{"id":1872,"date":"2013-07-13T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:38:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:00","slug":"03-chapter-iii-modern-theories-vol-15-the-secret-of-veda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/15-the-secret-of-veda\/03-chapter-iii-modern-theories-vol-15-the-secret-of-veda","title":{"rendered":"-03_Chapter III Modern Theories.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter
\nIII <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tModern Theories<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>T WAS<\/b> the curiosity of a foreign culture that broke after
\nmany centuries the seal of final authoritativeness which Sayana had fixed on the ritualistic interpretation of the
\nVeda. The ancient Scripture was delivered over to a scholarship laborious, bold in speculation, ingenious in its flights of fancy,
\nconscientious according to its own lights, but ill-fitted to understand the method of the old mystic poets; for it was void of
\nany sympathy with that ancient temperament, unprovided with any clue in its own intellectual or spiritual environment to the
\nideas hidden in the Vedic figures and parables. The result has been of a double character, on the one side the beginnings of a
\nmore minute, thorough and careful as well as a freer handling of the problems of Vedic interpretation, on the other hand a final
\nexaggeration of its apparent material sense and the complete obscuration of its true and inner secret. <\/p>\n

In spite of the hardiness of its speculations and its freedom in discovery or invention the Vedic scholarship of Europe has
\nreally founded itself throughout on the traditional elements preserved in Sayana’s commentary and has not attempted an
\nentirely independent handling of the problem. What it found in Sayana and in the Brahmanas it has developed in the light
\nof modern theories and modern knowledge; by ingenious deductions from the comparative method applied to philology,
\nmythology and history, by large amplifications of the existing data with the aid of ingenious speculation, by unification of
\nthe scattered indications available it has built up a complete theory of Vedic mythology, Vedic history, Vedic civilisation
\nwhich fascinates by its detail and thoroughness and conceals by its apparent sureness of method the fact that this imposing
\nedifice has been founded, for the most part, on the sands of conjecture.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 24<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe modern theory of the Veda starts with the conception, for which Sayana is responsible, of the Vedas as the hymnal of
\nan early, primitive and largely barbaric society crude in its moral and religious conceptions, rude in its social structure and entirely
\nchildlike in its outlook upon the world that environed it. The ritualism which Sayana accepted as part of a divine knowledge and
\nas endowed with a mysterious efficacy, European scholarship accepted as an elaboration of the old savage propitiatory sacrifices
\noffered to imaginary superhuman personalities who might be benevolent or malevolent according as they were worshipped or
\nneglected. The historical element admitted by Sayana was readily seized on and enlarged by new renderings and new explanations
\nof the allusions in the hymns developed in an eager hunt for clues to the primitive history, manners and institutions of those
\nbarbarous races. The naturalistic element played a still more important role. The obvious identification of the Vedic gods in
\ntheir external aspects with certain Nature-Powers was used as the starting-point for a comparative study of Aryan mythologies; the hesitating identification of certain of the less prominent deities as Sun-Powers was taken as a general clue to the system of
\nprimitive myth-making and elaborate sun-myth and star-myth theories of comparative mythology were founded. In this new
\nlight the Vedic hymnology has come to be interpreted as a halfsuperstitious, half-poetic allegory of Nature with an important
\nastronomical element. The rest is partly contemporary history, partly the formulae and practices of a sacrificial ritualism, not
\nmystic, but merely primitive and superstitious. <\/p>\n

\nThis interpretation is in entire harmony with the scientific
\ntheories of early human culture and of the recent emergence from the mere savage which were in vogue throughout the nineteenth
\ncentury and are even now dominant. But the increase of our knowledge has considerably shaken this first and too hasty generalisation. We now know that remarkable civilisations existed in China, Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria many thousands of years ago,
\nand it is now coming generally to be agreed that Greece and India were no exceptions to the general high culture of Asia and the
\nMediterranean races. If the Vedic Indians do not get the benefit   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 25<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of this revised knowledge, it is due to the survival of the theory with which European erudition started, that they belonged to the
\nso-called Aryan race and were on the same level of culture with the early Aryan Greeks, Celts, Germans as they are represented
\nto us in the Homeric poems, the old Norse Sagas and the Roman accounts of the ancient Gaul and Teuton. Hence has arisen the
\ntheory that these Aryan races were northern barbarians who broke in from their colder climes on the old and rich civilisations
\nof Mediterranean Europe and Dravidian India. <\/p>\n

