Sri Aurobindo: “I beheld afar in a ﬁeld one shaping his weapons who was goldentusked and pure-bright of hue; I give to him the Amrita (the immortal essence, Soma) in separate parts; what shall they do to me who have not Indra and have not the word? I beheld   in the ﬁeld as it were a happy herd ranging continuously, many, shining; they seized them not, for he was born; even those (cows) that were old, become young again.” But if these Dasyus who have not Indra, nor the word, are at present powerless to seize on the luminous herds, it was otherwise before this bright and formidable godhead was born. “Who were they that divorced my strength (maryakam; my host of men, my heroes, v¯ıra) from the cows? for they (my men) had no warrior and protector of the kine.


Sri Aurobindo: Let those who took them from me, release them; he knows and comes driving to us the cattle.”  What, we may fairly ask, are these shining herds, these cows who were old and become young again? Certainly, they are not physical herds, nor is it any earthly ﬁeld by the Yamuna or the Jhelum that is the scene of this splendid vision of the goldentusked warrior god and the herds of the shining cattle. They are the herds either of the physical or of the divine Dawn and the language suits ill with the former interpretation; this mystical vision is surely a ﬁgure of the divine illumination. They are radiances that were stolen by the powers of darkness and are now divinely recovered not by the god of the physical ﬁre, but by the ﬂaming Force which was concealed in the littleness of the material existence and is now liberated into the clarities of an illumined mental action.


Sri Aurobindo: Indra is not, then, the only god who can break up the tenebrous cave and restore the lost radiances. There are other deities to whom various hymns make the attribution of this great victory. Usha is one of them, the divine Dawn, mother of these herds. “True with the gods who are true, great with the gods who are great, sacriﬁcial godhead with the gods sacriﬁcial, she breaks open the strong places, she gives of the shining herds; the cows low towards the Dawn!” (VII.75.7). Agni is another; sometimes he wars by himself as we have already seen, sometimes along with Indra — “Ye two warred over the cows, O Indra, O Agni” (VI.60.2) — or, again, with Soma, — “O Agni and Soma, that heroic might of yours was made conscient when ye robbed the Pani of the cows” (I.93.4).


Sri Aurobindo: Soma in another passage is associated in this victory with Indra; “This god born by force stayed, with  The Cow and the Angiras Legend  Indra as his comrade, the Pani” and performed all the exploits of the gods warring against the Dasyus (VI.44.22). The Ashwins also are credited with the same achievement in VI.62.11, “Ye two open the doors of the strong pen full of the kine” and again in I.112.18, “O Angiras, (the twin Ashwins are sometimes uniﬁed in a single appellation), ye two take delight by the mind and enter ﬁrst in the opening of the stream of the cows,” where the sense is evidently the liberated, outﬂowing stream or sea of the Light .  Brihaspati is more frequently the hero of this victory.  “Brihaspati, coming ﬁrst into birth from the great Light in the supreme ether, seven-mouthed, multiply-born, seven-rayed, dispelled the darknesses; he with his host that possess the stubh and the Rik broke Vala into pieces by his cry.


Sri Aurobindo: Shouting Brihaspati drove upwards the bright herds that speed the offering and they lowed in reply” (IV.50). And again in VI.73.1 and 3, “Brihaspati who is the hill-breaker, the ﬁrst-born, the Angirasa. . . . Brihaspati conquered the treasures (vas¯uni), great pens this god won full of the kine.” The Maruts also, singers of the Rik like Brihaspati, are associated, though less directly in this divine action.


Sri Aurobindo: “He whom ye foster, O Maruts, shall break open the pen” (VI.66.8), and elsewhere we hear of the cows of the Maruts (I.38.2). Pushan, the Increaser, a form of the sun-god is also invoked for the pursuit and recovery of the stolen cattle, (VI.54); “Let Pushan follow after our kine, let him protect our war-steeds. . . . Pushan, go thou after the kine. . . . Let him drive back to us that which was lost.” Even Saraswati becomes a slayer of the Panis.


Sri Aurobindo: And in Madhuchchhandas’ hymn (I.11.5) we have this striking image, “O lord of the thunderbolt, thou didst uncover the hole of Vala of the cows; the gods, unfearing, entered speeding (or putting forth their force) into thee.”  Is there a deﬁnite sense in these variations which will bind them together into a single coherent idea or is it at random that the Rishis invoke now this and now the other deity in the search and war for their lost cattle? If we will consent to take the ideas of the Veda as a whole instead of bewildering ourselves in the play of separate detail, we shall ﬁnd a very simple and sufﬁcient   answer. This matter of the lost herds is only part of a whole system of connected symbols and images. They are recovered by the sacriﬁce and the ﬁery god Agni is the ﬂame, the power and the priest of the sacriﬁce; — by the Word, and Brihaspati is the father of the Word, the Maruts its singers or Brahmas, brahm¯an.o marutah., Saraswati its inspiration; — by the Wine, and Soma is the god of the Wine and the Ashwins its seekers, ﬁnders, givers, drinkers.


Sri Aurobindo: The herds are the herds of Light and the Light comes by the Dawn and by the Sun of whom Pushan is a form. Finally, Indra is the head of all these gods, lord of the light, king of the luminous heaven called Swar, — he is, we say, the luminous or divine Mind; into him all the gods enter and take part in his unveiling of the hidden light. We see therefore that there is a perfect appropriateness in the attribution of one and the same victory to these different deities and in Madhuchchhandas’ image of the gods entering into Indra for the stroke against Vala. Nothing has been done at random or in obedience to a confused ﬂuidity of ideas. The Veda is perfect and beautiful in its coherence and its unity.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover, the conquest of the Light is only part of the great action of the Vedic sacriﬁce. The gods have to win by it all the boons (vi´sv¯a v¯ary¯a) which are necessary for the conquest of immortality and the emergence of the hidden illuminations is only one of these. Force, the Horse, is as necessary as Light, the Cow; not only must Vala be reached and the light won from his jealous grasp, but Vritra must be slain and the waters released; the emergence of the shining herds means the rising of the Dawn and the Sun; that again is incomplete without the sacriﬁce, the ﬁre, the wine. All these things are different members of one action, sometimes mentioned separately, sometimes in groups, sometimes together as if in a single action, a grand total conquest. And the result of their possession is the revelation of the vast Truth and the conquest of Swar, the luminous world, called frequently the wide other world, urum u lokam or simply u lokam.


Sri Aurobindo: We must grasp this unity ﬁrst if we are to understand the separate introduction of these symbols in the various passages of the Rig Veda.   The Cow and the Angiras Legend   Thus in VI.73 which has already been cited, we ﬁnd a brief hymn of three verses in which these symbols are brieﬂy put together in their unity; it might almost be described as one of the mnemonic hymns of the


Sri Aurobindo: Veda which serve to keep in mind the unity of its sense and its symbolism. “He who is the hill-breaker, ﬁrst-born, possessed of the truth, Brihaspati, the Angirasa, the giver of the oblation, pervader of the two worlds, dweller in the heat and light (of the sun), our father, roars aloud as the Bull to the two ﬁrmaments. Brihaspati who for man the voyager has fashioned that other world in the calling of the gods, slaying the Vritra-forces breaks open the cities, conquering foes and overpowering unfriends in his battles. Brihaspati conquers for him the treasures, great pens this god wins full of the kine, seeking the conquest of the world of Swar, unassailable; Brihaspati slays the Foe by the hymns of illumination (arkaih.).” We see at once the unity of this many-sided symbolism.


Sri Aurobindo: Another passage more mystic in its language brings in the idea of the dawn and the restoration or new-birth of light in the sun which are not expressly mentioned in the brief hymn to Brihaspati. It is in the praise of Soma of which the opening phrase has already been cited, VI.44.22; “This god born by force stayed with Indra as his comrade the Pani; he it was wrested from his own unblest father (the divided being) his weapons of war and his forms of knowledge (m¯ay¯ah.), he it was made the Dawns glorious in their lord, he it was created in the Sun the Light within, he it was found the triple principle (of immortality) in heaven in its regions of splendour (the three worlds of Swar) and in the tripartite worlds the hidden immortality (this is the giving of the Amrita in separate parts alluded to in the Atris’ hymn to Agni, the threefold offering of the Soma given on the three levels, tris.u s¯anus.u, body, life and mind); he it was supported widely heaven and earth, he it was fashioned the car with the seven rays; he it was held by his force the ripe yield (of the madhu or ghr.ta) in the cows, even the fountain of the ten movements.” It certainly seems astonishing to me that so many acute and eager minds should have read such hymns as these without realising that they are the sacred poems of symbolists and mystics, not   of Nature-worshipping barbarians or of rude Aryan invaders warring with the civilised and Vedantic Dravidians.  Let us now pass rapidly through certain other passages in which there is a more scattered collocation of these symbols.


Sri Aurobindo: First, we ﬁnd that in this image of the cavern-pen in the hill, as elsewhere, the Cow and Horse go together. We have seen Pushan called upon to seek for the cows and protect the horses.  The two forms of the Aryan’s wealth always at the mercy of marauders? But let us see. “So in thy ecstasy of the Soma thou didst break open, O hero (Indra), the pen of the Cow and the Horse, like a city” (VIII.32.5).


Sri Aurobindo: “Break open for us the thousands of the Cow and the Horse” (VIII.34.14). “That which thou holdest, O Indra, the Cow and the Horse and the imperishable enjoyment, conﬁrm that in the sacriﬁcer and not in the Pani; he who lies in the slumber, doing not the work and seeking not the gods, let him perish by his own impulsions; thereafter conﬁrm perpetually (in us) the wealth that must increase” (VIII.97.2 and 3). In another hymn the Panis are said to withhold the wealth of cows and horses. Always they are powers who receive the coveted wealth but do not use it, preferring to slumber, avoiding the divine action (vrata), and they are powers who must perish or be conquered before the wealth can be securely possessed by the sacriﬁcer. And always the Cow and the Horse represent a concealed and imprisoned wealth which has to be uncovered and released by a divine puissance.


