Rig Veda

Text & Audio

MAṆḌALA 1

Sūkta 1

2. Audio

▪   by South Indian brahmins
▪   by Sri Shyama Sundara Sharma and Sri Satya Krishna Bhatta. Recorded by © 2012 Sriranga Digital Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

1. Early 1940s¹

Hymns of Madhuchchhandas. I. Hymn to the Fire.

1. The Fire I pray, the divine vicar of the sacrifice and ordinant of the rite, the Summoner (or, priest of the offering) who most founds the ecstasy.

2. The Fire, desirable to the ancient seers, so even to the new, — may he come to us with the gods.

3. By the Fire one obtains a wealth that increases day by day, glorious and full of hero-powers.

4. O Fire, the pilgrim sacrifice which thou encompassest on every side, reaches the gods.

5. Fire, priest of the call, the seer-will rich in brilliant inspirations, may he come to us, a god with the gods.

6. O Fire, the happy good that thou wilt create for the giver, is That Truth of thee, O Angiras.

7. To thee, O Fire, day by day, in the dawn and in the dusk, we come bringing to thee by the thought our obeisance,

8. To thee, who rulest the sacrifices of the Way, the shining Guardian of the Truth, growing in thy own home.

9. O Fire, be easy of access to us like a father to his son; cleave to us for our weal.

2. 1939–40²

1. The Flame I pray, the divine vicar of the sacrifice, the ordinant of the ritual, the Summoner who founds the ecstasy.

2. The Flame, desirable by the ancient seers and by the new, may he come hither with the gods.

3. By the Flame is won an energy that surely increases day by day, glorious and full of warrior-power.

4. O Flame, the pilgrim sacrifice that thou encompassest from every side, goes to the gods.

5. The Flame is our priest of the call, the seer-will true and brilliant in inspiration; may he come, a god with the gods.

6. The good that thou wilt create for the giver, O Flame, is that truth of thee, O Angiras.

7. To thee we come, O Flame, day by day in the dark and in the light bringing by the thought our obeisance; —

8. To thee, the ruler of our pilgrim-sacrifices, the shining Guardian of the Truth, growing in thy own home.

9. O Flame, be easy of access to us like a father to his son, cleave to us for our weal.

3. February–March 1917³

1. Fire I pray, the priest set in front of the sacrifice, the god Ritwik, the flamen of the call, who gives most the ecstasies.

2. Fire, desirable by the ancient sages and by the new, is he that brings here the gods.

3. By the Fire man enjoys a treasure that grows day by day, riches glorious, (most) armed with the heroes (to which most are joined the heroes).

4. O Fire, the pilgrim sacrifice around which thou comest into being on every side, that alone goes to the gods.

5. May the Fire, the priest of the call, the Seer Will true and most full of rich inspirations, come to us a god with the gods.

6. The happiness that thou wilt make for him that gives is That Truth of thee, O Flame-Seer.

7. To thee, O Fire, day by day, in the light and in the night we come bearing by the thought our surrender, —

8. To the luminous guardian of the Truth ruling over the (pilgrim) rites increasing in his own home.

9. Then be thou easy of approach to us like a father to his son, O Fire, — cling to us for our weal.

4. Circa 1915–17⁴

1. “I adore the flame who is in the vicar, the divine Ritwik of the Sacrifice, the summoner who founds the ecstasy.”

iḍe – bhajāmi, prārthaye, kāmaye: I adore.

purohitaṃ — one who sits in front of the sacrifice; representative of the sacrificer and performer of the sacrifice.

ṛtvijam — one who performs the sacrifice according to the time, the place and the occasion.

hotāraṃ — one who by invoking the gods accomplishes the sacrifice.

ratnadhā — Sayana gives the meaning of ‘beautiful riches’ to the word ‘ratna’; it would be more correct to say ‘delightful wealth.’

dhā — one who bears, directs or firmly establishes.

2. “The Flame adorable by the ancient sages is adorable too by the new. He brings here the Gods.”

The word sa gives the hint why they are adorable.

eha vakśati – iha āvahati: Agni brings the Gods in his own chariot.

3. “By the flame one enjoys a treasure that verily increases day by day, most full of hero-power.”

rayim – ayiḥ, rāyaḥ etc. have the same meaning as the word ‘ratna’. But in the word ratna the sense of delight is more prominent.

aśnavat – aśnuyāt, obtains or enjoys.

poṣam etc. are adjectives of rayiḥ; poṣam means that which grows, increases.

yaśasam — Sayana translates it sometimes as ‘fame’ and sometimes as ‘food’. Probably its real meaning is success, attainment of goal, etc. The meaning ‘radiance’ is also quite just but it does not apply here.

4. “O Flame! the pilgrim sacrifice on every side of which thou art with the envisioning being, that truly goes among the Gods.”

adhvaram — the root ‘dhvṛ’ means to kill. Sayana translates it as ahiṃsita yajña, a sacrifice with no killings. But the word adhvara itself has come to denote sacrifice; such a development is impossible for the word. The word adhvan means the path, so adhvara must signify the voyager or one having the form of the path. The sacrifice was the path that led to the abode of the gods; at the same time, the sacrifice was well-known everywhere as the pilgrim in the abode of the gods. This meaning is right. The word adhvara like the word adhvan derives from the root adḥ; as proof, we find that both the words adhva and adhvara were used in the sense of sky.

paribhūh-parito jātaḥ

deveṣu — the locative case indicates the destination.

it-eva, truly.

The Spiritual Significance. The Universal Sacrifice

The universal life is like an immense sacrifice.

God himself is the lord of the sacrifice. God is Shiva, and Nature is Uma. Though she carries the image of Shiva in her heart, still she misses his visible form; she yearns for his tangible body. This yearning is the deep significance of the universal life.

But by what means can her intention be fulfilled? By which appointed path can Nature attain the Supreme? How can she recover her own true form and that of the Supreme? Her eyes are tied with the bandage of ignorance and her feet are bound with a thousand chains of matter; as if the physical Nature has imprisoned the infinite existence within the finite and herself become the prisoner, no longer able to find the lost key of the self-made prison; as if the inert vibrations of the life-energy in matter have overpowered the free and unlimited Consciousness-Force and made her dumb, self-oblivious and unconscious; as if the infinite Bliss wandering about in the disguise of an inferior consciousness subject to trivial happiness and sorrow, has forgotten its real nature and unable to remember sinks lower and lower in the bottomless mire of suffering; as if the truth has been drowned under the uncertain waves of falsehood. The supramental principle beyond intellect is the foundation of the infinite Truth. The action of the Supermind is either forbidden in the earth-consciousness or very rare like the momentary glimmer of the lightning from behind the veil. The timid, lame and dull mind is again and again looking for it and by its titanic efforts may even catch a glimpse of it but the authentic, infinite and luminous form of the integral Truth escapes its grasp. The knowledge as well as the action of mind are afflicted with the same strife, indigence and failure. Instead of the smiling and effortless divine dance of the Truth-action, there is the shackled attempt of the will-power of the inferior Nature struggling in agony with the inextricable bonds of truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, poison and nectar, action, inaction and wrong action. The free, unhesitating, desireless, triumphant, blissful and passionate divine power of action, intoxicated with the wine of oneness remains as yet unrealised. Its natural and easy universal movements are impossible for the will-power of the inferior Nature. Can the terrestrial Nature, ensnared in the noose of the finite and untrue ever hope to obtain that limitless Existence, that boundless Consciousness-Force, and that immeasurable Bliss-Consciousness, and if so, by what means?

The sacrifice is the means. The sacrifice implies surrender, and self-immolation. What you are, what you have, what you become in future by your own effort or by the divine grace, what you can earn or save in the course of your action, pour all like clarified butter, into the fire of divine energy, as offering to the all-Blissful. By giving a tiny whole you will receive the infinite whole. The Yoga is implicit in the sacrifice. The infinity, the immortality and the divine felicity are legitimate results of the practice of yoga. To follow this path is the means of Nature's salvation.

The Universal Nature knows the secret. So with this immense hope, night and day, year in and year out, age after age, sleepless and restless, she performs the sacrifice. All her actions, all her endeavours are part of this cosmic ritual. She immolates everything she produces. She knows that the divine Player who is present in all, tastes the delight without reserve and accepts all effort and askesis as sacrifice. He is the one who is ever slowly leading the cosmic sacrifice on the ordained path towards the ordained goals by detours and zigzags, through rise and fall, across knowledge, ignorance and death. His assurance has made her fearless, unwavering and indiscriminate. Moved by the unceasing and ubiquitous divine impulsion, she consciously throws all that she can lay hands on, creation and killing, production and destruction, knowledge and ignorance, happiness and suffering, the ripe and the unripe, the beautiful and the ugly, the pure and the impure, into that huge eternal conflagration of sacrifice. The subtle arid material objects constitute the clarified butter used in the sacrifice, the Jiva, the being, is the bound animal. The Nature is constantly immolating the Jiva, fastened to the slaying-post with the triple bond of mind, life and body. The bond of mind is ignorance; the bond of life is suffering, desire and conflict; the bond of body is death.

Nature is shown the path of her salvation; by what means can the Jiva in fetters be delivered? By means of sacrifice, self-surrender and self-immolation. Instead of being under the domination of Nature and being offered by her, the Jiva has to rise, become the sacrificer and offer all that it possesses. This indeed is the profound secret of the universe that the Purusha is not only the god of the sacrifice but the object sacrificed as well. The Purusha has surrendered into the hands of Prakriti his own mind, life and body as offering, as principal means of performing the sacrifice. There is this hidden motive behind his self-surrender that one day, becoming conscious, he will take the Prakriti by the hand, make her his consort and companion in the sacrifice and himself perform the ritual. Man has been created to fulfil this secret longing of the Purusha who wants to play the Lila in a human body. Selfhood, immortality, the multiple infinite bliss, unlimited knowledge, boundless force and immeasurable love must be enjoyed in a human body, in a human consciousness. All these forms of delight exist within the Purusha himself and as the Eternal he enjoys them eternally. But creating man, he is actively engaged in relishing the opposite taste of oneness in the multiplicity, the infinite in the finite, the inward in the outward, the supra-sensible in the senses and the immortal existence in the terrestrial life. Seated at the same time above our mind, beyond our intellect in the hidden Supramental principle of the Truth and in the secret plane of consciousness behind the heart within us, in the cavern of the heart, in the concealed ocean of submerged consciousness where heart, mind, life, body and intellect are only little ripples, the Purusha experiences the delightful taste of the blind effort and search of the Prakriti and her endeavour to establish unity by the shock of duality. Above, he enjoys in knowledge; below, he enjoys in ignorance; he carries on these two actions simultaneously. But if he is for ever immersed in this condition, then the deep intention, his supreme purpose cannot be fulfilled. That is why the day of awakening is fixed for each human being. The inner godhead will one day give up this mechanical, merit-less, lower self-immolation and begin in knowledge, by chanting his own mantra, the performance of the sacrifice. To perform the sacrifice consciously and with the right mantra is the ‘Karma’, the work, mentioned in the Veda. It has a double objective; a completeness in the universal plurality, what is known in the Veda as the universal godhead and the universal manhood, and the realisation of immortality in the one self-being of the supreme Divine. The gods mentioned in the Veda under the names Indra, Agni, Varuna are not the inferior small godheads of later days disdained by the common people; they are different forms of the Divine, powerful and luminous. And this immortality is not the puerile heaven described in the Puranas, but the svar, the world of Divine Truth desired by the Vedic Rishis, the establishment of the Infinite Existence; the immortality mentioned in the Veda is the infinite Being and Consciousness of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

5. Circa 1915–17⁵

1. I adore the Flame, the Vicar, the divine Ritwik of the sacrifice, the summoner who most founds the ecstasy.

2. The Flame, adorable by the ancient sages, is adorable too by the new; he brings here the gods.

3. By the Flame one enjoys a treasure that verily increases day by day, glorious, most full of hero-powers.

4. O Flame, the pilgrim sacrifice on every side of which thou art with thy environing being, that truly goes among the gods.

5. The Flame, the Summoner, the Seer-Will, true and most full of richly varied listenings, may he come, a god with the gods.

6. O Flame, the happy good which thou shalt create for the giver is That Truth and verily thine, O Angiras!

7. To thee, O Flame, we day by day, in the night and in the light, come carrying by our thought the obeisance,

8. To thee who reignest over our pilgrim sacrifices, luminous guardian of the truth, increasing in thy own home.

9. Therefore be easy of access to us as a father to his son; cling to us for our happy state.

6. Circa 1915–17⁶

A hymn to Agni the divine Flame, priest of the sacrifice, bringer of the gods to man, giver of the treasures, protector and leader and king of the sacrifice of the path, inspired seer will in works, giver of the supreme good and truth and its shining guardian.

[1] I adore the Flame, divine vicar of sacrifice, Ritwik and offering priest who most founds the Delight.

[2] The Flame adored by the ancient sages is adorable too by the new. He brings on earth the gods.

[3] Man can get by the Flame a treasure that increases day by day, splendid and full of heroes’ strengths.

[4] O Flame, alone the sacrifice of the path which thou surroundest with thy being on every side, goes among the gods.

[5] The Flame is a priest, a seer will to acts, true and rich in many lights of inspiration, and shall come to us a god with the gods.

[6] O Flame, that happiness thou wilt create for the giver of sacrifice, is thine only and is that Truth, O Angiras⁷.

[7] To thee day by day, O Flame, in night and in light we come carrying to thee by the thought our adoration,

[8] To the ruler of the sacrifices of the path, the luminous guardian of the Truth, who increases in his own home!

[9] O Fire, be thou easy of access to us like a father to his son, cling to us for our happy ease.

7. December 1915⁸

5. who does the work of the seer, the true, the rich in varied light of inspiration

8. February 1915⁹

5. May Agni, priest of the offering whose will towards action is that of the seer, who is true, most rich in varied inspiration, come, a god with the gods.

6. The good that thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Angiras.

7. To thee day by day, O Agni, in the night and in the light, we by the thought come bearing our submission,—

8. To thee who shinest out from the sacrifices (or, who governest the sacrifices), guardian of the Truth and its illumination, increasing in thy own home.

[Notes]

6. “The good (happiness) which thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Agni.” In other words, the essence of this truth, which is the nature of Agni, is the freedom from evil, the state of perfect good and happiness which the Ritam carries in itself and which is sure to be created in the mortal when he offers the sacrifice by the action of Agni as the divine priest. Bhadrammeans anything good, auspicious, happy and by itself need not carry any deep significance. But we find it in the Veda used, like ṛtam, in a special sense. It is described in one of the hymns (V.82) as the opposite of the evil dream (duḥṣvapnyam), the false consciousness of that which is not the Ritam, and of duritam, false going, which means all evil and suffering. Bhadramis therefore equivalent to suvitam, right going, which means all good and felicity belonging to the state of the Truth, the Ritam.

7. There seems to be stated the condition of the effective sacrifice. It is the continual resort day by day, in the night and in the light, of the thought in the human being with submission, adoration, self-surrender, to the divine Will and Wisdom represented by Agni. Night and Day, Naktoṣāsā, are also symbolical, like all the other gods in the Veda, and the sense seems to be that in all states of consciousness, whether illumined or obscure, there must be a constant submission and reference of all activities to the divine control.

9. Perhaps 1914¹⁰

1. I adore Agni the god, the Purohit of the sacrifice, the Ritwik, the Hota, most delight-placing.

I seek with adoration the God-Will, divine priest of the sacrifice placed in front, sacrificer in the seasons, offerer of the oblation, who most ordains the ecstasy.

Agni (अग् and अज्) is the brilliant, the strong, the preeminent, he who moves, leads, drives, acts. He is the Flame, at once Heat and Light, Force and self-possessing Consciousness in the Force, Will with perfect revealing and intuitive knowledge in the will and its acts, — the Seer-Will of the one & infinite Divine Conscious-Existence at work in the universe.

The Rishi, seeker and finder of knowledge, adores and seeks this divine Seer-Will as the priest of the inner sacrifice by which man seeks the godhead. He is the priest in the three chief functions of that divine priesthood. The divine Seer-Will is the Purohit, that power which is placed in front of our consciousness to act for the human being; replacing the fallible human will this divine force as soon as it is kindled conducts the sacrifice; he leads it in its journey through the stages by which the sacrificer rises to the supramental divine consciousness; he is its vanguard and front-fighter in the battle of the divine with the undivine and the march of man to his goal, पुरएता, प्रणेता. The Seer-Will is the Ritwik, he sacrifices in the order, the right seasons, the right periods, the twelve months, the hundred years of the sacrificial session: he knows the time, place, order by which the Swadha, the self-arranging self-movement of the divine Nature in man that is developing itself, progresses till it turns itself into the Swaha, the luminous self-force of the fulfilled divine Nature of the gods. This order of the sacrificial seasons is called ऋतु and represents the progressive movement of development of the hidden truth of things in man. The Seer-Will is also the Hota, the power that brings the divine powers into the physical consciousness of man by his flaming force in the revealed Word, manifests & forms them there and offers to them the whole activity of the being as a sacrifice of the lower human to the higher divine. The result of this progressive action is the divine delight or ecstasy, the Ananda of the infinite & divine Consciousness, brought into man, there established, held, expanding till it possesses the whole being and occupies all the energies. The Seer-Will is the godhead in us which is most powerful thus to establish, hold, order the action of the Delight in us. This delight is represented as the wealth of the divine existence, by the words रयिः, राधः, राः, रत्न, each of which has a different connotation. रयिः is simply the accumulation of the riches, the mass of the felicity; राधः its riches as affecting the mental, emotional heart-consciousness, its vital and sensible abundance; राः is the bliss, the higher joy of these riches, more than mental in its touch on man; रत्न is its pure ecstasy of the Ananda. This last aspect, as it is the culmination of the Vedic वेदस् , the finding, conscious possession of the Divine, is rightly put here in front in the first rik of the Veda. The Seer-Will is the first means, the Ananda of the divine riches the ultimate aim and last achievement of the Vedic Yoga.

10. 1913 – early 1914¹¹

I will cite first a passage in the first hymn of the first Mandala, the invocation to Agni with which the Rig Veda opens. Agni the god of the sacred flame, ruler of the sacrifice, is described there as the “shining guardian of the Truth increasing in his own home”, gopām ṛtasya dīdivim. If we wish to render this verse ritualistically and take Agni as nothing but the physical fire we must interpret rita otherwise, “king of the sacrifices, the shining guardian of the rite”, and if he increases in his own home, it must be in the house of sacrifice or on his own place on the altar. Or if “ṛta” is the cosmic Law Agni is the god of fire who is the guardian of the Law — in what sense? — and who is manifested in the sacrificial flame on the altar. Now, if we take the rik by itself, there is no means by which we can decide among these and other possible interpretations. But in the first place the idea of the guardian of the ṛta is a common thought of the Vedic Rishis and it occurs in passages where ṛta cannot well mean the sacrifice; even the phrase gopām ṛtasya occurs elsewhere with this clear significance. The gods generally are said to be born in the Rita, ṛtejaḥ, ṛtajātaḥ; they are increasing the ṛta, ṛtāvridh, protecting the ṛta, ṛtapā, ṛtasya gopā, touching the ṛta, ṛtaspriś, sending down streams of the ṛta, knowing the ṛta, ṛtam id cikiddhi, rita-conscious, ṛtacid. It is evident even at a first glance, and we shall be able to establish it conclusively enough, that ṛta must mean in these phrases some kind of truth and not the ritual of the sacrifice. Moreover this rik is preceded by three others in which there is repeated mention of the ideas of truth and thought and knowledge. Therefore in the absence of convincing reasons to the contrary we are justified in supposing that Agni is described as the shining guardian of the Truth and it must then immediately occur to us that if he is spoken of here in a psychological function and the Truth is a psychological not a physical conception, then he is described as its “shining” guardian because his light is necessary to that guardianship. The light of the god must therefore be an image for a psychological and not a physical illumination. Equally, the own home of such a deity increasing in the exercise of such a function should be rather a psychological region than the house of ritual sacrifice or a place on a sacrificial altar.

Let us examine the three Riks more minutely. The fifth verse runs: “Agni, the priest of the oblation (or, of the summoning), the seer-will (or he whose work, whose sacrifice or whose power-of-works is a seer’s), the true, who has most richly-varied (inspired) knowledge, may he come, a god with the gods.” In this verse we have two words of doubtful meaning, śravas and kratu. Sayana wherever he can, renders śravas food, elsewhere fame, or where neither of these will do, śravas (also śruṣti) is for him wealth or rarely hymn. But there is the word satya, true! That he forces to mean “giving true or right results of the sacrifice”, evidently a meaning which the text itself does not suggest and read into the word from the commentator’s mind. Again there is the phrase कविक्रतुः and we cannot fit this into the ritualistic interpretation unless we destroy the Vedic significance of the word Kavi. Well then, we have two words satya and kavikratu which suggest a profound psychological character for the god Agni, the shining guardian of the Truth. It does not matter how we take kratu. Kavi is the seer, one who has vision of the revealed Truth and receives the inspired word, the draṣṭā of the Vedic mantra with the inspired mind of knowledge. If kratu is sacrifice — Sayana often prefers “work” — then Agni is the priest whose sacrifice is that of the seer, therefore the sacrifice over which he presides is that over which the divine knowledge presides; if work, then he is the god of the inspired workings; if power of workings, then the god whose power for works is guided by divine knowledge. I suggest that kratu which Sayana sometimes interprets [as] knowledge and which has for one of its senses “mind”, is in a psychological sense the mental power that presides over all action, that is to say the will or the volitional mind. The two words kavikratuḥ satyaḥ, coming together in this intimate way, cannot be disconnected; the phrase must mean therefore that Agni is guided in his will or his works by the seer’s vision of the Truth because he is himself true in his being, free from the cosmic falsehood. What then of citraśravastamaḥ? Has it no connection at all with the two preceding words or does it mean that because Agni is true in being and has the seer-will, therefore he gives man all sorts of food or all sorts of wealth? I suggest that śravas means hearing or that which is heard (this is the root of its other sense fame) and is used by the mystics for the inspired knowledge which is contained in the Vedic mantra or else simply the inspirations that come from the divine Truth of which Agni is the seer. We have then a clear connection and interdependence of sense in the three epithets of Agni, he is the Truth in his being, therefore his will or works are those of the seer of the Truth and he receives all the varied inspirations of the knowledge that comes from the Truth; for that reason he is the hotā in the sacrifice which the soul of man offers to the Lords of the Truth. We see at once in these three illuminative epithets all that is meant by the description of Agni as the shining guardian of the Truth.

