{"id":463,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=463"},"modified":"2013-12-01T16:15:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T00:15:21","slug":"50-dayananda-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17\/50-dayananda-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","title":{"rendered":"-50_Dayananda\u00a0.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nIX<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>DAY ANANDA – BANKIM – TILAK <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

ANDAL
\n– NAMMALWAR<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nDayananda\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/span>
\nTHE MAN AND
\nHIS WORK<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>AMONG<\/font><\/b> the great company of remarkable
\nfigures that will appear to the eye of posterity at the head of the Indian Renascence,
\none stands out by himself with peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique
\nin his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a
\nlong time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all
\nwith sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold
\nand striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in
\nsheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its
\nsummit, a solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure,
\nvigorous and fertilising water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain
\nof life and health to the valley. Such is the impression created on my mind by
\nDayananda.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It was Kathiawar that
\ngave birth to this puissant renovator and new-creator. And something of the
\nvery soul and temperament of that peculiar land entered into his spirit,
\nsomething of Girnar and the rocks and hills, something of the voice and
\npuissance of the sea that flings itself upon those coasts, something of that
\nhumanity which seems to be made of the virgin and unspoilt stuff of Nature,
\nfair and robust in body, instinct with a fresh and primal vigour, crude but in
\na developed nature capable of becoming a great force of genial creation.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>When I seek to give an
\naccount to myself of my sentiment and put into precise form the impression I
\nhave received, I find myself starting from two great salient characteristics of
\nthis man’s life and work which mark him off from his contemporaries and
\ncompeers. Other great Indians have helped to make India of today by a
\nself-pouring into the psychological material of the race, a spiritual infusion
\nof themselves into the fluent and indeterminate mass which will one day settle
\ninto consistency and appear as a great formal birth of Nature. They have
\nentered in as a sort<\/p>\n

\nPage -331<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of leaven, a
\npower of unformed stir and ferment out of which forms must result. One
\nremembers them as great souls and great influences who live on in the soul of
\nIndia. They are in us and we would not be what we are without them. But of no
\nprecise form can we say that this was what the man meant, still less that this
\nform was the very body of that spirit.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The example
\nof Mahadev Govind Ranade presents itself to my mind as the very type of this
\npeculiar action so necessary to a period of large and complex formation. If a
\nforeigner were to ask us what this Mahratta economist, reformer, patriot
\nprecisely did that we give him so high a place in our memory, we should find it
\na little difficult to answer. We should have to point to those activities of a
\nmass of men in which his soul and thought were present as a formless former of
\nthings, to the great figures of present-day Indian life who received the breath
\nof his spirit. And in the end we should have to reply by a counter question,
\n"What would Maharashtra of today have been without Mahadev Govind Ranade
\nand what would India of today be without Maharashtra?" But even with those
\nwho were less amorphous and diffusive in their pressure on men and things, even
\nwith workers of a more distinct energy and action, I arrive fundamentally at
\nthe same impression. Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one,
\na very lion among men, but the definite work he has left behind is quite
\nincommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We
\nperceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we
\nknow not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine,
\ngrand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say,
\n"Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the
\nsouls of her children." So it is with all. Not only are the men greater
\nthan their definite works, but their influence is so wide and formless that it
\nhas little relation to any formal work that they have left behind them.
\n               <\/span>Very different was
\nthe manner of working of Dayananda. Here was one who did not infuse himself
\ninformally into the in- determinate soul of things, but stamped his figure
\nindelibly as in bronze on men and things. Here was one whose formal works are
\nthe very children of his spiritual body, children fair and robust<\/p>\n

