Rig Veda

Text & Audio

MAṆḌALA 1

Sūkta 4

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. 1939–40¹

1. We call day by day for our protection the Maker of perfect forms like a good milch-cow for the milker of the Cows of Light.

2. Come to our wine-offerings; drink of the wine, O wine-drinker; thou art full of riches and thy ecstasy is a giver of Light.

3. Then may we know thy most intimate right-thinkings; manifest not beyond us, come.

4. Come over to Indra the vigorous, the unoverthrown, question the illumined in mind who has given to thy friends their desirable boon.

5. And may the Binders say to us, “Go forth elsewhere also holding in Indra your work of worship.”

6. And may the enemy peoples call us blessed, O Puissant; may we abide in Indra’s peace.

7. Bring for the swift this swift glory of the sacrifice that intoxicates the Gods; may it set on his march him who gives rapture to his friends.

8. Drinking of this, O thou of the hundred works, thou becamest a slayer of the Coverers and thou hast protected the man of plenitude in his plenty.

9. So we replenish thee in the plenitude of thy plenitude of the plenty, O Indra of the hundred works, for the winning of the Riches.

10. He who is a great continent of riches and takes us easily over, a friend of the offerer of the wine, to that Indra sing.

2. August 1915²

For instance in I.4.2 it is said of Indra, the maker of perfect forms who is as a good milker in the milking of the cows, that his ecstasy of the Soma-Wine is verily “cow-giving”, godā id revato madaḥ. It is the height of absurdity and irrationality to understand by this phrase that Indra is a very wealthy god and, when he gets drunk, exceedingly liberal in the matter of cowgiving.

It is obvious that as the cow-milking in the first verse is a figure, so the cow-giving in the second verse is a figure. And if we know from other passages of the Veda that the Cow is the symbol of Light, we must understand here also that Indra, when full of the Soma-ecstasy, is sure to give us the Light.

3. August 1914³

Indra, Giver of Light

1 The fashioner of perfect forms, like a good yielder for the milker of the Herds, we call for increase from day to day.

2 Come to our Soma-offerings. O Soma-drinker, drink of the Soma-wine; the intoxication of thy rapture gives indeed the Light.

3 Then may we know somewhat of thy uttermost right thinkings. Show not beyond us, come.

4 Come over, question Indra of the clear-seeing mind, the vigorous, the unoverthrown, who to thy comrades has brought the highest good.

5 And may the Restrainers⁴ say to us, “Nay, forth and strive on even in other fields, reposing on Indra your activity.”

6 And may the fighters, doers of the work⁵, declare us entirely blessed, O achiever; may we abide in Indra’s peace.

7 Intense for the intense bring thou this glory of the sacrifice that intoxicates the Man, carrying forward on the way Indra who gives joy to his friend.

8 When thou hadst drunk of this, O thou of the hundred activities, thou becamest a slayer of the Coverers and protectedst the rich mind in its riches.

9 Thee thus rich in thy riches we enrich again, O Indra, O thou of the hundred activities, for the safe enjoyment of our havings.

10 He who in his vastness is a continent of bliss,— the friend of the Soma-giver and he carries him safely through,— to that Indra raise the chant.

SAYANA’S INTERPRETATION

1. “The doer of (works that have) a good shape, Indra, we call daily for protection as (one calls) for the cow-milker a good milch-cow.

2. “Come to our (three) libations, drink of the Soma, O Somadrinker; the intoxication of thee, the wealthy one, is indeed cow-giving.

3. “Then (standing) among the intelligent people who are nearest to thee, may we know thee. Do not (go) beyond us (and) manifest (thyself to others, but) come to us.

4. “Come to him and question about me, the intelligent one, (whether I have praised him rightly or not),— to the intelligent and unhurt Indra who gives to thy friends (the priests) the best wealth.

5. “Let of us (i.e. our priests) speak (i.e. praise Indra),— and also, O you who censure, go out (from here) and from elsewhere too,—(our priests) doing service all about Indra.

6. “O destroyer (of foes), may even our enemies speak of us as having good wealth,—men (i.e. our friends will say it of course); may we be in the peace (bestowed) by Indra.

7. “Bring this Soma, that wealth of the sacrifice, the cause of exhilaration to men, (the Soma) that pervades (the three oblations) for Indra who pervades (the Soma-offering), that attains the rites and is friendly to (Indra) who gives joy (to the sacrificer).

8. “Drinking of this, O thou of many actions, thou becamest a slayer of Vritras (i.e. enemies led by Vritra) and didst protect entirely the fighter in the fights.