\n

But the indications in the Veda on which this theory of a
\nrecent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of any
\nsuch invasion. The distinction between Aryan and un-Aryan on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the
\nevidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference.1<\/font><\/sup> The language of the hymns clearly points to a particular worship
\nor spiritual culture as the distinguishing sign of the Aryan, —a worship of Light and of the powers of Light and a self-discipline
\nbased on the culture of the “Truth” and the aspiration to Immortality, —Ritam and Amritam. There is no reliable indication
\nof any racial difference. It is always possible that the bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India may have been the descendants of a
\nnew race from more northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions; but there is nothing in the
\nVeda, as there is nothing in the present ethnological features2 of the country to prove that this descent took place near to the time
\nof the Vedic hymns or was the slow penetration of a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilised Dravidian peninsula. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

1 It is urged that the Dasyus are described as black of skin and noseless in opposition
\nto the fair and high-nosed Aryans. But the former distinction is certainly applied to the Aryan Gods and the Dasa Powers in the sense of light and darkness, and the word
\n\u00af  .<\/i> anasah <\/i>does not mean noseless. Even if it did, it would be wholly inapplicable to the
\nDravidian races; for the southern nose can give as good an account of itself as any “Aryan” proboscis in the North.
\n2 In India we are chiefly familiar with the old philological divisions of the Indian
\nraces and with the speculations of Mr. Risley which are founded upon these earlier generalisations. But a more advanced ethnology rejects all linguistic tests and leans to
\nthe idea of a single homogeneous race inhabiting the Indian peninsula.  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 3<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNor is it a certain conclusion from the data we possess that the early Aryan cultures
\n\t\t\t—supposing the Celt, Teuton, Greek
\nand Indian to represent one common cultural origin, —were really undeveloped and barbarous. A certain pure and high
\nsimplicity in their outward life and its organisation, a certain concreteness and vivid human familiarity in their conception of
\nand relations with the gods they worshipped, distinguish the Aryan type from the more sumptuous and materialistic Egypto
\nChaldean civilisation and its solemn and occult religions. But those characteristics are not inconsistent with a high internal
\nculture. On the contrary, indications of a great spiritual tradition meet us at many points and negate the ordinary theory. The old
\nCeltic races certainly possessed some of the highest philosophical conceptions and they preserve stamped upon them even to the
\npresent day the result of an early mystic and intuitional development which must have been of long standing and highly evolved
\nto have produced such enduring results. In Greece it is probable that the Hellenic type was moulded in the same way by Orphic
\nand Eleusinian influences and that Greek mythology, as it has come down to us, full of delicate psychological suggestions, is a
\nlegacy of the Orphic teaching. It would be only consonant with the general tradition if it turned out that Indian civilisation has
\nthroughout been the prolongation of tendencies and ideas sown in us by the Vedic forefathers. The extraordinary vitality of these
\nearly cultures which still determine for us the principal types of modern man, the main elements of his temperament, the chief
\ntendencies of his thought, art and religion, can have proceeded from no primitive savagery. They are the result of a deep and
\npuissant prehistoric development. <\/p>\n

\nComparative Mythology has deformed the sense of man’s
\nearly traditions by ignoring this important stage in human progress. It has founded its interpretation on a theory which saw
\nnothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads. It has supposed the early religions to have been founded on the
\nwonder of barbarians waking up suddenly to the astonishing fact that such strange things as Dawn and Night and the Sun
\nexisted and attempting in a crude, barbaric, imaginative way to   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 27<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

explain their existence. And from this childlike wonder we stride at one step to the profound theories of the Greek philosophers
\nand the Vedantic sages. Comparative Mythology is the creation of Hellenists interpreting un-Hellenic data from a standpoint
\nwhich is itself founded on a misunderstanding of the Greek mind. Its method has been an ingenious play of the poetic
\nimagination rather than a patient scientific research. <\/p>\n

\n

If we look at the results of the method, we find an extraordinary confusion of images and of their interpretations in which there is nowhere any coherence or consistency. It is a mass of
\ndetails running into each other, getting confusedly into each other’s way, disagreeing yet entangled, dependent for their validity on the licence of imaginative conjecture as our sole means of knowledge. This incoherence has even been exalted into a
\nstandard of truth; for it is seriously argued by eminent scholars that a method arriving at a more logical and well-ordered result
\nwould be disproved and discredited by its very coherency, since confusion must be supposed to be the very essence of the early mythopoeic faculty. But in that case there can be nothing binding in the results of Comparative Mythology and one theory will be
\nas good as another; for there is no reason why one particular mass of incoherence should be held to be more valid than
\nanother mass of incoherence differently composed. <\/p>\n