\nPage -332<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and full of vitality, the image of their creator. Here was one who knew
\ndefinitely and clearly the work he was sent to do, chose his materials,
\ndetermined his conditions with a sovereign clairvoyance of the spirit and
\nexecuted his conception with the puis- sant mastery of the born worker. As I
\nregard the figure of this formidable artisan in God’s workshop, images crowd on
\nme which are all of battle and work and conquest and triumphant labour. Here, I
\nsay to myself, was a very soldier of Light, a warrior in God’s world, a
\nsculptor of men and institutions, a bold and rugged victor of the difficulties
\nwhich matter presents to spirit. And the whole sums itself up to me in a
\npowerful impression of spiritual practicality. The combination of these two
\nwords, usually so divorced from each other in our conceptions, seems to me the
\nvery definition of Dayananda.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Even if we leave out of account the actual
\nnature of the work he did, the mere fact that he did it in this spirit and to
\nthis effect would give him a unique place among our great founders. He brings
\nback an old Aryan element into the national character. This element gives us
\nthe second of the differentiae I observe and it is the secret of the first. We
\nothers live in a stream of influences; we allow them to pour through us and
\nmould us; there is something shaped and out of it a modicum of work results, the
\nrest is spilt out again in a stream of influence. We are indeterminate in our
\nlines, we accommodate ourselves to circumstance and environment. Even when we
\nwould fain be militant and intransigent, we are really fluid and opportunist.
\nDayananda seized on all that entered into him, held it in himself, masterfully
\nshaped it there into the form that he saw to be right and threw it out again
\ninto the forms that he saw to be right. That which strikes us in him as
\nmilitant and aggressive, was a part of his strength of self-definition.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He was not only
\nplastic to the great hand of Nature, but asserted his own right and power to
\nuse Life and Nature as plastic material. We can imagine his soul crying still
\nto us with our insufficient spring of manhood and action, "Be not content,
\n0 Indian, only to be infinitely and grow vaguely, but see what God intends thee
\nto be, determine in the light of His inspiration to what thou shalt grow.
\nSeeing, hew that out of thyself, hew that out of Life.
\n                                                                                                                Page -333<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Be a thinker, but be also a doer; be a soul, but be also a man; be a servant of
\nGod, but be also a master of Nature!" For this was what he himself was; a
\nman with God in his soul, vision in his eyes and power in his hands to hew out
\nof life an image according to his vision. "Hew" is the right word.
\nGranite him- self, he smote out a shape of things with great blows as in
\ngranite.
\n          <\/span>In Dayananda’s
\nlife we see always the puissant jet of this spiritual practicality. A
\nspontaneous power and decisiveness is stamped everywhere on his work. And to
\nbegin with, what a master-glance of practical intuition was this to go back
\ntrenchantly to the very root of Indian life and culture, to derive from the
\nflower of its first birth the seed for a radical new birth! And what an act of
\ngrandiose intellectual courage to lay hold upon this scripture defaced by
\nignorant comment and oblivion of its spirit, degraded by misunderstanding to
\nthe level of an ancient document of barbarism, and to perceive in it its real
\nworth as a scripture which conceals in itself the deep and energetic spirit of
\nthe forefathers who made this country and nation, – a scripture of divine knowledge,
\ndivine worship, divine action. I know not whether Dayananda’s powerful and
\noriginal commentary will be widely accepted as the definite word on the Veda. I
\nthink myself some delicate work is still called for to bring out other aspects
\nof this profound and astonishing Revelation. But this matters little. The
\nessential is that he seized justly on the Veda as India’s Rock of Ages and had
\nthe daring conception to build on what his penetrating glance perceived in it a
\nwhole education of youth, a whole manhood and a whole nationhood. Rammohan Roy,
\nthat other great soul and puissant worker who laid his hand on Bengal and shook
\nher – to what mighty issues – out of her long, indolent sleep by her rivers and
\nrice-fields- Rammohan Roy stopped short at the Upanishads. Dayananda looked
\nbeyond and perceived that our true original seed was the Veda. . He had the
\nnational instinct and he was able to make it luminous, – an intuition in place
\nof an instinct. Therefore the works that derive from him, however they depart from
\nreceived traditions, must needs be profoundly national.
\n                                                                                                                  Page – 334<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To be national is not to
\nstand still. Rather, to seize on a vital thing out of the past and throw it
\ninto the stream of modern life, is really the most powerful means of renovation
\nand new creation. Dayananda’s work brings back such a principle and spirit of
\nthe past to vivify a modern mould. And observe that in the work as in the life
\nit is the past caught in the first jet of its virgin vigour, pure from its
\nsources, near to its root principle and therefore to something eternal and
\nalways renewable.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>And in the work as
\nin the man we find that faculty of spontaneous definite labour and vigorous
\nformation which proceeds from an inner principle of perfect clearness, truth
\nand sincerity. To be clear in one’s own mind, entirely true and plain with
\none’s self and with others, wholly honest with the conditions and materials of one’s
\nlabour, is a rare gift in our crooked, complex and faltering humanity. It is
\nthe spirit of the Aryan worker and a sure secret of vigorous success. For
\nalways Nature recognises a clear, honest and recognisable knock at her doors
\nand gives the result with an answering scrupulosity and diligence. And it is
\ngood that the spirit of the Master should leave its trace in his followers,
\nthat somewhere in India there should be a body of whom it can be said that when
\na work is seen to be necessary and right, the men will be forthcoming, the
\nmeans forthcoming and that work will surely be done.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Truth seems a
\nsimple thing and is yet most difficult. Truth was the master-word of the Vedic
\nteaching, truth in the soul, truth in vision, truth in the intention, truth in
\nthe act. Practical truth, arjava, <\/i>an inner candour and a strong
\nsincerity, clearness and open honour in the word and deed, was the temperament
\nof the old Aryan morals. It is the secret of a pure unspoilt energy, the sign
\nthat a man has not travelled far from Nature. It is the bar dexter of the son
\nof Heaven, Divasputra. This was the stamp that Dayananda left behind him and it
\nshould be the mark and effigy of himself by which the parentage of his work can
\nbe recognised. May his spirit act in India pure, unspoilt, unmodified and help
\nto give us back that of which our life stands especially in need, pure energy,
\nhigh clearness, the penetrating eye, the masterful hand, the noble and dominant
\nsincerity.<\/p>\n

