

sense and a strange but clear result emerges. If we apply the

same treatment to other standing terms of the Veda, if we give

them their ordinary, natural and straightforward meaning and

give it constantly and consistently, not monkeying about with

330their sense or turning them into purely ritualistic expressions,

if we allow to certain important words, such as ´sravas, kratu,

the psychological meaning of which they are capable and which

they undoubtedly bear in certain passages as when the Veda

describes Agni as kratur hr.di, then this result becomes all the

335more clear, extended, pervasive. If in addition we follow the

indications which abound, sometimes the explicit statement of

the Rishis about the inner sense of their symbols, interpret in

the same sense the significant legends and figures on which they

constantly return, the conquest over Vritra and the battle with

340the Vritras, his powers, the recovery of the Sun, the Waters,

the Cows, from the Panis or other Dasyus, the whole Rig Veda

reveals itself as a body of doctrine and practice, esoteric, occult,

spiritual, such as might have been given by the mystics in any

ancient country but which actually survives for us only in the

345Veda. It is there deliberately hidden by a veil, but the veil is not

so thick as we first imagine; we have only to use our eyes and

the veil vanishes; the body of the Word, the Truth stands out

before us.

Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear

350on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form

of speech, have an inner meaning. When the seer speaks of Agni

as “the luminous guardian of the Truth shining out in his own

home”, or of Mitra and Varuna or other gods as “in touch with

the Truth and making the Truth grow” or as “born in the Truth”,

355these are words of a mystic poet, who is thinking of that inner

Truth behind things of which the early sages were the seekers.

He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer

element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he

speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and

360awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought:

Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the

“Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts.” It is surely not

the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, the

River if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing

365its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner

knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological

functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work,

an inner interchange between the gods and men, — man giving

what he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the

370Foreword

herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning

for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras,

Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, “Let us become conscious

whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond

375men”, his words have either a mystic significance or they have no

coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book

we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however

mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering

the real sense of the Veda. “Thought”, says the Rishi, “has

380nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great

Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of

many forms” — the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the

rest for which the sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material

wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied

385in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought

that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great

Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of

great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the

inner work of sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but

390still for one who knows how to read these secret words, nin.y¯a

vac¯a ˙msi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacan¯a. Again, Night

and Dawn the eternal sisters are like “joyful weaving women

weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a sac-

rifice.” Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there

395could hardly be a more positive statement of the psychological

character of the Sacrifice, the real meaning of the Cow, of the

riches sought for, the plenitudes of the Great Treasure.

Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with

symbols and symbolic words — for secrecy must be observed

400— the Rishis resorted to fixed double meanings, a device easily

manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears

several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English

translation and very often impossible. Thus the word for cow,

go, meant also light or a ray of light; this appears in the names of

405some of the Rishis, Gotama, most radiant, Gavishthira, steadfast

in the Light. The cows of the Veda were the Herds of the Sun,

familiar in Greek myth and mystery, the rays of the Sun of Truth

and Light and Knowledge; this meaning which comes out in

some passages can be consistently applied everywhere yielding

410a coherent sense. The word ghr.ta means ghee or clarified butter

and this was one of the chief elements of the sacrificial rite; but

ghr.ta could also mean light, from the root ghr. to shine, and

it is used in this sense in many passages. Thus the horses of

Indra, the Lord of Heaven, are described as dripping with light,

415ghr.ta-snu,1 — it certainly does not mean that ghee dripped from

them as they ran, although that seems to be the sense of the same

epithet as applied to the grain of which Indra’s horses are invited

to partake when they come to the sacrifice. Evidently this sense

of light doubles with that of clarified butter in the symbolism

420of the sacrifice. The thought or the word expressing the thought

is compared to pure clarified butter, expressions like dhiya ˙m

ghr.t¯ac¯ım, the luminous thought or understanding occur. There

is a curious passage in one of the hymns translated in this book

calling on Fire as priest of the sacrifice to flood the offering with

425a mind pouring ghrita, ghr.taprus. ¯a manas¯a and so manifest the

Seats (“places”, or “planes”), the three heavens each of them

and manifest the Gods.2 But what is a ghee-pouring mind, and

how by pouring ghee can a priest manifest the Gods and the

triple heavens? But admit the mystical and esoteric meaning

430and the sense becomes clear. What the Rishi means is a “mind

pouring the light”, a labour of the clarity of an enlightened or

illumined mind; it is not a human priest or a sacrificial fire, but

the inner Flame, the mystic seer-will, kavi-kratu, and that can

certainly manifest by this process the Gods and the worlds and

435all planes of the being. The Rishis, it must be remembered, were

seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in

their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might

precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete

form, might predict or give an occult body to it: so it would

4401 Sayana, though in several passages he takes ghr.ta in the sense of light, renders it

here by “water”; he seems to think that the divine horses were very tired and perspiring

profusely! A Naturalistic interpreter might as well argue that as Indra is a God of the sky,

the primitive poet might well believe that rain was the perspiration of Indra’s horses.