The next verse runs, “O Agni, the good which thou wilt create for the giver, thine verily is that truth, O Angiras.” This is interpreted ritualistically, “The good that thou wilt do to the giver, that (good) is thine, (this statement is) true (and not false).” But it is hardly possible on any rational law of poetic composition that satyam here should have no relation to satya immediately preceding it in the last verse. At any rate, the phrase tat satyam is used elsewhere in the Veda to mean “that truth” and is applied to the hidden sun or imprisoned light which the Angirases find as the result of their sacrifice & seeking in the cave of the Panis. Here too in connection with the same phrase tat satyam, Agni is described as the Angiras. The coincidence can hardly be fortuitous. Now the Angiras of the Veda, we shall find, is precisely the seer-puissance or seer-will, kavikratuḥ. So the good which Agni, the Angiras or seer-will, is to create for the human soul, giver of the sacrifice, is that divine Truth now withheld from man, the hidden light, the lost Sun which the powers of the seer-will find for man. We see in another hymn that Bhaga, a Sun God, creates this good or bhadram for man by getting rid of the evil dream to which the darkness or falsehood of existence belongs. We shall find too that in the Vedic idea the divine bliss or immortality of beatitude was held to be a result of the winning of the supramental Truth and this is evidently the idea which the verse indicates. It is indeed the central conception of the Vedic doctrine.

The next verse introduces and is connected in syntax with the rik which speaks of Agni as the guardian of the Truth; the two have to be taken together. “To thee, O Agni, we come day by day, in the night and the light, bringing with (or, by) the thought the obeisance; to thee ruling over the sacrifices, shining etc.” This in the ritualistic sense must mean that the priests offer sacrifice daily both during the day and during the night by means of the hymn or the work (Sayana interprets dhī sometimes in one sense, sometimes in the other according to his pleasure, but sometimes admits the significance “thought” or “understanding”), bringing, that is to say, doing obeisance or perhaps bringing the food or portion to the god¹². But if Agni is the god of an inner Flame, then we must interpret the verse differently. We see that the obeisance is brought, carried (bharantaḥ, Latin ferentes, Gr. φέροντες) by the thought; therefore, the obeisance must be an inner bowing down or submission to an inner flame. Namas, the obeisance, implies also obedience; the verb is used in the Veda in the sense of subduing. Now Agni kavikratuh is the luminous force or will-power of the Divine Existence, ekam sat; the force is the flame, the light of the flame is the knowledge; therefore he is the shining guardian of the Truth, for his unified power and knowledge protect all the workings of the divine Truth in the universe. The sacrifice offered by Man is a sacrifice offered for the conquest and conscious possession of this Truth at present concealed from him by ignorance and darkness. Therefore he is the ruler of the sacrifice; therefore the seekers come to him from day to day bringing to him submission in their thought so that the divine Will may govern their mentality and their action and lead it to the Truth. Day and night are, we shall see, symbols of the dark and illumined states of the human mind; the former is our ordinary consciousness, the latter that on which there comes the dawn, the light and power from the supramental Truth. Moreover this Agni increases in his own home. We shall see hereafter whether the own home of Agni is not the plane of the supramental Truth itself on which the divine powers dwell and from which they descend to the aid of the seeker. We must also understand the weal or “good state of being” [in] the closing verse, “Be easy of approach to us as a father to his child; cleave to us for our happy being”, as the state of bliss, the good, bhadram, which comes by the possession of the Truth. The Rishi is obviously not asking physical fire to allow him to approach and embrace it as a son with his father or pleading to fire to cleave to him for his welfare; the fulfilment of such a prayer would be slightly inconvenient and hardly lead to welfare. It is to the godhead, the Divine, that he prays, not the sacrificial flame on the altar, and what can be meant by the cleaving of a godhead to man, — not, be it noted, merely its succour or nearness — if Agni does not represent some divine power which must embrace the human being as a father his child and whose constant presence leads, not to the possession of herds and slaves and gold, but to a spiritually perfect state, svastaye? It is because the words of the Veda are not given their proper force, because we shirk their precise and evident meaning, preferring to think that the Rishis wrote loosely, clumsily and foolishly rather than to admit that they had other and profounder & subtler thoughts than ours — it is for this reason that we miss constantly the true sense of the Veda.

11. 1913 – early 1914¹³

[1] The Will I seek with adoration, divine priest of our sacrifice who is set in its front and sacrifices in the seasons of the Truth and offers the oblation and establishes in us wholly the Bliss;

[2] Will, the object of their adoration to the seers of old and to the seers who are now, for he brings into this world the godheads.

[3] By the Will man attains to wealth of the felicity and it increases day by day and is victorious in attainment and full of hero powers.

[4] That sacrifice which in its journey on the path thou encompassest with thy being on its every side, that travels to the gods.

[5] Will the priest, the seer-will, the true in being, richest in his shining inspirations of the truth, may he come divine with all the divine powers.

[6] O Will, in that thou wilt surely create his good for the giver of the sacrifice, thine is that truth, O Seer-Puissance.

[7] To thee, O Will, day by day, we come both in the light and in the night bringing the offering of our submission by the thought;

[8] To thee, who rulest our sacrifices in their march, to the shining guardian of the Truth who increases in his own home.

[9] Do thou be easy of access as is a father to his child, cleave to us for the bliss.

12. 1913 – early 1914¹⁴

1. The God-will I seek with adoration, divine priest of the sacrifice who is set in front and sacrifices in the seasons of the Law, giver of oblation who most ordains the ecstasy.

2. The Flame adored by the ancient finders of knowledge must be sought also by the new, for it is he that shall bring hither the godheads.

3. By the flame of the Will man enjoys a treasure of felicity that grows day by day and is a splendour of attainment and rich in hero-energies.

4. O Will, around whatsoever sacrifice travelling to its goal thou comest into being on its every side, that reaches truly the gods (or goes truly to the gods).

5. God-will is the priest of the oblation, for his is the Seer-will (or who has the will of the seer) true in its being, with a most rich and varied inspiration; let him come to us, a god with the gods.

6. The Good that thou wilt create for the giver of the sacrifice, thine is that Truth, O Will, O Seer-Puissance.

7. To the God-will we come day by day, in the night & in the light, carrying by our thought our offering of submission,

8. To the Ruler of our pilgrim sacrifices and shining guardian of the truth, increasing in his own home.

9. Therefore do thou, O Will, be as easy of approach to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for that happy state of our being.

13. September 1913¹⁵

[1] The Strength I seek who is set in front as our divine representative in the sacrifice and offers in the order of the Truth, the priest of our oblation who disposes utterly delight. [2] The Strength [was] desirable to the ancient sages and they of today must seek him too, for ’tis he that brings hither the gods. [3] By the Strength one attains a wealth of felicity that increases from day to day and, full of hero mights, victoriously attains. [4] O Strength, the sacrifice in its march that thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that reaches to the gods. [5] Strength is the priest of our oblation, he has the seer-will and is true in his being and is rich in varied inspirations; may he come to us, a god with the gods. [6] O Strength, that thou wilt create for the giver of the offering his weal, that is the truth in thee, O Puissance. [7] To thee, O Agni, we approach day after day, in the light and in the darkness, bringing thee submission by the thought, [8] To thee that rulest the march of the sacrifices, the protector of the Truth and its outshining, increasing in thine own home. [9] Therefore be easy of approach to us, O Strength, as a father to his child; cleave to us for our blissful state.

14. Before 1913¹⁶

Notes.

1. ईळे. To praise, in the ritualistic sense; but ईड् is a secondary root of ई and means to seek, go towards, attain, desire, adore, pray to, ask for (cf मातरमन्नमैट्ट). The former senses have been lost and only “to desire”, “pray” or “ask for” are left in later Sanskrit; but the other senses must have existed, as the idea of desiring, asking is never a primary sense of any root, but derived figuratively from the physical sense “to go, seek, approach”. We may therefore render ईळे either “seek”, “desire”, “adore” or “pray to”.

पुरोहितं. Sayana, “Purohit”, or else “placed in the front of the sacrifice as the Ahavaniya fire”. The Purohita of the Veda is the representative power in the sacrifice who stands in front of the consciousness and the action and conducts it. This is always the force of the “placing in front” which is so common an idea in the hymns. Normally this place belongs to Agni who leads the sacrifice.

देवं. Sy. दानादिगुणयुक्तं. Sayana’s dealing with the word देव is peculiar; sometimes he renders it simply “god”, sometimes he gives it some root value, दान, देवन, sometimes he makes it mean the priest. There is not a single passage in the Veda where the ordinary sense “god”, “divine being” does not give a clear and sufficient & the best sense. No doubt, the Vedic poets never left out of sight its root meaning; the gods are the Shining Ones, the Lords of Light as are the Dasyus the Dark or Black Ones, the sons of Darkness.

ऋत्विजं. “He who sacrifices at the right season” is the outward or ritualistic sense; but ऋतु in the Veda, as we shall see, is the order of the truth, its arranged law, time, circumstance. Agni is the representative priest who sacrifices according to the law, order, season of the Ritam.

होतारं. Sy. “because he utters the Mantra” and he quotes अहं होता स्तौमि; but he renders it sometimes आह्वाता, sometimes होमनिष्पादकः, sometimes gives us the choice. Undoubtedly होता is the priest of the oblation, who gives the offering, हु to offer, and not हू to call. The hymn was an attendant circumstance of the offering, therefore the invocation or praise might also fall to the part of the होता; but in the system of the Rigveda the proper name for the reciter of the Mantra is ब्रह्मा. Agni is the Hotri, Brihaspati the Brahma.

रत्न. Sy. यागफलरूपाणां रत्नानामतिशयेन धारयितारं पोषयितारं वा. धा to hold and धा to nourish (cf धात्री nurse). But in other passages he takes रत्न = रमणीयं धनं which shows that he took it to mean literally “that which is delightful” and made it = wealth, as he makes द्युम्न = “that which is shining” and renders it “wealth”. We need not follow him. रत्नं means “delight” or Ananda (cf रम् , रतिः, रण् , रण्व, राध् , रंज् etc) just as द्युम्नं means “light”. धा is to hold or else to place.

Ritualistic sense

I praise Agni the Purohit (or, who is set in front) of the sacrifice, the god (or, bountiful), the Ritwik, the Hota who holds very much wealth.

Psychological

I seek the God-Will, the priest set in front of our sacrifice, the divine offerer who sacrifices in the order of the truth, who disposes utterly the delight.

2. ऋषिः Lit. “seeker, attainer” so “knower” from ऋष् to go.

इह देवाँ — the divine powers into the mortal life and mortal being.

वक्षति. वह् + स् + ति. This स seems to have been either frequentative in force, “he constantly or habitually bears”, or intensive, “he entirely bears”, or desiderative, “he wills or intends to bear”. From the latter sense we have the use of स for the future, cf S. नी, नेष्यामि, Greek luo, I loose, luso, I shall loose, and English, I will go, where the desiderative will = wish, intend, has acquired the sense of a simple future.

“The God-Will is desirable as to the ancient sages, so to the new, for ’tis he that bringeth here the gods.”

3. अश्नवत् . Sy. प्राप्नोति — but the form gives a certain semiimperative sense or the idea of a rule of action or law of occurrence. “He shall attain.” अश् , to possess, have, obtain, enjoy — Gr. echo, I have.

यशसं. Sy. दानादिना यशोयुक्तं — so famous; but “a famous and man-fullest wealth” seems an absurd way of talking. यश् is literally to go, strive towards, attain; here it means success, fame; also from another sense “to shine” = splendour. It is connected in sense with या, यत् , यस् . We have in the Veda रयि, wealth or felicity, often described as expansive, pervading, breaking down obstacles on the way. There is therefore no inappropriateness or violence in rendering it “enjoyment that attains” or “a victorious riches”.

वीरवत्तमं. Sy. अतिशयेन पुत्रभृत्यादिवीरपुरुषोपेतं. It is absurd to take वीर = पुत्र Sayana does; it means “men, heroes, strengths” and is often the equivalent of नृ which is never used for servants in the Rigveda.

रयिं. There are two words रयि, from रि to go and from रि to attain, enjoy. The latter means “enjoyment” or the things enjoyed, “felicity, prosperity, riches”. The former sense is found in the Upanishad where रयि movement or matter is opposed to प्राण life.

Ritualistic

By Agni one attains a wealth daily increasing, famous and most full of men.

Psychological

By the God-Will one shall enjoy a felicity that shall increase day by day, victorious, fullest of hero-powers.

4. अध्वरं. Sy. हिंसारहितं because it is not destroyed by the Rakshasas, from अ privative + ध्वर (ध्वृ to hurt). But अध्वर is used by itself to mean sacrifice and it is quite impossible that the word “unhurt” used by itself can have come to mean sacrifice. It must express some essential quality of the sacrifice or it could not thus have been singled out. It is a notable fact that अध्वर is continually used for the sacrifice when there is a question of the sacrifice travelling or moving on the path towards the gods, as here. I therefore take अध्वर from an original Rt अध् to move, & connect it with अध्वन् path; it means the moving or travelling sacrifice, the sacrifice regarded as a pilgrimage of the soul or its gifts towards the gods.

Ritualistic

O Agni, the unhurt sacrifice that thou encompassest on all sides, that goes to the gods.

Psychological

O God-Will, whatsoever sacrifice on the path thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that indeed arrives to the gods.

5. कविक्रतुः. Sayana takes कवि here = क्रांत and क्रतुः = either knowledge or work. It means then “the priest whose work or whose knowledge moves”. But there is absolutely no reason to take कवि in any other than its natural & invariable sense. कवि is the seer, the one who has the divine or supramental knowledge. क्रतु from कृ or rather old root क्र to divide, to do, make, shape, work. From the sense “divide” comes that of the discerning mind, Sy’s प्रज्ञान; cf Grk. krites, judge etc; and this is the sense of karuttu in Tamil which means mind. But from the sense “to do”, क्रतु means (1) work, (2) power of work, strength, cf Grk. kratos, strength, (3) will or working force of the mind. For this last sense, cf Isha Upanishad क्रतो कृतं स्मर where the collocation क्रतो कृतं shows that that power of the mind is meant which conducts or dictates the work or action. Agni is the divine Seer-Will that works with the perfect supramental knowledge.

सत्यः. Sayana explains “true in its fruits”; but the collocation of “seer will” and श्रवः inspired knowledge indicates rather the sense “true in his being” & therefore true in knowledge श्रवः and in will क्रतुः. श्रवः is the supramental knowledge called the Truth, ऋतं, the vijnana of the Upanishads; कविक्रतुः means having the will that is full of that knowledge, the vijnanamaya will, the divine Ājnana; सत्यः means “vijnanamaya in his substance”.

चित्रश्रवस्तमः. Sy. having most varied kinds of fame, — an insipid & meaningless epithet for a god. श्रवः is used like श्रुति to indicate the inspired hymn; it must therefore be capable of meaning inspired knowledge. There are two kinds of supramental knowledge, दृष्टि & श्रुति, sight & hearing, revelation and inspiration, but श्रवः is usually used to indicate the knowledge gained by the supramental faculties.

Ritualistic

Agni, the priest, who sets in motion the knowledge (or work), true in his fruit, very varied in his fame, may he come a god with the gods.

Psychological

The God-Will, priest of our offering, true in his being, with the will of the seer, with richest variety of inspired knowledge, may he come to us divine with the powers divine.

15. 1912–13¹⁷

Rigveda. Mandala I, Hymns of Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra. I Hymn to Agni

1. Agni I adore, the priest who stands forward for the sacrifice, the god who acts in the truth of things, the giver of the oblation who disposes utterly delight.

2. Agni adored by the ancient seers is adorable still to the new, for he brings here the gods.

3. By Agni one gets day by day energy & increase victorious and full of force.

4. O Agni, whatsoever material sacrifice thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that goes to the gods.

5. Agni, he that offers the oblation, whose strength is in wisdom, the true, the rich in various inspiration, comes a god with the gods.

6. That thou, O Agni, wilt surely bring about good for the giver, that is the truth of thee, O lord of love.

7. To thee, O Agni, day by day, in darkness and in light we come in our minds bearing our submission, —

8. To thee, who rulest over all below, guardian of immortality, a brilliance increasing in its home.

9. Therefore do thou be easy of approach to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for our weal.

ऋत्विजं ऋतु = law, truth, fixed arrangement, season.

रयिः motion; so energy, matter, wealth. Cf Prasna Upanishad.

पोष more probably noun than adjective.

वीर in the Veda means 1. a hero. 2. force, strength. 3. manifest, vigorous, in full force, vī to open.

यज्ञमध्वरं a passage conclusive showing that adhwara does not mean sacrifice except by transition from an earlier meaning.

कवि one of the passages which show that कवि like ऋषि, सूर etc, is used of knowledge as well as of the knower. Another possible meaning would be “who is the strength of the seer or the strength of Wisdom”.

चित्रश्रवस्तमः श्रवः = inspired knowledge, the result of the vijnanamaya process of sruti; coming with कवि & सत्य it cannot mean fame.

गोपामृतस्य Cf राजानो अमृतस्य in a hymn of Kakshivan Dairghatamasa.

सचस्व सच् means 1. to cling. 2. to be strong.

16. 1912–13¹⁸

[1] Agni I adore, the representative priest of the Sacrifice, the god who sacrifices aright, the priest of the offering who disposes utterly delight. [2] Agni adorable to the seers of old, is adorable also [to the] new, for he brings hither the gods. [3] By Agni one gets him energy and an increase day by day full of success and full of power. [4] Agni, the material sacrifice which thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that indeed goeth to the gods. [5] Agni the priest of the offering, who has the force of the wisdom, the true, the full of rich inspiration, comes to us a god with the gods. [6] That thou, O beloved Agni, wilt do good to the giver, this is the truth of thee, O lord of love. [7] To thee, O Agni, day by day, by night & by day, we by the understanding come bringing to thee our submission, who governest all things below, [8] protector of the Truth, a brilliant flame increasing in its home. [9] Therefore do thou be easy of approach to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for our weal.

17. 1912–13¹⁹

[1] Agni I adore, the representative priest of the sacrificial act, the god who is the Adept of the sacrifice, the offerer of the action who disposeth utterly delight. [2] Agni adorable to the seers of old, is adorable always to the new, he beareth here the gods. [3] By Agni one getteth energy and increase also day by day and effective strength of highest forcefulness. [4] O Agni, whatso material action of sacrifice thou encompassest on every side, that verily moveth in the gods. [5] Agni, the offering priest whose might is knowledge, the true, the exceeding rich in inspiration, cometh a god with the gods. [6] That thou, O friend, O Agni, wilt surely effect the weal of the giver, that is the nature & truth of thee, O lord of love. [7] To thee, O Agni, day by day, O dweller in the twilight, we with the discerning mind bring our submission when thy strength is at its height, [8] to thee the ruler of all here below, guardian of Immortality, a high splendour increasing in its home. [9] Therefore do thou be easy of approach to us as a father to his son; be thou strong for our felicity.

18. 1912–13²⁰

1. Agni I adore who stands before Yajna, the god that seeth right, the offerer of the oblation, chief disposer of delight.

2. Agni, adorable to the former sages, adorable to those of today, he brings here the gods.

3. By Agni one getteth delight (or force) and increase too day by day, & widest victory (or most manifest or most forceful).

4. O Agni, the Yajna here below which thou encompassest on every side is that that moveth in the gods (or goeth to the gods).

5. Agni, the Hota, the strong in wisdom, the true, the varied in inspired knowledge, comes a god with the gods.

6. That thou, O beloved, doest good to the giver, O Agni, this is the truth in thee, O lord of love.

7. To thee, O Agni, day by day because thou protectest in the dimness, we with the understanding (come) bearing salutation and thou growest to thy strength.

8. Ruling over things below, O protector of immortality, a splendour increasing in its home.

9. Therefore do thou, O Agni, be accessible to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for our bliss.

19. 1912–13²¹

अग्निम् । The primitive root अ, to be, when combined with certain consonants क् , ग् , ज् , र् , contracted a sense of existence in the superlative, क् giving more the sense of height & intensity, ग् of strength, solidity or quantity, ज् , र् , of rapidity, vigour, activity, command. All strong action or quality could be denoted by अग् , as in अग्रः, Gr. ἄϰρος, topmost, first, foremost; ἄγω, ago, I lead, act; ἀγαθός, good, brave; ἄγαν, excessive; names like Agis, Agamemnon, Agamedes (cf Sanscrit अजः, अजमीढः); ἀγλαός, brilliant; etc. In Sanscrit the root अर् is much preferred to the guttural combination. There can be no doubt, however, that अग् in अग्निः meant strong, brilliant, forceful. Nasalised, we have it in अङ्गति fire (also a conveyance, cf ἄγω & S. अङ्ग्), अङ्गारः a live coal, अङ्ग् to stir, move; and in अङ्गिरः and अगस्ति,— the former term often applied to Agni. There was another signification, to cling, embrace, love, which we find in the Greek ἀγάπη, love, ἀγανός, tender, gentle, charming, which seems to have been another meaning of अङ्गिरः, loving, and appears in the mode of address अङ्ग, in अङ्कः, अङ्गम् etc, & in अनङ्ग the god of love. Agni is the bright and strong, the bright god of fire, the strong, burning god of Tapas, heat and force.

ईळे । The root is इल् or ईल् , ळ् being a modification which now survives only in the Southern Aryan tongues, Marathi, Tamil etc. इल् is itself a secondary root from इ to go, move, go after, wish for, desire, go to, reach, embrace, possess, control (cf ईह् , इच्छ् , ईश्). The liquid increases the closeness of contact, steadiness of action, or soft intensity of feeling. ईल् is to love, woo, desire, adore, embrace, press upon physically or mentally urge, crowd. The meaning, praise, is of later development from the sense of wooing or adoration. In words like इला, the earth, इल् has the original sense of motion. I adore or desire, or I praise will equally fit the first line, but in view of the second, where the coincident root ईड् means obviously desirable or adorable, not praiseworthy, the more primitive meaning must be preferred.

पुरोहितं । Not Purohit, but placed in front. Unless we take Yajna in the sense of sacrifice, there is no need to take पुरोहितम् in any but its original and primitive sense. Agni may be described as the Purohita or representative of the gods in the sacrifice, he is in no sense a sacrificer at the ceremony, in no sense either Purohit or Ritwik. He is the eater of the sacrifice not its priest. Even if Yajna is taken to mean sacrifice, Agni cannot rightly be called its priest, and पुरोहितम् will still have to mean standing in front, but with the idea of the Gods supplied and the genitive यज्ञस्य understood of general relation without any idea of possession, “who stands forth for the gods at the sacrifice”. But the language of the Vedas is always precise and sufficient and no such omission of a word need be supplied.