Sri Aurobindo: With the conquest of the shining herds is also associated the conquest or the birth or illumination of the Dawn and the Sun, but this is a point whose signiﬁcance we shall have to consider in another chapter. And associated with the Herds, the Dawn and the Sun are the Waters; for the slaying of Vritra with the release of the waters and the defeat of Vala with the release of the herds are two companion and not unconnected myths. In certain passages even, as in I.32.4, the slaying of Vritra is represented as the preliminary to the birth of the Sun, the Dawn and Heaven, and in others the opening of the Hill to the ﬂowing of the Waters.  For the general connection we may note the following passages: VII.90.4, “The Dawns broke forth perfect in their shining and  The Cow and the Angiras Legend  unhurt; meditating they (the Angirases) found the wide Light; they who desire opened the wideness of the cows and the waters for them ﬂowed forth from heaven”; I.72.8, “By right thought the seven Mighty Ones of heaven (the seven rivers) knew the truth and knew the doors of bliss; Sarama found the strong wideness of the cows and by that the human creature enjoys”; I.100.18, of Indra and the Maruts, “He with his shining companions won the ﬁeld, won the Sun, won the waters”; V.14.4, of Agni, “Agni, born, shone out slaying the Dasyus, by the Light the Darkness; he found the cows, the waters and Swar”; VI.60.2, of Indra and Agni, “Ye two warred over the cows, the waters, Swar, the dawns that were ravished; O Indra, O Agni, thou unitest (to us) the regions, Swar, the brilliant dawns, the waters and the cows”; I.32.12, of Indra, “O hero, thou didst conquer the cow, thou didst conquer the Soma; thou didst loose forth to their ﬂowing the seven rivers.”  In the last passage we see Soma coupled with the cows among the conquests of Indra.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually the Soma intoxication is the strength in which Indra conquers the cows; e.g. III.43.7, the Soma “in the intoxication of which thou didst open up the cowpens” ; II.15.8, “He, hymned by the Angirases, broke Vala and hurled apart the strong places of the hill; he severed their artiﬁcial obstructions; these things Indra did in the intoxication of the Soma.” Sometimes, however, the working is reversed and it is the Light that brings the bliss of the Soma wine or they come together as in I.62.5, “Hymned by the Angirases, O achiever of works, thou didst open the dawns with (or by) the Sun and with (or by) the cows the Soma.”  Agni is also, like the Soma, an indispensable element of the sacriﬁce and therefore we ﬁnd Agni too included in these formulas of association, as in VII.99.4. “Ye made that wide other world for (as the goal of) the sacriﬁce, bringing into being the Sun and the Dawn and Agni,” and we have the same formula in III.31.15 with the addition of the Path and in VII.44.3 with the addition of the cow.


Sri Aurobindo: From these examples it will appear how closely the different symbols and parables of the Veda are connected with each other   and we shall therefore miss the true road of interpretation if we treat the legend of the Angirases and the Panis as an isolated mythus which we can interpret at our pleasure without careful regard to its setting in the general thought of the Veda and the light that that general thought casts upon the ﬁgured language in which the legend is recounted.   Chapter XV The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows T HE CONQUEST or recovery of the Sun and the Dawn is a frequent subject of allusion in the hymns of the Rig Veda. Sometimes it is the ﬁnding of Surya, sometimes the ﬁnding or conquest of Swar, the world of Surya. Sayana, indeed, takes the word Swar as a synonym of Surya; but it is perfectly clear from several passages that Swar is the name of a world or supreme Heaven above the ordinary heaven and earth.  Sometimes indeed it is used for the solar light proper both to Surya and to the world which is formed by his illumination.


Sri Aurobindo: We have seen that the waters which descend from Heaven or which are conquered and enjoyed by Indra and the mortals who are befriended by him, are described as svarvat¯ır apah.. Sayana, taking these apah. for physical waters, was bound to ﬁnd another meaning for svarvat¯ıh. and he declares that it means saran.avat¯ıh., moving; but this is obviously a forced sense which the word itself does not suggest and can hardly bear. The thunderbolt of Indra is called the heavenly stone, svaryam a´sm¯anam; its light, that is to say, is the light from this world of the solar splendours. Indra himself is svarpati, the master of Swar, of the luminous world.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover, as we see that the ﬁnding and recovery of the Cows is usually described as the work of Indra, often with the aid of the Angiras Rishis and by the instrumentality of the mantra and the sacriﬁce, of Agni and Soma, so also the ﬁnding and recovery of the sun is attributed to the same agencies. Moreover the two actions are continually associated together. We have, it seems to me, overwhelming evidence in the Veda itself that all these things constitute really one great action of which they are parts. The Cows are the hidden rays of the Dawn or of Surya; their rescue out of the darkness leads to or is the sign of the uprising of the sun that was hidden in the darkness; this again is the condition, always with the instrumentality of the sacriﬁce,   its circumstances and its helping gods, of the conquest of Swar, the supreme world of Light. So much results beyond doubt, it seems to me, from the language of the Veda itself; but also that language points to this Sun being a symbol of the divine illumining Power, Swar the world of the divine Truth and the conquest of divine Truth the real aim of the Vedic Rishis and the subject of their hymns.


Sri Aurobindo: I will now examine as rapidly as possible the evidence which points towards this conclusion.  First of all, we see that Swar and Surya are different conceptions in the minds of the Vedic Rishis, but always closely connected. We have for instance the verse in Bharadwaja’s hymn to Soma and Indra, VI.72.1, “Ye found the Sun, ye found Swar, ye slew all darkness and limitations” and in a hymn of Vamadeva to Indra, IV.16, which celebrates this achievement of Indra and the Angirases, “When by the hymns of illumination (arkaih.) Swar was found, entirely visible, when they (the Angirases) made to shine the great light out of the night, he (Indra) made the darknesses ill-assured (i.e. loosened their ﬁrm hold) so that men might have vision.” In the ﬁrst passage we see that Swar and Surya are different from each other and that Swar is not merely another name for Surya; but at the same time the ﬁnding of Swar and the ﬁnding of Surya are represented as closely connected and indeed one movement and the result is the slaying of all darkness and limitations. So in the second passage the ﬁnding and making visible of Swar is associated with the shining of a great light out of the darkness, which we ﬁnd from parallel passages to be the recovery, by the Angirases, of the Sun that was lying concealed in the darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: Surya is found by the Angirases through the power of their hymns or true mantras; Swar also is found and made visible by the hymns of the Angirases, arkaih.. It is clear therefore that the substance of Swar is a great light and that that light is the light of Surya the Sun.  We might even suppose that Swar is a word for the sun, light or the sky if it were not clear from other passages that it is the name of a world. It is frequently alluded to as a world beyond the Rodasi, beyond heaven and earth, and is otherwise called the wide world, uru loka, or the wide other world, uru u loka, or  The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows  simply that (other) world, u loka. This world is described as one of vast light and of a wide freedom from fear where the cows, the rays of Surya, disport themselves freely.


Sri Aurobindo: So in VI.47.8, we have “Thou in thy knowledge leadest us on to the wide world, even Swar, the Light which is freedom from fear, with happy being,” svar jyotir abhaya ˙m svasti. In III.2.7, Agni Vaishwanara is described as ﬁlling the earth and heaven and the vast Swar, ¯a rodas¯ı apr.n.ad ¯a svar mahat; and so also Vasishtha says in his hymn to Vishnu, VII.99, “Thou didst support ﬁrmly, O Vishnu, this earth and heaven and uphold the earth all around by the rays (of Surya). Ye two created for the sacriﬁce (i.e. as its result) the wide other world (urum u lokam), bringing into being the Sun, the Dawn and Agni,” where we again see the close connection of Swar, the wide world, with the birth or appearance of the Sun and the Dawn. It is described as the result of the sacriﬁce, the end of our pilgrimage, the vast home to which we arrive, the other world to which those who do well the works of sacriﬁce attain, sukr.t¯am u lokam. Agni goes as an envoy between earth and heaven and then encompasses with his being this vast home, ks.aya ˙m br.hanta ˙m pari bh¯us.ati, (III.3.2).


Sri Aurobindo: It is a world of bliss and the fullness of all the riches to which the Vedic Rishi aspires: “He for whom, because he does well his works, O Agni Jatavedas, thou willest to make that other world of bliss, attains to a felicity full of the Horses, the Sons, the Heroes, the Cows, all happy being” (V.4.11). And it is by the Light that this Bliss is attained; it is by bringing to Birth the Sun and the Dawn and the Days that the Angirases attain to it for the desiring human race; “Indra who winneth Swar, bringing to birth the days, has conquered by those who desire (u´sigbhih., a word applied like nr. to express men and gods, but, like nr. also, sometimes especially indicating the Angirases) the armies he attacks, and he has made to shine out for man the vision of the days (ketum ahn¯am) and found the Light for the great bliss,” avindaj jyotir br.hate ran. ¯aya (III.34.4).  All this may very well be interpreted, so far as these and other isolated passages go, as a sort of Red Indian conception of a physical world beyond the sky and the earth, a world made out   of the rays of the sun, in which the human being, freed from fear and limitation, — it is a wide world, — has his desires satisﬁed and possesses quite an unlimited number of horses, cows, sons and retainers. But what we have set out to prove is that it is not so, that on the contrary, this wide world, br.had dyau or Swar, which we have to attain by passing beyond heaven and earth, — for so it is more than once stated, e.g. I.36.8, “Human beings (manus.ah.) slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven and made the wide world for their dwelling place,” ghnanto vr.tram ataran rodas¯ı apa uru ks.ay¯aya cakrire, — that this supra-celestial wideness, this illimitable light is a supramental heaven, the heaven of the supramental Truth, of the immortal Beatitude, and that the light which is its substance and constituent reality, is the light of Truth. But at present it is enough to emphasise this point that it is a heaven concealed from our vision by a certain darkness, that it has to be found and made visible, and that this seeing and ﬁnding depends on the birth of the Dawn, the rising of the Sun, the upsurging of the Solar Herds out of their secret cave.


Sri Aurobindo: The souls successful in sacriﬁce become svardr.´s and svarvid, seers of Swar and ﬁnders of Swar or its knowers; for vid is a root which means both to ﬁnd or get and to know and in one or two passages the less ambiguous root j˜n¯a is substituted for it and the Veda even speaks of making the light known out of the darkness. For the rest, this question of the nature of Swar or the wide world is of supreme importance for the interpretation of the Veda, since on it turns the whole difference between the theory of a hymnal of barbarians and the theory of a book of ancient knowledge, a real Veda. It can only be entirely dealt with in a discussion of the hundred and more passages speaking of this wide world which would be quite beyond the scope of these chapters. We shall, however, have to return to this question while dealing with the Angiras hymns and afterwards.  The birth of the Sun and the Dawn must therefore be regarded as the condition of seeing or attaining to Swar, and it is this which explains the immense importance attached to this legend or image in the Veda and to the conception of the  The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows  illumining, ﬁnding, bringing to birth of the light out of the darkness by the true hymn, the satya mantra.


Sri Aurobindo: This is done by Indra and the Angirases, and numerous are the passages that allude to it. Indra and the Angirases are described as ﬁnding Swar or the Sun, avindat, illumining or making it to shine, arocayat, bringing it to birth, ajanayat, (we must remember that in the Veda the manifestation of the gods in the sacriﬁce is constantly described as their birth); and winning and possessing it, sanat.  Often indeed Indra alone is mentioned. It is he who makes light from the nights and brings into birth the Sun, ks.ap¯a ˙m vast¯a janit¯a s¯uryasya (III.49.4), he who has brought to their birth the Sun and the Dawn (II.12.7), or, in a more ample phrase, brings to birth together the Sun and Heaven and Dawn (VI.30.5). By his shining he illumines the Dawn, by his shining he makes to blaze out the sun, haryann us.asam arcayah.


Sri Aurobindo: s¯urya ˙m haryann arocayah. (III.44.2) . These are his great achievements, jaj¯ana s¯uryam us.asa ˙m suda ˙ms¯ah. (III.32.8), that with his shining comrades he wins for possession the ﬁeld (is this not the ﬁeld in which the Atri saw the shining cows?), wins the sun, wins the waters,


Sri Aurobindo: sanat ks.etra ˙m sakhibhih. ´svitnyebhih. sanat s¯urya ˙m sanad apah.  suvajrah. (I.100.18)


Sri Aurobindo: . He is also he who winneth Swar, svars. ¯a , as we have seen, by bringing to birth the days


Sri Aurobindo: . In isolated passages we might take this birth of the Sun as referring to the original creation of the sun by the gods, but not when we take these and other passages together. This birth is his birth in conjunction with the Dawn, his birth out of the Night. It is by the sacriﬁce that this birth takes place, — indrah. suyaj˜na us.asah.