\nPage-335<\/font>\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\nDAYANANDA AND THE VEDA<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

Dayananda accepted the Veda as his rock of firm foundation, he took it for his
\nguiding view of life, his rule of inner existence and his inspiration for
\nexternal work, but he regarded it as even more, the word of eternal Truth on
\nwhich man’s knowledge of God and his relations with the Divine Being and with
\nhis fellows can be rightly and securely founded. This everlasting rock of the
\nVeda, many assert, has no existence, there is nothing there but the commonest
\nmud and sand; it is only a hymnal of primitive barbarians, only a rude worship
\nof personified natural phenomena, or even less than that, a liturgy of
\nceremonial sacrifice, half religion, half magic, by which superstitious animal
\nmen of yore hoped to get themselves gold and food and cattle, slaughter
\npitilessly their enemies, protect themselves from disease, calamity and
\ndemoniac influences and enjoy the coarse pleasures of a material Paradise. To
\nthat we must add a third view, the orthodox, or at least that which arises from
\nSayana’s commentary; this view admits, practically, the ignobler interpretation
\nof the substance of Veda and yet – or is it therefore? – exalts this primitive
\nfarrago as a holy Scripture and a Book of Sacred Works.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Now this matter is no
\nmere scholastic question, but has a living importance, not only for a just
\nestimate of Dayananda’s work but for our consciousness of our past and for the
\ndetermination of the influences that shall mould our future. A nation grows
\ninto what it shall be by the force of that which it was in the past and is in
\nthe present, and in this growth there come periods of conscious and
\nsubconscious stock-taking when the national soul selects, modifies, rejects, keeps
\nout of all that it had or is acquiring whatever it needs as substance and
\ncapital for its growth and action in the future: in such a period of
\nstock-taking we are still and Dayananda was one of its great and formative
\nspirits. But among all the materials of our past the Veda is the most venerable
\nand has been directly and indirectly the most potent. Even when its sense was
\nno longer understood, even when its traditions were lost behind Pauranic forms,
\nit was still held in honour, though without knowledge, as authoritative reve-
\n                                                                                                                 Page – 336<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

lation and inspired Book of Knowledge, the source of all sanctions and standard
\nof all truth.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But there has always been
\nthis double and incompatible tradition about the Veda that it is a book of
\nritual and mytho- logy and that it is a book of divine knowledge. The Brahmanas
\nseized on the one tradition, the Upanishads on the other. Later, the learned
\ntook the hymns for a book essentially of ritual and works, they went elsewhere
\nfor pure knowledge; but the instinct of the race bowed down before it with an
\nobstinate inarticulate memory of a loftier tradition. And when in our age the
\nVeda was brought out of its obscure security behind the Purdah of a reverential
\nneglect, the same phenomenon reappears. While Western scholarship extending the
\nhints of Sayana seemed to have classed it for ever as a ritual liturgy to
\nNature-Gods, the genius of the race looking through the eyes of Dayananda
\npierced behind the error of many centuries and received again the intuition of a
\ntimeless revelation and a divine truth given to humanity. In any case, we have
\nto make one choice or another. We can no longer securely enshrine the Veda
\nwrapped up in the folds of an ignorant reverence or guarded by a pious
\nself-deceit.
\nEither the Veda is what Sayana says it is, and then we have to leave it behind
\nfor ever as the document of a mythology and ritual which have no longer any
\nliving truth or force for thinking minds, or it is what the European scholars
\nsay it is, and then we have to put it away among the relics of the past as an
\nantique record of semi-barbarous worship; .or else it is indeed Veda, a book of
\ndivine knowledge, and then it becomes of supreme importance to us to know and
\nto hear its message.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It is objected to the
\nsense Dayananda gave to the Veda that it is no true sense but an arbitrary
\nfabrication of imaginative learning and ingenuity, to his method that it is
\nfantastic and unacceptable to the critical reason, to his teaching of a
\nrevealed Scripture that the very idea is a rejected superstition impossible for
\nany enlightened mind to admit or to announce sincerely. I will not now examine
\nthe solidity of Dayananda’s interpretation of Vedic texts, nor anticipate the
\nverdict of the future on his commentary, nor discuss his theory of revelation.
\nI shall only state the broad principles underlying his thought about the Veda
\nas  <\/p>\n