यज्ञस्य । यज्ञ is acknowledged to be a name for Vishnu, for the Supreme Lord, and the Supreme is not a sacrifice. We must find some other meaning for यज्ञ in the etymology of the word. We find the kindred यमः which means he who controls, governs, as in नियन्ता and other members of the य family of roots. The sense of force put forth to reach, obtain or control is a common significance in this group. “Restraint” is a sense of the word यः, “obtaining” of याः; “effort, control, mastery” is found in यत् , यतः, यतिः, यत्न, यन्ता, यन्त्र् , यम् , यमः (नियमः, संयमः), यामः; ययी is a name of Shiva; यज्ञः itself is a name of Agni, the master of तपः or force in action and exertion; यशः is fame, glory, beauty, wealth, — in Bengali, success, attainment, probably a survival of its original sense; in यविष्ठ youngest, from a lost यवः, not lost to the Veda, युवन् youth etc, & in यव barley, यवसः grass, the root sense is “strong, flourishing, vigorous”; यस् , यासः (आयासः, प्रयासः) bring us back to the idea of effort and labour. These significations arise [as] developments from the sense of “going”, (combined with effort or an original impetus), with its common, almost invariable development of going after, seeking, striving, desiring, (या, याच्), also reaching, meeting, mixing, acquiring, joining, embracing, enjoying (यु, युज् , योगः, यामी, योषा, युध् , योनि) and the sense of reaching to, joining to or handing, from which we have the idea of giving, यच्छ् , यज् in the sense of sacrifice, cf याजयति. The sense of strong one, master, controller, lord is established for यज्ञः by the application to Vishnu and Agni, continued at a time when the etymological justification had been lost; the sense of sacrifice is established by the universal later use. But it is also capable of the same senses as योगः, यत्न or the lost यत् from which we have यतिः, यतः etc; it could mean effort, action, tapasya, Yoga; this sense is the basis of the idea attached to the word यज्ञः in the Gita and of the meaning of adhiyajna there as the One in whom all action, tapasya and Yoga rest and to whom they are consciously or unconsciously devoted. The modern form of the Gita is there trying to assimilate an older form in which यज्ञः had its natural meaning, — Yoga, action, tapasya.

देवम् । The root दिव् , दीव् commonly means either “to shine” or “to play”. It is the former sense that gives us देवः, the shining ones, referring to the luminous tejomaya bodies proper to the inhabitants of the Swarloka where tejah is the primary element in all forms. देव by detrition of the व gives Latin deus and Greek θεός; from the long root दीव् we have divus and diva.

ऋत्विजम् । For a reason already alleged, this word need not & should not be taken in the modern sense. The modern derivation ऋतु & इज् , sacrificing in season, is a forced etymology, imposed after the word had contracted its modern meaning. The Ritwik was not a sacrificer in season any more than the Purohit, Hota, Brahma or Adhwaryu. The word meant originally “seer or knower of the truth, the right, the law, the Ritam”, and in this sense it was applied to the priest whose duty it was to see that everything was done according to the fixed rule and rationale of the sacrifice. But originally it had no such narrow significance. It meant “the seer of the ritam” and as applied to Agni it had the same sense as “jatavedah”, he to whom the Veda or direct vision of truth has appeared, — for jata in this word has nothing to do with birth. Even if we take the etymology to be ऋतु + इज् , this sense is perfectly possible, ऋतु will then be used in its original sense of established truth, ascertained thought, fixed law (from which the sense of “proper time, season” arose) and इज् in the sense “obtain, acquire, know”, common to the groups of roots which have the sense of motion towards. I suggest, however, that the combination is ऋत् truth, and विज् to see perfectly or decisively. The combination is not contrary to the old laws of sandhi, eg वर्त् + म = वर्त्म, पत् + नी = पत्नी etc. The liquid and nasal consonants did not originally call for the modification of the preceding hard consonant in composition.

The root ऋत् contracts the sense of truth from the original force of ऋ to go, move, go to, to reach, find, know, think, fix. We find in Sanscrit ऋजु, fixed, straight, honest; ऋत, right, proper, true; ऋतम् , rule, law, truth, right; ऋतु, a fixed time, season, period, a fixed order or rule; ऋभु, ऋभ्व, wise, skilful; ऋषि, thinker, knower, sage; ऋषु, wise. In Latin we have reor, I think, judge; ratus, thought, fixed, settled, valid; ratio, rule, method, reason, view, principle; also calculation, account etc; rectus, straight, right; regula, a rule.

The root विज् usually means an intense state of existence, as in Latin vigor, strength, vigour; vigere, to flourish; cf vireo, to flourish, be green, vir, a hero, S. वीरः from a brother root; S. विज् to be excited (उद्वेगः), वेगः speed, intensity; but it has other meanings, eg to discriminate, decide, judge. The primary वि means to appear, burst out, be divulged, to split open, separate, and, transitively, to see, know, discriminate, separate, divulge, expose, etc. A great regiment of words in Tamil & a few in Latin bear evidence to this sense, especially the Tamil for eye விழி and the root விள் with its numerous derivatives; a number of words meaning open, public, sale, auction, publication etc; Latin vile, common, cheap; villa, open place, country place, county seat; vendo, I sell; venalis, to be sold; but especially video, I see. In Sanscrit we have विद् to know; विज् to separate, discriminate; विच् in the same sense; वि itself always implying in some form division or separation; विना, except, without, from the same sense; विप् and विप्र a wise man, seer; आविर् manifest; विल् to divide, break, & in the causal form to send forth, throw out (originally, to divulge, manifest); बिलम् (विलम्) a hole, fissure; विश् to enter in, penetrate; विष् to separate, disjoin; वी to be born or produced, appear; shine, produce; वीपा lightning; वियत् the open sky; and others. विज् may therefore mean either to see, or to separate and discriminate.

होतारम् । The word होता again means a sacrificial priest, and it is curious, if these senses are to be taken, that three different words meaning different kinds of sacrificial priests, should be applied to Agni in the course of a short line composed of eight words and not one with any definite appropriateness either to Agni himself or to the context. We must seek a more appropriate meaning.

The root हु like all ह् roots must have had originally the sense of “to use force violently or aggressively, to come into aggressive contact, to throw, throw out, strike, kill”. This sense we find in हा to throw away, abandon; हत from ह, slain, killed; हन् to strike, injure, kill; हिंस् ; हिंसा injury, slaughter; हेतिः a weapon; हंसः a swan (one who flies flapping the wings); हठः violence, force, rapine; हद् to discharge (excrement), (cf Bengali হাগা); हनुः weapon, disease, death, (Greek θάνατος, death, θνητός, mortal); हथः a blow, killing, death; हय् to be weary; हयः horse (galloper); हृ to seize, ravish; हरिः anything strong, swift, brilliant, bright coloured (cf हरिणः, हरित्); हल् to plough, move strongly (we find traces of the idea of moving strongly in the vernaculars, cf हिल् , हिल्लोल, ह्वल्); हस् to ridicule, originally to insult, slight, humiliate; cf हिण्ड् to disregard, slight; हि to cast, shoot; हिक्क् to hurt, injure, kill; हुण्ड a tiger; हुल् to injure, kill; हुडः a ram (butter, fighter); हेड् , हेल् to slight; हेठ् to vex, hurt; होडृ a robber; होड् , हौड् to slight; ह्नु to rob, take away; ह्रस् to waste, diminish; ह्रेद् & ह्रेष् to sound loudly, roar, neigh; ह्री to be put to shame. So insistent are these senses of this violent root that it is impossible to believe that हु alone, unlike its secondary roots, हुण्ड् , हुड् & हुल् , should not have shared in them. As a matter of fact we find that the sense of sacrifice comes from the idea of throwing; to throw in the fire, hence to sacrifice. We have also the sense of calling, हवः a cry, call; ह्वे to call, where the idea is of the violent throwing out of the sound from the throat (cf ह्राद् , ह्रेष् , हेष् etc) and finally आहवः, battle. It is in this word आहवः that we get the key to the ancient sense of हु to slay, strike, fight. If it had this sense in the time of the Veda we may take होता as slayer, fighter, हव as meaning both battle & cry, call, होत्रं as war, battle. On this supposition Agni hota is the slayer, the warrior, the smiter of the foe.

रत्नधातमम् । Again we have a word we cannot take in its modern sense. रत्न in the sense of jewel comes from the idea of glittering, coruscating which is an original sense of the root र & its derivatives. This root र & its brother root रा, meant originally to vibrate, to be intense in movement, contact, feeling, so to coruscate, glitter, break up, play, rush, shout, rejoice, feel ecstasy. We have रः in the sense of fire, heat, love, desire, speed; रा gold; रं brightness, lustre; रंह् to go swiftly; रंहतिः, रंहस् speed, impetuosity; रकः the sunstone, crystal or a hard shower; रक् to taste, (take delight of); रक्त painted, brilliantly coloured, impassioned, playful; रघु swift; रंगः colour, amusement, passion; रजतं silver; रजस् originally strength, swiftness, passion, force; the dancing of broken dust, etc, cf रद् , रन्ध्रं ; रंज् to colour, be enamoured, delighted; रट् to shout, call out; रणः (literally a charge), war, combat, ringing sound; रथः a chariot, a hero or fighter (महारथः, अतिरथः, अधिरथः where the sense is evidently a fighter and has nothing to do with chariot); ecstasy, delight; रभ् to clasp, embrace; start off, begin; रभस् impetuosity, vehemence, in Bengali, violent delight or ecstasy; cf S. राभस्यं y delight, violence; रम् to play, rejoice, delight; रंभ् to bellow; रय् to stream, go; रश्मिः ray, beam; रस् to cry out, scream; taste, relish; रसः delight, taste, liquid, (from “to flow”). Cf also रागः, राधा, राम, रामा, रावः, रवः etc. The root रत् from which रत्न may come (unless we compound र + त्न, but this is contrary to the evidence of यत्नः, पत्नी etc) is not found except in रात्रिः and रातिः where it is significant that राति means a friend, a gift, ready or generous, which may all have come from the sense of delight, play etc; रात्रिः & रजनी may also mean the time of enjoyment. We have too रतिः, delight, which is usually derived from रम् . In any case the evidence of the other roots gives as the most probable meanings of a root रत् , delight, light or vehemence of feeling, motion or action. In this passage the two first alone will enter naturally into the sense of the verse. Agni is addressed either as the giver of light, ritwij and jatavedas — for physically Agni is the disposer of light only through Surya — or as the giver of delight, because tapas is the basis of all ananda. But this metaphorical sense of “light” is a doubtful use and for other reasons as well, foreign to the etymological considerations, I prefer the sense of “delight” to the other and more obvious significance.

Translation.

Agni I desire, who stands before the Lord, the god who seeth truth, — the warrior, who disposeth utterly delight.

ईड्यो । ड and ल are often interchangeable in Sanscrit; cf हुड् & हुल् , हेड् and हेल् . There is no difference of force or use between इड् & इल् .

नूतनैर् । नु or नू is evidently an old Aryan word for “now” used both of time & logical sequence and in asking questions; this is evident from the adverbs formed from it — Sanscrit नु, Greek νυ, Latin num, nunc. Hence नवः in the sense of new, lit. “belonging to now”, नवीन = तत्कालीन. न, नि, नु seem to have pointed out an immediate object; whence the Sanscrit नि of close relation, Lat. in, Gr. ἐν (from इ-नि, अ-नि, the इ and अ being expletive for the sake of more exact demonstration); also the use of नः to mean us, and of நாம், நம் in Tamil to mean I, us.

उत .. इद् ।²² In the old Aryan language अ, इ, उ were evidently used as demonstrative pronouns, इ being this here near me, अ this a little farther off, उ that. We have precisely this use in Tamil; அவன், இவன், உவன், the demonstrative pronouns where வ் is euphonic & அன் honorific; so too அது, இது. The three are liberally used to define other pronouns and adverbs, eg அப்போது, இப்போது, etc. We have similarly in Sanscrit अयम् , इयम् , where य् is euphonic and अम् definitive (as in वयं, यूयं); अव, इव, अति, इति, अतः, इतः etc. We have in Latin the two forms ille and olle, to say nothing of the suggestions in aliquis etc; we have is, ea, id, for the ordinary demonstrative pronoun. अः, इः, उः appear to have been the masculine forms, अत् , इत् , उत् or अद् , इद् , उद् the neuter. These neuter forms were used latterly only as emphatic adverbs, prepositions or conjunctions. We find similarly अ, इ, उ used by themselves as emphatic particles, or compounded with the adverbial neuters as in इति, अति. We have in Sanscrit इत् , उत, अति & इति; in Latin at, et, ad, ut, uti; in Greek ἔτι which is evidently the Sanscrit अति, in the sense of still, besides, “encore”. उत here is emphatic with something of the sense “of course”. इत् corresponds to the later एव. स इत् = स एव. इत् is also found in इत्था, इदा, इदानीम् . इति is इत् farther emphasised and used to mark off reported speech or to fill the place taken in English by inverted commas.

एह । The word is undoubtedly an adverb, but it is a question whether it is a mere variation of इह, as एव or एवम् undoubtedly were variations of इव. There is another possible signification. I suggest that the root इह् was used in the ancient tongue to signify “strength, force”. That this sense of strength was inherent in the इ roots is evident from the Sanscrit इन्द्रः, इन् to invigorate, force, compel, इनः able, mighty, lord, master, इभ्य wealthy, opulent, rich, a king, इषः full of sap or strength, ईश् to rule, master, Greek ῖφι, ἴφθιμος. एह would be an adverb formed from इह् by gunation to एह् and the addition of अ either adverbially or as an accusative termination and would mean strongly, forcibly, with strength.

वक्षति । I take वक्ष् as a habituative or intensive form tertiary from वह् = वह् + स, like रक्ष् from रह् , दक्ष् from दह् , जक्ष् from जस् & a lost जह् (जहकः, जहत्), नक्ष् from नस् . Agni ever bears up the gods with strength.

Translation.

Agni desirable to the seers of old no less than to those of today, mightily he beareth up the gods.

रयिम् । We have seen that the र roots have a strong sense of swift motion. To the instances already alleged may be added री going, motion; रु to go, move; रङ्घ् to hasten; रन्तु a way, road, river (cf रस्ता); रय् to go, move; रयः a current, river; speed, vehemence; रहस् swiftness; Gr. ῥέω, I flow; ῥόος, stream; ῥεῦμα, flow; Lat. rivus, a river. We have seen also that it bears the frequent sense of light and of delight. रयिः from रय् may mean either light, delight, motion or anything that moves, or from the old identification of substance with motion, it may mean matter, substance, wealth, force, substantial object. Compare the Latin res, thing, matter, affair. रयिः certainly has the sense of Matter in the Upanishad.

अश्नवत् । Rt अश् to have, get, enjoy. Greek ἔχω. I have, hold.

एव । Literally “so”; here evidently used to mean, “so also, also, as well”.

वीरवत्तमम् । The word वीर here is a noun adjectivised by the addition of वत् . There must therefore have been a noun वीरः meaning not only hero, strong man, but strength, like vis, viris, in Latin. See under ऋत्विज् in the first shloka. Another possible meaning of वीर would be manifest, intense, splendid, shining. See the same. In either case यशः means not fame but either mastery or strength. See under यज्ञः ibid. We may translate it either strength most glorious or strongest, most vigorous mastery. The latter seems more probable.

Translation.

By Agni one getteth substance and increase too day by day, yea, mightiest mastery.

अध्वरम् । Not sacrifice, but an adjective from अध् a secondary root of अ to be. The sounds ध & व appear to have given an idea of weight, solidity and dullness, with which the ideas of dense matter or downward motion were easily associated. We have अव of descent. We have अधः, a formation from अध् by the addition of the nominal अस् used in the neuter adverbially; we have अधरः & अधमः, lower & lowest from some lost adjective अधः low; we have अध्वन् a path, originally perhaps a way of descent, a path down, but this is not certain as we have अट् to wander and there are other proofs of a sense of motion in अ roots. Given a word अध्व descent, as we have इत्वन् & इत्वरः formed from a lost इत्व, so we shall have अध्वन् & अध्वरः formed from this lost अध्व, & meaning descending or descended, lower. अध्व must also have been capable of the sense substantial or material being, like अन्नम् a kindred root, but अध्वर in the Veda evidently refers to more than the annamaya existence. It embraces the whole aparardha or lower hemisphere of existence believed in by the Vaidic thinkers. It is the opposite of उत्तरः.

गच्छति । In the original sense of moving, not of going towards a particular direction. Cf गा the moving earth, जगती etc.

Translation.

O Agni, the Lord below whom thou encompassest with thy being on every side, is the same that moveth in the gods.

कविक्रतुः । क्रतुः again has nothing to do with a sacrifice. It meant activity, mastery, strength, doing, action, or the adjectives of these significations. It also meant like केतुः word of the same root family Will or Force. Cf Greek ϰράτος, ϰρατερός, ϰραταιός, ϰρείσσων (क्रतीयान्), ϰράτιστος. The Vedic शतक्रतुः does not mean Indra of a hundred sacrifices, but Indra of destroying strength. It is notable in how many cases the obsession of the idea of sacrifice has perverted the original sense of words. The perversion is beyond doubt. The only question is whether it was done before or after the composition of the Vedic hymns.

कविः. The root कु from the initial sense of curve, hollow, took the derivative idea of containing, holding, knowing, or forming, constructing, writing, drawing etc (cf the similar association of ideas in the म् roots). We have, therefore, the double idea of a sage and a poet or artist, familiar throughout Sanscrit literature. But for कविः in this passage we must suppose the sense not of the knower, but of knowledge. The addition of the nominal इः had always this double utility of indicating the agent or the state or action. कविः means the comprehensive knowledge, the art or science of a subject. Cf कोविदः.

चित्रश्रवः । श्रवः from श्रु to hear may indicate either fame, Gr. ϰλύω, ϰλέος oc or knowledge gained by श्रुति. We must take it in the latter significance when it is applied in a poem where all the words and circumstances are designed to show the principal qualities and activities of the god Agni, the jataveda. Sruti is one of the three processes of ideal knowledge by which Veda is conveyed.

देवेभिः । The third case used not to indicate the instrument, but the accompaniment.

Translation.

Agni, the warrior, the strong in knowledge, the true, the rich in revelation, has come a god with the gods.

अङ्ग् . From अग् to cling, embrace, love, nasalised. Originally “dear”, answering to the Greek φίλος or πέπων, it became a familiar style of address, “ὦ φίλε”, “ὦ πέπον”, and lost its original shade.

दाशुषे । This is a word of considerable importance. In the sacrificial interpretation of the Vedas it must mean a giver, sacrificer; in the religious interpretation it means an enemy, one who hurts or kills or desires to hurt or kill. Both significances are possible etymologically, both give a good sense in this verse. The ceremonial interpretation will run, “That thou wilt do good to the sacrificer, this is that truth of thee, O Agni Angiras”; the religious, “O beloved, that thou, O strong Agni, meanest to do good to him that would hurt thee, this is that truth in thee, O lord of might & love.” Satyam refers us back to the “satya” in the last shloka and indicates like every other epithet there used the truth to the right nature of things, the ritam, in the vijnana, the ideal or spiritual plane of existence, where hatred ceases and evil ceases, because these are asatyam, perversions and misunderstandings of the play of God in the universe.

अङ्गिरः । When applied to Agni, this epithet means etymologically the brilliant or mighty, like अग्निः itself, but there is an unmistakable allusion here to the other significance of “loving, tender, attached”, deduced from अङ्ग् to love. In अनङ्ग, the other notable Sanscrit word denoting this sense of अङ्ग् , the अन् is obviously intensive or reduplicative, not privative. Cf अनर्च from अर्च् etc for reduplication; दीदिविः etc for its intensive force. When the idea of the true Nirukta was lost, the false idea of “bodiless” was conveyed into this name of Kamadeva and the story of the Kumarasambhava brought in to explain so inapt an epithet.

Translation.

That thou, O beloved, O strong Agni, meanest to do good to him that would hurt thee, this is that truth of thee, O lord of might and love.

उप । The preposition expresses relation or subjection.

दोषावस् । दोषा is twilight or darkness; अवः, protector.

तर् । An old adverb still preserved in the compound form तर्हि and the Mahratti तर् . It seems here to have the force of “if”.

धिया । Used throughout the Veda of the Buddhi, the discerning reason. he reference in this line is to the buddhiyoga and yogic atmasamarpanam enjoined afterwards in the Gita.

नमो । Rt नम् to bend, submit. नमो means submission or obeisance (cf Grk. νόμος, rule, law, custom, that to which one is subject). But भरन्तः from the root भृ does not mean here to fill, but is used in the older sense of to bear (cf भारः, Greek φέρω, Lat. fero). We may therefore more appropriately take नमो in the active sense of that which bends, controls; as in the Greek νόμος, — law, rule, mastery. The participle here used as a verbal adjective dispenses with the necessity of a finite verb.

एमसि । We have seen that the इ roots develop the idea of strength; this sense is particularly appropriate to the combination with म् which means limit, extreme; cf Latin imus, originally extreme, farthest, afterwards lowest. एमसि means, on this supposition, thou growest to thy full or extreme strength.

Translation.

O Agni who protectest us in the darkness day by day, if under thee we bear by the discerning mind the law of thy full control, then growest thou to thy perfect strength.

राजन्तम् । Either shining, brilliant or ruling, governing. In connection with a अध्वराणाम् we must take it in the latter sense, which is, besides, especially appropriate after the नमो भरन्तः of the last line.

अध्वराणाम् । of all things here below.

गोप । Protector, from गुप् to embrace, shelter, protect. There can be no doubt that this is the significance. The introduction of a vocative, however, is out of place in a series of accusatives. I suggest that गोप is an old form of the accusative preserved by tradition. That there was such an accusative form appears from the Greek γύψ, γύπα etc, where there is no trace of a terminal m. The nominative then would be not गोपः but गोप् .

दीदिविम् । A strong reduplicated form from दिव् to shine, meaning tejas, force, energy, brilliance, splendour. There is a doubt here as to the relation of अमृतस्य. If it is with गोप, it must be taken to mean nectar or immortality and Agni is the protector of the amrita in the body or of the immortality of the body; if with दीदिविम् , it must mean the Immortal, God, and Agni is a splendid energy of the Immortal. The general sense of the verse will be the same, since अमृतस्य दीदिविम् in the latter interpretation explains how Agni has the force to be the protector of all creatures here below.