Sri Aurobindo: svar janat (II.21.4), “Indra sacriﬁcing well brought to birth the Dawns and Swar” ; it is by human aid that it is done, — asm¯akebhir nr.bhih. s¯urya ˙m sanat, by our “men” he wins the sun (I.100.6); and in many hymns it is described as the result of the work of the Angirases and is associated with the delivering of the cows or the breaking of the hill.  It is this circumstance among others that prevents us from taking, as we might otherwise have taken, the birth or ﬁnding of the Sun as simply a description of the sky (Indra) daily recovering the sun at dawn. When it is said of him that he ﬁnds the light   even in the blind darkness, so andhe cit tamasi jyotir vidat, it is evident that the reference is to the same light which Agni and Soma found, one light for all these many creatures, avindata ˙m jyotir eka ˙m bahubhyah., when they stole the cows from the Panis (I.93.4), “the wakeful light which they who increase truth brought into birth, a god for the god” (VIII.89.1), the secret light (g¯ud.ha ˙m jyotih.) which the fathers, the Angirases, found when by their true mantras they brought to birth the Dawn. It is that which is referred to in the mystic hymn to all the gods (VIII.29.10) attributed to Manu Vaivaswata or to Kashyapa, in which it is said, “Certain of them singing the Rik thought out the mighty S¯aman and by that they made the Sun to shine.”


Sri Aurobindo: This is not represented as being done previous to the creation of man; for it is said in VII.91.1, “The gods who increase by our obeisance and were of old, without blame, they for man beset (by the powers of darkness) made the Dawn to shine by the Sun.” This is the ﬁnding of the Sun that was dwelling in the darkness by the Angirases through their ten months’ sacriﬁce.  Whatever may have been the origin of the image or legend, it is an old one and widespread and it supposes a long obscuration of the Sun during which man was beset by darkness. We ﬁnd it not only among the Aryans of India, but among the Mayas of America whose civilisation was a ruder and perhaps earlier type of the Egyptian culture; there too it is the same legend of the Sun concealed for many months in the darkness and recovered by the hymns and prayers of the wise men (the Angiras Rishis?). In the Veda the recovery of the Light is ﬁrst effected by the Angirases, the seven sages, the ancient human fathers and is then constantly repeated in human experience by their agency.


Sri Aurobindo: It will appear from this analysis that the legend of the lost Sun and its recovery by sacriﬁce and by the mantra and the legend of the lost Cows and their recovery, also by the mantra, both carried out by Indra and the Angirases, are not two different myths, they are one. We have already asserted this identity while discussing the relations of the Cows and the Dawn. The Cows are the rays of the Dawn, the herds of the Sun and not physical cattle. The lost Cows are the lost rays of the Sun; their  The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows  recovery is the forerunner of the recovery of the lost sun. But it is now necessary to put this identity beyond all possible doubt by the clear statement of the Veda itself.


Sri Aurobindo: For the Veda does explicitly tell us that the cows are the Light and the pen in which they are hidden is the darkness.  Not only have we the passage already quoted, I.92.4, in which the purely metaphorical character of the cows and the pen is indicated, “Dawn uncovered the darkness like the pen of the cow”; not only have we the constant connection of the image of the recovery of the cows with the ﬁnding of the light as in I.93.4, “Ye two stole the cows from the Panis. . . . Ye found the one light for many”, or in II.24.3, “That is the work to be done for the most divine of the gods; the ﬁrm places were cast down, the fortiﬁed places were made weak; up Brihaspati drove the cows (rays), by the hymn (brahman. ¯a) he broke Vala, he concealed the darkness, he made Swar visible”; not only are we told in V.31.3, “He impelled forward the good milkers within the concealing pen, he opened up by the Light the all-concealing darkness”; but, in case any one should tell us that there is no connection in the Veda between one clause of a sentence and another and that the Rishis are hopping about with minds happily liberated from the bonds of sense and reason from the Cows to the Sun and from the darkness to the cave of the Dravidians, we have in answer the absolute identiﬁcation in I.33.10, “Indra the Bull made the thunderbolt his ally” or perhaps “made it applied (yujam), he by the Light milked the rays (cows) out of the darkness,” — we must remember that the thunderbolt is the svarya a´sm¯a and has the light of Swar in it, — and again in IV.51.2, where there is question of the Panis, “They (the Dawns) breaking into dawn pure, purifying, opened the doors of the pen, even of the darkness,” vrajasya tamaso dv¯ar¯a. If in face of all these passages we insist on making a historical myth of the Cows and the Panis, it will be because we are determined to make the Veda mean that in spite of the evidence of the Veda itself.  Otherwise we must admit that this supreme hidden wealth of the Panis, nidhi ˙m pan.¯ın¯a ˙m parama ˙m guh¯a hitam (II.24.6), is not wealth of earthly herds, but, as is clearly stated by Paruchchhepa   Daivodasi (I.130.3), “the treasure of heaven hidden in the secret cavern like the young of the Bird, within the inﬁnite rock, like a pen of the cows”, avindad divo nihita ˙m guh¯a nidhi ˙m ver na garbha ˙m pariv¯ıtam a´smani anante antar a´smani, vraja ˙m vajr¯ı gav¯am iva sis. ¯asan.


Sri Aurobindo: The passages in which the connection of the two legends or their identity appear, are numerous; I will only cite a few that are typical. We have in one of the hymns that speak at length of this legend, I.62, “O Indra, O Puissant, thou with the Dashagwas (the Angirases) didst tear Vala with the cry; hymned by the Angirases, thou didst open the Dawns with the Sun and with the Cows the Soma.” We have VI.17.3, “Hear the hymn and increase by the words; make manifest the Sun, slay the foe, cleave out the Cows, O Indra.” We read in VII.98.6, “All this wealth of cows that thou seest around thee by the eye of the Sun is thine, thou art the sole lord of the cows, O Indra,” gav¯am asi gopatir eka indra, and to show of what kind of cows Indra is the lord, we have in III.31, a hymn of Sarama and the Cows, “The victorious (Dawns) clove to him and they knew a great light out of the darkness; knowing the Dawns went upward to him, Indra became the sole lord of the Cows,” patir gav¯am abhavad eka indrah., and the hymn goes on to tell how it was by the mind and by the discovery of the whole path of the Truth that the seven sages, the Angirases drove up the Cows out of their strong prison and how Sarama, knowing, came to the cavern in the hill and to the voice of the imperishable herds. We have the same connection with the Dawns and the ﬁnding of the wide solar light of Swar in VII.90.4, “The Dawns broke forth perfect in light and unhurt, they (the Angirases) meditating found the wide Light (uru jyotih.); they who desire opened the wideness of the Cows, the waters ﬂowed on them from heaven.


Sri Aurobindo: ”  So too in II.19.3 we have the Days and the Sun and the Cows, — “He brought to its birth the Sun, found the Cows, effecting out of the Night the manifestations of the days.” In IV.1, the Dawns and the Cows are identiﬁed, “The good milkers whose pen was the rock, the shining ones in their concealing prison they drove upward, the Dawns answering their call,”  The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows  unless this means, as is possible, that the Dawns called by the Angirases, “our human fathers”, who are mentioned in the preceding verse, drove up for them the Cows. Then in VI.17.5 we have the breaking of the pen as the means of the outshining of the Sun; “Thou didst make the Sun and the Dawn to shine, breaking the ﬁrm places; thou didst move from its foundation the great hill that enveloped the Cows”; and ﬁnally in III.39 the absolute identiﬁcation of the two images in their legendary form, “None is there among mortals who can blame (or, as I should rather interpret, no mortal power that can conﬁne or obstruct) these our fathers who fought for the Cows (of the Panis); Indra of the mightiness, Indra of the works released for them the strongly closed cow-pens; when a friend with his friends the Navagwas, following on his knees the cows, when with the ten, the Dashagwas, Indra found the true Sun (or, as I render it, the Truth, the Sun,) dwelling in the darkness.” The passage is conclusive; the cows are the Cows of the Panis which the Angirases pursue entering the cave on their hands and knees, the ﬁnders are Indra and the Angirases who are spoken of in other hymns as Navagwas and Dashagwas, and that which is found by entering the cow-pens of the Panis in the cave of the hill is not the stolen wealth of the Aryans, but “the sun dwelling in the darkness”.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore it is established beyond question that the cows of the Veda, the cows of the Panis, the cows which are stolen, fought for, pursued, recovered, the cows which are desired by the Rishis, the cows which are won by the hymn and the sacriﬁce, by the blazing ﬁre and the god-increasing verse and the godintoxicating Soma, are symbolic cows, are the cows of Light, are, in the other and inner Vedic sense of the words go, usr¯a, usriy¯a, the shining ones, the radiances, the herds of the Sun, the luminous forms of the Dawn. By this inevitable conclusion the corner-stone of Vedic interpretation is securely founded far above the gross materialism of a barbarous worship and the Veda reveals itself as a symbolic scripture, a sacred allegory whether of Sun-worship and Dawn-worship or of the cult of a higher and inner Light, of the true Sun, satya ˙m s¯uryam, that   dwells concealed in the darkness of our ignorance, hidden as the child of the Bird, the divine Hansa, in the inﬁnite rock of this material existence, anante antar a´smani.  Although in this chapter I have conﬁned myself with some rigidity to the evidence that the cows are the light of the sun hid in darkness, yet their connection with the light of Truth and the sun of Knowledge has already shown itself in one or two of the verses cited. We shall see that when we examine, not separate verses, but whole passages of these Angiras hymns the hint thus given develops into a clear certainty. But ﬁrst we must cast a glance at these Angiras Rishis and at the creatures of the cave, the friends of darkness from whom they recover the luminous herds and the lost Sun, — the enigmatic Panis.   Chapter XVI


Sri Aurobindo: The Angiras Rishis T HE NAME Angiras occurs in the Veda in two different forms, Angira and Angiras, although the latter is the more common; we have also the patronymic Angirasa applied more than once to the god Brihaspati. In later times Angiras, like Bhrigu and other seers, was regarded as one of the original sages, progenitors of clans of Rishis who went by their names, the Angirasas, Atris, Bhargavas. In the Veda also there are these families of Rishis, the Atris, Bhrigus, Kanwas etc. In one of the hymns of the Atris the discovery of Agni, the sacred ﬁre, is attributed to the Angiras Rishis (V.11.6), but in another to the Bhrigus (X.46.9).1 Frequently the seven original Angiras Rishis are described as the human fathers, pitaro manus.y¯ah., who discovered the Light, made the sun to shine and ascended to the heaven of the Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: In some of the hymns of the tenth Mandala they are associated as the Pitris or Manes with Yama, a deity who only comes into prominence in the later Suktas; they take their seats with the gods on the barhis, the sacred grass, and have their share in the sacriﬁce.  If this were all, the explanation of the part taken by the Angiras Rishis in the ﬁnding of the Cows, would be simple and superﬁcial enough; they would be the Ancestors, the founders of the Vedic religion, partially deiﬁed by their descendants and continually associated with the gods whether in the winning back of the Dawn and the Sun out of the long Arctic night or in the conquest of the Light and the Truth. But this is not all, the Vedic myth has profounder aspects. In the ﬁrst place, the Angirases are not merely the deiﬁed human fathers, they are also brought before us as heavenly seers, sons of the gods, sons 1 Very possibly the Angiras Rishis are the ﬂame-powers of Agni and the Bhrigus the solar powers of Surya.