2 This is Sayana’s rendering of the passage and rises directly from the words.

445Foreword

be quite possible for him to see at once the inner experience

and in image its symbolic happening, the flow of clarifying light

and the priest god pouring the clarified butter on the inner self-

offering which brought the experience. This might seem strange

450to a Western mind, but to an Indian mind accustomed to the

Indian tradition or capable of meditation and occult vision it

would be perfectly intelligible. The mystics were and normally

are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and hap-

penings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer

455selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them.

That would make their identification or else an association of

the thing and its symbol easy, its habit possible.

Other standing words and symbols of the Veda invite a

similar interpretation of their sense. As the Vedic “cow” is the

460symbol of light, so the Vedic “horse” is a symbol of power,

spiritual strength, force of tapasya. When the Rishi asks Agni

for a “horse-form cow-in-front gift” he is not asking really for

a number of horses forming a body of the gift with some cows

walking in front, he is asking for a great body of spiritual power

465led by the light or, as we may translate it, “with the Ray-Cow

walking in its front”.3 As one hymn describes the recovery from

the Panis of the mass of the rays (the cows, — the shining herds,

gavyam), so another hymn asks Agni for a mass or abundance or

power of the horse — a´svyam. So too the Rishi asks sometimes

470for the heroes or fighting men as his retinue, sometimes in more

abstract language and without symbol for a complete hero-force

— suv¯ıryam; sometimes he combines the symbol and the thing.

So too the Rishis ask for a son or sons or offspring — apatyam

— as an element of the wealth for which they pray to the Gods,

475but here too an esoteric sense can be seen, for in certain passages

the son born to us is clearly an image of some inner birth: Agni

himself is our son, the child of our works, the child who as the

Universal Fire is the father of his fathers, and it is by setting

the steps on things that have fair offspring that we create or

4803 Compare the expression which describes the Aryan, the noble people as led by the

light — jyotir-agr¯ah..

discover a path to the higher world of Truth. Again, “water”

in the Veda is used as a symbol. It speaks of the inconscient

ocean, salilam apraketam, in which the Godhead is involved

485and out of which he is born by his greatness; it speaks also

of the great ocean — maho arn.as, the upper waters which, as

one hymn says, Saraswati makes conscious for us or of which

she makes us conscious by the ray of intuition — pra cetayati

ketun¯a. The seven rivers seem to be the rivers of Northern India

490but the Veda speaks of the seven Mighty Ones of Heaven who

flow down from Heaven; they are waters that know, knowers of

the Truth — r.taj˜na — and when they are released they discover

for us the road to the great Heavens. So too Parashara speaks

of Knowledge and universal Life, “in the house of the waters”.

495Indra releases the rain by slaying Vritra, but this rain too is the

rain of Heaven and sets the rivers flowing. Thus the legend of

the release of the waters which takes so large a place in the Veda

puts on the aspect of a symbolic myth. Along with it comes the

other symbolic legend of the discovery and rescue, from the dark

500cave in the mountain, of the Sun, the cows or herds of the Sun,

or the Sun-world — svar — by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis.

The symbol of the Sun is constantly associated with the higher

Light and the Truth: it is in the Truth concealed by an inferior

Truth that are unyoked the horses of the Sun, it is the Sun in its

505highest light that is called upon in the great Gayatri Mantra to

impel our thoughts. So too the enemies in the Veda are spoken

of as robbers, dasyus, who steal the cows, or Vritras and are

taken literally as human enemies in the ordinary interpretation,

but Vritra is a demon who covers and holds back the Light and

510the waters and the Vritras are his forces fulfilling that function.

The Dasyus, robbers or destroyers, are the powers of darkness,

adversaries of the seekers of Light and the Truth. Always there

are indications that lead us from the outward and exoteric to an

inner and esoteric sense.

