The Secret of the Veda

Aryaman

Aryaman, third of the four great solar godheads, is the least prominent of them all in the invocations of the seers. No separate hymn is addressed to him and, if his name occurs not unfrequently, it is in scattered verses; there is no strong body of Riks from which we can construct firmly our idea of his functions or recompose his physiognomy. Most often he is simply invoked by his bare name along with Mitra and Varuna or in the larger group of the sons of Aditi, almost always in adjunction to other kindred deities. Still there are half a dozen or more half-Riks from which his one chief and characteristic action emerges accompanied by the usual epithets of the Lords of the Truth, epithets expressive of Knowledge, Joy, Infinity and Power.

In the later tradition the name of Aryaman is placed at the head of the Fathers to whom as their appropriate offering is given the symbolic food, the piṇḍa of the Puranic funeral and memorial rites. In the Puranic traditions the Fathers are of two classes, divine and human, the latter being the ancestors, the Manes. But it is in connection with the Fathers as the souls who have attained to heaven, to immortality that we must think of Aryaman. Krishna in the Gita, enumerating the chief powers or manifestations of the eternal Godhead in things and beings, speaks of himself as Ushanas among the seers, Bhrigu among the Rishis, Vyasa among the sages, Vishnu among the children of Aditi, Aryaman among the Fathers. Now in the Veda the Fathers are the ancient illumined ones who discovered the Knowledge, created and followed the Path, reached the Truth, conquered Immortality; and in the few Riks in which Aryaman's separate personality emerges, it is as the God of the Path that he is hymned.

His name Aryaman, kin etymologically to the words arya, ārya, ari, by which are distinguished the men or peoples who

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follow the Vedic culture and the Gods who assist them in their battles and their aspirations, is similarly indicative. The Aryan is the traveller on the Path, the aspirant to immortality by divine sacrifice, one of the shining children of Light, a worshipper of the Masters of the Truth, a fighter in the battle against the powers of darkness who obstruct the human journey. Aryaman is the godhead in whose divine power this Aryahood is rooted; he is this Force of sacrifice, aspiration, battle, journey towards perfection and light and celestial bliss by which the path is created, travelled, pursued beyond all resistance and obscuration to its luminous and happy goal.

In consequence, the action of Aryaman takes up the attributes of Mitra and Varuna as leaders of the Path. This Force fulfils the happy impulsions of that Light and Harmony and the movement of infinite knowledge and power of that pure Vastness. Like Mitra and Varuna he makes men travel on the path; he is full of the perfect happiness of Mitra; he is complete in the will and the works of sacrifice; he and Varuna distinguish the path for mortals. He is like Varuna a godhead manifold in his births; like him he oppresses the wrath of the hurter of men. It is by the great path of Aryaman that we shall cross beyond the souls of a false or evil thought who obstruct our path. Aditi, mother of the Kings, and Aryaman carry us by paths of a happy travelling beyond all inimical powers. The man who seeks the straightness of Mitra's and Varuna's workings and by the force of the word and the affirmation embraces their law with all his being, is guarded in his progress by Aryaman.

But the Rik most distinctive of the function of Aryaman is that which describes him as "Aryaman of the unbroken path, of the many chariots, who dwells as the sevenfold offerer of sacrifice in births of diverse forms" (X.64.5). He is the deity of the human journey who carries it forward in its irresistible progress which the attacks of the enemy cannot overcome or successfully interrupt so long as this divine Force is our leader. The journey is effected through a manifold movement of our evolution, the many chariots of Aryaman. It is the journey of the human sacrifice which has a sevenfold energy of its action because there is a sevenfold principle in our being which has to be fulfilled in

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its integral perfection; Aryaman is the master of the sacrificial action who offers this sevenfold working to the godheads of the Divine Birth. Aryaman within us develops our various forms of birth in the ascending planes of our existence by which the Fathers climbed, travellers on his path, and by which it must be the aspiration of the Aryan soul to climb to the highest summit of Immortality.

Thus Aryaman sums up in himself the whole aspiration and movement of man in a continual self-enlargement and self-transcendence to his divine perfection. By his continuous movement on the unbroken path Mitra and Varuna and the sons of Aditi fulfil themselves in the human birth.