Sri Aurobindo

The Secret of the Veda

with Selected Hymns

Note on the Texts

In August 1914, Sri Aurobindo began to publish The Secret of the Veda in the first issue of the philosophical review Arya. This series was accompanied by a related one, Selected Hymns. Selected Hymns was followed a year later by Hymns of the Atris. These works, written and published in monthly instalments between 1914 and 1917, form Parts One to Three of the present volume.

Besides Selected Hymns and Hymns of the Atris, other Vedic translations appeared in the Arya at various times between 1915 and 1920. They were usually introduced when a page or two had to be filled at the end of a 64-page issue. These translations have been placed in the order of their original publication in Part Four, “Other Hymns”.

Thus this volume contains all writings on and translations of the Veda published by Sri Aurobindo in the Arya. Some of what appeared in the Arya was prefigured by essays, translations and notes on the Veda written between 1912 and 1914. However, none of this earlier material was incorporated directly in the works that came out in the Arya. Sri Aurobindo’s manuscript writings on the Veda are included in Vedic Studies with Writings on Philology, volume 14 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. His translations of hymns to Agni are published in volume 16, Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

The Secret of the Veda. This, Sri Aurobindo’s most important expository work on the Veda, appeared in the Arya in twenty-four consecutive instalments between August 1914 and July 1916. (The second chapter was printed in two instalments.) Sri Aurobindo never revised it, apart from minor alterations in Chapter 17. The last instalment of this work in the Arya ended with the following footnote:

We propose for the present to discontinue the Secret of the Veda so as to make room in the third year of the Arya for other matter, but we shall subsequently resume and complete the series.

 Sri Aurobindo never found time to resume the series, and left The Secret of the Veda incomplete.

Selected Hymns. These thirteen translations with commentaries were published in the first twelve issues of the Arya, from August 1914 to July 1915. (Two appeared in the first issue.) A footnote at the beginning of the first instalment, explaining the nature of the translations, is printed as an Author’s Note in the present edition. At the end of the last instalment, Sri Aurobindo noted that he had selected “a few brief and easy hymns” with the idea of “explaining by actual examples the secret of the Veda”, but that “other translations of a more general character” would be necessary to show that this was “the pervading sense and teaching of the Rig Veda.” It was evidently for this purpose that he began Hymns of the Atris in the next issue of the Arya.

Hymns of the Atris. In July 1915, Sri Aurobindo announced in “The ‘Arya’s’ Second Year” that he intended, from the following issue,

to replace the Selected Hymns by a translation of the Hymns of the Atris (the fifth Mandala of the Rig Veda) so conceived as to make the sense of the Vedic chants at once and easily intelligible without the aid of a commentary to the general reader.

Hymns of the Atris began to appear in the Arya in August 1915 and continued until December 1917. This work consists of translations of two series of Suktas (“hymns”) from the fifth Mandala (“book”) of the Rig Veda, along with introductory chapters, a summary of each hymn and interpretative notes. The introductory chapters consist of a foreword, a general introduction entitled “The Doctrine of the Mystics”, and two essays on the gods to whom the hymns are addressed: “Agni, the Divine Will-Force” and “The Guardians of the Light”. The fifth Mandala of the Rig Veda comprises eighty-seven hymns composed by Rishis of the Atri clan. Sri Aurobindo translated forty-three of these: all twenty-eight hymns to Agni (V.1 – 28), all eleven hymns to Mitra-Varuna (V.62 – 72), both hymns to Usha (V.79, 80), the hymn to Surya Savitri (V.81) already translated and commented upon in Selected Hymns, and a hymn to Varuna (V.85), rendered in two versions to show its “exoteric” as well as its “esoteric” sense. (See also “A Hymn of the Thought-Gods” in the next section.) Sri Aurobindo later retranslated the hymns to Agni from the fifth Mandala; the versions that appeared in the Arya are reproduced here, while the revised translations are published in Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

Other Hymns. These sixteen translations from various books of the Rig Veda were published in the Arya at different times between 1915 and 1920. They are reproduced here in the order in which they originally appeared. The last nine form a series. Apart from two pairs of related hymns, the rest have no obvious connection with each other, but illustrate a wide range of approaches to rendering the Veda into English.

A Vedic Hymn (Rig Veda VII.60). This translation of a hymn of Vasishtha to Surya and Mitra-Varuna, arranged in three paragraphs, was published in the Arya in August 1915.

A Hymn of the Thought-Gods. Published in the Arya in February 1916. This is not a translation but a paraphrase of the hymns to the Maruts by the Rishi Shyavashwa of the Atri clan; it is based on Rig Veda V.52 and, in the last three paragraphs, on scattered verses from V.53 – 61. It appeared in the Arya while Hymns of the Atris was running, but did not form part of that series.

The God of the Mystic Wine (Rig Veda IX.75, 42). Published in the Arya in September 1916. These two hymns to Soma were “rendered as literally as possible”, in contrast to the method of interpretative translation usually employed in the Arya. The Sanskrit text in transliteration was printed at the bottom of the page in the Arya. It has been replaced in this edition by the text in Devanagari before each verse, as has been supplied for the other translations.

The Vedic Fire (Rig Veda I.94, 97). These two hymns to Agni were published in the Arya in September 1917. In translating the first hymn, Sri Aurobindo joined the first half of the last verse with the preceding verse. He omitted the second half of the verse, a formula which occurs at the end of most of the hymns of Kutsa Angirasa and is unrelated to the rest of this hymn.