515In connection with the symbol of the Sun a notable and

most significant verse in a hymn of the fifth Mandala may here be

mentioned; for it shows not only the profound mystic symbolism

of the Vedic poets, but also how the writers of the Upanishads

Foreword

520understood the Rig Veda and justifies their belief in the inspired

knowledge of their forerunners. “There is a Truth covered by a

Truth,” runs the Vedic passage, “where they unyoke the horses

of the Sun; the ten hundreds stood together, there was That

One;4 I saw the greatest (best, most glorious) of the embodied

525gods.”5 Then mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates

this thought or this mystic experience into his own later style,

keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in

the sense. Thus runs the passage in the Upanishad, “The face of

the Truth is covered with a golden lid. O Pushan, that remove for

530the vision of the law of the Truth.6 O Pushan (fosterer), sole seer,

O Yama, O Sun, O Child of the Father of beings, marshal and

gather together thy rays; I see the Light which is that fairest (most

auspicious) form of thee; he who is this Purusha, He am I.” The

golden lid is meant to be the same as the inferior covering truth,

535r.tam, spoken of in the Vedic verse; the “best of the bodies of the

Gods” is equivalent to the “fairest form of the Sun”, it is the

supreme Light which is other and greater than all outer light;

the great formula of the Upanishad, “He am I”, corresponds

to That One, tad ekam, of the Rig Vedic verse; the “standing

540together of the ten hundreds” (the rays of the Sun, says Sayana,

and that is evidently the meaning) is reproduced in the prayer

to the Sun “to marshal and mass his rays” so that the supreme

form may be seen. The Sun in both the passages, as constantly

in the Veda and frequently in the Upanishad, is the Godhead

545of the supreme Truth and Knowledge and his rays are the light

emanating from that supreme Truth and Knowledge. It is clear

from this instance — and there are others — that the seer of the

Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda

than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic

550learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind

of the European scholars.

There are certain psychological terms which have to be

taken consistently in their true sense if we are to find the inner or

4 Or, That (the supreme Truth) was one;

5555 Or it means, “I saw the greatest (best) of the bodies of the gods.”

6 Or, for the law of the Truth, for vision.

esoteric meaning. Apart from the Truth, Ritam, we have to take

always in the sense of “thought” the word dh¯ı which constantly

recurs in the hymns. This is the natural meaning of dh¯ı which

560corresponds to the later word Buddhi; it means thought, un-

derstanding, intelligence and in the plural “thoughts”, dhiyah..

It is given in the ordinary interpretation all kinds of meanings;

“water”, “work”, “sacrifice”, “food” etc. as well as thought.

But in our search we have to take it consistently in its ordinary

565and natural significance and see what is the result. The word

ketu means very ordinarily “ray” but it also bears the mean-

ing of intellect, judgment or an intellectual perception. If we

compare the passages in the Veda in which it occurs we can

come to the conclusion that it meant a ray of perception or

570intuition, as for instance, it is by the ray of intuition, ketun¯a,

that Saraswati makes us conscious of the great waters; that

too probably is the meaning of the rays which come from the

Supreme foundation above and are directed downwards; these

are the intuitions of knowledge as the rays of the Sun of Truth

575and Light. The word kratu means ordinarily work or sacrifice

but it also means intelligence, power or resolution and especially

the power of the intelligence that determines the work, the will.

It is in this latter sense that we can interpret it in the esoteric

rendering of the Veda. Agni is a seer-will, kavi-kratu, he is the

580“will in the heart”, kratu hr.di. Finally the word ´sravas which

is constantly in use in the Veda means fame, it is also taken by

the commentators in the sense of food, but these significances

cannot be fitted in everywhere and very ordinarily lack all point

and apposite force. But ´sravas comes from the root ´sru to hear

585and is used in the sense of ear itself or of hymn or prayer — a

sense which Sayana accepts — and from this we can infer that it

means the “thing heard” or its result, knowledge that comes to

us through hearing. The Rishis speak of themselves as hearers

of the Truth, satya´srutah., and the knowledge received by this

590hearing as Sruti. It is in this sense of inspiration or inspired

knowledge that we can take it in the esoteric meaning of the

Veda and we find that it fits in with a perfect appositeness; thus

when the Rishi speaks of ´srav¯a ˙msi as being brought through

Foreword

595upward and brought through downward, this cannot be applied

to food or fame but is perfectly apposite and significant if he is

speaking of inspirations which rise up to the Truth above or

bring down the Truth to us. This is the method we can apply

everywhere, but we cannot pursue the subject any further here.