Sri Aurobindo: of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, divas putr¯aso asurasya v¯ır¯ah. (III.53.7), an expression which, their number being seven, reminds us strongly, though perhaps only fortuitously, of the seven Angels of Ahura Mazda in the kindred Iranian mythology. Moreover there are passages in which they seem to become purely symbolical, powers and sons of Agni the original Angiras, forces of the symbolic Light and Flame, and even to coalesce into a single seven-mouthed Angiras with his nine and his ten rays of the Light, navagve a˙ngire da´sagve sapt¯asye, on and by whom the Dawn breaks out with all her joy and opulence. And yet all these three presentations seem to be of the same Angirases, their characteristics and their action being otherwise identical.  Two entirely opposite explanations can be given of the double character of these seers, divine and human.


Sri Aurobindo: They may have been originally human sages deiﬁed by their descendants and in the apotheosis given a divine parentage and a divine function; or they may have been originally demigods, powers of the Light and Flame, who became humanised as the fathers of the race and the discoverers of its wisdom. Both of these processes are recognisable in early mythology. In the Greek legend, for instance, Castor and Polydeuces and their sister Helen are human beings, though children of Zeus, and only deiﬁed after their death, but the probability is that originally all three were gods, — Castor and Polydeuces, the twins, riders of the horse, saviours of sailors on the ocean being almost certainly identical with the Vedic Ashwins, the Horsemen, as their name signiﬁes, riders in the wonderful chariot, twins also, saviours of Bhujyu from the ocean, ferriers over the great waters, brothers of the Dawn, and Helen very possibly the Dawn their sister or even identical with Sarama, the hound of heaven, who is, like Dakshina, a power, almost a ﬁgure of the Dawn. But in either case there has been a farther development by which these gods or demigods have become invested with psychological functions, perhaps by the same process which in the Greek religion converted Athene, the Dawn, into the goddess of knowledge and Apollo, the sun, into the divine singer and seer, lord of the prophetic and poetic inspiration.   The Angiras Rishis


Sri Aurobindo: In the Veda it is possible that another tendency has been at work, — the persistent and all-pervading habit of symbolism dominant in the minds of these ancient Mystics. Everything, their own names, the names of Kings and sacriﬁcers, the ordinary circumstances of their lives were turned into symbols and covers for their secret meaning. Just as they used the ambiguity of the word go, which means both ray and cow, so as to make the concrete ﬁgure of the cow, the chief form of their pastoral wealth, a cover for its hidden sense of the inner light which was the chief element in the spiritual wealth they coveted from the gods, so also they would use their own names, Gotama “most full of light”, Gavisthira “the steadfast in light” to hide a broad and general sense for their thought beneath what seemed a personal claim or desire. Thus too they used the experiences external and internal whether of themselves or of other Rishis.  If there is any truth in the old legend of Shunahshepa bound as a victim on the altar of sacriﬁce, it is yet quite certain, as we shall see, that in the Rig Veda the occurrence or the legend is used as a symbol of the human soul bound by the triple cord of sin and released from it by the divine power of Agni, Surya, Varuna.


Sri Aurobindo: So also Rishis like Kutsa, Kanwa, Ushanas Kavya have become types and symbols of certain spiritual experiences and victories and placed in that capacity side by side with the gods.  It is not surprising, then, that in this mystic symbolism the seven Angiras Rishis should have become divine powers and living forces of the spiritual life without losing altogether their traditional or historic human character. We will leave, however, these conjectures and speculations aside and examine instead the part played by these three elements or aspects of their personality in the ﬁgure of the cows and the recovery of the Sun and the Dawn out of the darkness.  We note ﬁrst that the word Angiras is used in the Veda as an epithet, often in connection with the image of the Dawn and the Cows. Secondly, it occurs as a name of Agni, while Indra is said to become Angiras and Brihaspati is called Angiras and Angirasa, obviously not as a mere decorative or mythological appellation but with a special signiﬁcance and an allusion to   the psychological or other sense attached to the word.


Sri Aurobindo: Even the Ashwins are addressed collectively as Angiras. It is therefore clear that the word Angiras is used in the Veda not merely as a name of a certain family of Rishis, but with a distinct meaning inherent in the word. It is probable also that even when used as a name it is still with a clear recognition of the inherent meaning of the name; it is probable even that names in the Veda are generally, if not always, used with a certain stress on their signiﬁcance, especially the names of gods, sages and kings.  The word Indra is generally used as a name, yet we have such signiﬁcant glimpses of the Vedic method as the description of Usha indratam¯a a˙ngirastam¯a, “most-Indra”, “most-Angiras”, and of the Panis as anindr¯ah., “not-Indra”, expressions which evidently are meant to convey the possession or absence of the qualities, powers or functionings represented by Indra and the Angiras. We have then to see what may be this meaning and what light it sheds on the nature or functions of the Angiras Rishis.


Sri Aurobindo: The word is akin to the name Agni; for it is derived from a root a˙ng which is only a nasalised form of ag, the root of Agni.  These roots seem to convey intrinsically the sense of preeminent or forceful state, feeling, movement, action, light,2 and it is this last sense of a brilliant or burning light that gives us agni, ﬁre, a˙ngati, ﬁre, a˙ng¯ara, a burning coal and a˙ngiras, which must have meant ﬂaming, glowing. Both in the Veda and the tradition of the Brahmanas the Angirases are in their origin closely connected with Agni. In the Brahmanas it is said that Agni is the ﬁre and the Angirases the burning coals, a˙ng¯ar¯ah.; but in the Veda itself the indication seems rather to be that they are the ﬂames or lustres of Agni. In X.62, a hymn to the Angiras Rishis, it is said of them that they are sons of Agni and have been born about him in different forms all about heaven, and in the next clause it is added, speaking of them collectively in the singular:


Sri Aurobindo: 2 For state we have agra, ﬁrst, top and Greek agan, excessively; for feeling, Greek agap¯e, love, and possibly Sanskrit a˙ngan¯a, a woman; for movement and action several words in Sanskrit and in Greek and Latin.   The Angiras Rishis  navagvo nu da´sagvo a˙ngirastamah. sac¯a deves.u ma ˙mhate, ninerayed, ten-rayed, most “Angiras”, this Angiras clan becomes together full of plenty with or in the gods; aided by Indra they set free the pen of cows and horses, they give to the sacriﬁcer the mystic eight-eared kine and thereby create in the gods ´sravas, the divine hearing or inspiration of the Truth. It is fairly evident that the Angiras Rishis are here the radiant lustres of the divine Agni which are born in heaven, therefore of the divine Flame and not of any physical ﬁre; they become equipped with the nine rays of the Light and the ten, become most a˙ngiras, that is to say most full of the blazing radiance of Agni, the divine ﬂame, and are therefore able to release the imprisoned Light and Force and create the supramental knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Even if this interpretation of the symbolism is not accepted, yet that there is a symbolism must be admitted. These Angirases are not human sacriﬁcers, but sons of Agni born in heaven, although their action is precisely that of the human Angirases, the fathers, pitaro manus.y¯ah.; they are born with different forms, vir¯up¯asah., and all this can only mean that they are various forms of the power of Agni. The question is of what Agni; the sacriﬁcial ﬂame, the element of ﬁre generally or that other sacred ﬂame which is described as “the priest with the seer-will” or “who does the work of the seer, the true, the rich in varied light of inspiration,” agnir hot¯a kavikratuh. satya´s citra´sravastamah.? If it is the element of ﬁre, then the blazing lustre they represent must be that of the Sun, the ﬁre of Agni radiating out as the solar rays and in association with Indra the sky creating the Dawn.


Sri Aurobindo: There can be no other physical interpretation consistent with the details and circumstances of the Angiras myth. But this explanation does not at all account for the farther description of the Angiras Rishis as seers, as singers of the hymn, powers of Brihaspati as well as of the Sun and Dawn.  There is another passage of the Veda (VI.6.3-5) in which the identity of these divine Angirases with the ﬂaming lustres of Agni is clearly and unmistakably revealed. “Wide everywhere, O pure-shining Agni, range driven by the wind thy pure shining lustres (bh¯am¯asah.); forcefully overpowering the heavenly Nine  rayed ones (divy¯a navagv¯ah.) enjoy the woods3 (van¯a vananti, signiﬁcantly conveying the covert sense, ‘enjoying the objects of enjoyment’) breaking them up violently. O thou of the pure light, they bright and pure assail4 (or overcome) all the earth, they are thy horses galloping in all directions.


Sri Aurobindo: Then thy roaming shines widely vast directing their journey to the higher level of the Various-coloured (the cow, Prishni, mother of the Maruts).  Then doubly (in earth and heaven?) thy tongue leaps forward like the lightning loosed of the Bull that wars for the cows.”  Sayana tries to avoid the obvious identiﬁcation of the Rishis with the ﬂames by giving navagva the sense of “new-born rays”, but obviously divy¯a navagv¯ah. here and the sons of Agni (in X.62) born in heaven who are navagva are the same and cannot possibly be different; and the identiﬁcation is conﬁrmed, if any conﬁrmation were needed, by the statement that in this ranging of Agni constituted by the action of the Navagwas his tongue takes the appearance of the thunderbolt of Indra, the Bull who wars for the cows, loosed from his hand and leaping forward, undoubtedly to assail the powers of darkness in the hill of heaven; for the march of Agni and the Navagwas is here described as ascending the hill (s¯anu pr.´sneh.) after ranging over the earth.  We have evidently here a symbolism of the Flame and the Light, the divine ﬂames devouring the earth and then becoming the lightning of heaven and the lustre of the solar Powers; for Agni in the Veda is the light of the sun and the lightning as well as the ﬂame found in the waters and shining on the earth.


Sri Aurobindo: The Angiras Rishis being powers of Agni share this manifold function. The divine ﬂame kindled by the sacriﬁce supplies also to Indra the material of the lightning, the weapon, the heavenly stone, svarya a´sm¯a, by which he destroys the powers of darkness and wins the cows, the solar illuminations.  Agni, the father of the Angirases, is not only the fount and origin of these divine ﬂames, he is also described in the Veda 3 The logs of the sacriﬁcial ﬁre, according to Sayana.  4 Shave the hair of the earth, according to Sayana.


Sri Aurobindo: The Angiras Rishis  as himself the ﬁrst, that is to say the supreme and original Angiras, prathamo a˙ngir¯ah.. What do the Vedic poets wish us to understand by this description? We can best understand by a glance at some of the passages in which this epithet is applied to the bright and ﬂaming deity. In the ﬁrst place it is twice associated with another ﬁxed epithet of Agni, the Son of Force or of Energy, sahasah. s¯unuh., ¯urjo nap¯at.


