{"id":849,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=849"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:48","slug":"03-a-retrospect-of-vedic-theory-1-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10\/03-a-retrospect-of-vedic-theory-1-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","title":{"rendered":"-03_A Retrospect of Vedic Theory (1).htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> <\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nII   <\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

\n
\nA Retrospect of Vedic Theory <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n            V<\/font>EDA<\/font><\/b>,
\nthen, is the creation of an age anterior to our intellectual philosophies. In that original epoch
\nthought proceeded by other methods than those of our logical
\nreasoning and speech accepted modes of expression which in our
\nmodern habits would be inadmissible. The wisest then depended
\non inner experience and the suggestions of the intuitive mind for
\nall knowledge that ranged beyond mankind’s ordinary perceptions and daily activities. Their aim was illumination, not logical
\nconviction, their ideal the inspired seer, not the accurate reasoner.
\nIndian tradition has faithfully preserved this account of the origin
\nof the Vedas. The Rishi was not the individual composer of the
\nhymn, but the seer (draṣṭā)<\/i> of an eternal truth and an impersonal
\nknowledge. The language of Veda itself is śruti,<\/i> a rhythm not
\ncomposed by the intellect but heard, a divine Word that came
\nvibrating out of the Infinite to the inner audience of the man who
\nhad previously made himself fit for the impersonal knowledge.
\nThe words themselves, drṣṭi<\/i> and śruti,<\/i> sight and hearing, are
\nVedic expressions; these and cognate words signify, in the esoteric terminology of the hymns, revelatory knowledge and the
\ncontents of inspiration.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn the Vedic idea of the revelation there is no suggestion of
\nthe miraculous or the supernatural. The Rishi who employed
\nthese faculties, had acquired them by a progressive self-culture.
\nKnowledge itself was a travelling and a reaching, or a finding and
\na winning; the revelation came only at the end, the light was the
\nprize of a final victory. There is continually in the Veda this
\nimage of the journey, the soul’s march on the path of Truth. On
\nthat path, as it advances, it also ascends; new vistas of power
\nand light open to its aspiration; it wins by a heroic effort its
\nenlarged spiritual possessions.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom the historical point of view the Rig-veda may be<\/font>
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 8<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nregarded as a record of a great advance made by humanity by
\nspecial means at a certain period of its collective progress. In
\nits esoteric, as well as its exoteric significance, it is the Book of
\nWorks, of the inner and the outer sacrifice; it is the spirit’s hymn
\nof battle and victory as it discovers and climbs to planes of
\nthought and experience inaccessible to the natural or animal man,
\nman’s praise of the divine Light, Power and Grace at work in
\nthe mortal. It is far, therefore, from being an attempt to set down
\nthe results of intellectual or imaginative speculation, nor does it
\nconsist of the dogmas of a primitive religion. Only, out of the
\nsameness of experience and out of the impersonality of the know-
\nledge received, there arise a fixed body of conceptions constantly
\nrepeated and a fixed symbolic language which, perhaps, in that
\nearly human speech, was the inevitable form of these conceptions because alone capable by its combined concreteness and
\npower of mystic suggestion of expressing that which for the
\nordinary mind of the race was inexpressible. We have, at any
\nrate, the same notions repeated from hymn to hymn with the
\nsame constant terms and figures and frequently in the same
\nphrases with an entire indifference to any search for poetical
\noriginality or any demand for novelty of thought and freshness
\nof language. No pursuit of aesthetic grace, richness or beauty
\ninduces these mystic poets to vary the consecrated form which
\nhas become for them a sort of divine algebra transmitting the
\neternal formulae of the Knowledge to the continuous succession of the initiates.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe hymns possess indeed a finished metrical
\nform, a constant subtlety and skill in their technique, great variations of style
\nand poetical personality; they are not the work of rude, barbarous and primitive craftsmen, but the living breath of a supreme
\nand conscious Art forming its creations in the puissant but well-
\ngoverned movement of a self-observing inspiration. Still, all these high gifts
\nhave deliberately been exercised within one unvarying framework and always with the same materials. For
\nthe art of expression was to the Rishis only a means, not an aim;<\/font><\/p>\n

their principal preoccupation was strenuously practical, almost
\nutilitarian, in the highest sense of utility. The hymn was to the
\nRishi who composed it a means of spiritual progress for himself<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 9<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand for others. It rose out of his soul, it became a power of his
\nmind, it was the vehicle of his self-expression in some important
\nor even critical moment of his life’s inner history. It helped him
\nto express the god in him, to destroy the devourer, the expresser
\nof evil; it became a weapon in the hands of the Aryan striver
\nafter perfection, it flashed forth like Indra’s lightning against
\nthe Coverer oh the slopes, the Wolf on the path, the Robber by
\nthe streams.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe invariable fixity of Vedic thought when