दमे । house, home, territory. Greek δόμος house; cf also δῆμος people or deme. The root is दम् to master, conquer, own, from which we have the Greek δμῶες (दमायाः), servants, δέμας (दमस्), body, δάμαρ, δάμαρτος, wife (दम्रस्), δῆμος, territory or people conquered or owned, the Latin domus, house, dominus, master. In all probability दमः, δόμος, domus, originally meant the people of the household, the slaves etc, or the whole family as subject to the master, and was afterwards transferred to the house itself.

Translation.

Thee, the ruler and protector of all creatures here below, a splendour of the Immortal increasing in its home.

स has the force of therefore and sums up the hymn, but with special reference to the last line.

सूपायनो । Rt इ to go and उप to, with the idea of subjection or inferiority; easy to approach.

सचस्व । Cleave, in the ordinary sense of the root.

Translation.

Therefore be thou easy of approach to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for our bliss.

20. 1912–13²³

First Mandala. First Hymn

Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra’s Hymn to Agni written in the Gayatri metre in which the first verse runs in the devabhasha

“Agnim īle puro hitam Yajnasya devam ritvijam, hotaram ratnadhatamam”

and in English,

“Agni I adore, who stands before the Lord, the god who seeth Truth, the warrior, strong disposer of delight.”

So the Rigveda begins with an invocation to Agni, with the adoration of the pure, mighty and brilliant God. “Agni (he who excels and is mighty),” cries the Seer, “him I adore.” Why Agni before all the other gods? Because it is he that stands before Yajna, the Divine Master of things; because he is the god whose burning eyes can gaze straight at Truth, at the satyam, the vijnanam, which is the Seer’s own aim and desire and on which all Veda is based; because he is the warrior who wars down and removes all the crooked attractions of ignorance and limitation (asmajjuhuranam eno) that stand persistently in the way of the Yogin; because as the vehicle of Tapas, the pure divine superconscious energy which flows from the concealed higher hemisphere of existence, (avyaktam, parardha), he more than any develops and arranges Ananda, the divine delight. This is the signification of the verse.

Who is this Yajna and what is this Agni? Yajna, the Master of the Universe, is the universal living Intelligence who possesses and controls His world; Yajna is God. Agni also is a living intelligence that has gone forth, is srishta, from that Personality to do His work and represent His power; Agni is a god. The material sense sees neither God nor gods, neither Yajna nor Agni; it sees only the elements and the formations of the elements, material appearances and the movements in or of those appearances. It does not see Agni, it sees a fire; it does not see God, it sees the earth green and the sun flaming in heaven and is aware of the wind that blows and the waters that roll. So too it sees the body or appearance of a man, not the man himself; it sees the look or the gesture, but of the thought behind look or gesture it is not aware. Yet the man exists in the body and thought exists in the look or the gesture. So too Agni exists in the fire and God exists in the world. They also live outside of as well as in the fire and outside of as well as in the world.

How do they live in the fire or in the world? As the man lives in his body and as thought lives in the look or the gesture. The body is not the man in himself and the gesture is not the thought in itself; it is only the man in manifestation or the thought in manifestation. So too the fire is not Agni in himself but Agni in manifestation and the world is not God in Himself but God in manifestation. The man is not manifested only by his body, but also and much more perfectly by his work and action, thought is not manifested only by look and gesture, but also and much more perfectly by action and speech. So too, Agni is not manifested only by fire, but also and much more perfectly by all workings in the world, — subtle as well as gross material, — of the principle of heat and brilliance and force; God is not manifested only by this material world, but also and much more perfectly by all movements and harmonies of the action of consciousness supporting and informing material appearances.

What then is Yajna in Himself and what is Agni in himself? Yajna is Being, Awareness and Bliss; He is Sat, with Chit and Ananda, because Chit & Ananda are inevitable in Sat. When in His Being, Awareness and Bliss He conceals guna or quality, He is nirguna Sat, impersonal being with Awareness and Bliss either gathered up in Himself & passive, they nivritta, He also nivritta or working as a detached activity in His impersonal existence, they pravritta, He nivritta. Then He should not be called Yajna, because He is then aware of himself as the Watcher and not as the Lord of activity. But when in His being, He manifests guna or quality He is saguna Sat, personal being. Even then He may be nivritta, not related to His active awareness and bliss except as a Watcher of their detached activity; but He may also by His Shakti enter into their activity and possess and inform His universe (pravishya, adhisthita), He pravritta, they pravritta. It is then that He knows Himself as the Lord and is properly called Yajna. Not only is He called Yajna, but all action is called Yajna and Yoga, by which alone the process of any action is possible, is also called Yajna. The material sacrifice of action is only one form of Yajna, which, when man began to grow again material, took first a primary and then a unique importance and for the mass of men stood for all action and all Yajna. But the Lord is the master of all our actions; for Him they are, to Him they are devoted, with or without knowledge (avidhipurvakam) we are always offering our works to their Creator. Every action is therefore an offering to Him and the world is the altar of our lifelong session of sacrifice. In this worldwide karmakanda the mantras of the Veda are the teachers of right action (ritam) and it is therefore that the Veda speaks of Him as Yajna and not by another name.

This Yajna, who is the Saguna Sat, does not do works Himself, (that is by Sat), but He works in Himself, in Sat, by His power of Chit, — by His Awareness. It is because He becomes aware of things in Himself by some process of Chit that things are created, brought out, that is to say, srishta from His all-containing non-manifest Being into His manifest Self. Power & awareness, Chit and Shakti are one, and though we speak for convenience’ sake of the Power of Chit, & call it Chichchhakti, yet the expression should really be understood not as the Power of Chit, but as Chit that is Power. All awareness is power and all power conceals awareness. When Chit that is Power begins to work, then She manifests Herself as kinetic force, Tapas, and makes it the basis of all activity. For because all power is Chit subjectively, therefore all power is objectively attended with light; but there are different kinds of light, because there are different manifestations of Chit. Seven rays have cast out this apparent world from the Eternal Luminousness which dwells like a Sun of ultimate being beyond its final annihilation, adityavat tamasah parastat, and by these seven rays in their subjectivity the subjective world and by these seven rays in their objectivity the phenomenal world is manifested. Sat, chit, ananda, vijnanam, manas, prana, annam are the sevenfold subjectivity of the Jyotirmaya Brahman. Prakasha, agni, vidyut, jyoti, tejas, dosha and chhaya are His sevenfold objectivity. Agni is the Master of the vehicle of Tapas. What is this vehicle of Tapas of which Agni is the master? It is fiery light. Its Master is known by the name of his kingdom. Strength, heat, brilliance, purity, mastery of knowledge and impartiality are his attributes. He is Yajna manifest as the Master of the light of Tapas, through whom all kinetic energy of consciousness, thought, feeling or action is manifested in this world which Yajna has made out of His own being. It is for this reason that he is said to stand before Yajna. He or vidyut or Surya full of him is the blaze of light in which the Yogins see God with the divine vision. He is the instrument of that universal activity in which Yajna at once reveals and conceals His being.

Agni is a god — He is of the devas, the shining ones, the Masters of light — the great cosmic gamesters, the lesser lords of the Lila, of which Yajna is Maheswara, the one Almighty Lord. He is free and unbound or binds himself only in play. He is inherently pure and he is not touched nor soiled by the impurities on which he feeds. He enjoys the play of good & evil and leads, raises or forces the evil towards goodness. He burns in order to purify. He destroys in order to save. When the body of the sadhak is burned up with the heat of the tapas, it is Agni that is roaring and devouring and burning up in him the impurity and the obstructions. He is a dreadful, mighty, blissful, merciless and loving God, the kind and fierce helper of all who take refuge in his friendship.

Knowledge was born to Agni with his birth — therefore he is called jatavedas.

21. 1912–13²⁴

[1] “Agni I adore who stands before the Lord, the god who seeth Truth, the warrior, strong disposer of delight.”

So the Rigveda begins with a song to Agni, with the adoration of the pure, mighty and brilliant God. “Agni, he who excels and is mighty,” cries the Seer, “him I adore.” Why Agni before all the other gods? Because it is he that stands before Yajna, the Master of things; because he is the god whose burning eyes can gaze straight at Truth, at the satyam, the vijnanam, that which is the Seer’s aim and desire and the thing on which all Veda is based; because he is the warrior who wars down and removes all the crooked attractions of ignorance and desire, juhuranam enas, which stand in the way of the Yogin, because as the vehicle of Tapas, the pure divine energy which flows from the higher concealed hemisphere of existence, he more than any develops and disposes Ananda, the divine delight.

In order to look into the words of the inspired writing and comprehend, so far as mere intellectual exposition can help us to comprehend, their profound meaning, we must begin with the Vedanta, the great fundamental body of truth which all Veda assumes; for it is by the passing into oblivion of this fundamental knowledge that we have lost the key to the meaning of the Vedas, and it is only by a return to the knowledge that we can recover it. There are two states of being in consciousness, the divine Brahmi sthiti of blissful unity, from which we descend, and the divided state of the Jivatman into which we have descended. Parabrahman reveals himself first as Yajna, the Supreme Soul and Master of Things, Atman and Iswara; He is utterly one as Atman, He is both One and Many as Iswara, but always without losing His unity, always one without a second, ekam evadwitiyam, because the Many, both in their individuality and totality, are nothing but the One. Nothing is but God; we too are God, each one of us is He, and that which we dwell in is God. The fundamental sayings, So Aham; Tattwamasi, Swetaketo; sarvam khalu idam Brahma, are the sum of all Veda and Vedanta. All is merely the manifestation of Him for the sake of various delight; for Ananda the worlds are, from Ananda they proceeded, by Ananda they abide, to Ananda they return. Anandaddhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante, anandena jatani jivanti, anandam prayantyabhisanvishantiti. In this manifestation He as the Universal God pervades, governs, surpasses all. He is the master of the play, — यजति, He controls, rules and arranges it. This is Yajna. He again as the manifold individual God, ourselves, attaches Himself to every created thing (sarvabhuteshu) and limits not Himself but His manifestation in each adhara, arranging and perpetually developing in each a particular nature or law of life, a swabhava, a dharma. So ’rthan yathatathyato vyadadhacchaswatibhyah samabhyah. When we identify ourselves with the play of this various Nature reflected upon our consciousness and lose sight of our godhead, then we resort too utterly to the principle of Avidya, God’s power of not knowing Himself, we become its servants, we are subject to Apara Maya, we stumble about buffeted by grief and error and all sorts of vikaras and viparita vrittis, we know ourselves as the Jivatman and other than the Paramatman, we make division where there is no division; we turn play into bitter earnest and love and joy into hatred and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Nevertheless, this forgetfulness is allowed in order that our secret souls in the Parardha and Brahman in them may enjoy the viparita ananda, the contrary or perverse delight, of the dualities. When we forget the play of Nature on our consciousness, shut our consciousness to it, refuse to reflect it, then we resort too utterly to the principle of Vidya, God’s power of knowing His essential unity, we become subject to the Maya of Knowledge, we seem to baffle and bring to nought for ourselves the joy of the Lila, and disappear into some principle of Oneness, Prakriti, Asad Brahman, Sad Brahman, Nirvana or Sacchidananda. It is, or seems, an unnecessary movement; for the world remains just as before so long as God chooses that it shall remain and we cannot end it by our precipitation, and for ourselves we always were Brahman, we always will be Brahman and we are not any the more Brahman by our flight into the Absolute. Nevertheless, this withdrawal too is allowed in order that certain select spirits may help the joy of the manifest world from behind the veil by their immanent blessedness. For we have no need of laya and no need of lila, no need of freedom and no need of bondage, but all things are for delight and not from necessity. But when we remember always and continually our oneness with the Supreme, our eternal and indefeasible Godhead, and at the same time allow Nature to reflect its movements on our souls as on a magical canvas according to His eternal purpose, then we have inalienable joy, then we bring heaven upon earth, then we fulfil the highest purpose of existence. We are then free even when we seem to be bound, and even if we are born again, we are janmasiddha and janmashuddha, nityamukta, and wear the temporary limitations of Nature as children allow themselves to be bound in a game with bonds which the Yajna, Master of the Revels looses Himself when we have given Him and ourselves the intended and perfect satisfaction.

It is in the spirit of this knowledge that the hymns of the Rigveda have been written. The Isha Upanishad is the Upanishad of the Rigveda and it is there that its spiritual foundations are revealed. To make of Avidya a bridge to immortality and of Vidya the means of keeping our grasp on immortality, is the common aim of the Rigvedic Rishis. This is the keynote, this is the one great tone swelling through its thousand undertones. And as our fingers fall on string after string of this mighty and many-stringed harp of God, they return always one cry, the cry of joyous battle, of war between Deva and Daitya, between mortality and immortality, between man’s temporary imperfection and his eternal perfectibility.

In this holy war the Gods are our chief helpers. There are seven planes of cosmic consciousness on which the soul of man plays with the love and wisdom and power of God. When first the unknowable Parabrahman turns towards knowableness in this partial manifestation, — for utterly That allows itself not to be known, — the Absolute first becomes — to the possibility of knowledge, not to its actuality — the Eternal Being or Paratpara Purusha, paro ’vyaktad avyaktah sanatanah, who beyond the uttermost darkness of the Asat, Sunyam Brahma or eternal nothingness which is the ultimate negation of this manifest existence shines ever with the light unknown of which seven rays are sufficient to illuminate all these universal systems. He is that perceivable but unknowable glory seated for ever beyond the darkness that swallows up the worlds, tamasah parastat. Out of Him the Asad Brahma appears, the general negation, through which this mighty manifestation in the seven universes passes back into the unknowableness of Parabrahman; and out of the Asad, the Sat, the general affirmation which we know as pure Atman, Self of itself, not yet of things, where nothing is yet differentiated and even Chit and Ananda are involved in mere featureless existence. Asad va idam agra asit, tatah sad ajayata. Atman is featureless, unconnected, inactive, alakshanam avyavaharyam akriyam. It must be featureless in order to contain all possible feature; it must be unconnected with the play of the worlds in order that Chit may play upon Sat with perfect freedom and put forth into the worlds without limitation whatever name, form or being the Lord commands Her to put forth; it must be inactive in order that there may be illimitable possibilities for Her action. For Atman is the foundation and continent of our worlds and if Atman had any definite feature or any bondage of connection or any law of activity, the world play which it supports and contains would be limited by that feature, by that connection or by that activity and God in His manifestation would be bound and not free. Therefore it is that as the featureless, free, inactive Sad Atman the Eternal first manifests Himself on this side of the darkness of Asat. Next, in Atman, He appears to His self-knowledge as the Nirgun Brahma, the Being without quality of the Parabrahman, manifesting an impersonal self-existence, an impersonal self-awareness and an impersonal self-delight, Sat, Chit, Ananda. This too is Tat or That, but being unlike Parabrahman Tat in manifestation can be described, defined, cognised, not as anything else but as Atman and as Sacchidanandam. Tat in manifestation can be aware or unaware of the worlds and It can be both aware and unaware, but its cognition is without relation. It has no connection with the worlds in which it cognises and perceives activity merely as the play of a dream on the surface of its imperturbable quiet. On the calm of the Nirgunam God next imposes Himself (adhyaropayati) as the Personality of the Eternal, the Paratpara Purusha manifest in relation to the world. Here first we get relation, quality, activity. At first, the Personality merely contains and informs the activity which plays in it not as unrealised dream, but as realised though not binding actuality and truth, as an infinite active blissfulness of the Chit in the Sacchidananda in place of an infinite passive blissfulness. The indifference of the Impersonal to the play of the Personal does not make the play an unreality or an immense cosmic falsehood with which Brahman amuses Himself or distresses Himself for a season, any more than the featurelessness of the Sad Atman makes feature a lie and an impossibility. On the contrary just as that featurelessness is the necessary condition for features to manifest truly, infinitely, divinely — for Truth, infinity and Deity are one, — so the detachment of the Impersonal is simply the condition for the security of the soul when it plunges into the myriad-billowed ocean of manifest existence. The Impersonal is detachment from guna and it is as detached from guna that God possesses and enjoys guna, otherwise He would be bound by and could not rightly enjoy it. It is because the tranquillity and indifference of the Nirguna is concealed within us that our souls can with impunity play at being bound, at being ignorant and at being sorrowful without being really bound by our bonds or darkened by our ignorance or destroyed by our sorrow. For being omnipotent God within us can always go back to the tranquillity within Him and look upon these things as a dream that falls away from Him the moment He cares to wake. It was a dream, but not a dream, just as when we are aware of sights and sounds without attending to them or remember the past and it is to us dreamlike, swapnamaya. The world has a reality, but the Impersonal does not interest Itself in that reality, not attending to it; it does not properly recognise it except as a thing that is and yet is not, the Maya of Shankara. This also is not a lie but truth, not a foolish, blissful dream, but a perfect reality. Because it was avyakta in the Nirguna, it is not therefore false when it becomes vyakta any more than an apple hidden is an apple non-existent. The world is not utter reality because it is thing in manifestation, not thing in itself. Yet it is real because it is a manifestation of God in Himself and God who is satyam conceives nothing that is not satyam, nothing that is not Himself. He is not a seer of falsehoods. Anritam is merely a vikara or perversion of satyam. All ignorance is really partial or misplaced knowledge, all bondage a concealment of freedom, all evil good in the making, all sorrow a veiled delight. This the Saguna Brahman perceives and knows and as Vasudeva, or tranquil Personality, He utterly enjoys without any distinction of pleasure and grief, good and evil, the infinite play of the world within Himself. The Saguna is Sacchidananda envisaging cosmic activity. On the tranquillity [of] Vasudeva God by a new adhyaropa manifests Himself to Himself as the Sarvam Brahman in all things; He becomes the Lilamaya, the eternal Child frolicking in the Universe, the Playmate, Lover, Master, Teacher and Friend of all His creations; He is Hari, He is Srikrishna, He is the Personal God whom we love and adore and whom we pursue and seize through the Ages. Then, descending a step farther, avataran, He is known to Himself not only as the universal Lord of the Lila, but as the individual, Narayana concealed in Nara, playing through him, different from him, one with him. Many Adwaitins of the Kaliyuga insist that God is a myth and only the Sad Atman is a reality, just as many Buddhists deny the Sad Atman as well and say that only the Asad is a reality, but if we know only the Sad Atman or only the Asad, if we follow after only the Nirguna or only the Saguna, if we only embrace Vasudeva-Krishna-Narayan, then we know not the Eternal except in an aspect and we fall under the censure of the Upanishad, dabhram evapi twam vettha Brahmano rupam. We must shut our eyes upon nothing, renounce nothing as absolutely false or illusive if we would know the All and be perfectly liberated. Only when we gaze we must gaze aright and see God in all things, not things as aught but God. Our fathers did not commit the error of sectarianism or a partial philosophy. They were mighty as Gods or Titans, not like the men of the Kali Yuga who shout and quarrel over their imperfect philosophies and little bounded religions; their souls were spacious enough to take in all truth for their portion.

In this Brahman then, on the sure foundation of this free and disinterested Atman, in the joy and infinity of this Lila consciousness manifests its sevenfold nature and its sevenfold regions. We are already aware in our human progress of the three lower levels of consciousness; the vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar and Swar, planes in which we wander in the shadow of the Ajnanam lighted by a broken sunlight from above, erring under the control of Avidya who separated from her eternal companion and playmate Vidya and at strife with that glorious friend and helper stumbles about among the appearances of the world, ourselves always dissatisfied, always struggling, always seeking a good that we cannot grasp and crying out at the end, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity & vexation of spirit.” But in that too we cannot rest; for God condemns us to our own good and spurs us on ever to seek until we find the missing element [that] can complete the incompleteness of our existence. Meanwhile the soul imagining itself irrevocably bound, contents itself with the things of its prisonhouse and wears its chains as ornaments or else, touched by God and uplifted, delights to struggle upward to freedom. For above the three Vyahritis is the fourth, Mahas, where the soul is one with God, yet separate, free, yet consciously plays with bondage, — Mahas, the link between the Parardha and Aparardha, pouring the glory of the higher hemisphere into the lower, — Mahas which we enjoy and possess in the golden ages of our humanity, love and seek for in the iron. For to Mahas we rise, through Mahas we aspire to the perfect oneness of Sacchidananda.

Brahman at first becomes involved in gross matter, — he becomes or seems to become Annam, the conscious principle of Bhu. In pure Annam consciousness is involved, implicit, latent; from annam it has to develop or manifest the other six principles and this development or manifestation is the evolution of the modern Jadavadins. It develops them here, under the law of the universal harmony, in annam and the Jadavadins perceiving this principle of evolution, imagine not unnaturally that it is annam which is evolving and suppose the other six, even Mind, to be mere changes and movements of annam. At first prana or vitality which is latent in the metal, manifests in the tree; then mind which is latent in the tree manifests in the animal, first as chitta or mere receptive consciousness, then as manas or sensational consciousness without any self-conscious centre of individuality, then as the discriminatory faculty or buddhi with its companion Ahankara, egoism, the self-conscious principle. In the animals reason is awake, but elementary and has to be largely replaced by vijnanam, intuitive faculty manifesting not in intellect but in sensational & vital consciousness. Then in man discriminative reason takes the lead, for discriminative reason is the shadow of the vijnanam, the link between the animal and the god and it is not till a fit body is formed for the works of reason that the spiritual evolution begins and the development of the higher states of consciousness is possible. Man is that fit body, sukritam eva, well indeed and beautifully made as a habitation for the gods. His business is to raise the animal in him and develop beyond manomaya being, transcending & subordinating even its crown and glory which he considers his peculiar privilege, the discriminative and imaginative reason. For he has to develop vijnanam or ideal thought on which all Veda is based, he has to develop Ananda, Chit and Sat, the higher hemisphere of cosmic consciousness. In the present stage of his evolution he can only develop consciously as far as Ananda with Sat & Chit implicit in Ananda; to Chit & Sat proper he cannot arrive in his waking state, but only in the deep trance of Sushupta Samadhi, concentration of consciousness in a state of illuminated Sleep. He began his task as the supreme animal, Pashu, Vanara, Nrisingha, developing all these potentialities purely in the annamaya kosha or physical sheath of his being in Annam & Prana; he went on as the mixed animal, first the Pishacha or scientific, curious animal, then the Pramatha or aesthetic, curious animal; and from these levels climbed to the condition of the Rakshasa or animal-god who satisfies egoism through his sensational and emotional impulses; he is now the Asura, Titan or demi-god satisfying in the heart & buddhi his emotional and intellectual egoism. He has eventually to become the whole god; he must learn to satisfy himself without egoism through ideal knowledge and blissful spirituality. But always being in the annamaya world, in Bhu, resting always on the Anna Atma, he is compelled to base himself on the body even when rising above the body. The individual may leave the body, but the race has to keep it; it has not to leave the animal in humanity behind in its progress but to raise the animal until it is divine. It is his first business therefore to be conscious not only in the physical sheaths of the Annakosha and Pranakosha, — this he normally is, — but in the mental sheath or manahkosha, and there in his normal condition he is only partially active. Once awake in the mental body, he has to extend his waking consciousness, — whoever can so far develop, — into the Vijnana and Anandakoshas.