Sri Aurobindo: Thus in VIII.60.2 he is addressed, “O Angiras, Son of Force,” sahasah. s¯uno a˙ngirah., and in VIII.84.4, “O Agni Angiras, Son of Energy,” agne a˙ngira ¯urjo nap¯at. And in V.11.6 it is said, “Thee, O Agni, the Angirases found established in the secret place (guh¯a hitam) lying in wood and wood (vane vane)” or, if we accept the indication of a covert sense we have already noted in the phrase van¯a vananti, “in each object of enjoyment. So art thou born by being pressed (mathyam¯anah.), a mighty force; thee they call the Son of Force, O Angiras, sa j¯ayase saho mahat tv¯am ¯ahuh. sahasas putram a˙ngirah..”


Sri Aurobindo: It is hardly doubtful, then, that this idea of force is an essential element in the Vedic conception of the Angiras and it is, as we have seen, part of the meaning of the word. Force in status, action, movement, light, feeling is the inherent quality of the roots ag and a˙ng from which we have agni and a˙ngirah..  Force but also, in these words, Light. Agni, the sacred ﬂame, is the burning force of Light; the Angirases also are burning powers of the Light.  But of what light?


Sri Aurobindo: physical or ﬁgurative? We must not imagine that the Vedic poets were crude and savage intellects incapable of the obvious ﬁgure, common to all languages, which makes the physical light a ﬁgure of the mental and spiritual, of knowledge, of an inner illumination. The Veda speaks expressly of “luminous sages”, dyumanto vipr¯ah. and the word s¯uri, a seer, is associated with Surya, the sun, by etymology and must originally have meant luminous. In I.31.1 it is said of this god of the Flame, “Thou, O Agni, wast the ﬁrst Angiras, the seer and auspicious friend, a god, of the gods; in the law of thy working the Maruts with their shining spears were born, seers who do the work by the knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: ” Clearly, then, in the conception of Agni Angiras there are two ideas, knowledge and action; the   luminous Agni and the luminous Maruts are by their light seers of the knowledge, r.s.i, kavi; and by the light of knowledge the forceful Maruts do the work because they are born or manifested in the characteristic working (vrata) of Agni. For Agni himself has been described to us as having the seer-will, kavikratuh., the force of action which works according to the inspired or supramental knowledge (´sravas), for it is that knowledge and not intellectuality which is meant by the word kavi. What then is this great force, Agni Angiras, saho mahat, but the ﬂaming force of the divine consciousness with its two twin qualities of Light and Power working in perfect harmony, — even as the Maruts are described, kavayo vidman¯a apasah., seers working by the knowledge? We have had reason to conclude that Usha is the divine Dawn and not merely the physical, that her cows or rays of the Dawn and the Sun are the illuminations of the dawning divine consciousness and that therefore the Sun is the Illuminer in the sense of the Lord of Knowledge and that Swar, the solar world beyond heaven and earth, is the world of the divine Truth and Bliss, in a word, that Light in the Veda is the symbol of knowledge, of the illumination of the divine Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: We now begin to have reason for concluding that the Flame, which is only another aspect of Light, is the Vedic symbol for the Force of the divine consciousness, of the supramental Truth.  In another passage, VI.11.3, we have mention of the “seer most illumined of the Angirases”, vepis.t.ho a˙ngiras¯a ˙m viprah., where the reference is not at all clear. Sayana, ignoring the collocation vepis.t.ho viprah. which at once ﬁxes the sense of vepis.t.ha as equivalent to most vipra, most a seer, most illumined, supposes that Bharadwaja, the traditional Rishi of the hymn, is here praising himself as the “greatest praiser” of the gods; but this is a doubtful suggestion. Here it is Agni who is the hot¯a, the priest; it is he who is sacriﬁcing to the gods, to his own embodiment, tanva ˙m tava sv¯am, to the Maruts, Mitra, Varuna, Heaven and Earth.


Sri Aurobindo: “For in thee” says the hymn “the thought even though full of riches desires still the gods, the (divine) births, for the singer of the hymn that he may sacriﬁce to them, when the sage, the most luminous of the Angirases, utters the rhythm of sweetness   The Angiras Rishis  in the sacriﬁce. ” It would almost seem that Agni himself is the sage, the most luminous of the Angirases. On the other hand, the description seems to be more appropriate to Brihaspati.


Sri Aurobindo: For Brihaspati is also an Angirasa and one who becomes the Angiras. He is, as we have seen, closely associated with the Angiras Rishis in the winning of the luminous cattle and he is so associated as Brahmanaspati, as the Master of the sacred or inspired word (brahma); for by his cry Vala is split to pieces and the cows answer lowing with desire to his call. As powers of Agni these Rishis are like him kavikratu; they possess the divine Light, they act by it with the divine force; they are not only Rishis, but heroes of the Vedic war, divas putr¯aso asurasya v¯ır¯ah. (III.53.7) ,


Sri Aurobindo: sons of heaven, heroes of the Mighty Lord, they are, as described in VI.75.9, “the Fathers who dwell in the sweetness (the world of bliss), who establish the wide birth, moving in the difﬁcult places, possessed of force, profound,5 with their bright host and their strength of arrows, invincible, heroes in their being, wide overcomers of the banded foes”: but also, they are, as the next verse describes them, br¯ahman. ¯asah. pitarah. somy¯asah., that is, they have the divine word and the inspired knowledge it carries with it.6 This divine word is the satya mantra, it is the thought by whose truth the Angirases bring the Dawn to birth and make the lost Sun to rise in the heavens.


Sri Aurobindo: This word is also called the arka, a vocable which means both hymn and light and is sometimes used of the sun. It is therefore the word of illumination, the word which expresses the truth of which the Sun is the lord, and its emergence from the secret seat of the Truth is associated with the outpouring by the Sun of its herded radiances; so we read in VII.36.1, “Let the Word come forward from the seat of the Truth; the Sun has released wide by its rays the cows,” pra brahmaitu sadan¯ad r.tasya, vi ra´smibhih. sasr.je s¯uryo g¯ah..   5


Sri Aurobindo: Cf. the description in X.62.5 of the Angirases as sons of Agni, different in form, but all profound in knowledge, gambh¯ıravepasah..   6 This seems to be the sense of the word Brahmana in the Veda. It certainly does not mean Brahmans by caste or priests by profession; the Fathers here are warriors as well as sages.


Sri Aurobindo: The four castes are only mentioned in the Rig Veda once, in that profound but late composition, the Purushasukta.    It has to be won possession of like the Sun itself and the gods have to give their aid for that possession (arkasya s¯atau) as well as for the possession of the Sun (s¯uryasya s¯atau) and of Swar (svars. ¯atau).  The Angiras, therefore, is not only an Agni-power, he is also a Brihaspati-power. Brihaspati is called more than once the Angirasa, as in VI.73.1, yo adribhit prathamaj¯a r.t¯av¯a br.haspatir ¯a˙ngiraso havis.m¯an, “Brihaspati, breaker of the hill (the cave of the Panis), the ﬁrst-born who has the Truth, the Angirasa, he of the oblation.” And in X.47.6 we have a still more significant description of Brihaspati as the Angirasa; pra saptagum r.tadh¯ıti ˙m sumedh¯a ˙m br.haspati ˙m matir acch¯a jig¯ati ya ¯a˙ngiraso namas¯a upasadyah..


Sri Aurobindo: “The thought goes towards Brihaspati the seven-rayed, the truth-thinking, the perfect intelligence, who is the Angirasa, to be approached with obeisance.” In II.23.18, also, Brihaspati is addressed as Angiras in connection with the release of the cows and the release of the waters; “For the glory of thee the hill parted asunder when thou didst release upward the pen of the cows; with Indra for ally thou didst force out, O Brihaspati, the ﬂood of the waters which was environed by the darkness.” We may note in passing how closely the release of the waters, which is the subject of the Vritra legend, is associated with the release of the cows which is the subject of the legend of the Angiras Rishis and the Panis and that both Vritra and the Panis are powers of the darkness. The cows are the light of the Truth, the true illumining sun, satya ˙m tad . . . s¯uryam; the waters released from the environing darkness of Vritra are called sometimes the streams of the Truth, r.tasya dh¯ar¯ah. and sometimes svarvat¯ır apah., the waters of Swar, the luminous solar world.


Sri Aurobindo: We see then that the Angiras is in the ﬁrst place a power of Agni the seer-will; he is the seer who works by the light, by the knowledge; he is a ﬂame of the puissance of Agni, the great force that is born into the world to be the priest of the sacriﬁce and the leader of the journey, the puissance which the gods are said by Vamadeva (IV.1) to establish here as the Immortal in mortals, the energy that does the great work (arati). In the second place, he is a power or at least has the power of Brihaspati, the  The Angiras Rishis  truth-thinking and seven-rayed, whose seven rays of the light hold that truth which he thinks (r.tadh¯ıtim) and whose seven mouths repeat the word that expresses the truth, the god of whom it is said (IV.50.4-5), “Brihaspati coming ﬁrst to birth out of the great Light in the highest heaven, born in many forms, seven-mouthed, seven-rayed (sapt¯asyah. saptara´smih.), by his cry dispelled the darkness; he by his host with the Rik and the Stubh (the hymn of illumination and the rhythm that afﬁrms the gods) broke Vala by his cry.” It cannot be doubted that by this host or troop of Brihaspati (sus.t.ubh¯a r.kvat¯a gan.ena) are meant the Angiras Rishis who by the true mantra help in the great victory.  Indra is also described as becoming an Angiras or as becoming possessed of the Angiras quality. “May he become most Angiras with the Angirases, being the Bull with bulls (the bull is the male power or Purusha, nr., with regard to the Rays and the Waters who are the cows, g¯avah., dhenavah.), the Friend with friends, the possessor of the Rik with those who have the Rik (r.gmibhir r.gm¯ı), with those who make the journey (g¯atubhih., the souls that advance on the path towards the Vast and True) the greatest; may Indra become associated with the Maruts (marutv¯an) for our thriving.


Sri Aurobindo: ” The epithets here (I.100.4) are all the proper epithets of the Angiras Rishis and Indra is supposed to take upon himself the qualities or relations that constitute Angirashood. So in III.31.7, “Most illumined in knowledge (vipratamah., answering to the vepis.t.ho a˙ngiras¯a ˙m viprah. of VI.11.3), becoming a friend (sakh¯ıyan, the Angirases are friends or comrades in the great battle) he went (agacchad, upon the path, cf. g¯atubhih., discovered by Sarama); the hill sped forth its pregnant contents (garbham) for the doer of the good work; strong in manhood with the young (maryo yuvabhih., the youth also giving the idea of unaging, undecaying force) he sought fullness of riches and won possession (sas¯ana makhasyan); so at once, chanting the hymn (arcan), he became an Angiras.”  This Indra who assumes all the qualities of the Angiras is, we must remember, the Lord of Swar, the wide world of the Sun or the Truth, and descends to us with his two shining horses, har¯ı, which are called in one passage s¯uryasya ket¯u, the sun’s   two powers of perception or of vision in knowledge, in order to war with the sons of darkness and aid the great journey. If we have been right in all that we have concluded with regard to the esoteric sense of the Veda, Indra must be the Power (indra, the Puissant,7 the powerful lord) of the divine Mind born in man and there increasing by the Word and the Soma to his full divinity.