\n

There is much that is useful in the speculations of Comparative Mythology; but in order that the bulk of its results should be sound and acceptable, it must use a more patient and
\nconsistent method and organise itself as part of a well-founded Science of Religion. We must recognise that the old religions
\nwere organic systems founded on ideas which were at least as coherent as those which constitute our modern systems of belief.
\nWe must recognise also that there has been a perfectly intelligible progressive development from the earlier to the later systems of
\nreligious creed and of philosophical thought. It is by studying our data widely and profoundly in this spirit and discovering
\nthe true evolution of human thought and belief that we shall arrive at real knowledge. The mere identification of Greek and
\nSanskrit names and the ingenious discovery that Heracles’ pyre is   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 28<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nan image of the setting sun or that Paris and Helen are Greek corruptions of the Vedic Sarama and the Panis make an interesting
\ndiversion for an imaginative mind, but can by themselves lead to no serious result, even if they should prove to be correct. Nor
\nis their correctness beyond serious doubt, for it is the vice of the fragmentary and imaginative method by which the sun and star
\nmyth interpretations are built up that they can be applied with equal ease and convincingness to any and every human tradition,
\nbelief or even actual event of history.3 With this method we can never be sure where we have hit on a truth or where we are
\nlistening to a mere ingenuity. <\/p>\n

\n Comparative Philology can indeed be called to our aid, but,
\nin the present state of that Science, with very little conclusiveness. Modern Philology is an immense advance on anything we
\nhave had before the nineteenth century. It has introduced a spirit of order and method in place of mere phantasy; it has given us
\nmore correct ideas of the morphology of language and of what is or is not possible in etymology. It has established a few rules
\nwhich govern the phenomena of the detrition of language and guide us in the identification of the same word or of related
\nwords as they appear in the changes of different but kindred tongues. Here, however, its achievements cease. The high hopes
\nwhich attended its birth, have not been fulfilled by its maturity. It has failed to create a Science of Language and we are still
\ncompelled to apply to it the apologetic description given by a great philologist after some decades of earnest labour when he
\nwas obliged to speak of his favourite pursuits as “our petty conjectural sciences”. But a conjectural Science is no Science
\nat all. Therefore the followers of more exact and scrupulous forms of knowledge refuse that name altogether to Comparative
\nPhilology and deny even the possibility of a linguistic science. <\/p>\n

\n There is, in fact, no real certainty as yet in the obtained
\nresults of Philology; for beyond one or two laws of a limited 3
\nE.g. Christ and his twelve apostles are, a great scholar assures us, the sun and the twelve months. The career of Napoleon is the most perfect Sun-myth in all legend or
\nhistory.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 29<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

application there is nowhere a sure basis. Yesterday we were all convinced that Varuna was identical with Ouranos, the Greek
\nheaven; today this identity is denounced to us as a philological error; tomorrow it may be rehabilitated.
\nParame vyoman<\/i>
\nis a Vedic phrase which most of us would translate “in the highest heaven”, but Mr. T. Paramasiva Aiyar in his brilliant
\nand astonishing work, The Riks<\/i>, tells us that it means “in the lowest hollow”; for
\nvyoman <\/i>“means break, fissure, being literally absence of protection, (uma)”; and the reasoning which he uses is so entirely after the fashion of the modern scholar
\nthat the philologist is debarred from answering that “absence of protection” cannot possibly mean a fissure and that human
\nlanguage was not constructed on these principles. For Philology has failed to discover the principles on which language was constructed or rather was organically developed, and on the other hand it has preserved a sufficient amount of the old spirit of mere
\nphantasy and ingenuity and is full of precisely such brilliances of hazardous inference. But then we arrive at this result that there
\nis nothing to help us in deciding whether parame vyoman <\/i>in the Veda refers to the highest heaven or to the lowest abyss. It is
\nobvious that a philology so imperfect may be a brilliant aid, but can never be a sure guide to the sense of Veda. <\/p>\n

\n

We have to recognise in fact that European scholarship in its dealings with the Veda has derived an excessive prestige from
\nits association in the popular mind with the march of European Science. The truth is that there is an enormous gulf between the
\npatient, scrupulous and exact physical sciences and these other brilliant, but immature branches of learning upon which Vedic
\nscholarship relies. Those are careful of their foundation, slow to generalise, solid in their conclusions; these are compelled to
\nbuild upon scanty data large and sweeping theories and supply the deficiency of sure indications by an excess of conjecture and
\nhypothesis. They are full of brilliant beginnings, but can come to no secure conclusion. They are the first rough scaffolding for
\na Science, but they are not as yet Sciences. <\/p>\n