9. “O Indra of many actions, for enjoyment of riches we make thee abundant in food who art strong in the battles⁶.

10. “Sing to that Indra who is a protector of wealth, great, a good fulfiller (of works) and a friend of the sacrificer.”

Commentary

Madhuchchhandas, son of Vishwamitra, invokes in the Soma-offering Indra, the Master of luminous Mind, for increase in the Light. The symbols of the hymn are those of a collective sacrifice. Its subject is the growth of power and delight in Indra by the drinking of the Soma, the wine of immortality, and the consequent illumination of the human being so that the obstructions of his inner knowledge are removed and he attains to the utmost splendours of the liberated mind.

But what is this Soma, called sometimes amrita, the Greek ambrosia, as if it were itself the substance of immortality? It is a figure for the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss, from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d’être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness. But in that consciousness,– often figured as adri, the hill, stone, or dense substance,– divine light and divine delight are both of them concealed and confined, and have to be released or extracted. Ananda is retained as rasa, the sap, the essence, in sense-objects and sense-experiences, in the plants and growths of the earth-nature, and among these growths the mystic Soma-plant symbolises that element behind all sense activities and their enjoyments which yields the divine essence. It has to be distilled and, once distilled, purified and intensified until it has grown luminous, full of radiance, full of swiftness, full of energy, gomat, āśu, yuvāku. It becomes the chief food of the gods who, called to the Soma-oblation, take their share of the enjoyment and in the strength of that ecstasy increase in man, exalt him to his highest possibilities, make him capable of the supreme experiences. Those who do not give the delight in them as an offering to the divine Powers, preferring to reserve themselves for the sense and the lower life, are adorers not of the gods, but of the Panis, lords of the sense-consciousness, traffickers in its limited activities, they who press not the mystic wine, give not the purified offering, raise not the sacred chant. It is the Panis who steal from us the Rays of the illumined consciousness, those brilliant herds of the sun, and pen them up in the cavern of the subconscient, in the dense hill of matter, corrupting even Sarama, the hound of heaven, the luminous intuition, when she comes on their track to the cave of the Panis.

But the conception of this hymn belongs to a stage in our inner progress when the Panis have been exceeded and even the Vritras or Coverers who seclude from us our full powers and activities and Vala who holds back the Light, are already overpassed. But there are even then powers that stand in the way of our perfection. They are the powers of limitation, the Confiners or Censurers, who, without altogether obscuring the rays or damming up the energies, yet seek by constantly affirming the deficiencies of our self-expression to limit its field and set up the progress realised as an obstacle to the progress to come. Madhuchchhandas calls upon Indra to remove the defect and affirm in its place an increasing illumination.

The principle which Indra represents is Mind-Power released from the limits and obscurations of the nervous consciousness. It is this enlightened Intelligence which fashions right or perfect forms of thought or of action not deformed by the nervous impulses, not hampered by the falsehoods of sense. The image presented is that of a cow giving abundantly its yield to the milker of the herds. The word go means in Sanskrit both a cow and a ray of light. This double sense is used by the Vedic symbolists to suggest a double figure which was to them more than a figure; for light, in their view, is not merely an apt poetic image of thought, but is actually its physical form. Thus, the herds that are milked are the Herds of the Sun,– Surya, God of the revelatory and intuitive mind, or else of Dawn, the goddess who manifests the solar glory. The Rishi desires from Indra a daily increase of this light of Truth by his fuller activity pouring rays in a rich yield upon the receptive mind.

The activity of the pure illuminated Intelligence is sustained and increased by the conscious expression in us of the delight in divine existence and divine activity typified by the Soma wine. As the Intelligence feeds upon it, its action becomes an intoxicated ecstasy of inspiration by which the rays come pouring abundantly and joyously in. “Light-giving indeed is the intoxication of thee in thy rapture.”

For then it is possible, breaking beyond the limitations still insisted upon by the Confiners, to arrive at something of the finalities of knowledge possible to the illuminated intelligence. Right thoughts, right sensibilities,– this is the full sense of the word sumati; for the Vedic mati includes not only the thinking, but also the emotional parts of mentality. Sumati is a light in the thoughts; it is also a bright gladness and kindness in the soul. But in this passage the stress of the sense is upon right thought and not on the emotions. It is necessary, however, that the progress in right thinking should commence in the field of consciousness already attained; there must not be flashes and dazzling manifestations which by going beyond our powers elude expression in right form and confuse the receptive mind. Indra must be not only illuminer, but a fashioner of right thought-formations, surūpakṛtnu.