600In the brief limits of this foreword these slight indications must

suffice; they are meant only to give the reader an initial insight

into the esoteric method of interpretation of the Veda.

But what then is the secret meaning, the esoteric sense, which

emerges by this way of understanding the Veda? It is what we

605would expect from the nature of the seeking of the mystics every-

where. It is also, as we should expect from the actual course of

the development of Indian culture, an early form of the spiritual

truth which found its culmination in the Upanishads; the secret

knowledge of the Veda is the seed which is evolved later on

610into the Vedanta. The thought around which all is centred is the

seeking after Truth, Light, Immortality. There is a Truth deeper

and higher than the truth of outward existence, a Light greater

and higher than the light of human understanding which comes

by revelation and inspiration, an immortality towards which

615the soul has to rise. We have to find our way to that, to get into

touch with this Truth and Immortality, sapanta r.tam amr.tam,7

to be born into the Truth, to grow in it, to ascend in spirit into

the world of Truth and to live in it. To do so is to unite ourselves

with the Godhead and to pass from mortality into immortality.

620This is the first and the central teaching of the Vedic mystics.

The Platonists, developing their doctrine from the early mystics,

held that we live in relation to two worlds, — a world of higher

truth which might be called the spiritual world and that in which

we live, the world of the embodied soul which is derived from

625the higher but also degraded from it into an inferior truth and

inferior consciousness. The Vedic mystics held this doctrine in a

more concrete and pragmatic form, for they had the experience

of these two worlds. There is the inferior truth here of this world

mixed as it is with much falsehood and error, anr.tasya bh¯ureh.,8

6307 I.68.2.

8 VII.60.5.

and there is a world or home of Truth, sadanam r.tasya,9 the

Truth, the Right, the Vast, satyam r.ta ˙m br.hat,10 where all is

Truth-conscious, r.tacit.11 There are many worlds between up

635to the triple heavens and their lights but this is the world of

the highest Light — the world of the Sun of Truth, svar, or the

Great Heaven. We have to find the path to this Great Heaven,

the path of Truth, r.tasya panth¯ah.,12 or as it is sometimes called

the way of the gods. This is the second mystic doctrine. The

640third is that our life is a battle between the powers of Light

and Truth, the Gods who are the Immortals and the powers of

Darkness. These are spoken of under various names as Vritra

and Vritras, Vala and the Panis, the Dasyus and their kings. We

have to call in the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition

645of these powers of Darkness who conceal the Light from us or

rob us of it, who obstruct the flowing of the streams of Truth,

r.tasya dh¯ar¯ah.,13 the streams of Heaven and obstruct in every

way the soul’s ascent. We have to invoke the Gods by the inner

sacrifice, and by the Word call them into us, — that is the specific

650power of the Mantra, — to offer to them the gifts of the sacrifice

and by that giving secure their gifts, so that by this process we

may build the way of our ascent to the goal. The elements of

the outer sacrifice in the Veda are used as symbols of the inner

sacrifice and self-offering; we give what we are and what we

655have in order that the riches of the divine Truth and Light may

descend into our life and become the elements of our inner birth

into the Truth, — a right thinking, a right understanding, a right

action must develop in us which is the thinking, impulsion and

action of that higher Truth, r.tasya pres. ¯a, r.tasya dh¯ıti,14 and by

660this we must build up ourselves in that Truth. Our sacrifice is a

journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, — a travel towards the Gods

and we also make that journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as

our path-finder and leader. Our human things are raised up by

the mystic Fire into the immortal being, into the Great Heaven,

665and the things divine come down into us. As the doctrine of

9 I.164.47; also IV.21.3.

10 Atharva XII.1.1.

11 IV.3.4.

12 III.12.7; also VII.65.3.

67013 V.12.2; also VII.43.4.

14 I.68.3.

Foreword

the Rig Veda is the seed of the teaching of the Vedanta, so is

its inner practice and discipline a seed of the later practice and

675discipline of Yoga. Finally, as the summit of the teaching of the

Vedic mystics comes the secret of the one Reality, eka ˙m sat,15 or

tad ekam,16 which became the central word of the Upanishads.

The Gods, the powers of Light and Truth are powers and names

of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries them in

680him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam,17 and one bliss to which

we must rise. But in the Veda this looks out still mostly from

behind the veil. There is much else but this is the kernel of the

doctrine.