A Vedic Hymn to the Fire (Rig Veda I.59). Published in the Arya in January 1920, after a gap of two years during which no Vedic translations came out in the review. The translation is missing the sixth verse, probably due to lack of space on the last page of the Arya issue. A complete translation is published in Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

Parashara’s Hymns to the Lord of the Flame (Rig Veda I.65 – 73). These nine hymns were published in the Arya in February, June, July and August 1920. They were numbered from 1 to 9 in the order of their appearance: I.65, 67, 68, 66 and 69 – 73. Subsequently Sri Aurobindo revised them for inclusion in Hymns to the Mystic Fire (1946). In the present volume they are reproduced as originally published in the Arya, in the order indicated above.

Appendix: Interpretation of the Veda. This letter was written on 26 August 1914, according to an entry in Sri Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga. In the letter, Sri Aurobindo addressed himself to some remarks on his theory of Vedic interpretation made in an article that appeared in the Hindu, a daily newspaper of Madras, on 24 August. The Hindu printed Sri Aurobindo’s letter on the 27th under the title “Interpretation of the Veda”. The present text has been checked against the files of the Hindu.

Publishing history. After their appearance in the Arya, none of the writings in this volume were reprinted during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime. He expressed some dissatisfaction with them in their existing state and wished to revise them thoroughly before allowing them to be published in book-form. As early as 1920 he wrote to someone who wished to translate The Secret of the Veda into Gujarati:

The “Secret of the Veda” is not complete and there are besides many imperfections and some errors in it which I would have preferred to amend before the book or any translation was published.

In the Foreword to the first edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire (1946), Sri Aurobindo explained why The Secret of the Veda and the accompanying translations had not been reprinted:

The interpretation I have put forward was set out at length in a series of articles with the title “The Secret of the Veda” in the monthly philosophical magazine, “Arya”, some thirty years ago; written in serial form while still developing the theory and not quite complete in its scope or composed on a preconceived and well-ordered plan it was not published in book-form and is therefore not yet available to the reading public. It was accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig Veda which were rather interpretations than translations....

Finally, when it was proposed in 1949 to bring out The Secret of the Veda as a book, Sri Aurobindo dictated in reply:

The publication of the Secret of the Veda as it is does not enter into my intention. It was published in a great hurry and at a time when I had not studied the Rig Veda as a whole as well as I have since done. Whole chapters will have to be rewritten or written otherwise and a considerable labour gone through; moreover it was never finished and considerable additions in order to make it complete are indispensable.

Sri Aurobindo never found time for the necessary revision. After his passing, however, aware of the value of the material that had appeared in the Arya, the Sri Aurobindo International University Centre published in 1956 The Secret of the Veda, Selected Hymns, Hymns of the Atris, and seven of the “Other Hymns” under the title On the Veda. A new edition of the same text was brought out by the same publisher (renamed Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education) in 1964. Both these editions included as an appendix an essay from Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts, “The Origins of Aryan Speech”.

In 1971, most of the same material was published as The Secret of the Veda, volume 10 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library. In that edition, “The Doctrine of the Mystics” was omitted from Hymns of the Atris and printed in full in Hymns to the Mystic Fire, in place of the excerpt originally included in that book; the section of “Other Hymns” was augmented by the reproduction of a number of translations from Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts; and the letter “Interpretation of the Veda” was added. The Centenary edition has been reprinted several times.

The present edition. The Secret of the Veda with Selected Hymns differs in content from earlier editions of the corresponding book (On the Veda and The Secret of the Veda) in that it contains all writings on and translations of the Veda published by Sri Aurobindo in the Arya. Writings reproduced from manuscripts in previous editions – “The Origins of Aryan Speech” and certain translations – have been placed in a new volume, Vedic Studies with Writings on Philology. “The Doctrine of the Mystics” has been restored to the text of Hymns of the Atris. The series entitled “Parashara’s Hymns to the Lord of the Flame” is reproduced for the first time since it appeared in the Arya; the revised translations of these hymns brought out by Sri Aurobindo in 1946 remain in Hymns to the Mystic Fire. Three other Arya translations of hymns to Agni, omitted from The Secret of the Veda in 1971 when they were added to Hymns to the Mystic Fire, are also reproduced in the present volume. All texts have been carefully checked against the Arya.

Vedic quotations. Vedic quotations and references have been checked against a standard edition of the Rig Veda and corrected if necessary. Sri Aurobindo sometimes adapted Sanskrit quotations to suit his context, particularly with regard to case endings, number and word order. Moreover, he often separated the words in transliteration for clarity or for metrical reasons. (See his remarks on pp. 17 – 18 concerning the “euphonic combination of separate words” in the Veda.) Where other discrepancies were found, the received text of the Rig Veda has generally been followed.

In The Secret of the Veda (Part One), Sri Aurobindo often identified quotations from the Rig Veda by references to the Mandala, Sukta and Rik. In passages where most quotations are so identified, the editors have supplied missing references in parentheses according to Sri Aurobindo’s own style. But in other texts, where Sri Aurobindo provided few or no references, references have not been inserted in this edition. This applies in particular to the chapters introducing the translations in Part Three – especially “The Guardians of the Light”, where the Arya text contains dozens of unidentified Vedic allusions and quotations, with or without the use of quotation marks. The sources of these are identified in a table in the reference volume (volume 35) for the convenience of readers who wish to consult the original verses.

In Parts Two to Four, the Saṃhitā text of the translated hymns has been supplied in Devanagari (without accents), as in the previous edition.