The Rishi, next, turning to a comrade in the collective Yoga, or, perhaps, addressing his own mind, encourages him or it to pass beyond the obstruction of the adverse suggestions opposed to him and by questioning the divine Intelligence progress to the highest good which it has already given to others. For it is that Intelligence which clearly discerns and can solve or remove all still-existing confusion and obscuration. Swift of movement, intense, energetic, it does not by its energy stumble in its paths like the impulses of the nervous consciousness. Or perhaps it is rather meant that owing to its invincible energy it does not succumb to the attacks whether of the Coverers or of the powers that limit.

Next are described the results towards which the seer aspires. With this fuller light opening on to the finalities of mental knowledge the powers of Limitation will be satisfied and of themselves will withdraw, consenting to the farther advance and to the new luminous activities. They will say, in effect, “Yes, now you have the right which we were hitherto justified in denying. Not only in the fields won already, but in other and untrod provinces pursue then your conquering march. Repose this action wholly on the divine Intelligence, not upon your lower capacities. For it is the greater surrender which gives you the greater right.”

The word ārata, move or strive, like its congeners ari, arya, ārya, arata, araṇi, expresses the central idea of the Veda. The root ar indicates always a movement of effort or of struggle or a state of surpassing height or excellence; it is applied to rowing, ploughing, fighting, lifting, climbing. The Aryan then is the man who seeks to fulfil himself by the Vedic action, the internal and external karma or apas, which is of the nature of a sacrifice to the gods. But it is also imaged as a journey, a march, a battle, a climbing upwards. The Aryan man labours towards heights, fights his way on in a march which is at once a progress forward and an ascent. That is his Aryahood, his aretē, virtue, to use a Greek word derived from the same root. Ārata, with the rest of the phrase, might be translated, “Out and push forward in other fields.”

The idea is taken up again, in the subtle Vedic fashion of thought-connections by word-echoes, with the ariḥ kṛṣṭayaḥ of the next verse. These are, I think, not the Aryan nations on earth, although that sense too is possible when the idea is that of a collective or national Yoga, but the powers that help man in his ascent, his spiritual kindred bound to him as comrades, allies, brothers, yoke-fellows (sakhāyaḥ, yujaḥ, jāmayaḥ), for his aspiration is their aspiration and by his completeness they are fulfilled. As the Restrainers are satisfied and give way, so they too, satisfied, must affirm finally their task accomplished by the fullness of human bliss, when the soul shall rest in the peace of Indra that comes with the Light, the peace of a perfected mentality standing as upon heights of consummated consciousness and Beatitude.

Therefore is the divine Ananda poured out to be made swift and intense in the system and offered to Indra for the support of his intensities. For it is this profound joy manifest in the inner sensations that gives the ecstasy by which the man or the God grows strong. The divine Intelligence will be able to move forward in the journey yet uncompleted and will return the gift by fresh powers of the Beatitude descending upon the friend of God.

For it was in this strength that the Divine Mind in man destroyed all that opposed, as Coverers or besiegers, its hundredfold activities of will and of thought; in this strength it protected afterwards the rich and various possessions already won in past battles from the Atris and Dasyus, devourers and plunderers of our gains.

Although, continues Madhuchchhandas, that Intelligence is already thus rich and variously stored we seek to increase yet more its force of abundance, removing the Restrainers as well as the Vritras, so that we may have the full and assured possession of our riches.

For this Light is, in its entire greatness free from limitation, a continent of felicity; this Power is that which befriends the human soul and carries it safe through the battle, to the end of its march, to the summit of its aspiration.

4. 1913–14⁷

1 Indra is the God to whom by preference Madhuchchhandas Vaiswamitra raises the Vedic chant. Agni indeed claims his opening homage; the Aswins and Vayu, Mitra and Varuna, Saraswati and the Viswadevas have shared Indra’s praises in the two succeeding hymns; but from the fourth Sukta to the eleventh we have an unbroken series devoted to the mighty God of his preference. It is no small advantage for us to possess these eighty riks occupied by a single deity, yet addressed to him from different standpoints, composed in different states of mind and expressing a different set of related ideas about his personality, powers and functions; for from such an ensemble the figure of the god is likely to emerge with an exceptional fullness and distinctness. How far do these hymns confirm the ideas about Indra we have derived from the third Sukta? Indra, whether god of the sky or of the mind, is the most considerable of the Vedic deities and the most prominent presence in physical nature or in human psychology; it is right and fitting that his subjective physiognomy should be the decisive starting point for any theory of the Veda.