The interpretation I have put forward was set out at length

685in a series of articles with the title “The Secret of the Veda”

in the monthly philosophical magazine, Arya, some thirty years

ago; written in serial form while still developing the theory and

not quite complete in its scope or composed on a preconceived

and well-ordered plan it was not published in book-form and

690is therefore not yet available to the reading public.18 It was

accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig

Veda which were rather interpretations than translations and to

these there was an introduction explanatory of the “Doctrine

of the Mystics”. Subsequently there was planned a complete

695translation of all the hymns to Agni in the ten Mandalas which

kept close to the text; the renderings of those hymns in the

second and sixth Mandalas are now published in this book for

the first time as well as a few from the first Mandala.19 But to

establish on a scholastic basis the conclusions of the hypothesis

700it would have been necessary to prepare an edition of the Rig

Veda or of a large part of it with a word by word construing

in Sanskrit and English, notes explanatory of important points

in the text and justifying the interpretation both of separate

15 1.164.46.

70516 X.129.2.

17 III.39.5; also IV.54.4 and VIII.45.27.

18 The writings on and translations of the Veda that Sri Aurobindo published in the

Arya are now published in The Secret of the Veda with Selected Hymns, volume 15 of

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. — Ed.

71019 The 1946 edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire, containing the translations referred

to here, is reproduced in Part One of the present volume. — Ed.

words and of whole verses and also elaborate appendices to

fix firmly the rendering of key-words like r.tam, ´sravas, kratu,

ketu, etc. essential to the esoteric interpretation. This also was

715planned, but meanwhile greater preoccupations of a permanent

nature intervened and no time was left to proceed with such a

considerable undertaking. For the benefit of the reader of these

translations who might otherwise be at a loss, this foreword has

been written and some passages from the unpublished “Doctrine

720of the Mystics” have been included.20 The text of the Veda has

been given for use by those who can read the original Sanskrit.

These translations however are not intended to be a scholastic

work meant to justify a hypothesis; the object of this publication

is only to present them in a permanent form for disciples and

725those who are inclined to see more in the Vedas than a superficial

liturgy and would be interested in knowing what might be the

esoteric sense of this ancient Scripture.

This is a literary and not a strictly literal translation. But a

fidelity to the meaning, the sense of the words and the structure

730of the thought, has been preserved: in fact the method has been to

start with a bare and scrupulously exact rendering of the actual

language and adhere to that as the basis of the interpretation;

for it is only so that we can find out the actual thoughts of

these ancient mystics. But any rendering of such great poetry as

735the hymns of the Rig Veda, magnificent in their colouring and

images, noble and beautiful in rhythm, perfect in their diction,

must, if it is not to be merely dead scholastic work, bring at

least a faint echo of their poetic force, — more cannot be done

in a prose translation and in so different a language. The turn

740of phrase and the syntax of English and Vedic Sanskrit are poles

asunder; to achieve some sense of style and natural writing one

has constantly to turn the concentrated speech of the Veda into

a looser, more diluted English form. Another stumbling-block

for the translator is the ubiquitous double entendre marking in

74520 “The Doctrine of the Mystics” is now published in its entirety in The Secret of the

Veda with Selected Hymns, pages 370–84. The excerpt from it included in the first

edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire is reproduced after this foreword. — Ed.

Foreword

one word the symbol and the thing symbolised, Ray and Cow,

750clear light of the mind and clarified butter, horses and spiritual

power; one has to invent phrases like the “herds of the light” or

“the shining herds” or to use devices such as writing the word

horse with a capital H to indicate that it is a symbolic horse

that is meant and not the common physical animal; but very

755often the symbol has to be dropped, or else the symbol has to be

kept and the inner meaning left to be understood;21 I have not

always used the same phrase though always keeping the same

sense, but varied the translation according to the needs of the

passage. Often I have been unable to find an adequate English

760word which will convey the full connotation or colour of the

original text; I have used two words instead of one or a phrase

or resorted to some other device to give the exact and complete

meaning. Besides, there is often a use of antique words or turns

of language of which the sense is not really known and can only

765be conjectured or else different renderings are equally possible.

In many passages I have had to leave a provisional rendering;

it was intended to keep the final decision on the point until the

time when a more considerable body of the hymns had been

translated and were ready for publication; but this time has not

770yet come.

21 The Rishis sometimes seem to combine two different meanings in the same word; I

have occasionally tried to render this double sense.