\nPage – 337<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

they present themselves to me. For in the action and thought of a great soul or
\na great personality the vital thing to my mind is not the form he gave to it,
\nbut in his action the helpful power he put forth and in his thought the helpful
\ntruth he has added or, it may be, restored to the yet all too scanty stock of
\nour human acquisition and divine potentiality.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To start with the
\nnegation of his work by his critics, in whose mouth does it lie to accuse
\nDayananda’s dealings with the Veda of a fantastic or arbitrary ingenuity? Not
\nin the mouth of those who accept Sayana’s traditional interpretation. For if
\never there was a monument of arbitrarily erudite ingenuity, of great learning
\ndivorced, as great learning too often is, from sound judgment and sure taste
\nand a faithful, critical and comparative observation, from direct seeing and
\noften even from plainest commonsense or of a constant fitting of the text into
\nthe Procrustean bed of preconceived theory, it is surely this commentary,
\notherwise so imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and
\nlaborious, left to us by the Acharya Sayana. Nor does the reproach lie in the
\nmouth of those who take as final the recent labours of European scholarship.
\nFor if ever there was a toil of interpretation in which the loosest rein has
\nbeen given to an ingenious speculation, in which doubtful indications have been
\nsnatched at as certain proofs, in which the boldest conclusions have been
\ninsisted upon with the scantiest justification, the most – enormous
\ndifficulties ignored and preconceived prejudice maintained in face of the clear
\nand often admitted suggestions of the text, it is surely this labour, so
\neminently respectable otherwise for its industry, good will and power of
\nresearch, performed through a long century by European Vedic scholarship.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>What is the main positive
\nissue in this matter? An interpretation of Veda must stand or fall by its
\ncentral conception of the Vedic religion and the amount of support given to it
\nby the intrinsic evidence of the Veda itself. Here Dayananda’s view is quite
\nclear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One
\nDeity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express His
\nquaiities and powers. Was this conception of Dayananda’s an arbitrary conceit
\nfetched out of his own too ingenious imagintion? Not at all; it is the ex-<\/p>\n

\nPage – 338<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

plicit statement of the Veda itself: "One existent, sages" \u2013 not the
\nignorant, mind you, but the seers, the men of knowledge, – "speak of in
\nmany ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matarishwan, as Agni". The Vedic Rishis
\nought surely to have known some- thing about their own religion, more, let us
\nhope, than Roth or Max Muller, and this is what they knew.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We are aware how
\nmodern scholars twist away from the evidence. This hymn, they say, was a late
\nproduction, this loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up
\nsomehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed by those ignorant fire-
\nworshippers, sun-worshippers, sky-worshippers from their cultured and
\nphilosophic Dravidian enemies. But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory
\nhymns and expressions: Agni or Indra or another is expressly hymned as one with
\nall the other gods. Agni contains all other divine powers within himself, the
\nMaruts are described as all the gods, one deity is addressed by the names of
\nothers as well as his own, or, most commonly, he is given as Lord and King of
\nthe universe attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. Ah, but that
\ncannot mean, ought not to mean, must not mean, the worship of One; let us
\ninvent a new word, call it henotheism and suppose that the Rishis did not
\nreally believe Indra or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or
\nevery god as such for the nonce, perhaps that he might feel the more flattered
\nand lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a compliment! But why should not
\nthe foundation of Vedic thought be natural monotheism rather than this
\nnew-fangled monstrosity of henotheism? Well, because primitive barbarians could
\nnot possibly have risen to such high conceptions and, if you allow them to have
\nso risen, you imperil our theory of the evolutionary stages of the human
\ndevelopment and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns and
\ntheir place in the history of mankind. Truth must hide herself, commonsense
\ndisappear from the field so that a theory may flourish! I ask, in this point,
\nand it is the <\/i>fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with
\nthe text, Dayananda or the Western scholars?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But if this fundamental
\npoint of Dayananda’s is granted, if the character given by the Vedic Rishis
\nthemselves to their gods<\/p>\n