Fortunately, the very first lines of this fourth stotra, this first hymn to Indra in the Rigveda, supply us with a striking passage in which the question is raised and solved. It is as if the Rishi were lying in wait for us with his answer to our difficulty at the very opening of his great Indra series. In the first word of the first rik he describes Indra as surūpakritnu, a fashioner of perfect or beautiful images or forms, or possibly a good fashioner of forms. There is no sense in which this epithet — brought forward so prominently and strikingly as the opening idea of the hymn — can be appropriate to the god of sky and rain or opportune in a hymn of material sacrifice. Sayana has seen the difficulty and met or rather dodged it scholastically in his usual fashion; surūpa, beautiful form, means, he says, sacrificial action of a beautiful form! We bow as usual to the learning and the fearless ingenuity of the great scholiast and we pass on. The epithet is nothing to the purpose in a material sacrifice; but if this outer sacrifice be the image of an inner rite, the use of the epithet becomes quite inevitable in sense and luminously clear in intention. Indra, god of mental force, is indeed a maker of beautiful forms or perfect images or a good fashioner of forms. If our hypothesis of Vedic philosophy is correct, Indra is, indeed, the direct builder of all forms; it is Mind that measures, limits and by its stress compels the infinite plastic Idea to objectivise Brahman in fixed mental and material forms. We have, therefore, at the very outset a difficulty straightforwardly met and luminously solved by the psychological theory.

Indra, maker of images, is not only a perfect, but an abundant workman. He is likened in his work to a good milker in the milking of the cows, sudughām iva goduhe. The balancing of the forms surūpakritnum and sudughām is strongly in favour of our taking the particle su in both cases as affected to the act expressed, to kritnu as to dughā. Indra is a good maker of images, skilful and abundant, like a good milker who knows how to produce a free yield from the teats of the herd. It is in this capacity that Madhuchchhanda calls on the god of his preference, juhūmasi dyavi dyavi. A rich and clear activity of mind, abundant in perfect forms of thought and inner vision, is the first aim of the sacrifice in this Sukta.

But there is a deeper subtlety concealed in this vigorous pastoral simile which, once we have grasped its principle, opens new doors on the significance and value of words in the Veda. Go in the Vedic tongue is not confined to the ordinary sense, cattle, but means frequently ray or light. In the language of Madhuchchhanda, we may almost affirm, it has usually this latter sense and, even when it means primarily cows, always refers obliquely to rays. We have gobhir in connection with Surya in the seventh sukta, where it can only mean rays and nothing else; we have the combination sūnritā gomatī in the eighth where coherence and good sense demand the rendering “true and luminous”; we have gomat sravah in the ninth, where ceremonially we may translate “wealth consisting of cows”, but also either “luminous fame” or, as I shall show, “luminous knowledge”; we have it in the tenth, twice in successive riks, gavām apa vrajam vridhi and san gā asmabhyam dhūnuhi, where the sense cows, if it adheres at all to the text, is only a conventional figure for rays of light; we have it twice again in the eleventh, vājasya gomatah, which may mean, ceremonially, wealth consisting of cows, but also, as I shall show, psychologically, “luminous plenty”, and Valasya gomatah which certainly contains the same use as in the tenth sukta; we have it finally in the second rik of this very sukta, godā, where there is a plain allusion to the goduhe of the first line and the sense of the whole passage demands the rendering “giver of light”. I shall seek to justify the theory that this distribution represents fairly enough the ordinary usage of Veda; go means oftenest ray, light or cows as a conventional figure for rays, is sometimes capable of a double sense, material or psychological, and, even in the rarer passages where the reference is to physical cattle, there is usually a play of the mind on the other and figurative sense. These rays which figure so largely in Vedic imagery are not, as I shall show, the rays of the physical sun, but of Surya, the brilliant god of knowledge, master of revelation and ideal perception, the prophetic Apollo. Thus we have such expressions as gavyatā manasā, with a radiating mind.

In the present rik the image is certainly of physical cows, but the usual double figure of the Veda familiar to the Rishi colours, as is perfectly natural and inevitable, the physical image. This is shown by the immediate repetition of the word in godā of the second verse, where, as we see from the third verse, athā te vidyāma sumatīnām, it is the light of knowledge that Indra is praised for giving. We have then the second sense of a great and abundant activity of luminous mental perceptions out of which are produced the clear images of thought and vision desired by the Rishi. The rays of Surya, of ideal knowledge, are the cows of the milking; the constant stream of thought-forms are their yield. For the aim of the Yogin is to avoid the confusion which comes from an abundant but hurried and ill formed mental activity and to effect a perfect distinctness in the forms of his knowledge — the rashmín vyūha of the Isha Upanishad.

