Lights on the Upanishads

VEDIC WISDOM IN THE VEDANTA - THE MYSTIC HONEY

THE title of the subject would suggest that this short dissertation is intended to show that what is called Knowledge of the Mystic Honey, the Madhuvidyā, mentioned in the Brahmanas and the Upanishads, does in sober truth form part of the wealth of Wisdom treasured in the hymns of the Rig Veda. True, this is so; but what is of greater moment to us is that the subject occasions the application of a fresh light, the light long lost, but recovered for us by Sri Aurobindo for the elucidation of the texts of the Rik Samhita. The Madhu Brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is just an illustration of the truth that the sages of the Upanishads often draw their inspiration from the earlier wisdom of the Vedic seers; either they seek the support of the mystic tradition of their forefathers for their intuitions and conclude with the quotation of a Rik or two and mention a Rishi, or rediscover the hidden meaning of a hymn or verse addressed to a Vedic God and re-state it concisely in the language of their age. These sages and thinkers of the original Vedanta, the Upanishads, are not, as supposed by some moderns, apostates from the Vedic cult, worship and tradition, but are seekers of Self-Knowledge and God Knowledge, endeavouring whenever necessary or possible to get at the secrets of the Vedic Wisdom, with their lives dedicated to the development of an inner Self-culture. Therefore in our pursuit of knowledge for a correct understanding of the Madhu Vidya of the Shatapatha Brahmana we adopt a positive method of interpreting the Riks quoted therein and shall scrutinise and see the relevancy of the Vedic verses being cited in the context. This certainly involves the rejection of certain theories in regard to the Veda and Vedanta propounded by western Orientalists and based to some extent on indigenous scholasticism represented by Sayana’s great commentaries on the Brahmanas and Samhitas of all the Vedas. Even if we ignore these views and hold them as misconceptions partly due to temperamental inequipment, fanciful and fundamentally wrong in their startling assumptions, conjectural and hasty in their generalisations and conclusions, we must still recognise the fact that after all they are the special contributions of Vedic scholarship from the West, are improvements in their own way with the help of many branches of modern learning upon the information given by native Indian scholarship, by mediaeval commentaries on the most ancient texts of a remote prehistoric age.

Therefore it will be of no use to state, much less to examine the conclusions of modern scholarship concerning the subject of the Vedic hymns and Vedic seers; but even though we need not scrutinise the position of orthodox Indian schools of thought in regard to the original and most sacred scripture of ancient India, it is essential that we must know and bear in mind what it is and how it has for many centuries held sway over the learned classes. Great scholars, teachers and founders of various sects in India, not only the priests and pundits, have followed and admitted in practice as correct the long line of the ritualistic tradition springing from the Brahmanas. Though ritualism as a professed Vedic creed has for long existed as is evidenced by the texts of the Brahmanas, it is Jaimini, the author of Mimamsa-sutras who made it the Vedic creed; he gave it a definite shape basing it on a system of ethical and religious thought, propounded the theory that though Mantras and Brahmanas form together the Veda, the former has value in so far as it subserves the purpose of rituals for which the Brahmanas are the sole supreme eternal authority! Since then the Upanishads which form part of the Brahmanas, treated by, the Jaimini school as supplements subsidiary to the Brahmanas, vidhiseșa, became the book of knowledge, jñāna kānda, in the later systems of philosophy, while the Brahmanas, the book of rituals, karmakāņda, occupied the central part of the Veda with the Mantras tagged to them for use in the ceremonials of the Vedic rites. This division of the karma and jñāna portions became more and more pronounced until a tacit understanding among different schools of religio-philosophic thought was established with the stamp of approval recorded in the classical writings of original thinkers, of great philosophic teachers from Shankaracharya downwards.

The relegation of the Mantras, verse or prose (Rik or Yajus), to the lumber-room was brought to prominence by their occasional display and convenient use with doubtful significance in the dominant ceremonial religion, so much so that the Mimamsakas use the word śruti to mean Brahmanas, while to the philosophers, the later teachers of the Vedanta, the term means the Upanishads. This is the position that has been in vogue for rnany centuries now.