\nPage – 339<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

is admitted, we are bound, whenever the hymns speak of Agni or another, to see
\nbehind that name present always to the thought of the Rishi the one Supreme
\nDeity or else one of His powers with its attendant qualities or workings.
\nImmediately the whole character of the Veda is fixed in the sense Dayananda
\ngave to it; the merely ritual, mythological, polytheistic interpretation of
\nSayana collapses, the merely meteorological and naturalistic European
\ninterpretation collapses. We have instead a real Scripture, one of the world’s
\nsacred books and the divine word of a lofty and noble religion.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>All the rest of
\nDayananda’s theory arises logically out of this fundamental conception. If the
\nnames of the godheads express qualities of the one Godhead and it is these
\nwhich the Rishis adored and towards which they directed their aspiration, then
\nthere must inevitably be in the Veda a large part of psychology of the Divine
\nNature, psychology of the relations of man with God and a constant indication
\nof the law governing man’s God- ward conduct. Dayananda asserts the presence of
\nsuch an ethical element, he finds in the Veda the law of life given by God to
\nthe human being. And if the Vedic godheads express the powers of a supreme
\nDeity who is Creator, Ruler and Father of the universe, then there must
\ninevitably be in the Veda a large part of cosmology, the law of creation and of
\ncosmos. Dayananda asserts the presence of such a cosmic element, he finds in
\nthe Veda the secrets of creation and law of Nature by which the Omniscient
\ngoverns the world.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Neither Western
\nscholarship nor ritualistic learning has succeeded in eliminating the
\npsychological and ethical value of the hymns, but they have both tended in
\ndifferent degrees to minimise it. Western scholars minimise because they feel
\nuneasy whenever ideas that are not primitive seem to insist on their presence
\nin these primeval utterances; they do not hesitate openly to abandon in certain
\npassages interpretations which they adopt in others and which are’ admittedly
\nnecessitated by their own philological and critical reasoning because, if
\nadmitted always, they would often involve deep and subtle psychological
\nconceptions which cannot <\/i>have occurred to primitive minds! Sayana
\nminimises because his theory of Vedic discipline was not<\/p>\n

\nPage-340<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

ethical righteousness with a moral and spiritual result but mechanical
\nperformance of ritual with a material reward. But, in spite of these efforts of
\nsuppression, the lofty ideas of the Vedas still reveal themselves in strange
\ncontrast to its alleged burden of fantastic naturalism or dull ritualism. The
\nVedic godheads are constantly hymned as Masters of Wisdom, Power, Purity,
\npurifiers, healers of grief and evil, destroyers of sin and falsehood, warriors
\nfor the truth; constantly the Rishis pray to them for healing and purification,
\nto be made seers of knowledge, possessors of the truth, to be upheld in the divine
\nlaw, to be assisted and armed with strength, manhood and energy. Dayananda has
\nbrought this idea of the divine right and truth into the Veda; the Veda is as
\nmuch and more a book of divine Law as Hebrew Bible or Zoroastrian Avesta.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The cosmic element is not
\nless conspicuous in the Veda; the Rishis speak always of the worlds, the firm
\nlaws that govern them, the divine workings in the cosmos. But Dayananda goes
\nfarther; he affirms that the truths of modern physical science are discoverable
\nin the hymns. Here we have the sole point of fundamental principle about which
\nthere can be any justifiable misgivings. I confess my incompetence to advance
\nany settled opinion in the matter. But this much needs to be said that his idea
\nis increasingly supported by the recent trend of our knowledge about the
\nancient world. . The ancient civilisations did possess secrets of science some
\nof which modern knowledge has re- covered, extended and made more rich and
\nprecise but others are even now not recovered. There is then nothing fantastic
\nin Dayananda’s idea that Veda contains truth of science as well as truth of
\nreligion. I will even add my own conviction that Veda contains other truths of
\na science the modern world does not at all possess, and in that case Dayananda
\nhas rather understated than overstated the depth and range of the Vedic wisdom.\n<\/p>\n

