Lexicon of Rig Veda

Lexicon

of Rig Veda

nava, nine, go, cow, ray. Sri Aurobindo (1946): the seers of ninefold ray. The word connected with Dashagvas (daśagvin), the seers of tenfold ray. At The Secret of the Veda Sri Aurobindo several times returned to these double terms, but their sense was not definitively fixed, we can find two conjectural explains. 1. Period of time of 9 and 10 months: “Navagwas themselves might well become Dashagwas by extending the period of the sacrifice to ten months instead of nine”, but “For in the seventh verse of V.45 and again in the eleventh we are told that it was the Navagwas, not the Dashagwas, who sacrificed or chanted the hymn for ten months.” 2. Number of Rishis. “...when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi...” (10.67.1). But at 1.62.4 there are seven illumined seers, Navagvas, Dashagvas; at 4.51.4 Navagva, Angira, Dashagva is seven-mouthed; in 6.22.2 “we are told of the ancient fathers, the seven seers who were Navagwas”.

Understanding the terms “Navagwa” and “Dashagva” depends, on the one hand, on the understanding of the Vedic symbolism of numbers nine and ten, on the other – on the understanding of the term go, a ray or a cow, symbolizing the perception of the Truth. We already offered our explanation of the meaning of ten and nine (see Ten). If it is true, then Navagwa is the one who uses the consciousness carried by the nine Vedic rivers, but the tenth river, the supramental consciousness in the worlds of the Earth, is not yet available to him, while Dashagva with the help of God has released the supramental consciousness in the Earth, the tenth ray.