While the Brahmanas (Karma-kanda) found their votaries in Jaimini and his followers with their rules of textual interpretations and theories of knowledge and queer notions of the Vedic rites and their efficacies and fruits, the Upanishads (Jnanakanda) were taken up for enquiry by others, the doubtful texts were examined and reconciled, systematised and put into shape by the formulation of what is called the Vedanta Darśana of Badarayana who had had the fortune—shall we say misfortune?-of having easily a dozen diverse interpreters some of whom are poles apart, irreconcilably opposed to one another. The Mantras, the hymns of the Veda, Parent of the Brahmanas including the Upanishads, did not receive the attention of anyone, separately as a body of original sacred texts; they became settled into oblivion as a living scripture, but continued to enjoy a respectable place as a sacred name, a hallowed memory in the minds of laymen and priests and pundits though not always for identical reasons. This neglected, rather unclaimed treasure, this soul of all that is sacred in the life and literature of the race, bearing the name Veda which means knowledge, did at last claim the attention of an extraordinary scholar, Sayanacharya, of the fourteenth century who was well equipped with all that is necessary for undertaking the Herculean task. He has left to posterity a finished and complete commentary on all the Brahmanas and Mantra Samhitas of which the Rik Samhita presents insuperable difficulties for interpretation. But he overcomes them, gives generally a lucid exposition of the hymns assigning their place in the ceremonial worship and presents a harmonious whole of the plan of his work. The merits of this stupendous work of Sayana are many and so precious that his work is an indispensable help for Vedic studies. But there is a central weakness, a defect that is at the very foundation of the edifice that he has put up in his commentary on the Rik Samhita. He shared the religious beliefs of his age, an age far removed from the times of the Brahmanas, not to speak of those of the hymns which he chose to explain. He followed and expounded the Mimamsa doctrine of ritualism as the soul of the Vedas, wrote his commentaries first on the Brahmanas and the Yajur Veda which is the Veda for sacrifice and began his commentary on the Rig Veda. He did so, as he himself explains in the introduction to his Rig-bhashya, because a finished commentary on the Brahmanas, the central part of the Veda for the ritualist, would facilitate his labours in explaining the Riks, obviously in such a way as to make them fit in with the Brahmana texts. In this endeavour he has proved a success beyond measure, a success that never crowned the previous efforts either of the Brahmanas themselves or later of the Mimamsakas. For the latter did not care to go into the meanings of the Riks referred to in the Brahmana passages and even when they had to know the sense of a mantra, they found it smooth sailing as the ready-made explanation was given in the Brahmana texts with which alone they were concerned in constructing their rules of interpretation of scriptural texts. In a sense Sayana went far beyond the Brahmanas themselves; for it is doubtful if the latter were sure that they have correctly interpreted the Riks even for the purpose of rituals, and what is more, they have not taken up the whole body of the hymnal text for explanation and use in the sacrificial rites; above all, they seem to make an attempt to explain only select hymns and stress their significance in their own way without themselves claiming or voicing superiority in wisdom and authority over the Mantras.

But Sayana’s commentary on the Riks succeeds in establishing Ritualism as the sole and central creed of the Veda, founded on the eternal self-existent words and passages of the Brahmanas to which the Mantras are the uncreated self-existent accessories. Therefore he explains verses, even when they are of spiritual and mystical import in a half-hearted manner and makes them fit into the context of a ritual and where he could not avoid the sense of the hymns which are avowedly spiritual, he is frank and states, “These verses convey spiritual ideas; other verses also can be similarly explained, but as they help us little in our purpose which is to substantiate the supremacy of sacrificial rites we need not trouble ourselves further in this direction.” It is beyond the scope of our subject here to recount the defects and virtues of Sayana’s commentary. Suffice it to say that his work is indispensable for a student of the Veda for the invaluable help it gives—the numerous references, mention of ancient authorities, traditions, lexicons, legends, alternative meanings suggesting other possible senses of words, verses and hymns, elucidation of accents and points of grammar and construction of sentences in these ancient litanies of a remote antiquity. There are other commentaries on the Riks, but in fragments and are of little avail and importance before the weight and prestige of Sayana and the volume of his work.¹⁵² Nevertheless the central defect of Sayana’s work remains. It is the defect of a representative obscurantism of the time, unprogressive and narrow, vast erudition developing “an extraordinary poverty of sense” attached to the hymns of the Vedic seers, enthroning in the heart of the Vedic Religion the external cult and worship of Nature Powers and performance of ceremonial rites for material benefits and otherworldly pleasures, a sublimated hedonistic doctrine before which refined ideals of an inner and higher life and spiritual knowledge have their facets disfigured or eclipsed and hidden in disgrace.