What are these bodies and these Atmas? The Vedantins of old recognised that divine consciousness on whatever level always creates for itself through Prakriti or Chit, its active creative knowledge, a world to live in & a body for its habitation in the world, and in that world and in that body manifests as a part of the Atman reflecting their conditions. If therefore there are seven distinct states of consciousness, there must equally be seven conditions of the Atman, seven distinct worlds with their denizens and seven kinds of bodies. These seven states are Annam, Prana, Manas, Vijnanam, Ananda, Chit and Sat; these seven worlds are Bhuloka, Bhuvarloka, Swarloka, Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka; these seven conditions of the Atman are the Visva Atma, Prana Atma, Buddha Atma, Mahan Atma, Mahajana Atma, Chaitanya Atma and Satya Atma; these seven bodies are the Annakosha, Pranakosha, Manahkosha, Vijnanakosha, Anandakosha, Chitkosha and Satkosha. In each world the denizens, although living predominatingly in the body proper to their own element of conscious existence, also live latently or consciously in the other six, and all have therefore seven bodies, each in communication with its proper plane or world & containing its proper principle of consciousness. Man, living here in the Bhu, has, he too, his seven bodies. He has for instance the Manahkosha containing his pure mental consciousness and, although mind can & does play in the other sheaths, it can only be by becoming awake & living in his mental body as well as his physical that he can realise the utmost potentialities of pure mental activity. It is because he has these other bodies, that he can, if he will, communicate with the other worlds and have relations with the Gods.

This then is the arrangement of the created universe, and the world we live in is its base, not only earth but all these sidereal systems, Bhuloka, the material universe, our present inheritance. Being the lowest of the Aparardha worlds, it is according to a common action of God’s love and wisdom, at once the least and the most privileged, the least privileged because here alone grief and pain are utterly felt, here alone is the whole pain and struggle of evolution, — the most privileged because here alone is the evolution eventually complete in all the potentiality of its parts and heaven perfectly realised in a sevenfold blissfulness. Above us are the six other worlds, homes of the gods who change not ever, except by entering human bodies. First, there is Bhuvar, the Pranamaya world, where Prana is at its height, vitality is stupendous, grief and pain are felt but enjoyed, sensuous enjoyment is perfect and prolonged. Then there is Swar, lower & higher, Swarga and Chandraloka, where Indra and the greater gods reside, manas is at its height, sensation, emotion, aesthetic pleasure and intellectual joy are of a mighty intensity, grief and pain are not felt except as another kind of pleasure and rapture, mental enjoyment is perfect and prolonged. Above there is Mahas or Suryaloka where vijnanam is at its height, intuitive ideal perception, inspiration & revelation are the normal processes of knowledge and the joys of ideal and direct knowledge unmixed with falsehood and error are perfect and prolonged. It is this state of consciousness which is so often called in the Veda, satyam, ritam, brihat and technically termed Bhuma, Mahas or Mahat, the abundant, full or mighty. These are the worlds of the lower hemisphere and of these states of consciousness we can have some conception, we can imagine and even realise or almost realise the condition of the beings who reside in these worlds, to the very highest. But what of the three supreme states of consciousness? what of the three worlds of the higher hemisphere? It is more difficult to conceive of them or to realise what man himself will be or is when he develops them — is, for even now by Yoga he can develop the Ananda. Still, because, debarred though we are from the actual tread of these infinite heavens, we can experience them indirectly and as conditioned by our existence on these lower levels, therefore some idea of them, not altogether inadequate, may be formed by those of us who have a touch of the ideal faculty.

22. 1912–13²⁵

अग्निम् । The stem is अग्नि, the root अग् , with the addition of न् combined with इ.

The suffix न् is nominal, adjectival and verbal, and as an adjectival or nominal suffix denotes substance or actuality; it uses, like all other such suffixes, the enclitics अ, इ, उ to connect it with the root or with the termination or additional suffix or with both or neither.

The root अग् is a secondary formation from the primary old Aryan root अ which means essentially to be or, transitively, to have. अ expresses being in its widest and barest sense without any idea of substance or attribute. The sound ग् suggests application, contact or a gentle force or insistence. Combining with अ it gives the sense of being or having with an application of force to action, to men, to things and easily acquires significations on the one hand of strength, force, excellence, preeminence, brilliance, on the other of gentle contact, love, possession. Illustrative derivates are Latin and Greek ago, ἄγω, to lead, drive, act; stir; move; ἀγαθός, excellent, good; S. अग्र, foremost, in front, Gr. ἄϰρος, top, ἀϰμή, extreme height, ἀϰτή, extreme limit, border, coast; ἄγαν, excessively (O.A. अगाम्); ἀγανός, brilliant, graceful, gentle; ἀγλαός, brilliant; Ἄγις, Ἀγαμέμνων; ἀγαπάω, I love, prefer; ager, a possession, field; अगस्ति, and with the nasal, अङ्ग् , making the root अङ्ग् , to stir, move, walk; अङ्ग, beloved, distinguished; afterwards used only, from the two senses, as a respectful, yet affectionate mode of address; अङ्गति, fire (also a conveyance, cf ago, अङ्ग्), अङ्गारः, a live coal, अङ्गिरः, from the sense of brilliant, forceful, distinguished, preeminent, foremost. The word Agni therefore means the strong, brilliant, mighty, and may always suggest along with this, its proper signification as determined by usage, an allusion to its other possible sense of “loving” or “loveable”. Afterwards, it was confined to the sense of fire, Latin ignis.

ईळे । Dialectical form of ईले, also ईडे. Root इळ् with the addition of the verbal suffix ए (composed of the connective enclitic अ and the personal termination इ).

The root ईल् is a secondary formation from the primary root इ, ई which means essentially to be in relation to some thing, person, time or direction, so to go, drive, press towards, master, study, approach, etc and also means to produce, arise, come into being, as opposed to the idea in a of static existence. The sound ल् is the shabda of love, desire, entreaty, gentle and wooing touch; it expresses softness, sweetness, desire, and by a development passion, intensity, force of the heart. Combining with ई it gives the sense of close adherence, to embrace, cling to, love, adore, approach with love or adoration; of pressure, to crowd, press, pack, press together, make compact or strong; of maternal production, motherhood, to bear, produce, give birth to. It has also the primary senses of motion, to go, move, cast, strike; and by a development from the sense of clinging or persistence in a given place, the opposite idea of motionlessness, rest, — to rest still, lie, sleep. Its derivates are इला meaning mother and applied to the earth, a cow, Speech; इलिका, earth; इली, a short sword or stick; and from the almost identical root इड् or ईड् , the nouns इड् and इडा having the same meanings, and also the meaning “libation, offering, that which is cast or thrown on the altar or earth”, “a draught, ie what is taken down at a cast into the throat”, “heaven”, the place of bliss, love and delight; (इड् also means people or subjects, from another sense, to control, master, rule, cf ईश्); इडः as an epithet of Agni; ईडा, love, desire, prayer or praise; ईडनम् , adoration; ईड्य or ईडेन्य, adorable, desirable. Greek derivatives are ἰλαδόν, in a close throng, pressed together, εἴλη, a crowd, troop; εἰλέω, press together, gather, assemble, hem in; εἶλαρ, a stronghold, fortification.

The word here means not to praise or hymn as taken by the commentators and Europeans, but to love, desire, adore, as is evident from the use of ईड्यः in a later verse. इडः as applied to Agni means the adored, loved or loving, from the other meaning of the root अग् noted under the word अग्नि above.

पुरो हितम् । Two words, not one. पुरो in front, originally fifth case (genitive) of पुर् , meaning door, gate, wall, front; then city or house — cf Greek πύλη, gate; πύλος, walled fort; πόλις, town. Rt पु with the nominal suffix र् , in the sense of “cover, protect”, common to primary प् roots, as in प, पट, पा, पाल, पति, पुंस् (originally husband, protector, then male), पुमान् , पुटं (cup, sheath, covering), पुष् , to protect, nourish; पिटः (roof, house, basket), पिठरं, etc. Lat. pudor, shame.

हितम् fixed, stationed, put. Rt हि with adjectival suffix त, in the sense of to cast, throw down, strike in, fix, plant, common to the primary ह् roots; afterwards the sense of striking predominated, the other being preferably expressed by धा and other roots. Gr. χέω (O.S. हया), I pour, ἵημι (O.S. हियामि), I throw, cast, send.

पुरो हितम् means him who stands before or in front of and was afterwards applied to the purohita or chief priest at the sacrifice.

यज्ञस्य । Root यज् with the nominal suffix न.

यज् is a derivative from the primary root य which has the essential significances of motion to or from, yearning, contact and union. The sound ज् adds to it the idea of sharply applied and decisive or effective force in the motion, desire or contact. Hence it gets the meaning of effort, seeking after, wooing, application to, adhesion, or strongly maintained union or contact. The sense of successful effort gives that of mastery. Cf यम् , यत् , यस् (आयासः, रयासः, यमः, नियमः, यत्न, यति). It means in its nominals labour, action, control, mastery, Yoga, and when used transitively, ruler, master, Yogin. The word यमः had the same significance. In another sense, to cast before, hand over to, cf यच्छ् , it means to give, offer, sacrifice. A third sense is to woo, court, worship, adore, cf Gr. ἰάλλω, to desire. यज्ञः may therefore mean either, the Master, the Almighty, the Lord, Vishnu, Ishwara; or, action, or yoga; or, sacrifice. All three senses have to be taken into consideration in the Veda. Here and ordinarily it means Ishwara, the Lord.

देवम् । Root दिव् compounded after modification with the nominal and adjectival suffix अ, which gives simply and vaguely the sense of being.

The root दिव् or दीव् has two common senses, to play or sport and to shine, besides some of the significances common to द् roots, viz, to strike, throw; hurt, cause to suffer, vex, torment, harass; destroy; squander, give (द, दा, दान). The sense of to play, gamble, to sport, gambol, rejoice, etc is its most characteristic significance. The sense of shining comes from the sense of coruscation, brilliance caused by light playing brilliantly, vibrating powerfully. The Gods are therefore primarily those who rejoice, to whom life is play, lila or ananda — their occupations being described in the Smriti by the significant expression देवानुक्रीडनम् . Deva subsequently came to have the sense, luminous or flashingly brilliant, jyotirmaya, attached to it; also, heavenly, from दिव् the shining or blissful regions, and was used in the ancient language in all these senses, the associations of which have come down to us in the modern sense of देव . The gods are the jyotirmaya beings of the tejomaya, luminous Chandraloka or Swar and jyotirmaya, brilliant Suryaloka or Mahar, the two heavens attainable by mortals.

ऋत्विजम् । An ancient compound word ऋत् and विज् formed in the early childhood of the language before the modern laws of Sandhi were applied.

ऋत् is the root ऋ with the verbal and nominal suffix त् expressing either action or quality. ऋ signifies essentially to move or go vibratingly straight or swift to a mark. It means to go, to go straight; to attempt, attack; reach, acquire; master, know; think. Hence various meanings for its derivatives, eg ऋक्थं acquisitions, wealth; ऋध् to flourish, prosper; ऋद्धिः; ऋष्टिः a weapon, sword; ऋक्ण wounded, etc; but the common meaning is based on the idea of straightness, fixity, directness, truth, knowledge, as in ऋजु, ऋतम् (truth, law, rule), ऋतु (fixed time, season; order, rule); ऋषि, knower, thinker, Latin reor, I think, ratio, reason, etc; ऋभु , wise, adept, expert. The word ऋत् here means truth or law.

विज् is a derivative root from the important primary root वि, which has essentially the significance of coming into existence, so to appear, open, separate, be discerned. These meanings can be traced through a host of derivatives in Sanscrit, Latin and Tamil. From the sense of appearing, being open, we get transitively the meaning to see, know, Latin video, Greek εῖδον, οῖδα, ἴσθι, etc; (cf Tamil விளங்ஞ to give light, shine; விழி eye); Sanscrit दिद् . The form दिद् implies successful, decisive, complete or spontaneous sight or knowledge. ऋत्विज् is therefore the knower of truth, the drashta of the Veda, Agni jatavedas, or the adept in law and rule. In the latter sense it came to mean a sacrificial priest versed in the rules of the sacrifice. The later Nirukta, fixing on the sense of priesthood, the only one then known, very naturally derived it from ऋतु and इज् , sacrificing in season, which is the only possible combination by modern rules and arrives at the right meaning by another road.

होतारम् । Root हु after modification with the verbal termination तृ.

The essential significance of ह् roots, हा, हि and हु, is violent contact, movement, application of force. Their primary meanings are to strike, dash, hit, destroy, slay; then, to cast, throw, hurl, fling; then, to hurl forth the voice, shout, call. The sense of abandonment, the sense of casting a libation on the altar, and other derivate senses are of later origin. होता in the old Aryan tongue meant a slayer, striker, destroyer, warrior; हवः and आहवः meant slaughter, battle, war; हविः slaying, strife; हु to hurl, fight, shout, call, invoke assistance (cf Grk βοή, βοηθέω). The sacrificial application is of later origin and belongs to the Dwapara Yuga, the age of sacrifice and ceremonial.

रत्नधातमम् । रत्न and धा with the superlative termination तम.

The word रत्न is the word रत् with the adjectival & nominal suffix न expressing quality or substance. The root is र which has as its essential significance vibration, swift repeated action, tremulous, eager or impetuous contact, shock or motion, and its characteristic significance, to play, enjoy, sport, take delight; to love, embrace etc; also, to shine, coruscate, shed lustre. It and its derivatives also mean to rule, govern, protect; to fight, attack; set to, begin; to move rapidly, shout loud, make a noise. The word रत् had several of these meanings, but chiefly delight, enjoyment, love, sexual pleasure, passion, lustre, brilliance, and रत्न therefore means delightful, brilliant, and as a noun delight, ananda, or lustre. It is in later Sanscrit that it took the sense of jewel, from the adjectival sense, brilliant.

धा is the root धा to arrange, place, dispose, used as an adjective or noun. रत्नधा therefore means disposer of delight, रत्नधातमम् , mightiest disposer of delight.

पूर्वेभिः । Root पुर् , पूर् previously explained under the first sloka and the suffix व which indicates substance, possession or being. Originally the word meant protecting, covering, in front, anterior, and by transference from place to time former, ancient, पुरातन. It had also the sense of first, foremost, best, leading, chief. Here the sense is ancient, those that were before.

ऋषिभिः । Root ऋ to think, reach, know forming the intensitive derivative ऋष् , to know, reach or acquire thoroughly or finally, with the nominal suffix इ expressing action or possession. The rishi is one who knows, possesses, has reached or acquired knowledge, an adept, आप्त, master. (Cf the German word reich, English rich, O.S. ऋश्). See under ऋत्विजम् in the first sloka.

ईड्यो । Root ईड् to love, desire, with the possessive or qualitative suffix य used either actively or passively; here passively = desirable, adorable. See under ईळे in the first sloka.

नूतनैः । Root नु or नू with the suffix तनः from root तन् meaning to hold, possess, contain (tenere, terra, तनुः) and therefore expressing a quality.

The root नु means to come forward, appear, come into being, come in, enter, penetrate, push in or forward, move forward, sail, walk etc. It belongs to the न् family of roots, whose essential signification is birth, manifestation, presence, appearance, entry, motion forward, progress (cf नः, nos, nascere, nare, natare, नौः, nauta, नट् meaning in Tamil to walk, नि, नुद् , नदः) and from the sense of birth or new appearance or arrival acquires the sense of newness, in नवः, Latin novus, Gr. νέος. The adverb नु or नू, meaning now, (cf the particle नु, Grk νυ, Latin nunc, which properly means now, now then, then) takes the adjectival suffix तन to signify the quality of newness; — like पुरा of old, पुरातन old, चिरं long, चिरन्तनः lasting, eternal.

उत । Also. This is a particle which has survived from the ancient Aryan tongue. It belongs to the class represented [by] the Latin et, ut, at, Sanscrit इद् , उ, उत, अति, Greek ι at the end of a word for emphasis, οὑτοσί, Bengali ই, ও, (তুমিই, তুমিইও). They are all based on the original particles अ, इ and उ, meaning, “this here”, “this there”, “that”, and used for distinction, emphasis, addition, connection; with the addition of the definitive sound त् , they formed अत् , इत् , उत् , which again by the addition of the emphatic अ, इ, formed अति, इति, उति, अत, इत, उत. From these words a number of pronouns, adverbs, suffixes, affixes, conjunctions and prepositions are descended in the Aryan languages.

उत has the force as an adverb of also, in addition, verily, much more, quite as much, indeed, or of course, according to the context and spirit of the passage or phrase in which it occurs.

स । The static root स, signifying existence in rest, used as a pronoun, expresses a fixed object resting before the eyes. It is the original of the Greek article, ὁ, ἡ, τό, the Greek relative ὅς (O.S. सः, सा, स), cf ὅτι because, and in the old Aryan and Vedic languages had not only the demonstrative force, but also when connecting two clauses, the relative or copulative. Here it is the causal relative who, because, and connects ईड्यो and वक्षति. वक्षति gives the reason for ईड्यो. Adorable or desirable because he habitually bears.

देवाँ । The nasal at the end of a word in old Aryan tended always to be a pure nasal, anuswara, as in French, just as s final tended to become a pure aspiration, visarga. This is the reason for the metrical peculiarity by which final s in old Latin and final m both in old and classical Latin become silent and are elided before a vowel or do not affect the quantity of the syllable in the prosody of a verse. The later tendency was to materialise the sound.

एह । The spirit of the sound इ is a certain narrowness and intensity. The root accordingly easily acquires an association of force and strength in action; it easily forms derivatives like ईर् to force out, utter, इरस्यति to be angry, hostile, Latin ira, anger, Gr. ἵημι, I throw, ἴσχω, to control, rule, and in certain forms compounded with strong sounds like ह, प, भ or even with soft sounds like न and ल it has the pure idea of strength, cf S. इन्द्रः, इन्द्रियम् , Gr. ἴφιος, ἴφθιμος, ἰσχύς, ἴς (ἰνός G.), इष् , ईश्वरः. From this sense of the root इह् is formed इह् , एह् , substantives meaning strength, force, with an old form of the dwitiya or accusative case एह used adverbially to mean strongly, forcibly, with strength. (The derivation of इह, here, is different and it was by an error that this sense was extended to the archaic word एह by the later grammarians on the analogy of इव, एव etc.)

वक्षति । Root वह् in the derivative वक्ष् (वह् + स्), to bear habitually. The suffix स or क्ष added to a root gave three senses, intention or futurity, desire, or frequency and habit. It is in the last sense that it occurs here and forms words like वस् to dwell (be or occupy habitually), वक्षः breast, लक्ष् to notice, observe; ऋक्ष star, constellation, etc, इरस्यति. In the former sense स् forms the future in Greek and Sanscrit.

The root वह् is derivative from the primary root व in its sense of “be in space & substance, hold matter, contain, bear”. It also means to bring, carry, sweep, lead.

रयिम् । From the sense of vibration and motion in the root र, the word being the root र + the nominal suffix इ, य a merely connective semivowel between two vowels as in जाये, म्रिये, मन्ये (मँये). Sanscrit has lost, Tamil has preserved this connective use of the semivowels य and व as a constant rule of its system of euphony. रयिः is that which vibrates, moves, is in constant play; it comes therefore to signify substance, matter, force, energy, strength, prosperity, play, delight, laughter, with other kindred or derivative senses. It is the Latin res, “thing, affair, object, matter, fact”. In the sense of substance or matter it is constantly used in the Veda. In this passage it means substance or force of substance.

अश्नुवत् । Root अश् to have or enjoy, with the connective verbal affix नु and the impersonal adjectival or participial termination वत् . We find this general use of व in Tamil with the verbal stem to indicate a verbal adjective, “one who enjoys”. The root अश् is a secondary root from अ in its transitive sense “to have”. It is the same word as the Greek ἔχω, I have (अशा), and from the sense of possession develops other significances, to eat, enjoy, etc. अश्नुवत् is in this passage “one enjoys.”

पोषम् । Stem पुष् modified with the nominal suffix अ. पुष् is a habitual, frequentative or desiderative form from पु, to produce, beget, possess, protect (see under पुरो in the first sloka) and develops the sense “to nourish, rear, increase”. It also means “to perfect, develop”, and “to cherish, foster, love”. Cf पुत्र, Latin, pullus; पूषा the Sun; पूज् to worship, adore, developed from the sense of cherishing or loving. The substantive पोषः means, therefore, “increase, development, increasing, perfection”.

एव । The pronominal and adverbial particle व (still used for the second personal pronoun plural as न is used for the first) meant originally “a substantial object, a thing before the eyes”. It came to mean, especially when compounded with अ, इ, उ, thus, this way, in that direction; cf इव, originally meaning, “so”, then, “as”; अव in that direction, in the direction of, then, down to, down; वै, so indeed, verily, वा “or”, originally meaning “so”, “and”, “or”. एव is merely a variant of इव giving a vaguer and more comprehensive sense. It was used formerly with its other form इवम् to mean, “so, and”, the latter significance surviving in the Bengali এবং, and only afterwards came to mean “indeed, verily, that and no other, so and not otherwise”. In this passage it has the significance of “and, also”.

दिवे । Root दिव् to shine, be bright, with the nominal suffix अ, “the bright period, day”, or “the bright world”, “heaven”. Here दिवे दिवे means “from day to day”.

यशसम् । Root यश् with the nominal suffix अस् “enjoyment, satisfied possession”.