\ntaken in conjunction with its depth, richness and subtlety, gives rise to some
\ninteresting speculations. For we may reasonably argue that
\nsuch a fixed form and substance would not easily be possible
\nin the beginnings of thought and psychological experience or
\neven during their early progress and unfolding. We may there-
\nfore surmise that our actual Sanhita represents the close of a
\nperiod, not its commencement, nor even some of its successive stages. It is even
\npossible that its most ancient hymns are a comparatively modern development or version of a more ancient<\/font>\u00b9<\/font>
\nlyric evangel couched in the freer and more pliable forms of a
\nstill earlier human speech. Or the whole voluminous mass of its
\nlitanies may be only a selection by Veda Vyasa out of a more
\nrichly vocal Aryan past. Made, according to the common belief,
\nby Krishna of the Isle, the great traditional sage, the colossal
\ncompiler (Vyasa), with his face turned towards the commencement of the Iron Age, towards the centuries of increasing twilight
\nand final darkness, it is perhaps only the last testament of the
\nAges of Intuition, the luminous Dawns of the Forefathers, to their descendants,
\nto a human race already turning in spirit towards the lower levels and the more easy and secure gains \u2014
\nsecure perhaps only in appearance \u2014 of the physical life and of
\nthe intellect and the logical reason.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut these are only speculations and inferences. Certain
\nit is that the old tradition of a progressive obscuration and loss
\nof the Veda as the law of the human cycle has been fully justified
\nby the event. The obscuration had already proceeded far before<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>The Veda itself speaks constantly of "ancient" and "modern" Rishis, (pūrvebhih<\/i><\/font>̣<\/i><\/font>…
\nnūtanaih<\/i><\/font>̣<\/i><\/font>),<\/i> the former remote enough to be regarded as a kind of demigods, the first founders
\nof knowledge. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 10<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe opening of the next great age of Indian spirituality, the
\nVedantic, which struggled to preserve or recover what it yet
\ncould of the ancient knowledge. It could hardly have been
\notherwise. For the system of the Vedic mystics was founded
\nupon experiences difficult to ordinary mankind and proceeded
\nby the aid of faculties which in most of us are rudimentary and
\nimperfectly developed and, when active at all, are mixed and
\nirregular in their operation. Once the first intensity of the search
\nafter truth had passed, periods of fatigue and relaxation were
\nbound to intervene in which the old truths would be partially
\nlost. Nor once lost, could they easily be recovered by scrutinising
\nthe sense of the ancient hymns; for those hymns were couched
\nin a language that was deliberately ambiguous.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nA tongue unintelligible to us may be correctly understood
\nonce a clue has been found; a diction that is deliberately ambiguous, holds its secret much more obstinately and successfully,
\nfor it is full of lures and of indications that mislead. Therefore
\nwhen the Indian mind turned again to review the sense of Veda,
\nthe task was difficult and the success only partial. One source
\nof light still existed, the traditional knowledge handed down
\namong those who memorised and explained the Vedic text or
\nhad charge of the Vedic ritual, \u2014 two functions that had originally been one; for in the early days the priest was also the
\nteacher and seer. But the clearness of this light was already
\nobscured. Even Purohits of repute performed the rites with a
\nvery imperfect knowledge of the power and the sense of the
\nsacred words which they repeated. For the material aspects of
\nVedic worship had grown like a thick crust over the inner know-
\nledge and were stifling what they had once served to protect.
\nThe Veda was already a mass of myth and ritual. The power had
\nbegun to disappear out of the symbolic ceremony; the light had
\ndeparted from the mystic parable and left only a surface of
\napparent grotesqueness and na\u00efvet\u00e9.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Brahmanas and the Upanishads are the record of a
\npowerful revival which took the sacred text and ritual as a
\nstarting-point for a new statement of spiritual thought and
\nexperience. This movement had two complementary aspects,
\none, the conservation of the forms, another the revelation of the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 11<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsoul of Veda, \u2014 the first represented by the Brahmanas,<\/font>\u00b9<\/font> the
\nsecond by the Upanishads.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Brahmanas labour to fix and preserve the minutiae of
\nthe Vedic ceremony, the conditions of their material effectuality, the symbolic
\nsense and purpose of their different parts, movements, implements, the significance of texts important in the
\nritual, the drift of obscure allusions, the memory of ancient myths and
\ntraditions. Many of their legends are evidently posterior to the hymns, invented to explain passages which were no
\nlonger understood; others may have been part of the apparatus
\nof original myth and parable employed by the ancient symbolists
\nor memories of the actual historical circumstances surrounding
\nthe composition of the hymns. Oral tradition is always a light
\nthat obscures; a new symbolism working upon an old that is
\nhalf lost, is likely to overgrow rather than reveal it; therefore the
\nBrahmanas, though full of interesting hints, help us very little
\nin our research; nor are they a safe guide to the meaning of separate texts when they attempt an exact and verbal interpretation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Rishis of the Upanishads followed another method.