Sri Aurobindo: This growth continues by the winning and growth of the Light, till Indra reveals himself fully as the lord of all the luminous herds which he sees by the “eye of the sun”, the divine Mind master of all the illuminations of knowledge.  Indra in becoming the Angiras, becomes Marutwan, possessed of or companioned by the Maruts, and these Maruts, luminous and violent gods of the storm and the lightning, uniting in themselves the vehement power of Vayu, the Wind, the Breath, the Lord of Life and the force of Agni, the Seer-Will, are therefore seers who do the work by the knowledge, kavayo vidman¯a apasah., as well as battling forces who by the power of the heavenly Breath and the heavenly lightning overthrow the established things, the artiﬁcial obstructions, kr.trim¯an.i rodh¯a ˙msi, in which the sons of Darkness have entrenched themselves, and aid Indra to overcome Vritra and the Dasyus. They seem to be in the esoteric Veda the Life-Powers that support by their nervous or vital energies the action of the thought in the attempt of the mortal consciousness to grow or expand itself into the immortality of the Truth and Bliss. In any case, they also are described in VI.49.11 as acting with the qualities of the Angiras (a˙ngirasvat), “O young and seers and powers of the sacriﬁce, Maruts, come uttering the word to the high place (or desirable plane of earth or the hill, adhi s¯anu pr.´sneh., which is probably the sense of varasy¯am), powers increasing, rightly moving (on the path, g¯atu) like the Angiras,8 give joy even to that which is not 7 But also perhaps “shining”, cf. indu, the moon; ina, glorious, the sun; indh, to kindle.


Sri Aurobindo: 8 It is to be noted that Sayana here hazards the idea that Angiras means the moving rays (from a˙ng to move) or the Angiras Rishis. If the great scholar had been able to pursue with greater courage his ideas to their logical conclusion, he would have anticipated the modern theory in its most essential points.   The Angiras Rishis  illumined (acitram, that which has not received the varied light of the dawn, the night of our ordinary darkness).” We see here the same characteristics of the Angiras action, the eternal youth and force of Agni (agne yavis.t.ha), the possession and utterance of the Word, the seerhood, the doing of the work of sacriﬁce, the right movement on the great path which leads as we shall see to the world of the Truth, to the vast and luminous bliss.


Sri Aurobindo: The Maruts are even said to be (X.78) as it were “Angirases with their Sama hymns, they who take all forms,” vi´svar¯up¯a a˙ngiraso na s¯amabhih..  All this action and movement are made possible by the coming of Usha, the Dawn. Usha also is described as a˙ngirastam¯a and in addition as indratam¯a. The power of Agni, the Angiras power, manifests itself also in the lightning of Indra and in the rays of the Dawn. Two passages may be cited which throw light on this aspect of the Angiras force.


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁrst is VII.79.2-3. “The Dawns make their rays to shine out in the extremities of heaven, they labour like men who are set to a work. Thy rays set ﬂeeing the darkness, they extend the Light as if the sun were extending its two arms. Usha has become (or, come into being) most full of Indra power (indratam¯a), opulent in riches and has given birth to the inspirations of knowledge for our happy going (or for good and bliss), the goddess, daughter of Heaven, most full of Angirashood (a˙ngirastam¯a), orders her riches for the doer of good works.” The riches in which Usha is opulent cannot be anything else than the riches of the Light and the Power of the Truth; full of Indra power, the power of the divine illumined mind, she gives the inspirations of that mind (´srav¯a ˙msi) which lead us towards the Bliss, and by the ﬂaming radiant Angiraspower in her she bestows and arranges her treasures for those who do aright the great work and thus move rightly on the path, itth¯a naks.anto a˙ngirasvat.


Sri Aurobindo: The second passage is in VII.75. “Dawn, heaven-born, has opened up (the veil of darkness) by the Truth and she comes making manifest the vastness (mahim¯anam), she has drawn away the veil of harms and of darkness (druhas tamah.) and all that is unloved; most full of Angirashood she manifests the paths (of   the great journey). Today, O Dawn, awake for us for the journey to the vast bliss (mahe suvit¯aya), extend (thy riches) for a vast state of enjoyment, conﬁrm in us a wealth of varied brightness (citram) full of inspired knowledge (´sravasyum), in us mortals, O human and divine. These are the lustres of the visible Dawn which have come varied-bright (citr¯ah.) and immortal; bringing to birth the divine workings they diffuse themselves, ﬁlling those of the mid-region,” janayanto daivy¯ani vrat¯ani, ¯apr.n.anto antariks.


Sri Aurobindo: ¯a vyasthuh.. Again we have the Angiras power associated with the journey, the revelation of its paths by the removal of the darkness and the bringing of the radiances of the Dawn; the Panis represent the harms (druhah., hurts or those who hurt) done to man by the evil powers, the darkness is their cave; the journey is that which leads to the divine happiness and the state of immortal bliss by means of our growing wealth of light and power and knowledge; the immortal lustres of the Dawn which give birth in man to the heavenly workings and ﬁll with them the workings of the mid-regions between earth and heaven, that is to say, the functioning of those vital planes governed by Vayu which link our physical and pure mental being, may well be the Angiras powers. For they too gain and maintain the truth by maintaining unhurt the divine workings (amardhanto dev¯an¯a ˙m vrat¯ani). This is indeed their function, to bring the divine Dawn into mortal nature so that the visible goddess pouring out her riches may be there, at once divine and human, devi martes.u m¯anus.i, the goddess human in mortals.   Chapter XVII The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas


Sri Aurobindo: T HE LANGUAGE of the hymns establishes, then, a double aspect for the Angiras Rishis. One belongs to the external garb of the Veda; it weaves together its naturalistic imagery of the Sun, the Flame, the Dawn, the Cow, the Horse, the Wine, the sacriﬁcial Hymn; the other extricates from that imagery the internal sense. The Angirases are sons of the Flame, lustres of the Dawn, givers and drinkers of the Wine, singers of the Hymn, eternal youths and heroes who wrest for us the Sun, the Cows, the Horses and all treasures from the grasp of the sons of darkness. But they are also seers of the Truth, ﬁnders and speakers of the word of the Truth and by the power of the Truth they win for us the wide world of Light and Immortality which is described in the Veda as the Vast, the True, the Right and as the own home of this Flame of which they are the children. This physical imagery and these psychological indications are closely interwoven and they cannot be separated from each other.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore we are obliged by ordinary common sense to conclude that the Flame of which the Right and the Truth is the own home is itself a Flame of that Right and Truth, that the Light which is won by the Truth and by the force of true thought is not merely a physical light, the cows which Sarama ﬁnds on the path of the Truth not merely physical herds, the Horses not merely the wealth of the Dravidians conquered by invading Aryan tribes, nor even merely images of the physical Dawn, its light and its swiftly moving rays and the darkness of which the Panis and Vritra are the defenders not merely the darkness of the Indian or the Arctic night. We have even been able to hazard a reasonable hypothesis by which we can disentangle the real sense of this imagery and discover the   true godhead of these shining gods and these divine, luminous sages.  The Angiras Rishis are at once divine and human seers. This double character is not in itself an extraordinary feature or peculiar in the Veda to these sages. The Vedic gods also have a double action; divine and pre-existent in themselves, they are human in their working upon the mortal plane when they grow in man to the great ascension.


Sri Aurobindo: This has been strikingly expressed in the allocution to Usha, the Dawn, “goddess human in mortals”, devi martes.u m¯anus.i. But in the imagery of the Angiras Rishis this double character is farther complicated by the tradition which makes them the human fathers, discoverers of the Light, the Path and the Goal. We must see how this complication affects our theory of the Vedic creed and the Vedic symbolism.  The Angiras Rishis are ordinarily described as seven in number: they are sapta vipr¯ah., the seven sages who have come down to us in the Puranic tradition1 and are enthroned by Indian astronomy in the constellation of the Great Bear. But they are also described as Navagwas and Dashagwas, and if in VI.22 we are told of the ancient fathers, the seven seers who were Navagwas, p¯urve pitaro navagv¯ah.


Sri Aurobindo: sapta vipr¯aso, yet in III.39.5 we have mention of two different classes, Navagwas, and Dashagwas, the latter ten in number, the former presumably, though it is not expressly stated, nine. Sakh¯a ha yatra sakhibhir navagvair, abhij˜nv¯a satvabhir g¯a anugman; satya ˙m tad indro da´sabhir da´sagvaih., s¯urya ˙m viveda tamasi ks.iyantam; “where, a friend with his friends the Navagwas, following the cows Indra with the ten Dashagwas found that truth, even the Sun dwelling in the darkness.” On the other hand we have in IV.51 a collective description of the Angiras seven-faced or seven-mouthed, ninerayed, ten-rayed, navagve a˙ngire da´sagve sapt¯asye. In X.108.8 we have another Rishi Ayasya associated with the Navagwa Angirases.


Sri Aurobindo: In X.67 this Ayasya is described as our father who found the vast seven-headed Thought that was born out of 1 Not that the names given them by the Purana need be those which the Vedic tradition would have given.   The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 175 the Truth and as singing the hymn to Indra. According as the Navagwas are seven or nine, Ayasya will be the eighth or the tenth Rishi.  Tradition asserts the separate existence of two classes of Angiras Rishis, the one Navagwas who sacriﬁced for nine months, the other Dashagwas whose sessions of sacriﬁce endured for ten. According to this interpretation we must take Navagwa and Dashagwa as “nine-cowed” and “ten-cowed”, each cow representing collectively the thirty Dawns which constitute one month of the sacriﬁcial year.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is at least one passage of the Rig Veda which on its surface is in direct conﬂict with the traditional interpretation. 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. This seventh verse runs, An¯unod atra hastayato adrir, ¯arcan yena da´sa m¯aso navagv¯ah.; r.ta ˙m yat¯ı saram¯a g¯a avindad, vi´sv¯ani saty¯a a˙ngir¯a´s cak¯ara, “Here cried (or, moved) the stone impelled by the hand, whereby the Navagwas chanted for ten months the hymn; Sarama travelling to the Truth found the cows; all things the Angiras made true.” And in verse 11 we have the assertion repeated; Dhiya ˙m vo apsu dadhis.e svars. ¯a ˙m, yay¯ataran da´sa m¯aso navagv¯ah.; ay¯a dhiy¯a sy¯ama devagop¯a, ay¯a dhiy¯a tutury¯ama ati a ˙mhah..


Sri Aurobindo: “I hold for you in the waters (i.e. the seven Rivers) the thought that wins possession of heaven2  ( this is once more the seven-headed thought born from the Truth and found by Ayasya), by which the Navagwas passed through the ten months; by this thought may we have the gods for protectors, by this thought may we pass through beyond the evil.”  The statement is explicit. Sayana indeed makes a faint-hearted attempt to take da´sa m¯aso in v. 7, ten months, as if it were an epithet da´sam¯aso, the ten-month ones i.e. the Dashagwas; but he offers this improbable rendering only as an alternative and abandons it in the eleventh rik.