We are given, finally, an object for this calling of Indra and this abundance of mental perceptions and thought-images, ūtaye, and a circumstance of the calling, dyavi dyavi. Ūtaye, Sayana says, means “for protection”. This is undoubtedly one of the senses of ūti, but not, as I think, either in this Rik or in any hymn of the Rigveda. It gives here no real sense; for in order to accept this significance, we have to suppose that ūti has no connection in thought with the words with which it is most nearly connected in the structure of the verse. It is obviously meant by its position to be a part of the idea conveyed in the description of Indra, a good fashioner of forms like a good milker in the milking of the cows of light; but neither mental activity nor abundance of thought-forms has anything to do with protection. We must seek for a more appropriate significance. The only other received value of ūti, enjoyment, will make good sense in this and a great many other passages; but I propose throughout the Veda to take ūti in another and more fundamental meaning not recognised by the lexicographers,— “growth, expansion, expanded being, greater fullness, richness or substance.” Ūti, in this significance, will not belong to the root av, but to the obsolete roots u, ū (see Aryan Origins), the primitive base of the U family of roots which has for its fundamental significance mediality, incomplete being or limited pervasiveness. It is this sense which is at the basis of udaya, udan, uchchā, ut, udara, ushas, uru, ūrjas, ūrmi, ūrdhwa and the words of this class which express the idea of wish and desire. Growth or expansion in richness and substance of the individual being, (the primary object of all Rigveda), is the purpose for which this luminous mental activity and abundant formation is desired by the Rishi,— growth especially of mental force, fertility and clearness.

Again, this process with its resultant growth is desired, dyavi dyavi, from day to day,— say the scholiasts. A daily growth, as we see in the first hymn of the Veda, rayim posham eva dive dive, is the object of the daily sacrifice and the daily invocation. On the other hand dyavi dyavi may equally mean, in sky and sky; for dyu and its congeners have the basic sense of light from which arise diversely the idea of day as in diva, divasa, dina, and of sky or heaven as in divi, dyu-loka, dyuksha; dyu shares in both meanings. It may therefore well be that we have here an allusion to the Vedic theory of the five earths and the three or sometimes five heavens, which correspond to the five principles and the three bodies of our complex existence,— the 5 principles, earth, matter or body, prana, midair or nervous vitality, manas, heaven or mentality, mahas or pure idea, and mayas or ananda, the divine state of bliss, and the three bodies, physical, subtle and typal (sthūla, sūkshma and kārana). This system, as can be established from a hundred indications, was not a creation of Vedantic or Puranic mystics but well known already to the Vedic Rishis. We shall then have a very strong and pregnant sense; the Rishi invokes in each of these ethers the activity of Indra, abundant in mental perceptions and thought-images, so that there may be growth in mind, growth in physical and sensational receptiveness, growth in ideal knowledge, ūtaye .. dyavi dyavi.

Such is the significance, deep, pregnant, rich in psychological suggestions we have gathered in the light of the words surūpakritnu and go from this first rik of the fourth sukta. But our system is to hold nothing for certain from a single text,— to demand rather confirmation from the whole context and the whole hymn before we are satisfied. We proceed then to question the second verse.

2 “Thou, the Soma-drinker,” cries Madhuchchhandas, “come to our outpourings and drink of the Soma, for verily light-giving is the intoxication of thee in thy impetuosity.” Savana is the Soma-offering, but the word often retains something of its basic meaning,— the outpressing or outpouring of the Soma, and the insistence here, savanā .. somasya somapāh, justifies the supposition that the Rishi wishes to dwell on the characteristic act of the sacrifice. “We are pressing out for the use of the gods the nectar of joyous vitality within us,” he says in effect, “come therefore to that rite; thou, the Soma-drinker, take thy part of the nectar offered to thee.” Then the Rishi with that admirable logical connection and coherency which is the principal characteristic of Vedic style — though always in the logical form of poetry which half-veils the process of reasoning, and not of prose which parades it,— gives the idea which connects the second rik with the first, the offering of nectar with the luminous formative activity of the god of Mind. “Verily light-giving is the intoxication of thee impetuous.” For when the vital force and joy in us, especially that divine vitality and joy developed by Yoga is placed at the service of Indra’s luminous mental activity, then the mind increases in a sort of ecstatic intoxication of energy, vriddho ajāyathāh, and the abundant light of thought pours forth in the impetuous stream of the mind’s swiftness.