यश् is an intensitive derivative from य, to reach, join or embrace entirely, (see under यज्ञः in the first sloka) and meant “success, fame, glory, possession, mastery”. It also meant “enjoyment, a thing enjoyed or enjoyable, love, beauty, charm, splendour,” (cf योषा, योषित् , from युष्) which it subsequently lost, and “seat of enjoyment, the vital organs, heart, liver etc,” Latin, jecur.

वीरवत्तमम् । वीर् , manifestation from Root वी, with the adjectival suffix वत् and the superlative suffix तमः, from त in the sense of to stretch, extend; cf तन् , ततः, तालः etc. तमः means extensive, extreme, very, so “most”.

The roots वि and वी mean to open, expand, manifest, a sense chiefly found in the roots विद् , विल् (Tamil, Sanscrit, Latin), cf also आविः, वियत् , the open sky, B. বিজলি, lightning, Lat. verus, true etc, etc. From this sense it developed the idea of full and forceful manifestation, strength, energy, courage, heroism, Lat. vis, vir, virtus, Sanscrit वीरः, वीर्यं. The word वीर is here plainly used as a substantive since it needs वत् to give it the adjectival sense. वीर means either “strength, force”, or “manifestation, splendour, openness, fullness”. With यशः in the sense of enjoyment goes most suitably the latter signification, “fullest, most expanded, unstinted”; but “forceful” would also not be inappropriate to the character and function of Agni.

यम् । The demonstrative relative in the old Aryan tongue, यः, implies motion or direction from one point to another as opposed to the static force of सः. यः means the one who is yonder, सः the one who is here.

यज्ञम् । Yajna (the Lord, Isha) here refers to the Jivatman; the distinction from the universal Yajna is indicated in the epithet अध्वरम् .

अध्वरम् । This word is an adjective formed by the addition of the common adjectival suffix र to अध्व (रुचिर from रुचि, असुर from असु, मधुर from मधु). अध्व itself is a substantive formed by the root अध् by the direct addition of the nominal suffix व. Kindred vocables are अधस् , below, अध्वन् , path, distance, sky, attack, time, place, अधम, lowest, अधर, lower, अधि, originally meaning towards, down to, so from above, above, concerning (Gr. ϰατά), अधिक, more, आधिः, pain, अधिः, pain, misfortune. अध्वर itself is used in later Sanscrit to mean, “lasting, uninterrupted, attentive, the sky or air, and a sacrificial ceremony”. All these significations are recognisable as developments from the original Aryan root अध् , a secondary formation from अ, to be. The sound ध् signifies dull contact, downward motion or pressure from above, rest, finality with an idea of tamasic condition, establishment, etc. अध् therefore means to oppress, cover, rest, descend and rest, reach and end, attack, etc. The air or atmosphere covering or pressing on the earth, place, Time and distance, as continents, grief as a dull tamasic condition, are early derivative meanings. The same relation viewed from two different standpoints creates the opposite senses of “down, lower”, अधः and “above, towards, more”, अधि, अधिक.

अध्वरः means lower, relative, individual, from the lost word अध्व which signified philosophically the lower planes of the universe, the aparardha, τὸ ἔνερθεν. In relation to the word यज्ञः, adhwara signifies the Purusha, Lord or Ishwara manifesting in the aparardha and attached to an individual adhara; the Jivatman, not bound but relative in his manifestation.

विश्वतः । विश्व, root श्व to lie, remain, be spread out, with the prefix वि meaning open, outspread, diverse, manifold, and the suffix तः which expresses possession, relation or origin, commonly used to form adverbial expressions. On all sides.

परिभूः । पर, परि or प्र, all signifying in front, beyond, above, from in front, and afterwards variously for, to, towards, around, about, are kindred words from the root प to cover, protect. In the old language परि as preposition governs the second case even when it is part of a compound verb, adjective or noun; it had not at that time either become otiose or lost its separate existence in the compound, but was easily detachable and always bore its especial significance and power. भूः means “existent or in being”, परि “round about or in relation to”.

असि । Thou art. Root अ with the personal termination सि. In the old language there were two forms अस्सि and असि from the secondary अस् (अस्मि, अस्ति) and the primary अ; but the latter alone has survived.

इद् । The old enclitic इत् , kindred to अत् (Latin et) and उत् (Latin ut) and signifying that (Latin id), also, and, indeed, verily, the same (Lat. idem). Cf the use of इति answering to English “that”. “He, the same Yajna whom you surround as the individual soul, is also beyond that relation and universal.”

देवेषु । The gods, as masters of the forces and functions, physical, mental and spiritual which surround with their activities and minister to the individual knowledge and action of the Jiva.

गच्छति । The secondary root गच्छ् from ग is used to form certain tenses of the verb गम् which has replaced both ग and गच्छ् . Cf यच्छ् and यम् from the primary root य. ग means originally to move softly or steadily, or continuously. It is the characteristic root for general motion as opposed to the more specific senses of इ, ऋ, या, and conveys here the same sense of primary cosmic motion as in जगत् , जगती, गा (the world or earth).

कविक्रतुः । कवि. Root कु modified before a vowel with the nominal suffix इ. This root is only found in later Sanscrit in the modified form कव् , to praise or describe, to compose a poem, to paint a picture. The क् roots are among those of the widest scope in the Aryan language. Primarily, they convey the idea of any kind of violent, strong or masterful contact, action or relation to any thing, person or action. The root कु was used in the more ancient language in the sense of do, act, form, make, design, create. को in कोविदः is the substantive, meaning “art, practice”. It also meant to desire, enjoy (Lat. cupio, and from the idea of any strong passion connected with love कुप् to be angry, cf कम् , कामः, ϰυέω, to kiss, कुमारः etc), to master, seize, hold, contain, shut, confine, protect, imprison (कवचः, कवसः, कवषः, armour, a shield; कवकः, कवलः, कवडः, a mouthful; कवरकी, a prisoner; कव्यं, a handful, then the oblation to the Manes; कुटं, कुटी, कुटीरः; cf कोशः, कोलः, कोरकः, कोशः, कोटः, कोटरः, कूलं, कूपः, कुक्षिः, कुः, earth). Various ideas of calling, crying, crying on or at, praising, reviling (कु, कू, कूज् , कूट् , कुत्स् etc). The idea of curve or crookedness derived from the sense of the circle (Gr ϰύϰλος, ϰυλίνδω, कुलं, the circle, society, herd, race, family, कुटिलः, कुह् , to deceive, कुच् , कुटी, को in कोदण्डः etc) is fairly common. On the other hand, the root very rarely accepts the more strong and violent senses common to the forms क, कि and कृ, but it has them sometimes as in कुरु a master, ruler or priest, कुट्ट् to cut, pound, burn etc. In the word कवि the sense of perfect creative action is dominant. कवि meant a poet, artist, scientist, craftsman, sage, anyone who was कोविद, who could deal perfectly with his material physical or intellectual. It also meant the art or science itself and so, wisdom, skill, mastery, proficiency. It is in this latter sense that it is used in the compound कविक्रतुः, “whose strength is in the mastery of knowledge”.

क्रतु is the Root क्रत् , a tertiary formation from कृ by modification of the vowel to र. The root कृ expresses action, work, mastery, strength, rule or any strong, violent or mastering activity, to cut, pierce, slaughter, hurt etc. क्रतुः meant strength, action, force, power of any kind mental or physical. It often meant the Will or any activity of the will. Cf Greek ϰράτος, ϰάρτος, ϰαρτερός. The word शतक्रतु as a name of Indra meant not “he of the hundred sacrifices”, but he whose force was that of a hundred.

सत्यम् । True; free from the dwandwa of truth and falsehood. The root स to be in a fixed state or state of rest, to lie, rest, remain, be fixed, gives to सत् and सत्य the idea of that which is or is true, fact, reality, abidingness. सत्य is formed by the adjectival य from the old substantive सत् existence, truth, reality.

चित्रश्रवस्तमः । चित्र, Rt चि with the verbal suffix त्र. चि indicates fundamentally any action that cuts, splits, divides, separates or distinguishes. Its characteristic significance is to discern, distinguish, analyse, group, arrange and collect. Its verbal adjective चित्र means that which discerns, groups, arranges in a collection or that which is so discerned, grouped and arranged. It has the sense of various, variegated, decorative or decorated, well-arranged and assorted.

श्रवः, from the Root श्रु, to hear, modified, before the nominal suffix अस् . The word is the same as the Greek ϰλέος, (ϰλύω, श्रुया, I hear) and had in early times the sense of “fame, repute, renown”, but the sense “to move vibrating, react with a strong harmonious contact”, developing the sense, “to resort to, take refuge with, join” in श्रि and “to be heard, to hear” in श्रु are a yet more essential and original association. श्रवः means the thing heard, the thing received by revelation, knowledge, learning, belief, faith (cf श्रद्धा).

चित्रश्रवस् means “analysed and grouped knowledge of great variety” or one who possesses such knowledge. Agni is he among the gods who possesses most such knowledge, proper to the vijnanam, ideal or purely ideative consciousness. He is जातवेदाः, the one who has the revealed knowledge, in whom and by whom it is born.

आगमत् । Root गम् to go, move, properly with a sense of direction, finality or intended or accomplished arrival. The preposition आ originally conveyed the idea of general relation; in this compound the sense of approach and arrival predominates. The preposition has no relation to the instrumental देवेभिः, which by itself implies union or accompaniment; divus cum divis, a god with the gods. The form आगमत् does not convey the idea of past time, but of general action, the time being vague, “arriveth”, whether now or habitually or as a past experience we have of him. It was from this vagueness that the form afterwards acquired an imperfect or habitual significance with regard to the past.

यद् । That. The demonstrative यत् like स was originally used either as a demonstrative pronoun or a relative and in the neuter as a conjunction; the transition from the relative to the conjunctional use is seen in this construction, where यत् is really the relative to the correlative तत् . यत् is a hanging introductory relative vaguely referring to the idea of the sentence भद्रं करिष्यसि and not a relative pronoun qualifying भद्रम् .

अङ्ग । See under अग्निम् in the first sloka.

दासुषे । Root दास् with the verbal suffix ष् preceded by enclitic उ, in a desiderative sense, the one who wishes to hurt, the enemy. The root द with its congeners दा, दि, दी, दु, दू, दृ, दॄ, expressed always effective, rapid and aggressive movement, contact, action etc. It had predominatingly an aggressive sense, in the beginning to cut, slay, tear, bite, divide; to destroy, ruin, waste, squander; to burn, pillage, havoc. Its most important derivatives as well as its less important, दंश् to bite, दशनं, दत् , दन्तः tooth; दक्ष् to act quickly, hurt, kill (also to act or think ably); दघ् to kill, hurt; दङ्घ् to abandon (also, protect, cherish); दंड् to chastise; दंभ् to injure, hurt, deceive, drive; दम् to conquer, crush, tame; दय् to hurt, divide, as well as to love or pity; दल् to burst open, split, divide; दवः fire, heat, pain; दस् to toss up, destroy, perish; दहर wasted, thin; small and so young; दह् to burn, destroy, torment; दा to cut, divide, then, to give, its later though still ancient use; दात्रम् a sickle, दाश् to hurt, kill, give, grant, are all instances of the predominating frequency of this use. The same tendency may be found in the roots दॄ, दू, etc, but other significances were^ developed in them more frequently, and by a not infrequent irony of transmutation, the sense of loving, cherishing, protecting was developed from the sense of hurting, crushing, taming, and we find such words of tender import as दमः, house, Gr. δόμος, दानं, the Persian दिल् (cf the name दिलीप), दयिता, दया, दाराः, etc as descendants of this root of violent or baleful significance. The word दस्यु in the Veda, meaning enemy, afterwards robber, दासः, a captured enemy, slave, (Gr. δοῦλος from दसुल) are from the roots दस् , दास् , meaning to hurt, afflict. दासुषे bears the same sense. There is no reason to take it in the later sense of “giver”.

त्वम् । Thou. तु, Lat. tu, Gr. σύ, with the old definitive particle अम् . Cf अहम् , इदम् , Lat. idem, वयम् from व, यूयम् from यु etc. The word तु is demonstrative, that there, like the plural यु (cf यः, the one who yonder) and was used by itself or with the suffix व (त्व) to indicate the second person.

भद्रम् । The word भद्र from the root भ compounded with the noun द्र. It originally meant household wealth, from भ (भवनं, भुवनम्) being, a house, place, world, sky, etc, and द्र (द्रव्य) spoil, plunder, substance, possessions, wealth. From this sense it came to mean ease, happiness, good condition etc. Here it means simply “good”, its latest sense.

करिष्यसि । Thou intendest or desirest to do. The future sense was originally one conveying the significance of intention, purpose, will, all conveyed by the sibilant suffixes स, ष. Cf “I will do” in English.

तव । Originally possessive adjective from तु, thou.

सत्यम् । Here in the sense of “nature”, “essential quality”, from सत् being with the adjectival य, belonging to the being, essential, real. It may also be taken in the sense of truth, which will have the same significance. The sense “oath, vow, promise”, would be out of place in the early language, though it would make good verbal sense, if the line stood by itself in some other context.

अङ्गिरः । Root अग् to love with the adjectival suffix इर् , makes अङ्गिर् the lover, loving, and from the adjectival sense loving, is formed a secondary substantive अङ्गिरस् , again meaning lover or one who loves. Agni as Angiras is the lord of love.

उप । उ with the sense to cover, pervade, उप, over, above, through, under, and from the sense of over, in the direction of, towards; from the sense of under, in subjection to, up to. उप has here the sense of approach by an inferior to a superior.

दोषावस् । दोषा darkness, tamas, from दुष् , to assail, attack, overcome, oppress, cover, darken, eclipse. दोषा or दोः also means the striking part of the arm, the forearm.

अवस् Root अव् with the nominal suffix अस् . अव् , a secondary formation from अ, to be in substance, (व् conveying the idea of substance, solidity, patent or objective existence), to be strong, strengthen, maintain, keep, cherish, protect, confirm, desire, love; to rise, soar, fly, be exalted.

दोषावस् he who strengthens, maintains or protects in the darkness.

तर् । An old adverbial form still preserved in तर्हि and the Mahratti तर् , “so”; it meant there, then, thus, इति. Here it is used almost as a vocative “O!”

धिया । The essential meaning of the roots ध, धा, धि, is to set down, fix, place, settle, keep, hold. धि is that operation of the intellect which fixes, arranges and retains, the buddhi or discerning and judging intellect.

वयम् । व with the definitive particle अम् connected by the semivowel य; cf त्वम् , यूयम् (see under त्वम् in the sixth sloka). व was used for the plural of the pronoun both in the first and the second persons with a distinguishing prefix which was afterwards lost or replaced the व, न वः or नु वः, we, Latin, nos; य व or यु वः, you. When यूयम् replaced the second form, वयम् came to be restricted to the first pronoun.

नमो । The root नम् means originally go or bring to an end or conclusion. To lead, guide, control, dispose, distribute, mark off, arrange, shape, bend, are its more common later meanings. The Greek νόμος, law, νέμω, to distribute, give, arrange, regulate, occupy or to pasture, graze; νέμος, an apportioned ground or enclosure, so grove or pasturage; νέμεσις (O.A. नमतिः) the goddess who arranges, controls, rewards, punishes, avenges; ὄνομα, designation, name, (S. नाम), Lat. nemus, are survivals of these significations. In later Sanscrit only the intransitive sense of submission, being governed, ruled, subject, to bend, submit, bow, salute has left traces except in the sense, “to give”, attached to नम् , in the particle नाम, “granted”, “allowed”, “certainly”, and the substantive नाम, name. नमो means submission, self-surrender, नतिः; the later sense of salutation, obeisance does not apply to this passage.

भरन्तः । The participle used in place of the finite verb; the use is almost that of a loose nominative absolute or an anacoluthon. Rt भृ (Gr. φέρω, Lat. fero) with the verbal adjective or participial form of अ, to be. भृ means to occupy, fill, hold, uphold, bear, carry, contain, convey, bestow, be full of, feel within. It is used in this passage in the latter sense, to be full of.

एमसि । There are two words, the locative of एमस् (Rt इ modified with the nominal suffix मस् signifying, “way, path”) and the second person of the verb ईम् or एम् , a final derivative from इ, to reach, to culminate, to grow to full strength. From this root comes ईम् , the intensive particle, meaning, utterly, actually, indeed, at once, now, and इमथा, as things actually are, now, under present circumstances, Lat. imus, uttermost, last, lowest. एमसि means, “thou culminatest, risest to thy full force”.

राजन्तम् । Rt राज् intensive form of रा, as रज् of र in the participial form. Like र, रा has chiefly the cognate senses of play, enjoyment, satisfaction, bounty, love, (रागः, राध, रात्रिः, रामः, रासः, etc) and, to shine, glitter, colour etc. A third set of significations depend on the idea of darting on, seizing, pouncing on, — to seize, ravish, plunder, hold and keep, squeeze, subdue, rule, regulate, conquer, oppress, strike, rend etc (रक्ष् , रद् , रध् , रसः, रक्षः, रावण etc, Lat. rapio, rego). We find राज् itself used in two senses, to shine or to rule, (cf राजी, a shining streak, line etc, राजीव, coloured blue lotus). He who rules, controls.

अध्वराणाम् । τῶν νερτέρων. Of things or beings in the lower planes or aparardha.

गोप । Not a vocative, but the old accusative of गोप् , root गूप् modified and forming a noun, both substantive and adjective. Cf Grk. γύψ, γύπα. The secondary root गूप् is a strongly active, sometimes causal form of गू, to seize, swallow up, hold, contain, screen, hide, protect, embrace. The Grk. γύψ, vulture, is literally the seizer, the bird of prey. It also means, to hide from, fear, shun, loathe (जुगुप्सा). In this passage, as in most, it means “protector”.

अमृतस्य । अ, negative, with मृतः mortal, liable to death, Greek βροτός. The word is not अमृतम् but अमृतः, used like अक्षरः, to connote the Divine Personality, the imperishable being who is not subject to life or death, who as eternal, unchangeable Sat is the source of the principle of Immortality in the world.

दीदिविम् । Reduplication from दिव् to shine, with the nominal termination इ. The reduplication gives the idea of intensity, frequency or variety. “A shining force, brilliance, fiery energy.”

वर्धमानम् । Rt वृध् , secondary root from वृ to be, extend, cover, be in force, excel, be in activity, act, operate etc. The sound ध् always adds the idea of solid or heavy strength and persistence, — to spread, increase, be exalted.

स्वे । Own. स with the suffix व conveying the idea possession, makes either स्व (Lat. suus) or सव (Greek ἑός) as in तव.

दमे । दम् to conquer entirely, crush, tame, possess as entirely one’s own, with the nominal suffix अ. Possession, personal property, home. (Lat. domus, Grk. δόμος.) His own home, ie, the parardha planes as opposed to the Aparardha which he protects.

स । Again the causal relative sense used loosely to mean therefore.

नः । The demonstrative न, used generally to indicate the person here, I, we.

पिता । The प roots mean principally to reach, obtain, make, do, produce, protect, cherish, strike, strike out. From the sense “to produce” in पि and पु, come पिता, the begetter, and पुत्र, the begotten.

इव । So, as. इ, this and व. See under एव in the third sloka.

सूनवे । The roots सु, सू are found chiefly in three senses, to press out, distil, pour out, create, beget, from which we have सूनुः, son or daughter, सू with the nominal नुः (न, नि); to besiege, strike, attack, wound, (सूद् , सूर् , सूना, सूच् to pierce); and to be at rest, ease, firm, to confirm, ascertain, teach etc, सु, सुंख, सुष्टु, सूच् , सूत्र, सूरिः etc. The last is the primary meaning of the roots in स, but the addition of उ, gives as often an idea of violence, pressure etc, from which comes originally the sense, to press, squeeze, besiege, encroach on, insist, confirm and afterwards all the derivative meanings, even to the most remote from the original idea of rest, eg Greek σείω, I shake (साया from सि, सी), and the sense of siege and battle common in the Veda. See the next hymn.

सूपायनो । The adverb सु, well or very and उपायनो, Rt इ with आ (making the verb ए to go, come, approach) and उप towards, with the idea of submission or inferiority, prefixed and followed by the nominal suffix न preceded by the enclitic अ. One who can easily be approached, accessible, open.

भव । Root भू, Grk. φύω, Lat. fui, to be, become, from the sense of substantial containing existence essential in the sound भ् . Cf भुवन, भवन, भ, भृ etc.

सचस्व । Imperative of Root सच् . स means to be in a state of rest, to lie, lie with, adhere to, be with, embrace. सच् and सज् are intensitive and decisive, to be entirely with, cling, adhere utterly. It means to resort to, follow, love, serve, aid, also to enjoy physically. सचस्व means “Be with us, adhere to, abide with us.”

आ । Expressing relation, emphasises the idea of adherence in सच् .

स्वस्तये । सु and अस्ति, substantive from अस् to be, with the common nominal suffix ति, “happiness, welfare, prosperity, increase”.

Translation.

1. Agni I desire who standeth before the Lord, the god who knoweth all the law, the warrior who disposeth utterly delight.

2. Agni whom the ancient seers desired, the modern too adore; for in his strength he beareth all the Gods.

3. By Agni one getteth substance, yes, and increase day by day, and glorious success.

4. O Agni, that Lord here below whom thou encompassest on every side, is he that moveth in the Gods.

5. Agni, the warrior whose strength is wisdom, he of the Truth who has the knowledge rich, cometh, a God attended by the Gods.

6. O beloved, O Agni, that thou desirest to do good to him who seeks to hurt thee, this is utterly thy nature, O Lord of Love.

7. To thee, O Agni who protectest us in darkness day by day, if with hearts full of self-surrender we come, then thou towerest to thy height,

8. To thee, controller and protector of all things below, of the Immortal brilliant force, ever increasing in thy home.

9. So be thou easy to our approach as a father to his child, abide with us for our bliss.

23. 1912²⁶

Analysis.