Sri Aurobindo: 2 Sayana takes it to mean, “I recite the hymn for water” i.e. in order to get rain; the case however is the locative plural, and dadhis.e means “I place or hold” or, with the psychological sense, “think” or “hold in thought, meditate”. Dhis.an. ¯a like dh¯ı means thought; dhiya ˙m dadhis.e would thus mean “I think or meditate the thought.”    Must we then suppose that the poet of this hymn had forgotten the tradition and was confusing the Dashagwas and Navagwas? Such a supposition is inadmissible.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculty arises because we suppose the Navagwas and Dashagwas to have been in the minds of the Vedic Rishis two different classes of Angiras Rishis; rather these seem to have been two different powers of Angirashood and in that case the Navagwas themselves might well become Dashagwas by extending the period of the sacriﬁce to ten months instead of nine. The expression in the hymn, da´sa m¯aso ataran, indicates that there was some difﬁculty in getting through the full period of ten months. It is during this period apparently that the sons of darkness had the power to assail the sacriﬁce; for it is indicated that it is only by the conﬁrming of the thought which conquers Swar, the solar world, that the Rishis are able to get through the ten months, but this thought once found they become assured of the protection of the gods and pass beyond the assault of the evil, the harms of the Panis and Vritras. This Swar-conquering thought is certainly the same as that seven-headed thought which was born from the Truth and discovered by Ayasya the companion of the Navagwas; for by it, we are told, Ayasya becoming universal, embracing the births in all the worlds, brought into being a fourth world or fourfold world, which must be the supramental beyond the three lower sessions, Dyaus, Antariksha and Prithivi, that wide world which, according to Kanwa son of Ghora, men reach or create by crossing beyond the two Rodasi after killing Vritra. This fourth world must be therefore Swar.


Sri Aurobindo: The seven-headed thought of Ayasya enables him to become vi´svajanya, which means probably that he occupies or possesses all the worlds or births of the soul or else that he becomes universal, identifying himself with all beings born, — and to manifest or give being to a certain fourth world (Swar), tur¯ıya ˙m svij janayad vi´svajanyah. (X.67.1);  and the thought established in the waters which enables the Navagwa Rishis to pass through the ten months, is also svars. ¯a, that which brings about the possession of Swar. The waters are clearly the seven rivers and the two thoughts are evidently the same.


Sri Aurobindo: Must we not then conclude that it is the addition  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 177 of Ayasya to the Navagwas which raises the nine Navagwas to the number of ten and enables them by his discovery of the seven-headed Swar-conquering thought to prolong their ninemonths’ sacriﬁce through the tenth month? Thus they become the ten Dashagwas. We may note in this connection that the intoxication of the Soma by which Indra manifests or increases the might of Swar or the Swar-Purusha (Svarn.ara) is described as ten-rayed and illuminating (da´sagva ˙m vepayantam).  This conclusion is entirely conﬁrmed by the passage in III.39.5 which we have already cited. For there we ﬁnd that it is with the help of the Navagwas that Indra pursues the trace of the lost kine, but it is only with the aid of the ten Dashagwas that he is able to bring the pursuit to a successful issue and ﬁnd that Truth, satya ˙m tat, namely, the Sun that was lying in the darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: In other words, it is when the nine-months’ sacriﬁce is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi, that the Sun is found and the luminous world of Swar in which we possess the truth of the one universal Deva, is disclosed and conquered. This conquest of Swar is the aim of the sacriﬁce and the great work accomplished by the Angiras Rishis.  But what is meant by the ﬁgure of the months? for it now becomes clear that it is a ﬁgure, a parable; the year is symbolic, the months are symbolic.3 It is in the revolution of the year that the recovery of the lost Sun and the lost cows is effected, for we have the explicit statement in X.62.2, r.ten¯abhindan parivatsare valam, “by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala,” or, as Sayana interprets it, “by sacriﬁce lasting for a year.”


Sri Aurobindo: This passage certainly goes far to support the Arctic theory, for it speaks of a yearly and not a daily return of the Sun. But we are not concerned with the external ﬁgure, nor does its validity in any way affect our own theory; for it may very well be that the striking Arctic experience of the long night, the annual 3 Observe that in the Puranas the Yugas, moments, months, etc. are all symbolic and it is stated that the body of man is the year.    sunrise and the continuous dawns was made by the Mystics the ﬁgure of the spiritual night and its difﬁcult illumination. But that this idea of Time, of the months and years is used as a symbol seems to be clear from other passages of the Veda, notably from Gritsamada’s hymn to Brihaspati, II.24.


Sri Aurobindo: In this hymn Brihaspati is described driving up the cows, breaking Vala by the divine word, brahman. ¯a, concealing the darkness and making Swar visible. The ﬁrst result is the breaking open by force of the well which has the rock for its face and whose streams are of the honey, madhu, the Soma sweetness, a´sm¯asyam avata ˙m madhudh¯aram. This well of honey covered by the rock must be the Ananda or divine beatitude of the supreme threefold world of bliss, the Satya, Tapas and Jana worlds of the Puranic system based upon the three supreme principles, Sat, Chit-Tapas and Ananda; their base is Swar of the Veda, Mahar of the Upanishads and Puranas, the world of Truth.4 These four together make the fourfold fourth world and are described in the Rig Veda as the four supreme and secret seats, the source of the “four upper rivers”.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes, however, this upper world seems to be divided into two, Swar the base, Mayas or the divine beatitude the summit, so that there are ﬁve worlds or births of the ascending soul. The three other rivers are the three lower powers of being and supply the principles of the three lower worlds.  This secret well of honey is drunk by all those who are able to see Swar and they pour out its billowing fountain of sweetness in manifold streams together, tam eva vi´sve papire svardr.´so bahu s¯aka ˙m sisicur utsam udrin.am. These many streams poured out together are the seven rivers poured down the hill by Indra after slaying Vritra, the rivers or streams of the Truth, r.tasya dh¯ar¯ah.; and they represent, according to our theory, the seven principles of conscious being in their divine fulﬁlment in the Truth and  4


Sri Aurobindo: In the Upanishads and Puranas there is no distinction between Swar and Dyaus; therefore a fourth name had to be found for the world of Truth, and this is the Mahar discovered according to the Taittiriya Upanishad by the Rishi Mahachamasya as the fourth Vyahriti, the other three being Swar, Bhuvar and Bhur, i.e. Dyaus, Antariksha and Prithivi of the Veda.   The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 179 Bliss. This is why the seven-headed thought, — that is to say, the knowledge of the divine existence with its seven heads or powers, the seven-rayed knowledge of Brihaspati, saptagum, has to be conﬁrmed or held in thought in the waters, the seven rivers, that is to say the seven forms of divine consciousness are to be held in the seven forms or movements of divine being; dhiya ˙m vo apsu dadhis.e svars. ¯am, I hold the Swar-conquering thought in the waters.  That the making visible of Swar to the eyes of the Swarseers, svardr.´sah., their drinking of the honeyed well and their outpouring of the divine waters amounts to the revelation to man of new worlds or new states of existence is clearly told us in the next verse, II.24.5, san¯a t¯a k¯a cid bhuvan¯a bhav¯ıtv¯a, m¯adbhih.


Sri Aurobindo: ´saradbhir duro varanta vah.; ayatant¯a carato anyad anyad id, y¯a cak¯ara vayun¯a brahman.aspatih., “Certain eternal worlds (states of existence) are these which have to come into being, their doors are shut5 to you (or, opened) by the months and the years; without effort one (world) moves in the other, and it is these that Brahmanaspati has made manifest to knowledge”; vayun¯a means knowledge, and the two forms are divinised earth and heaven which Brahmanaspati created.  These are the four eternal worlds hidden in the guh¯a, the secret, unmanifest or superconscient parts of being which although in themselves eternally present states of existence (san¯a bhuvan¯a) are for us non-existent and in the future; for us they have to be brought into being, bhav¯ıtv¯a, they are yet to be created. Therefore the Veda sometimes speaks of Swar being made visible, as here (vyacaks.ayat svah.), or discovered and taken possession of, vidat, sanat, sometimes of its being created or made (bh¯u, kr.). These secret eternal worlds have been closed to us, says the Rishi, by the movement of Time, by the months and years; therefore naturally they have to be discovered, revealed, conquered,  5


Sri Aurobindo: Sayana says varanta is here “opened”, which is quite possible, but vr. means ordinarily to shut, close up, cover, especially when applied to the doors of the hill whence ﬂow the rivers and the cows come forth; Vritra is the closer of the doors. Vi vr. and apa vr. mean to open. Nevertheless, if the word means here to open, that only makes our case all the stronger.    created in us by the movement of Time, yet in a sense against it.  This development in an inner or psychological Time is, it seems to me, that which is symbolised by the sacriﬁcial year and by the ten months that have to be spent before the revealing hymn of the soul (brahma) is able to discover the seven-headed, heavenconquering thought which ﬁnally carries us beyond the harms of Vritra and the Panis.


Sri Aurobindo: We get the connection of the rivers and the worlds very clearly in I.62 where Indra is described as breaking the hill by the aid of the Navagwas and breaking Vala by the aid of the Dashagwas. Hymned by the Angiras Rishis Indra opens up the darkness by the Dawn and the Sun and the Cows , he spreads out the high plateau of the earthly hill into wideness and upholds the higher world of heaven. For the result of the opening up of the higher planes of consciousness is to increase the wideness of the physical, to raise the height of the mental. “This, indeed,” says the Rishi Nodha, “is his mightiest work, the fairest achievement of the achiever,” dasmasya c¯arutamam asti da ˙msah., “that the four upper rivers streaming honey nourish the two worlds of the crookedness,” upahvare yad upar¯a apinvan madhvarn.aso nadya´s catasrah..


Sri Aurobindo: This is again the honey-streaming well pouring down its many streams together; the four higher rivers of the divine being, divine conscious force, divine delight, divine truth nourishing the two worlds of the mind and body into which they descend with their ﬂoods of sweetness. These two, the Rodasi, are normally worlds of crookedness, that is to say of the falsehood, — the r.tam or Truth being the straight, the anr.tam or Falsehood the crooked, — because they are exposed to the harms of the undivine powers, Vritras and Panis, sons of darkness and division. They now become forms of the truth, the knowledge, vayun¯a, agreeing with outer action and this is evidently Gritsamada’s carato anyad anyad and his y¯a cak¯ara vayun¯a brahman.aspatih.. The Rishi then proceeds to deﬁne the result of the work of Ayasya, which is to reveal the true eternal and uniﬁed form of earth and heaven. “In their twofold (divine and human?) Ayasya uncovered by his hymns the two, eternal and in one nest; perfectly achieving he upheld earth and  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 181 heaven6 in the highest ether (of the revealed superconscient, parama ˙m guhyam) as the Enjoyer his two wives.”


Sri Aurobindo: The soul’s enjoyment of its divinised mental and bodily existence upheld in the eternal joy of the spiritual being could not be more clearly and beautifully imaged.  These ideas and many of the expressions are the same as those of the hymn of Gritsamada. Nodha says of the Night and Dawn, the dark physical and the illumined mental consciousness that they new-born (punarbhuv¯a) about heaven and earth move into each other with their own proper movements, svebhir evaih. . . . carato any¯any¯a (cf. Gritsamada’s ayatant¯a carato anyad anyad, ayatant¯a bearing the same sense as svebhir evaih., i.e. spontaneously), in the eternal friendship that is worked out by the high achievement of their son who thus upholds them, sanemi sakhya ˙m svapasyam¯anah., s¯unur d¯adh¯ara ´savas¯a suda ˙ms¯ah.. In Gritsamada’s hymn as in Nodha’s the Angirases attain to Swar, — the Truth from which they originally came, the “own home” of all divine Purushas, — by the attainment of the truth and by the detection of the falsehood.