Sayana would have us render the verse: “thy intoxication, who art wealthy, is indeed cattle-giving.” Guarda e passa! He connects revān evidently with rayih and rai in the sense of wealth; but the evidence of the other members of this root-clan justifies a different interpretation. Rayih itself signifies primarily motion, energy and then matter or substance; rai is properly ecstasy or felicity, then by a natural transition well-being or material prosperity. The primary root rī means to flow, to stream; rīti, motion; rev or reb, to go or leap; revaṭa, the rushing boar or the whirlwind; revā, the name of a river, must mean flowing or streaming, revatī, the name of a constellation, either bright or moving; and we have the Latin rivus, a river, and the Greek rīpē, rush. The balance of probability is therefore in favour of revān in the sense of swift, rushing or impetuous. It is here the just and inevitable epithet describing the ecstatic impetuosity of the Soma-drinker in his intoxication and rapture, revato madah.

Still, the proof is not complete; for another and materialistic interpretation of these verses is possible, and it may well be argued, “Ought not a plain naturalistic sense to be preferred to these too brilliant and illuminating ideas? True, the expression in the naturalistic interpretation becomes horribly cramped, awkward and even grotesque and unnatural; no one, ordinarily, would dream of saying ‘The drunkenness of thee wealthy is truly cattle-giving’, but what can you expect from a primitive barbarian? And if you paraphrase the whole thing becomes natural, vivid and convincing. Madhuchchhandas, the old barbaric sacrificer and medicine man of the tribe, says to Indra, the god of the sky and rain, the fertiliser, ‘We are calling you every day, for you are just like a good milker busy with the herd, a very fine craftsman. Just come and drink this Soma; for you are a very rich fellow but it is only when you are drunk that you give us plenty of cows.’ ” Such an argument would square well with the European idea of genial old Vedic barbarians, lusty, earthy, practical, naturalistic, greedy of wealth and cattle, who would besides be well-accustomed to the drunken liberality of their chiefs and easily attribute the same nature to their gods.

We must therefore still go forward and question yet a third verse.

3 This magnificent verse, admirable in rhythm, admirable in thought, admirable in poetical nobility and force, is reduced by Sayana to the last bathos and incoherency. “Then may we know thee in the midst of intellectual people who are in thy vicinity”, or “May we know thee for getting good ideas about sacrificial operations.” The plain sense of the words, for sumatīnām is here obviously a genitive of vague possession as in somasya piba, is perfectly easy to grasp. “Then indeed” says Madhuchchhandas, “may we know somewhat of thy most intimate felicities of thinking, manifest not a thought beyond us, come.” The whole thought of these opening verses is here summed up and receives its rich and inevitable consummation. Then indeed when the ecstatic activity of the mind is most luminous we can open the inner eye to those most intimate and felicitous perceptions of true and profound thinking of which the mental energy in us is capable. “But” says the Rishi “let not thy revelation of thought be beyond our capacities already developed”; for then there will no longer be the clearness of thought images and the entire inner satisfaction attending fulfilment, but rather a vagueness and straining with a waste of vital force and joy and not its self-renewing contentment. In this idea, for this deep, precise and limited purpose, “come”.

We are, therefore, justified by the succession of these three riks in holding the psychological intention of the hymn to be well-established. And when we proceed, when the Rishi turns to another strain of thought, that intention becomes yet clearer and more perfectly indisputable. “Parehi vigram astritam Indram prichchhā vipaschitam”, “Approach Indra the vigorous, the uno’erthrown; question him who has the discerning eye.” Not for cattle, but for light is Indra called to the sacrifice of the Veda. Of no mortal herds is he the giver, but of the luminous kine of Swar, (swarwatīr apah san gā asmabhyam dhūnuhi), sumatīnām sūnritānām, of the rich illuminations, the right thinkings, the right feelings, the perfect states of mind which the seeker after perfection desires. These he carries to us in his force, san .. dhunoti, in the divine ecstasy, so delightful and precious to mankind in its youth, of a luminous and joyous mental activity. The succession of the thoughts is clear and natural. Indra is a rich fashioner of clear mental images, an abundant milker of the luminous kine; as such we call him in each layer of our consciousness, dyavi dyavi, in sensational perception, in mental and emotional thinking, in ideal vision and experience. But only when by the Soma wine of Ananda, our vitalities are pure, perfect and intense, does he give of his fullness; therefore we offer him the sacrifice of that immortalising nectar, āyus, amritam. Then indeed, when he is drunk with it and impetuous, we may attain all the felicities of thought which our deepest mental capacities are ready to seize; but let him not go beyond; for we should exchange clearness and definite possession for an ungrasped possession. Dhanānām sātis, ktēmatōn sōsis, the safe possession of what we have, is the condition of the sacrifice. To such a Soma-offering, for such activities, O Indra, arrive.