॥१॥ अग्निम् । Agni is a devata, one of the most brilliant and powerful of the masters of the intelligent mind. Man, according to Vedic psychology, consists of seven principles, in which the Atman cases itself, — annam, gross matter; prana, vital energy; manas, intelligent mind; vijnanam, ideal mind; ananda, pure or essential bliss; chit, pure or essential awareness; sat, pure or essential being. In the present stage of our evolution ordinary humanity has developed annam, prana and manas for habitual use; and well-developed men are able to use with power the vijnanam acting not in its own habitation, स्वे दमे, nor in its own rupa, vijnanam, but in the mind and as reasoning faculty, buddhi; extraordinary men are able to aid the action of manas and buddhi proper by the vijnanam acting in the intelligent mind indeed and so out of its proper sphere, but in its own form as ideal consciousness — the combination of manasic and vijnani action making what is called genius, pratibhanam, a reflection or luminous response in the mind to higher ideation; the Yogin goes beyond to the vijnanam itself or, if he is one of the greatest Rishis, like Yajnavalkya, to the ananda. None in ordinary times go beyond the ananda in the waking state, for the chit and sat are only attainable in sushupti, because only the first five sheaths or panchakosha are yet sufficiently developed to be visible except to the men of the Satya Yuga and even by them the two others are not perfectly seen. From the vijnanam to the annam is the aparardha or lower part of existence where Vidya is dominated by Avidya; from the ananda to the sat is the parardha or higher half in which Avidya is dominated by Vidya and there is no ignorance, pain or limitation.

In man as he is at present developed, the intelligent mind is the most important psychological faculty and it is with a view to the development of the intelligent mind to its highest purity and capacity that the hymns of the Veda are written. In this mind there are successively the following principles: sukshma annam, the refinement of the gross annam out of which the physical part of the manahkosha or sukshma deha is made; sukshma prana, the vital energy in the mind which acts in the nadis or nervous system of the sukshma deha and which is the agent of desire; chitta or receptive consciousness, which receives all impressions from without and within by tamasic reaction, but, being tamasic, does not make them evident to the sattwic consciousness or intelligent awareness which we call knowledge, so that we remember with the chitta everything noticed or unnoticed, but that knowledge is useless for our life owing to its lying enveloped in tamas; hrit or the rajasic reaction to impressions which we call feeling or emotion, or, when it is habitual, character; manas or active definite sensational consciousness rendering impressions of all kinds into percept or concept by a sattwic reaction called intelligence or thought which men share with the animals; buddhi or rational, imaginative and intellectually mnemonic faculty, observing, retaining, comparing, reasoning, comprehending, combining and creating, the amalgam of which functions we call intellect; manasa ananda or the pure bliss of existence manifesting through the impure mind, body and prana impurely, ie mixed with pain of various kinds, but in itself pure, because disinterested, ahaituka; manasa tapas or the pure will-power acting towards knowledge, feeling and deed, impurely through the impure mind, body and prana, ie mixed with weakness, dull inertia and ignorance or error; but in itself pure because ahaituka, disinterested, without any ulterior purpose or preference that can interfere with truth of thought, act and emotion; ahaituka sat or pure realisation of existence, operating through the impure organs as ahankara and bheda, egoism and limitation, but in itself pure and aware of unity in difference, because disinterested, not attached to any particular form or name in manifestation; and, finally, Atman or Self seated in mind. This Atman is Sat and Asat, positive and negative, Sad Brahma and Sunyam Brahma; both positive and negative are contained in the Sa or Vasudeva and Tat or Parabrahman, and Sa and Tat are both the same. The Buddhi again is divided into understanding (medha), which merely uses the knowledge given by sensation and like manas, chitta, hrit and prana is adhina, anisha, subject to sensation; reason or buddhi proper, (smriti or dhi, also called prajna), which is superior to sensation and contradicts it in the derived light of a higher knowledge; and direct jnanam, satyam or sattwam which is itself that light of higher knowledge. All these faculties have their own devatas, one or many, each with his ganas or subordinate ministers. The jiva or spirit using these faculties is called the hansa, he who flies or evolves upward; when he leaves the lower and rises to the sacchidananda in the mind, using Sat, chit and ananda only, and reposing in the Sad Atma or in Vasudeva, then he is called the Paramhansa, one who has gone or evolved to the highest in that stage of evolution. This is the fundamental knowledge underlying the Veda, the loss of which, aided by the corruption of nirukta, has led to the present confusion and degradation of its meaning.

Chandra is the devata of the smriti or prajna; Surya of the satyam; Indra of the understanding and manas; Vayu of the sukshma prana; Mitra, Varuna, Aryama and Bhaga are the four masters of the emotional mind or character; Brihaspati of the sahaituka chit or tapas of knowledge; Brahma of the sahaituka sat; Agni of the sahaituka tapas etc. This is only an indication. The various characteristics and energies of the gods are best developed by an examination of the Veda itself. The gods strive to function perfectly for the Lord or Yajna, the Isha, Master of the adhara or sevenfold medium of manifestation; the Titans or Daityas, equally divine, try to upset this perfect functioning. Their office is to disturb that which is established in order to push man below or give him an opportunity of rising higher by breaking that which was good and harmonious in itself but imperfect, and in any case to render him dissatisfied with anything short of perfection and drive him continually to the Infinite, either by the uttama gati to Vasudeva or, if he will not have that, by the adhama gati to Prakriti. The Vedic Aryans sought to overcome the Daityas or Dasyus by the aid of the gods; afterwards the gods had themselves to be overcome in order that man might reach his goal.

Agni in the sphere of material energies is the master of tejas, the third and central material principle in the five known to Vedic science. Tejas itself is of seven kinds, chhaya or negative luminosity which is the principle of the annakosha; twilight or dosha, the basis of the pranakosha being tejas modified by chhaya; tejas proper or simple clarity and effulgence, dry light, which is the basis of the manahkosha; jyoti or solar light, brilliance which is the basis of the vijnanakosha; agni or fiery light, which is the basis of the chitkosha; vidyut or electrical illumination, which is the basis of the anandakosha; and prakasha which is the basis of the satkosha. Each of the seven has its own appropriate energy; for the energy is the essential reality and the light only a characteristic accompaniment of the energy. Of all these Agni is the greatest in this world, greater even than Vidyut — although the God of the vaidyuta energy is Vishnu himself who is the Lord of the ananda, the vaidyuto manavah, electrical Man, of the Upanishads. In the vijnana, Surya as well as Vishnu is greater than Agni, but here he and Vishnu both work under the dominant energy of Agni and for the satisfaction of Indra, — Vishnu in the Upanishads being younger than Indra, — Upendra. Translated into the language of physics, this means that Agni, commanding as he does heat and cold, is the fundamental active energy behind all phenomena of light and heat; the Sun is merely a reservoir of light and heat, the peculiar luminous blaze of the sun being only one form of tejas and what we call sunlight is composed of the static energy of prakasha or essential light which is the basis of the satkosha, the electrical energy or vaidyutam, and the tejas of agni modified by the nature of Surya and determining all other forms of light. The prakasha and vaidyutam can only become active when they enter into Agni and work under the conditions of his being and Agni himself is the supplier of Surya; he creates jyoti, he creates tejas, he creates, negatively, chhaya. Right or wrong, this is the physics of the Veda. Translated into the language of psychology, it means that in the intelligent mind, which now predominates, neither jnanam nor ananda can be fully developed, though essentially superior to mind; not even Soma, the rational buddhi, can really govern; but it is Indra full of Soma, the understanding based on the senses and strengthened by the buddhi, who is supreme and for whose satisfaction Soma, Surya, Agni and even the supreme Vishnu work. The reason on which man prides himself, is merely a link in the evolution from the manas to the vijnanam and must serve either the senses or the ideal cognition; if it tries to work for itself it only leads to universal agnosticism, philosophic doubt and the arrest of all knowledge. It must not be thought that the Veda uses these names merely as personifications of psychological and physical forces; it regards these gods as realities standing behind the psychological and physical operations, since no energy can conduct itself, but all need some conscious centre or centres from or through which they proceed. A doubt will naturally arise, how Vishnu, the supreme Lord, can be the Upendra of the Vedas. The answer is that, whatever energy is of supreme importance at a particular stage of the evolution, is taken up by Vishnu-Virat as his especial care. We have seen that the Ananda is now highest in the developed evolution. Vishnu is therefore now preeminently the Lord of the Ananda and when he comes down into the material world he stands in the Sun as the supreme electrical force involved in Agni and evolving out of him, which is the physical counterpart of Ananda and without which no action in the world can proceed. He is not inferior, he only subordinates himself, pretending to serve, while really by service he commands. But Upendratwa is not the highest plane of Vishnu’s manifestation, the param dhama; rather it is a special function here in the lowest dhama. Upendratwa is not Vishnutwa, but only one of its workings.

Agni, therefore, is master of tejas, especially fiery tejas, and the agent of the sahaituka tapas in the mind. In the language of modern psychology, this sahaituka tapas is Will in action, — not desire, but Will embracing desire and exceeding it. It is not even choice, wish or intention. Will, in the Vedic idea, is essentially knowledge taking the form of force. Agni, therefore, is purely mental force, necessary to all concentration. Once we perceive this Vedic conception, we realise the immense importance of Agni and are in a position to understand the hymn we are studying.

The word Agni is formed from the root अग् with the nominal addition नि. The root अग् is itself a derivative root from the primitive अ meaning “to be”, of which traces are found in many languages. The ग gives an idea of force and अग् therefore means to exist in force, preeminently — to be splendid, strong, excellent and Agni means mighty, supreme, splendid, forceful, bright. We find the same root in the Greek ἀγαθός, agathos, good, meaning originally, strong, noble, brave; ἄγαν, agan, excessively; ἄγω, ago, I lead; Latin, ago; ἀγλαός, aglaos, bright; the names Ἄγις, Ἀγαμέμνων, Agis, Agamemnon, and in the Sanscrit अग्र, अगास्ति. It is interchangeable with its brother root अज् from which some of the meanings of ἄγω are derived. It seems also to have meant to love, from the idea of embracing, cf Greek ἀγάπη, agape, but in this sense the old Sanscrit preferred अङ्ग् . For the connection between the two roots, cf अङ्गति, in the sense of fire, अङ्गिरः as a name of Agni, अङ्गारः, a live coal.

ईळे । The root like all simple Sanscrit roots has two forms इळ् and ईळ् . The original root was इल् to love, embrace, flatter, praise, adore; the cerebral ळ is a later form, — a dialectical peculiarity belonging to some of the dominant races of the Dwapara Yuga, which established itself for a time but could not hold its own and either resolved itself back into ल or was farther transformed into the soft cerebral ड with which it was interchangeable. So we have the form ईड् in precisely the same sense. There is no idea necessarily involved of adoration to a superior, the dominant ideas being love, praise and desire. The meaning here is not “praise” or “worship”, but “desire”, “yearn for”.

पुरो हितम् । The words are two and not one. The sense of “priest, purohit”, put on the compound word in the later ceremonial interpretation of the Veda, is entirely absent in this hymn. The word पुरः was originally the genitive of पुर् used adverbially. पुर् meant door, gate, front, wall; afterwards, house or city; cf the Greek πύλη, pule, a gate, πύλος, pulos, a walled city or fort, πόλις, a city; so in front. हितम् is the participial adjective from the root हि in the sense of to cast down, throw down, plant, place, which appears in Greek as χέω, cheo, I pour (हया). पुरो हितम् means therefore set or planted before.

यज्ञस्य । The word यज्ञ is of supreme importance in the Veda. In the ceremonial interpretation यज्ञ is always understood as sacrifice and no other conception admitted. The Veda cannot be understood as the source of all Indian spirituality and divine knowledge, if this materialistic interpretation is accepted. In reality यज्ञ is the name of the Supreme Lord Vishnu himself; it also means धर्म or योग, and by a later preference of meaning it came to signify sacrifice, because sacrifice in the later Dwapara Yuga became the one dharma and yoga which dominated and more and more tended to replace all others. It is necessary to recover the proper meaning of this important word by Nirukta, and, in order to [do] so, to lay down briefly the principle of Nirukta.

The Sanscrit language is the devabhasha or original language spoken by men in Uttara Meru at the beginning of the Manwantara; but in its purity it is not the Sanscrit of the Dwapara or the Kali, it is the language of the Satyayuga based on the true and perfect relation of vak and artha. Every one of its vowels and consonants has a particular and inalienable force which exists by the nature of things and not by development or human choice; these are the fundamental sounds which lie at the basis of the Tantric bijamantras and constitute the efficacy of the mantra itself. Every vowel and every consonant in the original language had certain primary meanings which arose out of this essential shakti or force and were the basis of other derivative meanings. By combination with the vowels, the consonants, and, without any combination, the vowels themselves formed a number of primary roots, out of which secondary roots were developed by the addition of other consonants. All words were formed from these roots, simple words by the addition again of pure or mixed vowel and consonant terminations with or without modification of the root and more complex words by the principle of composition. This language increasingly corrupted in sense and sound becomes the later Sanscrit of the Treta, Dwapara and Kali Yuga, being sometimes partly purified and again corrupted and again partly purified so that it never loses all apparent relation to its original form and structure. Every other language, however remote, is a corruption formed by detrition and perversion of the original language into a Prakrit or the Prakrit of a Prakrit and so on to increasing stages of impurity. The superior purity of the Indian language is the reason of its being called the Sanscrit and not given any local name, its basis being universal and eternal; and it is always a rediscovery of the Sanscrit tongue as the primary language that prepares first for a true understanding of human language and, secondly, for a fresh purification of Sanscrit itself.

This particular root यज् from which यज्ञ is formed, is a secondary root on the base of the consonant य् , the gunas of which are strength and tenderness applied to action, motion, formation and contact. The primary roots are य, यि and यु, with their lengthened forms या, यी and यू, — the original devabhasha recognising only three pure vowels, the rest being either modified or mixed vowels. The primary root of यज् is य, which means essentially to go quietly and persistently, to act or apply oneself quietly and with force and persistence, to master (knowledge or any thing or person) by steady application, to come or bring into contact with gently or lovingly and effectively, to form or express clearly etc. The first sense appears, with its colour rubbed out, in the lengthened form या, in यक्ष् , in one of the meanings of यम् etc; the second in यत् & यस् ; the third in यज् , यम् and यन्त्र् ; the fourth in यज् and याच् which is originally a causal of यच् to give, now lost except in certain conjugational forms of यम् ; the fifth in one of the meanings of यम् (to show), etc. Besides यच् there are other lost roots यल् to seek after, love, desire (Greek ἰάλλω), यश् with a similar meaning, from which we have यशः which was originally an adjective meaning lovely, charming, and a noun meaning sometimes an object of love or pursuit, sometimes beauty, ambition, fame etc, or love itself, favour, partiality. This is a brief example of the method followed by the original tongue as it can now be observed with its distinctions and shades confused and the colours of the words expunged.

In the root यज् the force of the consonant ज् determines the meaning. Its essential nature is swiftness, decisiveness, rapid brilliance and restlessness. It has therefore a frequentative and intensitive force. It means to love habitually and fervently, so to worship, to adore. It means to give freely, wholly or continuously; from these shades comes the meaning of sacrifice. It means to master thoroughly, habitually, with a continual repetition of the act of mastery; the word यत् means endeavour, but यज् can never have meant endeavour, it is too decisive and triumphant and must imply possession of mastery, action sure of its result. It means therefore to rule, govern, order, possess. That is why यज्ञ is Vishnu, in the sense of the Almighty Ruler, the Master of man’s action, body, thought, the supreme Lord ruling from the higher faculty in man, the parardha or Sacchidananda.

यज्ञः is formed by the addition of न, a nominal suffix which has the sense of action. It may be adjectival or nominal. It may convey the actor, the instrument, the manner or the sufferer of the action. यज्ञः therefore came to mean, he who rules, the governor or master; loving, adoring, also he who is loved; the means of mastery and so Yoga, in its processes, not in its realisations; the manner of mastery and so dharma, a rule of action or self-government; adoration or an act of worship, though this sense was usually kept for यजुः, giving, offering, sacrifice. As the name of Vishnu it meant, predominantly, the Master who directs, compels and governs; but the idea of the Lover and Beloved, the Giver and the object of all action, ritual and worship, of all karma also entered into it in the associations of the worshipper and sometimes became prominent.

The Vishnu Purana tells us that Vishnu in the Satya Yuga incarnates as Yajna, in the Treta as the conqueror and king, in the Dwapara as Vyasa, the compiler, codifier and lawgiver. It is not meant that He incarnates as sacrifice. The Satya Yuga is the age of human perfection when a harmonious order is established, the perfect or chatuspad dharma, whose maintenance depends on the full and universal possession of Yoga or direct relation to God and that again on the continual presence of incarnate Vishnu as the Adored, the Master and centre of dharma and yoga. The chatuspad dharma is the perfect harmony of the four dharmas, Brahmanyam, Kshatram, Vaishyam and Shaudram; for this reason separate castes do not exist in the Satya Yuga. In the Treta the Brahmanyam begins to fail, but remains as a subordinate force to help the Kshatram which then governs humanity. Mankind is maintained no longer by viryam or tapas easily sustained by inherent Brahmajnanam, but by viryam or tapas sustaining the Brahmajnanam with some difficulty and preventing its collapse. Vishnu incarnates as the Kshatriya, the incarnate centre of viryam and tapas. In the Dwapara, the Brahmanyam farther fails and turns into mere knowledge or intellectuality, the Kshatram becomes a subordinate force supporting the Vaishyam which has its turn of supremacy. The main qualities of the Vaishya are kaushalam, order and method, and therefore the Dwapara is the age of codification, ritual, Shastra, external appliances to maintain the failing internal spirituality; danam, and therefore hospitality, liberality, the sacrifice and the dakshina begin to swallow up other dharmas — it is the yuga yajniya, — the age of sacrifice; bhoga, and therefore the Veda is used for procuring enjoyment in this world and the next, bhogaishwaryagatim prati. Vishnu incarnates as the lawgiver, ritualist and Shastrakara to preserve the knowledge and practice of the dharma by the aid of the intellect and abhyasa, customary practice based on intellectual knowledge. In the Kali all breaks down except love and service, the dharma of the Shudra by which humanity is maintained and from time to time purified; for the jnanam breaks down and is replaced by worldly, practical reason, the viryam breaks down and is replaced by lazy mechanical appliances for getting things done lifelessly with the least trouble, dana, yajna and shastra break down and are replaced by calculated liberality, empty ritual and tamasic social forms and etiquette. Love is brought in by the Avataras to break down these dead forms in order that the world may be rejuvenated and a new order and a new Satya Yuga emerge, when the Lord will again incarnate as Yajna, the supreme Vishnu in the full manifestation of the chatuspad dharma, knowledge, power, enjoyment and love.

It has been said that Vishnu in our present stage of evolution is preeminently the Lord of the Ananda, but he is also the Sanmay Brahman and the Tapomay. It is as the Sanmay that He is Yajna — the Sat containing in it the Chit or Tapas and the Ananda. It must be remembered that while in the Aparardha we envisage Brahman through thought, feeling, action etc, in the Parardha we envisage Him through essential realisation superior to thought, feeling and action. In the Ananda we realise essential delight; in the Chit, essential energy, intelligence and will; in the Sat, essential truth or be-ness. The Sat is therefore called the Mahasatyam and Mahakaranam, the highest truth in the manifestation, out of which everything proceeds. It is by this Mahasatyam — distinguished from the ordinary satyam or karanam called objectively mahat and subjectively vijnanam, the fourth of the seven bhumis, — that Vishnu as Yajna supports the dharma and yoga in the Satya Yuga. He is the Sad Brahma in manifestation. We shall see when we deal with the word ऋत्विजम् in what sense Agni stands before the Lord.

देवम् । A god. From the secondary root दिव् to flash, gleam, vibrate, play. On the basis of the consonant द् of which the gunas are force, heavy violence, density, dense penetration, dense movement, we get दा to cut, दि to vibrate and दु to trouble and from दि we get द्यु and दिव् or दीव् meaning to vibrate shiningly, gleam, scintillate or play. The Devas are those who play in light. Their proper home is in the vijnanam, महर्लोक or karanajagat, where matter is jyotirmay and all things luminous स्वेन धाम्ना, by their own inherent lustre and where life is an ordered lila or play. Therefore when the Bhagawat speaks of the power of seeing the life of the gods in Swarga, it calls that particular siddhi देवक्रीडानुदर्शनम् , watching the sports of the gods, because all life is to them a sport or lila. The Gods, however, dwell for us in the lower Swarloka, ie, Chandraloka of which the summit is Kailas and the basis Swarga with Pitriloka just above Swarga. Nevertheless even there they keep their jyotirmay and lilamay nature, their luminous bodies and worlds of self-existent bliss free from death and care.

ऋत्विजम् । This word is taken in the ceremonial interpretation of the Veda in the later sense of Ritwik, a sacrificial priest, and it is explained by separating as ऋतु + इज् one who sacrifices seasonably. In reality, ऋत्विज् is a very old word compounded in ancient Sanscrit before the creation of the modern rules of Sandhi, and is composed of ऋत् truth and विज् , ecstasy or ecstatic. It means one who has the ecstasy of the truth or satyam.

ऋत् is an abstract noun formed from the root ऋ whose essential meaning was to vibrate, shake, dart, go straight; and its derivate meanings to reach, acquire, or else attack, hurt, injure, or to be erect, rise or raise; to shine; to think, realise truth etc. From the sense of going straight in the secondary verb ऋज् with its adjective ऋजु straight, cf Lat. rego, rectus; ऋत straight, right, true; ऋतम् , truth, right, established law or custom, — सत्यम् applied to the Supreme Brahman as the satyam or mahakaranam; ऋतु, rule, fixed order, fixed time or season; ऋषि, a thinker, direct seer of truth, cf Lat. reor, I think, ratio, method, order, reason, proposition, etc. The obsolete word ऋत् meant directness, truth, law, rule, thought, सत्यम् .