If we accept Sayana’s interpretation of the hymns, it means that we also accept the underlying motive of his commentary to which we have already made clear reference. It means that all the sacred scriptures from the Vedas downwards, the āgamas, saiva, vai şņava and sākta, the purānas, the writings and teachings of the great saints of the North, of the Nayanmars and Alwars of the South, are all fanciful products of minds in fool’s paradise when they sing the glory of the Veda as the store-house of all sacred knowledge. In short the universal reverence for the Vedas, their reputation as the repository of Divine Wisdom is a chimera, a phantasm without substance, a “colossal myth.”

THE RECOVERED LIGHT

Sri Aurobindo marks out a fresh line of approach to the study of the Vedic hymns. Under uncommon circumstances he made his entry into the world of Vedic wisdom, perceived with the discerning eye of light the revealing images of the Vedic Gods and Goddesses, chanced upon the hidden secrets of human speech as a living force and organic growth with the people of that original Epoch of the Veda, opened the doors behind which lay open the covert meanings of the Mantras of the Rik Samhita. It is sufficient for our purpose to note just some of the salient features of the system of his interpretation as that will facilitate its application to the subject on hand; and more is not possible within the limits of the space we have set for ourselves here. We make no apology for giving relevant passages, where necessary, culled from Sri Aurobindo’s own writings, “The Rishis arranged the substance of their thought in a system of parallelism by which the same deities were at once internal and external powers of universal nature, and they managed its expression through a system of double values by which the same language served for their worship in both aspects. The psychological sense predominates and is more pervading, close knit and coherent than the physical.” It is the latter sense—the physical and the external—that is more pervading than the spiritual, the inner and psychological, in the interpretations of Sayana on which European scholarship has based its theories of Nature-worship of primitive semi-civilised Aryans of the Rig Vedic times. Yet it is the spiritual and inner sense that is restored to the hymns in the writings of Sri Aurobindo on Veda and Vedic symbolism. For the Rig Veda belongs to an age when the social stage of the race was profoundly religious and imaginative in its religion as is always the case with human society in its beginnings—we may call it primitive-whether or not it is cultured, civilised and economically advanced. A strongly symbolic mentality governs its thought, customs and institutions; in fact "Symbolism and a wide-spread imaginative or intuitive religious feeling go together.... The symbol then is of something which man feels to be present behind himself and his life and his activities—the Divine, the Gods, the Vast and the deep Unnamable, a hidden, living and mysterious nature of things. All his religious and social institutions, all the moments and phases of his life are to him symbols in which he seeks to express what he knows or guesses of the mystic influences which are behind them and shape and govern them.”

This is the background against which the language and substance of the hymns and the seers and the Gods of the Rig Veda have to be approached for a sensible appreciation and understanding. “The Vedic deities are names, powers and personalities of the universal Godhead and they represent each some essential puissance of the Divine Being. They manifest the Cosmos and are manifest in it. Children of the Light, Sons of the Infinite, they recognise in the soul of man their brother and ally and desire to help and increase him by themselves increasing in him so as to possess his world with their light, strength and beauty. The Gods call man to a divine companionship and alliance; they attract and uplift him to their fraternity, invite his aid and offer theirs against the Sons of Darkness and Division. Man in return calls the Gods to his sacrifice, offers to them his swiftnesses and his strengths, his clarities and his sweetnesses and receives them into his being and their gifts into his life.”