II

The three opening riks of the Sukta have been admirably clear and straightforward in thought and expression; the three that follow present a number of difficulties, not, I think, because their style or thought is at all harsh or obscure, but because they contain a number of unfamiliar words or familiar words used in an antique and unfamiliar sense, over which the tradition of the scholiasts has seriously stumbled. I will therefore begin by giving first Sayana’s solution and then my own with my justification for differing from the accepted renderings.

4–6 Sayana renders: “O sacrificer, do thou approach Indra the intelligent and uninjured, and ask of me the clever priest (whether I have praised him well or not),— Indra who gave perfectly the best wealth to thy friends, the sacrificial priests. Let (the priests connected) with us praise Indra (so Sayana amazingly interprets uta no bruvantu), also, O our censurers, go out (from this country) and from elsewhere (another country),— (the priests) maintaining service to Indra. O destroyer, our enemies have called us wealthy, men (our friends) of course say it, so let us, being wealthy, be in the ease given by Indra.” Whatever else may or may not be the sense of the Veda, this confused and ungrammatical rigmarole cannot be that sense. Apart from the questionable interpretation of particular words, Sayana drags into the fourth verse a non-existent mām, which unnecessarily disturbs syntax and sense, for vipaschitam can only refer like the other epithets to Indra and, indeed, if it did not, the relative yah could not refer back to the god, as Sayana would have it, over the head of this new antecedent. In the fifth rik equally, he drags in a non-existent ritwijah; no cannot conceivably stand for nah sambandhino ritwijah, as the scholiast wishes,— the thing is preposterous,— and if it did, dadhānā could not refer back over the head of nidah and a whole clause to a far back unexpressed ritwijah which the hearer, if indeed he ever guessed at its existence, has long ago forgotten. In the sixth verse, to take krishtayah as a sort of algebraical symbol for a whole clause, krishtayah tad vocheyur eva, is to establish a kind of syntax which a grammarian in a difficulty may admit, but no writer in his senses would use. We must reject Sayana’s interpretation totally and start afresh with a clean slate.

I reject to begin with vigram in the sense of wise or intelligent,— for it would then be identical with vipaschitam and lead to a heavy tautology; I take it in the sense of vigorous. The root vij expresses any intensity of motion, emotion, thought or being; it signifies “to tremble”, “to be disturbed”, “to be keen-minded”, “to be vigorous”; for the Latin vigor undoubtedly represents an old Aryan vijās and we have in Veda itself vijarbhrit, which signifies, I suggest, “strength-holding”. Vigra, the adjective, may well mean energetic or vigorous. If we take it in this perfectly easy and natural significance, we are at once taken back in thought to the revatah of the second verse and go forward to the epithet astritam that follows. Indra, the impetuous, the intoxicated Soma-drinker, is also a god of vigorous strength, “uno’erthrown”, capable of bearing without a stagger or a fall the utmost burden of activity demanded of him. He is vigra, vijarbhrit. Parehi, says the singer; him approach, have recourse or take refuge with him; for he will bear triumphantly all the swift and impetuous activity that is demanded of him and lead you mightily into the peace of self-fulfilment. We shall see how the idea thus thrown out in these four simple and vigorous words stands as the basis of all the riks that follow. The Rishi adds, prichchhā vipaschitam; question him, for he has the eye of discerning thought.

5. Circa 1913⁸

1. From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays.

2. “Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savanā), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured” or in better English bringing out the sense and association of the words, “Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine and be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light.”

3. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not by — O come!

Notes

“Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savana), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured” or in better English bringing out the sense and association of the words, “Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine and be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not by — O come!” Id lays emphasis on goda as the capacity in which, the purpose for which Indra is to drink. Revato and madah give the conditions under which Indra becomes a giver of illumination, the rushing and impetuous ecstasy produced by the Soma wine. It is then that men know the ultimate perceptions of mind, the highest realisations that can be given by the intellect when Indra, lord of mental force and power, is full of the ecstasy of the immortalising juice. This clear and easy sense being fixed for these two verses, we can return to the first and discover its connection with what follows.