विज् is noun or adjective from the verb विज् meaning to shake, be troubled, excited, tremble, to be ecstatic, joyous, full of rapture, felicity or ecstatic energy. Cf Latin vigeo and vigor, from which comes the English vigour. ऋत्विज् is therefore one who is ecstatic with the fullness of the truth or satyam. Agni, it has been pointed out, is the god of the tapas or energy at work disinterestedly on the intellectual plane, one of the higher gods working on the lower level in the service of the lower deity Indra. He proceeds straight from the chit, which, when active, is known as mahatapas or chichchhakti, the energy of the essential intelligence in the Sad Brahman, Yajna or Vishnu. The Shakti begins creation by kshobha or ecstatic vibration in the calm Sad Atma and this ecstatic vibration or विज् , वेगः goes out as speed, force, heat, तपः or अग्नि, the basis of life and existence. This tapas born of the Chichchhakti (Shakti, Devi, Kali, Prakriti) is full of the ecstatic movement of the Sat or Mahasatyam manifesting itself. For this reason Agni is called ऋत्विज् , vibrating, ecstatic with the सत्यम् . For the same reason he is called जातवेदाः, he from whom the higher knowledge is born, because he holds in himself the Veda or Satyam and manifests it; tapas is the basis of all concentration of chit, awareness (the sanyama of Patanjali) and it is by sanyama or concentration of awareness either on the object of awareness (rajayoga) or on itself (jnanayoga and adhyatmayoga) that satyam and Veda become directly self-manifest and luminous to the Yogin. Without this sanyama no Yoga is possible, no effective action of any kind is possible. When Brahma turned his mind to creation, it was the cry of “tapas, tapas” that was heard on the waters of the karan samudra (Mahakaranam or Sad Brahma). The immense importance of Agni as the Ritwij to the Yogin, therefore, becomes manifest; and it is also clear why he is पुरोहितं यज्ञस्य for it is the tapas which stands before the Satyam, which we reach before we can get the Sat. It is the Chichchhakti which takes us to the Sat, — the Devi, Shakti or Kali who brings us to Brahman, to Vasudeva, and Agni, her especial agent for tapas in the mind, is therefore a special intermediary between us and Yajna, who, as has been seen, is Vishnu, Vasudeva or Brahman, in the Sacchidananda or Parardha on the intellectual plane, which is all man in the average has yet reached. This is the reason why Agni was so great a god to the Rishis. To mere sacrificers and ritualists he was great only as the god of fire indispensable in all their ritual, but to the Yogin he has a much greater importance, as great as that of Surya, the lord of illumination, and Soma, the lord of Amrita. He was one of the most indispensable helpers in the processes which the Veda illumines and assists.

होतारम् । Hota is another word of great importance in the Veda. In all existing interpretations of the Veda hota is interpreted as the priest who offers the libation, हविः as the libation and hu in the sense of pouring the offering. So fixed is this notion born of the predomination through several millenniums of the ceremonial meanings attached to all the important words of the Veda, that any other rendering would be deemed impossible. But in the original Veda होता did not mean a sacrificial priest, nor हविः an offering. Agni may by a metaphorical figure be called a purohit of the sacrifice, though the figure will not have any very great Sanscritic exactness, but he can in no sense be the one who pours the libation. He devours the libation, he does not offer or pour it. Hota, therefore, must have some other signification which, without outraging fact and common sense, can be applied to Agni.

The root हु, like the roots हा and हि, is based on the consonant ह् , the essential gunas of which are aggression, violent action, impetuosity, loud breathing, and so challenge, summons etc. The verb हु originally like ह, हा and हि meant to strike or throw down, attack, slay, the vowel उ adding a sense of pervasiveness which easily brought the idea of battle. We find, therefore, that this root meant to attack, fight, as in आहवः battle; to call, shout, summons, as in ह्वे (originally हवे) etc; to throw, overthrow, destroy; to throw, pour, offer. From the last sense it came to have its more modern meaning. The transference from the sense of battle to the sense of sacrifice is paralleled by the Greek word μάχη, battle, which is certainly the same as the Sanscrit मखः, sacrifice. It must be remembered that the Yoga was to the old Aryans a battle between the Devas and Daityas, the gods being the warriors who fought the Daityas for man and were made strong and victorious by the क्रिया-s or effective practices of Yoga, the Daityas being the Dasyus or enemies of Yajna and Yoga. This will become clearer and clearer as we proceed. This view of life as well as Yoga, which is only the sublimation of life, as a struggle between the Devas & Daityas is one of the most fundamental ideas of Veda, Purana, Tantra and every practical system in Hinduism. Agni is par excellence the warrior whom the Daityas most dread, because he is full of the ahaituka tapas, against which, if properly used and supported by the Yajamana, the Yogin, no evil force can prevail. The Ahaituka Tapas destroys them all. It is the mighty effective and fighting force which once called in prepares perfect siddhi and an almost omnipotent control over our nature and our surroundings. Even when ashuddha, impure, tapas fights the enemy tamas; when shuddha, when the very action of Agni, it brings viryam, it brings jnanam, it brings Ananda, it brings mukti. Hotaram means therefore the warrior, the destroyer of the Daityas, Agni jatavedas; havis and hava mean battle or strength in violent action; hu to fight.

रत्नधातमम् । Superlative of रत्नधा, joy-giving, the disposer of delight. We have the root रत् as a derivative from the primary root र. The three roots र, रि, रु are themselves variations of the elemental shabda र् whose essential significance is tremulous continual vibration. र means essentially to vibrate, shake, quiver abroad, the vowel अ conveying essentiality, absoluteness, wideness, want of limitation as opposed to the vowel इ which gives a sense of relation and direction to a given point. From this essential sense come the derivative meanings, to play, to shine; as in रतम् , रत्न a jewel, रतिः, रम् , रञ्ज् , रजतम् silver, रजः dust, रजनी, रात्रि, night etc. From the former meaning there comes the sense, to please, delight, love, adore, etc. as in रामा, रामः, राध् , रज् , रजः, (rajoguna) etc. The word रत्न in ancient Sanscrit, from the root रत् , had two sets of senses, delight, ananda, pleasure, play, sexual intercourse, a thing of delight, mistress, etc, and splendour, light, lustre, brilliance, a brilliant, a jewel, — the modern sense. At first sight it would seem that lustre, brilliance is more appropriate to Agni, and it would apply well to the warrior who destroys the darkness of the mind, but the central idea of the hymn is not Agni as the master of light, — that is Surya, — but as the master of force, tapas, which is the source out of which comes delight. The three terms of the parardha are sat, chit and ananda. In sat, chit abides and emerges from sat. As soon as it emerges, it generates the energy of chichchhakti which plays throughout the universe; this play, रत्न, is ananda in chit and it emerges from chit. All tapas therefore generates ananda, and the pure sahaituka tapas generates pure sahaituka ananda which being universal, self-existent and by its nature incapable of any admixture of sorrow, is the most sure, wide, and intense. Therefore Agni is most joy-giving, a great disposer of delight. The word धा means to set, create, give, arrange; here it is the old Aryan substantive expressing the agent and often used adjectivally.

॥२॥ अग्निः पूर्वेभिर्ऋषिभिरीड्यो नूतनैरुत There is nothing in these words that needs special explanation, since all the words and their senses are modern. The Rishi indicates Agni, master of the ahaituka tapas, as adorable in all ages by all seers ancient or modern, because to all seekers and at all times, ahaituka tapas is the condition and agent of suddhi, mukti, bhukti and siddhi, the fourfold aim of Yoga. The word Rishi means a knower of truth, one who attains, from ऋ to go straight, attain the goal, reach the object, know, think. Originally it had something of the sense of साधक, the ष giving a habitual force; one who continually goes straight (by knowledge or inspired thought) to the truth. The force of उत is here, “much more”, “as a matter of course”. The idea is that not only is Agni the great object of desire and worship to the high sadhaks of these days, but in all times he has occupied the same place in the sadhan, even when man was in a different stage of evolution and walked in other paths of Yoga. Whatever Yoga is adopted, sahaituka tapas is of the first importance to full siddhi.

स । Sa is here used much in the sense of “who”, — it is the Greek ἃς (originally σός though by a common law in Greek the σ has been worn into an aspirate), and it gives the reason for the adoration of Agni.

देवान् । The gods of the lower functions in the body, prana, mind and vijnana are all borne up by the impartial strength of Agni and the delight, रत्न, which it generates. Ananda is the condition of all existence and persistence, — को ह्येवान्यात् कः प्राण्यात् यदेष आकाश आनन्दो न स्यात् ॥. Tapas is the stay, the supporter of ananda. Therefore Agni bears up the gods.

एह । From root इह् , an adverb meaning forcefully, with strength. The root इह् meant originally to put forth strength in a given direction, so to will, wish, desire. Cf for this sense of derivatives from the primary root इ, Greek ῖφι, ἴφθιμος, ἴς (ῖνα), इन्द्र, ईर् to utter, force out, etc. The adverb used is especially appropriate to the action of the god of tapas; it is in strength, by the force of tapas that he supports all the gods.

वक्षति । The root is वह् + ष, and ष in old Sanscrit gave a habituative or desiderative sense, the two being kin to each other, cf the Greek φιλεῖ, meaning both “loves” and “is wont to”. Cf also the previous note about ऋषि. We shall meet this habituative form frequently. Agni is wont to bear up, that is his perpetual office.

॥३॥ अग्निना रयिम् The word रयिः (Latin res) means substance. It comes from the root र to vibrate + इः, an ordinary nominal termination which, when feminine, usually gives the idea of quality or abstract existence. In ancient Sanscrit the semivowels य & व were used to bridge over the gap between two vowels, as in म्रिये, जाये, हुवे, and this usage has been faithfully preserved in one of its surviving daughters of an elder group, Tamil. रयिः therefore means vibration, stir, play, motion, and, because all substance is merely Prakriti or Shakti in motion, it comes to mean substance. The word and the meaning are among the oldest in Sanscrit. By Agni, by sahaituka tapas is got or enjoyed substance, body. Into whatever that stream of force flows, however unsubstantial it may be at the time, it grows in body, being and solidity; it tends to establish itself, to become a res or established actual thing.

अश्नवत् । The word अश् is a secondary root from अ to be, one of the most important of all old Sanscrit roots. From this root we have अस् to be, breathe, live, be strong; अद् to be (annam, substance, matter), to eat (अन्नं food); अह् to breathe (अही, प्राह); अन् to breathe, live, be (अनिलः, प्राणः, अनु); अर् to be, be strong, excel, fight, rule (अरिः, आर्य, अर्यमा, Gr. ἀρετή, Ἄρης) and a number of others. Every Aryan primary root was capable of being used either transitively or intransitively, and in its transitive sense अ meant “to have”, whence we get अश् to have, possess, enjoy, eat, get, acquire. अश् becomes in Greek ἔχω. Here both the senses of “get”, and “enjoy”, must be taken together. The root is one of those which still preserves the old verbal enclitics न, ना, नु. The verbal termination वत् is here used impersonally; one gets, there is got.

पोषमेव । The sense of पोषम् is “increase”. The word completes the sense of रयिमश्नवत् which, without the addition of पोषम् , might only imply a single and immediate accretion of substance, but the Rishi refers to the steady action of sahaituka tapas in the Yoga, by which once the stream of Agni is set flowing on the guna, vritti or jnanam to be obtained, it inevitably proceeds to get actuality and to increase in substance and power from day to day until it acquires यशसं वीरवत्तमम् , the utmost manifestation of splendour.

The root पु is important in Vedic etymology. The letter प् has the signification of sharp, swift and decisive movement, contact, formation etc. The roots based upon it give us variations of the ideas, “to rush, fall, dart, strike, leap, soar; to seize, master, own, be lord of; to enjoy, take, take in, devour, drain, drink, fill oneself, fill; to strike out, forge, do, make, effect; to produce, bring to being or fulfilment; increase, advance” and others developing from the elementary idea of the vocable. We get from the root पु, पुत्र one produced, cf Latin pullus, a son; पू to perfect, पूतः, पूताः (Vedic), पुण्यं perfection, virtue, merit; पवनः the wind, (the rushing one); पूषा the Sun, he who fosters, develops and perfects; पोषः increase; पूज् to foster, cherish, adore, worship; पुर् increase, advance, forwardness, front (पुरः, पूर्वः, पुरा, before, O.S. पुरा (Gr. πύλη) door, gate, पुर् , पुरः, पुती front, wall, fortified town, Gr. Πύλος, πόλις) etc.

एव in later Sanscrit means “indeed”, giving emphasis, or has a limiting and restricting sense, eg Isha Upanishad कुर्वन्नेव कर्माणि, “Thou shalt verily do actions (and not refrain from them).” But in old Sanscrit its original force was that of एवम् , so, this, thus; and then “and, also”. In the latter sense एवम् is still used in literary Bengali, for the spoken Sanscrit of the provinces often preserved forms and meanings the literary language lost and these, more or less corrupted, have passed into our modern vernaculars.

दिवे दिवे । From day to day. By the mere lapse of time, without effort on our part, the mere action of Agni being sufficient. This is an important principle of Yogic psychology which will be explained in the Commentary. The word दिवः is from दिव् to shine and may mean either “day”, दिवः कालः the bright period, or “heaven”, दिवो लोकः, the bright world. It has both senses in the Veda.

यशसम् । The word yaśas is from the root यशस् , a secondary root from the primary य.

24. Before May 1912²⁷

A hymn of praise, welcome and prayer to Agni, Lord of Tejas, composed when the mind of the Yogin Madhuchchhanda was full of sattwic energy and illumination.

1. Agni the brilliant I adore who standeth before the Lord, the god that has the ecstasy of the truth, the fighter that fulfilleth utter bliss.

2. Agni adorable to the sages of old, adorable to the new, holds up the gods with force & might.

3. By Agni one enjoyeth strength, one enjoyeth increase day by day and a mastery full of force.

4. O Agni, the Lord below about whom thou art on every side a flame encompassing, came by the gods into this world.

5. Agni the fighter, the strong in wisdom, the true, the manifold, the high of fame, has come to us, a god meeting with gods.

6. O beloved, that to the foe who would destroy thee thou, O Agni, doest good, this is the Truth of thee, O Lord of Love.

7. O Agni, to thee yearning if day by day we embrace thee with our mind and bear the law, then thou growest in mastery and might: —

8. To thee the shining one of the gods below who guardest the energy of the nectar and increasest in thy home.

9. Do thou therefore, O Agni, become lavish of thy approach to us as a father to his child; cleave to us for our heavenly bliss.

Linguistic

अग्निम् . The word Agnis is composed of the root अग् , the suffix नि and the case-ending स् . The root अग् occurs in two other words of this hymn, अङ्ग and अङ्गिरः. Its most common meaning is love, force or excellence. The original root अ of which it is a primary derivative meant existence. The addition of ग् adds the sense of force or power. To exist in force or power is अग् in its initial sense and all other meanings are derivative or deductive from the initial sense. The sound न् is added to roots with an adjectival force as in रत्न from रत् , यज्ञ from यज् . It may have adherent to it either अ, इ or उ, and may be pure or preceded by the enclitics अ, इ, उ or their prolonged forms आ, ई, ऊ. Thus करण, शयान, बकिन् , राजन् , वरुण, इष्णु, विष्णु etc. अग्नि means one who exists in force or power. Cf the Greek ἄγαν, exceedingly, ἀγαθός, good, originally meaning strong, powerful, brave. From the same sense of power, force, excellence come various senses of ἄγω, the Latin ago, lead, drive, act, etc. On the other hand the insertion of the nasal sound between अ and ग् gives the sense of love, sweetness, softness, beauty, as the particular kind of force or excellence implied in the root.

ईळे. The root ईल् , dialectically ईळ् , also takes by a slight modification of sound the form ईड् . It is a primary derivative of the original root इ, implying motion towards. The addition of ल् gives the sense of approaching with love and gives rise to the signification, adore, worship. It has a strong sense of bhakti, emotional worship.

पुरो हितम् . Two separate words, adverb and participle, “set before”. The participle is generally treated as belonging to धा, but it is originally the past verbal adjective of हि. The sound ह् conveys contact, motion or emission with force. Thus the root ह is to throw, strike, kill and in its derivatives to leap, dance etc. The root हु is similarly to attack, fight, throw from one, drag away etc. The root हि means to pierce, penetrate, adhere, be set in and actively to strike away, wear away, impair with other meanings. From the sense of adherence, we get a deductive sense of fondness, clinging, love, friendliness, the classic significance of the adjective हित.

यज्ञस्य. This word is of the utmost importance in the Veda. Its subsequent meaning of sacrifice has overclouded the sense of the Scriptures ever since the later half of the Dwapara Yuga; but originally and in the age of Madhuchchhanda it had no shade of this meaning. It is the root यज् with the suffix न adjectival, as explained under अग्नि. यज् is a primary derivative from the initial root य which had a sense of control, restraint, persistence, preservation. This we find in its derivatives यम् to order, control, regulate; यत् to use force upon, strive, practise; यक्ष् the habituative, to keep carefully from which यक्ष the guardians of wealth, the ganas, hosts of Kuvera; यछ् to importune, entreat, supplicate; यच् to control, to regulate, distribute, give. यज् means to regulate, rule, order, govern. यज्ञ is He who does these things, the Lord, Governor, Master, Provider, Giver, and in the Veda it is applied to the Supreme Being, Parameshwara, who governs the universe as the Master of Nature, the Disposer of its Laws, the Almighty Providence, the Master of the Dharma. It has a similar sense to the word यमः applied to the single god of Dharma, Yama. There is an echo of this use in the Vishnu Purana when it is said that Vishnu is born in the Satya Yuga as Yajna, in the Treta as the Chakravarti Raja, in the Dwapara as Vyasa. In the Satya Yuga mankind is governed by its own pure, perfect and inborn nature spontaneously fulfilling the dharma under the direct inspiration of God within as Yajna, the Lord of the Dharma. In the Treta the Dharma is maintained by the sceptre and the sword guarding the unwritten law. In the Dwapara the Dharma is supported by codes, Shastras, a regulated and written system.

देवम् . From the root दिव् conveying the idea of active, rapid or brilliant energy. It means to shine, to play, (cf दीव् to gamble), to be bright, clear, strong, swift or luminous. The Devas are strictly speaking the sattwic and rajasic powers of the sukshma worlds, Swar and Bhuvar, who govern or assist the operations of intelligence and energy in man; but it came to be applied to all beings of the other worlds without distinction, even to the tamasic forces, beings and powers who hurt and oppose these very operations. It is in this latter sense that the Persians used it after the teachings of Jarad-drashta (Zaruthrusta, Jaratkaru) had accustomed them to apply other terms to the beneficent and helpful powers.

ऋत्विजम् . The word ऋत्विक् like the word पुरोहितम् only latterly came to mean a sacrificial priest. It is composed of two words ऋत् and विज् . In Old Sanscrit ऋ and रि were used inter-changeably like ळ and ड. The root ऋ conveyed the idea of fixity, constancy, ऋत् or रित् is the old verbal noun forming the roots ऋत् and रित् and conveys the ideas [of] fixity, persistence, constancy, truth, steadfastness, wisdom, धैर्य, सत्यं. From the same root is formed ऋषिः, the root ऋष् being a habituative form of ऋ and meaning to be constant, wise, true, steadfast, calm and still. It was the old word answering to the धीर of the Upanishads. Similarly ऋतम् means truth, law etc, ऋतु is the fixed period or season, the habitual menstruation etc. The word विज् is a derivative of the initial root वि to open, manifest, from which are formed विद् to see, the root विल् conveying the idea of publicity, light, etc common in Tamil and Latin, and विज् meaning also to see. The ऋत्विज् is the drashta, seer or rishi, the one who has vision of spiritual truth.

¹ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, p. 461. (Part 2, Appendix № 14); 1st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 5, No2 (1981, December), pp. 178.

Back

² CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, p. 460. (Part 2, Appendix. № 13). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 5, No1 (1981, April), p. 9.

Back

³ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 459-460. (Part 2, Appendix № 12). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 4, No2 (1980, December), pp. 153-155.

Back

⁴ The Rigveda [: In Bengali] // Sri Aurobindo. Bengali Writings: [Translated from Bengali into English] / Published by Madanlal Himatsingka. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.– Pondicherry: All India Press, 1991, pp. 42-54.

Back

⁵ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 459-460. (Part 2, Appendix № 11). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 4, No1 (1980, April), p. 459.

Back

⁶ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, p. 458. (Part 2, Appendix № 10). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 4, No1 (1980, April), pp. 39-40.

Back

⁷ The seven Angiras seers, sons of the Flame, discovered, says the Veda, that Truth, the sun that was lodged in the darkness. This inconscient darkness is figured as the cave of the Panis; Indra and the Angiras seers enter and find the shining cows of the Dawn, the Dawn herself, the Day, the Sun, the vision of knowledge and man’s path to immortality. This is the day said in the next hymn to be discovered or known by the adorers of Vayu. The name Angiras is given also to the gods as finders of the Truth.

Back

⁸ The Secret of the Veda. XVI. The Angiras Rishis // CWSA.– Vol. 15.– The Secret of the Veda.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998, pp. 159-172. 1-st published: Arya: A Philosophical Review. Monthly.– Vol.2, No 5 – December 1915, pp. 300-314.

Back

⁹ The Secret of the Veda. VI. Agni and the Truth // CWSA.– Vol. 15.– The Secret of the Veda.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998, pp. 58-69. 1-st published: Arya: A Philosophical Review. Monthly.– Vol.1, No 7 – February 1915, pp. 403-414.

Back

¹⁰ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 550-552. (Часть 3 № 10).

Back

¹¹ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 545-550. (Part 3, № 9).

Back

¹² Sayana interprets “namas” sometimes as food, a sense which he gives to a host of Vedic words, even to brahma, dyumna etc. I do not see why he should avoid it here, where it goes so well with भरंतः.

Back

¹³ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, p. 457. (Part 2, № 9).

Back

¹⁴ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 456-457. (Part 2, Appendix № 8).

Back

¹⁵ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 455-456. (Part 2, № 7).

Back

¹⁶ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 540-545. (Part 3, № 8).

Back

¹⁷ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 455; 539-540. (Part 2, № 6; Part 3, № 8).

Back

¹⁸ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, p. 454. (Part 2, № 5). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 3, No 2 (1979, December), pp. 150-152.

Back

¹⁹ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 453-454. (Part 2, № 4). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 3, No1 (1979, April), pp. 35-37.

Back

²⁰ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 452-453. (Part 2, № 3).

Back

²¹ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 525-539. (Part 3, № 6). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 2, No2 (1978, December), pp. 148-154.

Back

²² When Sri Aurobindo wrote out the second verse above (evidently from memory), he initially substituted sa id devesu gacchati from the fourth verse for sa devan eha vaksati. This paragraph on uta and id was written before the mistake was corrected. — Ed.

Back

²³ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 521-525. (Part 3 № 5).

Back

²⁴ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 511-521. (Part 3 № 4).

Back

²⁵ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 452; 488-510. (Part 2, № 2; Part 3 № 3). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 2, No1 (1978, April), pp. 51-57.

Back

²⁶ The Rigveda: with a Translation and Commentary in English // CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 469-487. (Part 3 № 2).

Back

²⁷ CWSA.– Vol. 16.– Hymns to the Mystic Fire.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013, pp. 451; 465-468. (Part 2, № 1; Part 3 № 1). 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 1, No2 (1977, December), pp. 35-38.

Back

Please, start with Introduction
Without knowledge of some things, reading Rigveda will be unproductive. We strongly recommend that you begin your acquaintance with Rigveda by reading the Introduction.