Sri Aurobindo: “They who travel towards the goal and attain that treasure of the Panis, the supreme treasure hidden in the secret cave, they, having the knowledge and perceiving the falsehoods, rise up again thither whence they came and enter into that world. Possessed of the truth, beholding the falsehoods they, seers, rise up again into the great path,” mahas pathah., the path of the Truth, or the great and wide realm, Mahas of the Upanishads.  We begin now to unravel the knot of this Vedic imagery.  Brihaspati is the seven-rayed Thinker, saptaguh., saptara´smih., he is the seven-faced or seven-mouthed Angiras, born in many forms, sapt¯asyas tuvij¯atah., nine-rayed, ten-rayed. The seven mouths are the seven Angirases who repeat the divine word (brahma) which comes from the seat of the Truth, Swar, and of which he is the lord (brahman.aspatih.).


Sri Aurobindo: Each also corresponds to 6 This and many other passages show clearly, conclusively, as it seems to me, that the anyad anyad, the two are always earth and heaven, the human based on the physical consciousness and the divine based on the supraphysical, heaven.    one of the seven rays of Brihaspati; therefore they are the seven seers, sapta vipr¯ah., sapta r.s.ayah., who severally personify these seven rays of the knowledge. These rays are, again, the seven brilliant horses of the sun, sapta haritah., and their full union constitutes the seven-headed Thought of Ayasya by which the lost sun of Truth is recovered. That thought again is established in the seven rivers, the seven principles of being divine and human, the totality of which founds the perfect spiritual existence.


Sri Aurobindo: The winning of these seven rivers of our being withheld by Vritra and these seven rays withheld by Vala, the possession of our complete divine consciousness delivered from all falsehood by the free descent of the truth, gives us the secure possession of the world of Swar and the enjoyment of mental and physical being lifted into the godhead above darkness, falsehood and death by the in-streaming of our divine elements. This victory is won in twelve periods of the upward journey, represented by the revolution of the twelve months of the sacriﬁcial year, the periods corresponding to the successive dawns of a wider and wider truth, until the tenth secures the victory. What may be the precise signiﬁcance of the nine rays and the ten, is a more difﬁcult question which we are not yet in a position to solve; but the light we already have is sufﬁcient to illuminate all the main imagery of the Rig Veda.  The symbolism of the Veda depends upon the image of the life of man as a sacriﬁce, a journey and a battle. The ancient Mystics took for their theme the spiritual life of man, but, in order both to make it concrete to themselves and to veil its secrets from the unﬁt, they expressed it in poetical images drawn from the outward life of their age.


Sri Aurobindo: That life was largely an existence of herdsmen and tillers of the soil for the mass of the people varied by the wars and migrations of the clans under their kings, and in all this activity the worship of the gods by sacriﬁce had become the most solemn and magniﬁcent element, the knot of all the rest.  For by the sacriﬁce were won the rain which fertilised the soil, the herds of cattle and horses necessary for their existence in peace and war, the wealth of gold, land (ks.etra), retainers, ﬁghtingmen which constituted greatness and lordship, the victory in the  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 183 battle, safety in the journey by land and water which was so difﬁcult and dangerous in those times of poor means of communication and loosely organised inter-tribal existence. All the principal features of that outward life which they saw around them the mystic poets took and turned into signiﬁcant images of the inner life. The life of man is represented as a sacriﬁce to the gods, a journey sometimes ﬁgured as a crossing of dangerous waters, sometimes as an ascent from level to level of the hill of being, and, thirdly, as a battle against hostile nations. But these three images are not kept separate.


Sri Aurobindo: The sacriﬁce is also a journey; indeed the sacriﬁce itself is described as travelling, as journeying to a divine goal; and the journey and the sacriﬁce are both continually spoken of as a battle against the dark powers.  The legend of the Angirases takes up and combines all these three essential features of the Vedic imagery. The Angirases are pilgrims of the light. The phrase naks.antah. or abhinaks.antah. is constantly used to describe their characteristic action. They are those who travel towards the goal and attain to the highest, abhinaks.anto abhi ye tam ¯ana´sur nidhi ˙m paramam, “they who travel to and attain that supreme treasure” (II.24.6).


Sri Aurobindo: Their action is invoked for carrying forward the life of man farther towards its goal, sahasras¯ave pra tiranta ¯ayuh. (III.53.7). But this journey, if principally of the nature of a quest, the quest of the hidden light, becomes also by the opposition of the powers of darkness an expedition and a battle. The Angirases are heroes and ﬁghters of that battle, gos.u yodh¯ah., “ﬁghters for the cows or rays”.  Indra marches with them saran.yubhih., as travellers on the path, sakhibhih., comrades, r.kvabhih. and kavibhih., seers and singers of the sacred chant, but also satvabhih., ﬁghters in the battle.  They are frequently spoken of by the appellation nr. or v¯ıra, as when Indra is said to win the luminous herds asm¯akebhih. nr.bhih., “by our men”.


Sri Aurobindo: Strengthened by them he conquers in the journey and reaches the goal, naks.ad-d¯abha ˙m taturim. This journey or march proceeds along the path discovered by Sarama, the hound of heaven, the path of the Truth, r.tasya panth¯ah., the great path, mahas pathah., which leads to the realms of the Truth.  It is also the sacriﬁcial journey; for its stages correspond to the   periods of the sacriﬁce of the Navagwas and it is effected by the force of the Soma-wine and the sacred Word.  The drinking of the Soma-wine as the means of strength, victory and attainment is one of the pervading ﬁgures of the Veda. Indra and the Ashwins are the great Soma-drinkers, but all the gods have their share of the immortalising draught.


Sri Aurobindo: The Angirases also conquer in the strength of the Soma. Sarama threatens the Panis with the coming of Ayasya and the Navagwa Angirases in the keen intensity of their Soma rapture, eha gamann r.s.ayah. soma´sit¯a ay¯asyo a˙ngiraso navagv¯ah. (X.108.8) .


Sri Aurobindo: It is the great force by which men have the power to follow the path of the Truth. “That rapture of the Soma we desire by which thou, O Indra, didst make to thrive the Might of Swar (or the Swarsoul, svarn.aram), that rapture ten-rayed and making a light of knowledge (or, shaking the whole being with its force, da´sagva ˙m vepayantam) by which thou didst foster the ocean; that Somaintoxication by which thou didst drive forward the great waters (the seven rivers) like chariots to their sea, — that we desire that we may travel on the path of the truth,” panth¯am r.tasya y¯atave tam ¯ımahe (VIII.12.2-3). It is in the power of the Soma that the hill is broken open, the sons of darkness overthrown. This Somawine is the sweetness that comes ﬂowing from the streams of the upper hidden world, it is that which ﬂows in the seven waters, it is that with which the ghr.ta, the clariﬁed butter of the mystic sacriﬁce, is instinct; it is the honeyed wave which rises out of the ocean of life. Such images can have only one meaning; it is the divine delight hidden in all existence which, once manifest, supports all life’s crowning activities and is the force that ﬁnally immortalises the mortal, the amr.tam, ambrosia of the gods.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is especially the Word that the Angirases possess; their seerhood is their most distinguishing characteristic. They are br¯ahman. ¯asah. pitarah. somy¯asah. . . . r.t¯avr.dhah. (VI.75.10),


Sri Aurobindo: the fathers who are full of the Soma and have the word and are therefore increasers of the Truth. Indra in order to impel them on the path joins himself to the chanted expressions of their thought and gives fullness and force to the words of their soul, a˙ngiras¯am ucath¯a jujus.v¯an brahm¯a t¯utod g¯atum is.n.an (II.20.5).   The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas 185  It is when enriched in light and force of thought by the Angirases that Indra completes his victorious journey and reaches the goal on the mountain; “In him our primal fathers, the seven seers, the Navagwas, increase their plenty, him victorious on his march and breaking through (to the goal), standing on the mountain, inviolate in speech, most luminous-forceful by his thinkings,”


Sri Aurobindo: naks.ad-d¯abha ˙m taturi ˙m parvates.t.h¯am, adroghav¯aca ˙m matibhih. ´savis.t.ham (VI.22.2). It is by singing the Rik, the hymn of illumination, that they ﬁnd the solar illuminations in the cave of our being, arcanto7 g¯a avindan (I.62.2). It is by the stubh, the all-supporting rhythm of the hymn of the seven seers, by the vibrating voice of the Navagwas that Indra becomes full of the power of Swar, svaren.a svaryah. and by the cry of the Dashagwas that he rends Vala in pieces (I.62.4). For this cry is the voice of the higher heaven, the thunder that cries in the lightning-ﬂash of Indra, and the advance of the Angirases on their path is the forward movement of this cry of the heavens, pra brahm¯an.o a˙ngiraso naks.anta, pra krandanur nabhanyasya vetu (VII.42.1); for we are told that the voice of Brihaspati the Angirasa discovering the Sun and the Dawn and the Cow and the light of the Word is the thunder of Heaven, br.haspatir us.asa ˙m s¯urya ˙m g¯am, arka ˙m viveda stanayann iva dyauh.


Sri Aurobindo: (X.67.5) . It is by the satya mantra, the true thought expressed in the rhythm of the truth, that the hidden light is found and the Dawn brought to birth, g¯ud.ha ˙m jyotih. pitaro anvavindan, satyamantr¯a ajanayann us. ¯asam (VII.76.4).


Sri Aurobindo: For these are the Angirases who speak aright, itth¯a vadadbhih. a˙ngirobhih. (VI.18.5), masters of the Rik who place perfectly their thought, sv¯adh¯ıbhir r.kvabhih. (VI.32.2) ;


Sri Aurobindo: they are the sons of heaven, heroes of the Mighty Lord who speak the truth and think the straightness and therefore they are able to hold the seat of illumined knowledge, to mentalise the supreme abode of the sacriﬁce, r.ta ˙m ´sa ˙msanta r.ju d¯ıdhy¯an¯a, divas putr¯aso asurasya v¯ır¯ah.; vipra ˙m padam a˙ngiraso dadh¯an¯a, yaj˜nasya dh¯ama prathama ˙m mananta (X.67.2).  7 Arcati (r.c) in the Veda means to shine and to sing the Rik; arka means sun, light and the Vedic hymn.    It is impossible that such expressions should convey nothing more than the recovery of stolen cows from Dravidian cavedwellers by some Aryan seers led by a god and his dog or else the return of the Dawn after the darkness of the night.


Sri Aurobindo: The wonders of the Arctic dawn themselves are insufﬁcient to explain the association of images and the persistent stress on the idea of the Word, the Thought, the Truth, the journey and the conquest of the falsehood which meets us always in these hymns.  Only the theory we are enouncing, a theory not brought in from outside but arising straight from the language and the suggestions of the hymns themselves, can unite this varied imagery and bring an easy lucidity and coherence into this apparent tangle of incongruities. In fact, once the central idea is grasped and the mentality of the Vedic Rishis and the principle of their symbolism are understood, no incongruity and no disorder remain. There is a ﬁxed system of symbols which, except in some of the later hymns, does not admit of any important variations and in the light of which the inner sense of the Veda everywhere yields itself up readily enough. There is indeed a certain restricted freedom in the combination of the symbols, as in those of any ﬁxed poetical imagery, — for instance, the sacred poems of the Vaishnavas; but the substance of thought behind is constant, coherent and does not vary.