\n

It follows that the whole problem of the interpretation of
\nVeda still remains an open field in which any contribution that   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 30<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\ncan throw light upon the problem should be welcome. Three such contributions have proceeded from Indian scholars. Two
\nof them follow the lines or the methods of European research, while opening up new theories which if established, would considerably alter our view of the external sense of the hymns. Mr. Tilak in his
\nArctic Home in the Vedas <\/i>has accepted the
\ngeneral conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows
\nand the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended originally
\nfrom the Arctic regions in the glacial period. Mr. T. Paramasiva Aiyar by a still bolder departure has attempted to prove that
\nthe whole of the Rig Veda is a figurative representation of the geological phenomena belonging to the new birth of our planet
\nafter its long-continued glacial death in the same period of terrestrial evolution. It is difficult to accept in their mass Mr. Aiyar’s
\nreasonings and conclusions, but he has at least thrown a new light on the great Vedic mythus of Ahi Vritra and the release
\nof the seven rivers. His interpretation is far more consistent and probable than the current theory which is not borne out
\nby the language of the hymns. Taken in conjunction with Mr. Tilak’s work it may serve as the starting-point for a new external
\ninterpretation of the old Scripture which will explain much that is now inexplicable and recreate for us the physical origins if not
\nthe actual physical environment of the old Aryan world. <\/p>\n

\n The third Indian contribution is older in date, but nearer
\nto my present purpose. It is the remarkable attempt by Swami Dayananda, the founder of the Arya Samaj, to re-establish the
\nVeda as a living religious Scripture. Dayananda took as his basis a free use of the old Indian philology which he found
\nin the Nirukta. Himself a great Sanskrit scholar, he handled his materials with remarkable power and independence. Especially
\ncreative was his use of that peculiar feature of the old Sanskrit tongue which is best expressed by a phrase of Sayana’s,
\n\t\t\t—the
\n“multi-significance of roots”. We shall see that the right following of this clue is of capital importance for understanding the
\npeculiar method of the Vedic Rishis.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 31<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Dayananda’s interpretation of the hymns is governed by the idea that the Vedas are a plenary revelation of religious, ethical
\nand scientific truth. Its religious teaching is monotheistic and the Vedic gods are different descriptive names of the one Deity; they
\nare at the same time indications of His powers as we see them working in Nature and by a true understanding of the sense of
\nthe Vedas we could arrive at all the scientific truths which have been discovered by modern research. <\/p>\n

\n

Such a theory is, obviously, difficult to establish. The Rig Veda itself, indeed, asserts4<\/font><\/sup> that the gods are only different names
\nand expressions of one universal Being who in His own reality transcends the universe; but from the language of the hymns we
\nare compelled to perceive in the gods not only different names, but also different forms, powers and personalities of the one
\nDeva. The monotheism of the Veda includes in itself also the monistic, pantheistic and even polytheistic views of the cosmos
\nand is by no means the trenchant and simple creed of modern Theism. It is only by a violent struggle with the text that we can
\nforce on it a less complex aspect. <\/p>\n

\n

That the ancient races were far more advanced in the physical sciences than is as yet recognised, may also be admitted. The Egyptians and Chaldeans, we now know, had discovered
\nmuch that has since been rediscovered by modern Science and much also that has not been rediscovered. The ancient Indians
\nwere, at least, no mean astronomers and were always skilful physicians; nor do Hindu medicine and chemistry seem to have
\nbeen of a foreign origin. It is possible that in other branches also of physical knowledge they were advanced even in early times.
\nBut the absolute completeness of scientific revelation asserted by Swami Dayananda will take a great deal of proving. <\/p>\n

\n

The hypothesis on which I shall conduct my own enquiry is that the Veda has a double aspect and that the two, though
\nclosely related, must be kept apart. The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which
\nthe same deities were at once internal and external Powers of <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

4  R.V. I.164.46 and 170.1.   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 32<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nuniversal Nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for
\ntheir worship in both aspects. But the psychological sense predominates and is more pervading, close-knit and coherent than
\nthe physical. The Veda is primarily intended to serve for spiritual enlightenment and self-culture. It is, therefore, this sense which
\nhas first to be restored. <\/p>\n

\n To this task each of the ancient and modern systems of
\ninterpretation brings an indispensable assistance. Sayana and Yaska supply the ritualistic framework of outward symbols
\nand their large store of traditional significances and explanations. The Upanishads give their clue to the psychological and
\nphilosophical ideas of the earlier Rishis and hand down to us their method of spiritual experience and intuition. European
\nscholarship supplies a critical method of comparative research, yet to be perfected, but capable of immensely increasing the
\nmaterials available and sure eventually to give a scientific certainty and firm intellectual basis which has hitherto been lacking.
\nDayananda has given the clue to the linguistic secret of the Rishis and reemphasised one central idea of the Vedic religion, the idea
\nof the One Being with the Devas expressing in numerous names and forms the many-sidedness of His unity. <\/p>\n

\n With so much help from the intermediate past we may yet succeed in reconstituting this remoter antiquity and enter by the
\ngate of the Veda into the thoughts and realities of a prehistoric wisdom.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 33<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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