From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays. Undoubtedly, sudugham goduhe may be translated, a good milch cow to the milker of the cows; undoubtedly the poet had this idea in his mind when he wrote. The goddess is in the simile a milch cow, Indra is the milker. In each of the skies (the lower, middle and higher) he calls to her and makes her bring out the beautiful forms which she reveals to the drinker of the Soma. But it is impossible, when we take the connection with the two following verses, to avoid seeing that he is taking advantage of the double sense of go, and that while in the simile Indra is goduh the cow-milker, in the subject of the comparison he is goduh, the bringer out of the illumination, the flashes of higher light which produce the beautiful forms by the power of the goddess. The goddess herself must be one who is habitually associated with illumination, either Ila or Mahi. To anyone acquainted with the processes of Yoga, the whole passage at once becomes perfectly clear and true. The forms are those beautiful and myriad images of things in all the three worlds, the three akashas, dyavi dyavi, which appear to the eye of the Yogin when mental force in the Yoga is at its height, the impetuous and joyous activity (revato madah) of the mingled Ananda and Mahas fills the brain with Ojas and the highest intellectual perceptions, those akin to the supra-rational revelation, become not only possible, but easy, common and multitudinous. The passage describes the condition in which the mind, whether by drinking the material wine, the Karanajal of the Tantrics, or, as I hold, by feeding on the internal amrita, is raised to its highest exalted condition, before it is taken up into mahas or karanam, (whether in the state of Samadhi or in the waking state of the man who has realised his mahan atma, his ideal self), a state in which it is full of revealing thoughts and revealing visions which descend to it from the supra-rational level of the mahat, luminous and unerring, sunrita gomati mahi, where all is Truth and Light. Uti is the state of manifestation in Sat, in being, when that conscious existence which we are is stimulated into intensity and produces easily to the waking consciousness states of existence, movements of knowledge, outpourings of bliss which ordinarily it holds guha, in the secret parts of being.

¹ CWSA.– Vol. 14.– Vedic and Philological Studies.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2016, pp. 199-201.

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² The Secret of the Veda. XII. The Herds of the Dawn // CWSA.– Vol. 15.– The Secret of the Veda.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998, pp. 123-130. 1-st published: Arya: A Philosophical Review. Monthly.– Vol.2, No 1 – August 1915, pp. 20-28.

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³ Indra, Giver of Light // CWSA.– Vol. 15.– The Secret of the Veda.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998, pp. 257-265. 1-st published: Arya: A Philosophical Review. Monthly.– Vol.1, No 1 – August 1914, pp. 21-29.

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⁴ Or Censurers, Nidaḥ. The root nid bears, I think, in the Veda the sense of “bondage”, “confinement”, “limitation”, which can be assigned to it with entire certainty by philological deduction. It is the base of nidita, bound, and nidāna, tether. But the root also means to blame. After the peculiar method of the esoteric diction one or other sense predominates in different passages without entirely excluding the other.

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⁵ Ariḥ kṛṣṭayaḥ may also be translated, “the Aryan people”, or “the warlike nations”. The words kṛṣṭi and carṣaṇi, interpreted by Sayana as “man”, have as their base the roots kṛṣ and carṣ. which originally imply labour, effort or laborious action. They mean sometimes the doer of Vedic Karma, sometimes, the Karma itself,— the worker or the works.

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⁶ Note that Sayana explains vājinam in v. 8 as “fighter in the fights” and the same expression in the very next verse as “strong in the fights” and that in the phrase vājeṣu vājinaṃ vājayāmaḥ he takes the base word vāja in three different significances, “battle”, “strength” and “food”. This is a typical example of the deliberate inconsistency of Sayana’s method. I have given the two renderings together so that the reader may make an easy comparison between both methods and results. I enclose within brackets the commentator’s explanations wherever they are necessary to complete the sense or to make it intelligible. Even the reader unacquainted with Sanskrit will be able, I think, to appreciate from this single example the reasons which justify the modern critical mind in refusing to accept Sayana as a reliable authority for the interpretation of the Vedic text.

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⁷ R.V. 1.4 // CWSA.– Vol. 14.– Vedic and Philological Studies.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2016, pp. 364-374. (Часть 3 № 5).

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⁸ Note on the Word Go // CWSA.– Vol. 14.– Vedic and Philological Studies.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2016, p. 99-110. 1-st published: Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal.– Volume 9, No1 (1985, April), pp. 50-60.

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