        Objection has also been made to the
\nphilological and etymological method by which he arrived at his results,
\nespecially in his dealings with the names of the godheads. But this objection,
\nI feel certain, is an error due to our introduction of modern ideas about
\nlanguage into our study of this ancient tongue. We modems use words as counters
\nwithout any memory or appre- <\/p>\n

\nPage – 341<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

ciation of their original sense;
\nwhen we speak we think of the object spoken of, not at all of the expressive
\nword which is to us a dead and brute thing, mere coin of verbal currency with
\nno value of its own. In early language the word was on the contrary a living
\nthing with essential powers of signification; its root meanings’ were
\nremembered because they were still in use, its wealth of force was vividly
\npresent to the mind of the speaker. We say "wolf" and think only of
\nthe animal, any other sound would have served our purpose as well, given the
\nconvention of its usage; the ancients said "tearer" and had that
\nsignificance present to them. We say "agni" and think of fire, the
\nword is of no other use to us; to the ancients "agni" means other
\nthings besides and only because of one or more of its root meanings was applied
\nto the physical object fire. Our words are carefully limited to one or two
\nsenses, theirs were capable of a great number and it was quite easy for them,
\nif they so chose, to use a word like Agni, Varuna or Vayu as a sound-index of a
\ngreat number of connected and complex ideas, a key-word. It cannot be doubted
\nthat the Vedic Rishis did take advantage of this greater potentiality of their
\nlanguage, – note their dealings with such words as gau <\/i>and candra. <\/i>The
\nNirukta bears evidence to this capacity and in the Brahmanas and Upanishads we
\nfind the memory of this free and symbolic use of words still subsisting.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Certainly, Dayananda
\nhad not the advantage that a comparative study of languages gives to the
\nEuropean scholar. There are defects in the ancient Nirukta which the new
\nlearning, though itself sadly defective, still helps us to fill in and in
\nfuture we shall have to use both sources of light for the elucidation of Veda.
\nStill this only affects matters of detail and does not touch the fundamental
\nprinciples of Dayananda’s interpretation. Interpretation in detail is a work of
\nintelligence and scholarship and in matters of intelligent opinion and
\nscholarship men seem likely to differ to the end of the chapter, but in all the
\nbasic principles, in those great and fundamental decisions where the eye of
\nintuition has to aid the workings of the intellect, Dayananda stands justified
\nby the substance of Veda itself, by logic and reason and by our growing
\nknowledge of the past of mankind. The Veda does hymn the one Deity of many
\nnames and powers; it does<\/p>\n

\nPage – 342<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

celebrate the divine Law and man’s aspiration to fulfil it; it does purport to
\ngive us the law of the cosmos.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>On the question of
\nrevelation I have left myself no space to write. Suffice it to say that here
\ntoo Dayananda was perfectly logical and it is quite grotesque to charge him
\nwith insincerity because he held to and proclaimed the doctrine. There are
\nalways three fundamental entities which we have to admit and whose relations we
\nhave to know if we would understand existence at all, God, Nature and the Soul.
\nIf, as Dayananda held on strong enough grounds, the Veda reveals to us God,
\nreveals to us the law of Nature, reveals to us the relations of the Soul to God
\nand Nature, what is it but a revelation of divine Truth? And if, as Dayananda
\nheld, it reveals them to us with a perfect truth, flawlessly, he might well
\nhold it for an infallible Scripture. The rest is a question of the method of
\nrevelation, of the divine dealings with our race, of man’s psychology and
\npossibilities. Modern thought, affirming Nature and Law but denying God, denied
\nalso the possibility of revelation; but so also has it denied many things which
\na more modern thought is very busy reaffirming. We cannot demand of a great
\nmind that it shall make itself a slave to vulgarly received opinion or the
\ntransient dogmas of the hour; the very essence of its greatness is this, that
\nit looks beyond, that it sees deeper.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In the matter of
\nVedic interpretation I am convinced that whatever may be the final complete
\ninterpretation, Dayananda will be honoured as the first discoverer of the right
\nclues. Amidst the chaos and obscurity of old ignorance and age-long
\nmisunderstanding his was the eye of direct vision that pierced to the truth and
\nfastened on that which was essential. He has found the keys of the doors that
\ntime had closed and rent asunder the seals of the imprisoned fountains.<\/p>\n

\nPage – 343<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IX \u00a0DAY ANANDA – BANKIM – TILAK ANDAL – NAMMALWAR Dayananda\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THE MAN AND HIS WORK \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AMONG the great company of remarkable figures that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","wpcat-9-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9712,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/9712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}