\nThey sought to recover the lost or waning knowledge by meditation and spiritual experience and they used the text of the ancient
\nmantras as a prop or an authority for their own intuitions and
\nperceptions; or else the Vedic Word was a seed of thought and
\nvision by which they recovered old truths in new forms. What
\nthey found, they expressed in other terms more intelligible to
\nthe age in which they lived. In a certain sense their handling of
\nthe texts was not disinterested; it was not governed by the
\nscholar’s scrupulous desire to arrive at the exact intention of the
\nwords and the precise thought of the sentences in their actual
\nframing. They were seekers of a higher than verbal truth and
\nused words merely as suggestions for the illumination towards
\nwhich they were striving. They knew not or they neglected the
\netymological sense and employed often a method of symbolic
\ninterpretation of component sounds in which it is very difficult
\nto follow them. For this reason, while the Upanishads are in-
\nvaluable for the light they shed on the principal ideas and on the<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>Necessarily, these and other appreciations in the chapter are brief and summary views
\nof certain main tendencies. The Brahmanas, for instance, have their philosophical passages.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 12<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npsychological system of the ancient Rishis, they help us as little
\nas the Brahmanas in determining the accurate sense of the texts
\nwhich they quote. Their real work was to found Vedanta rather
\nthan to interpret Veda.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor this great movement resulted in a new and more permanently powerful statement of thought and spirituality, Veda
\nculminating in Vedanta. And it held in itself two strong tendencies which worked towards the disintegration of the old Vedic
\nthought and culture. First, it tended to subordinate more and
\nmore completely the outward ritual, the material utility of the
\nmantra and the sacrifice to a more purely spiritual aim and
\nintention. The balance, the synthesis preserved by the old Mystics between the external and the internal, the material and the
\nspiritual life was displaced and disorganised. A new balance,
\na new synthesis was established, leaning finally towards
\nasceticism and renunciation, and maintained itself until it was
\nin its turn displaced and disorganised by the exaggeration
\nof its own tendencies in Buddhism. The sacrifice, the symbolic ritual became
\nmore and more a useless survival and even an encumbrance; yet, as so often happens, by the very fact of becoming
\nmechanical and ineffective the importance of everything that was
\nmost external in them came to be exaggerated and their minutiae
\nirrationally enforced by that part of the national mind which still
\nclung to them. A sharp practical division came into being,
\neffective though never entirely recognised in theory, between
\nVeda and Vedanta, a distinction which might be expressed in the
\nformula, "the Veda for the priests, the Vedanta for the sages".<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe second tendency of the Vendatic movement was to disencumber itself progressively of the symbolic language, the veil of
\nconcrete myth and poetic figure, in which the Mystics had shrouded their thought and to substitute a clearer statement and more
\nphilosophical language. The complete evolution of this tendency
\nrendered obsolete the utility not only of the Vedic ritual but of
\nthe Vedic text. Upanishads, increasingly clear and direct in their
\nlanguage, became the fountain-head of the highest Indian thought
\nand replaced the inspired verses of Vasishtha and Vishvamitra.<\/font>\u00b9<\/font>
\nThe Vedas, becoming less and less the indispensable basis of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00b9Again this expresses the main tendency and is subject to qualification. The Vedas are also quoted as authorities; but as a whole it is the Upanishads that become the Book of
\nKnowledge, the Veda being rather the Book of Works. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 13<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\neducation, were no longer studied with the same zeal and intelligence; their symbolic language, ceasing to be used, lost the remnant of its inner sense to new generations whose whole manner
\nof thought was different from that of the Vedic forefathers.
\nThe Ages of Intuition were passing away into the first dawn of the
\nAge of Reason.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBuddhism completed the revolution and left of the externalities of the ancient world only some venerable pomps and
\nsome mechanical usages. It sought to abolish the Vedic sacrifice
\nand to bring into use the popular vernacular in place of the literary tongue. And although the consummation of its work was
\ndelayed for several centuries by the revival of Hinduism in the
\nPuranic religions, the Veda itself benefited little by this respite.
\nIn order to combat the popularity of the new religion it was necessary to put forward instead of venerable but unintelligible texts
\nScriptures written in an easy form of a more modern Sanskrit.
\nFor the mass of the nation the Puranas pushed aside the Veda
\nand the forms of new religious systems took the place of the
\nancient ceremonies. As the Veda had passed from the sage to the
\npriest, so now it began to pass from the hands of the priest into
\nthe hands of the scholar. And in that keeping it suffered the last
\nmutilation of its sense and the last diminution of its true dignity
\nand sanctity.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNot that the dealings of Indian scholarship with the hymns,
\nbeginning from the pre-Christian centuries, have been altogether a record of
\nloss. Rather it is to the scrupulous diligence and conservative tradition of the Pandits that we owe the preservation of
\nVeda at all after its secret had been lost and the hymns themselves had ceased in practice to be a living Scripture. And even
\nfor the recovery of the lost secret the two millenniums of
\nscholastic orthodoxy have left us some invaluable aids, a text
\ndetermined scrupulously to its very accentuation, the important
\nlexicon of Yaska and Sayana’s great commentary which in spite
\nof its many and often startling imperfections remains still for the
\nscholar an indispensable first step towards the formation of a
\nsound Vedic learning.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 14<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER II     A Retrospect of Vedic Theory               VEDA, then, is the creation of an age anterior to our intellectual philosophies. In that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","wpcat-17-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","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=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}