The Gods, then, are not simply “poetical personalities of abstract ideas or of psychological and physical functions of Nature. To the Vedic seers they are living realities; the vicissitudes of the human soul represent a Cosmic struggle not merely of principles and tendencies but of the Cosmic Powers which support and embody them. These are the Gods and the Demons. On the world-stage and in the individual soul the same real drama with the same personages is enacted.”

This, in sum, is the vision that Sri Aurobindo presents to us in his studies of the Rig Veda. But when we take up the texts we must remember what he has pointed out, that the Rik Samhita as we have it, “represents the close of a period, not its commencement, not even some of its successive stages”. A sufficiently long period must have elapsed before there could be settled such an invariable fixity of thought and substance with depth, richness and subtlety, couched in a finished metrical form marked by a constant masterful skill in technique.

It is this line of interpretation that eminently fits into the texts of the earlier Upanishads which make references to the Veda or Vedic seers, and quote occasionally for their conclusions verses from the hymns of the Rik Samhita. For the Brahmanas and the Upanishads are the record of a powerful revival which took the sacred text and ritual as a starting-point for a new statement of the spiritual thought and expression. If the Brahmanas represent the conservation of forms, the Upanishads the revelation of the soul of the Veda.

THE MADHU BRAHMANA

The Madhu Brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, not the same as the Madhu Vidya of the Chhandogya (III. I), contains certain Riks which we have chosen to consider here. When we apply to them the principles underlying the line or interpretation that we adopt for reasons already stated and keep in mind the significant sense of the Vedic names and words and the right conception of the Gods, we will find no difficulty in appreciating the propriety of introducing the Riks at the conclusion of the short discourse that the Upanishad gives in praise of the mystic Honey, the madhu. Before enquiring into the meaning and drift of the Vedic verses in the Vedanta, it is necessary that we must know the subject matter of the Madhu Brahmana as well as the legends grown around it as recorded in the Shatapatha Brahmana; we can then examine and trace the legends to their source in the hymns and see to what extent they are in fact supported by the Riks themselves; for the Brahmanas often quote a tradition or legend to find some explanation for certain hymns or verses which are used as parts of the Vedic rites of which the Soma sacrifice is the most important and indispensable for the performance of others, such as Ashvamedha. There is a ceremony intoductory to the Soma Yaga, called pravargya with which is closely associated the Madhu Vidya. And here is the legend connected with what is called the Pravargya ceremony.

Indra taught the sage Dadhyan, son of Atharvan, the secret of Pravargya Vidya and Madhu Vidya, saying that in case he revealed this knowledge to others his head would be cut off. The twin Gods, Ashvins, overheard this and called upon Dadhyan to teach them the forbidden knowledge. To avoid Indra’s punishment they cut off the sage’s head and replaced it with a horse’s head with which the sage revealed the Vidyas to the Ashvins. When Indra was apprised of this breach of faith on the part of the sage, with his thunderbolt he cut off the sage’s head which was the horse’s; thereupon the Ashvins restored to Dadhyan his own head (Shatapatha Br. XIV. 1.4). Wherever Dadhyan and Ashvins are mentioned in the Riks, Sayana refers to the Pravargya and Madhu Vidyas and recalls this story. There is another story about the sage and though it is not connected with Pravargya we shall mention it here with a purpose which will be presently evident, as it is quoted from another Brahmana by Sayana in his commentary (Rv. I. 84. 13, 14).

When Dadhyan, son of Atharvan lived, the Asuras were frightened and subdued by his very sight, but occupied the whole earth the moment he departed to Svarga. Indra desired to know what happened to him and if anything of him was left behind on earth. As a result of the enquiry, he caused a search made for the horse’s head with which he had taught the Ashvins the Pravargya Vidya and the Madhu Vidya. It was at last found in Sharyanavat (Kurukshetra) and with the bones of the skull Indra destroyed the Asuras. Such stories from the Brahmanas may have some meaning, some symbolic significance; but it is ridiculous, dangerous to rely upon these tales which the Brahmanas narrate to explain the Riks used in connection with rituals. That the sacrifice is a symbolic Vedic rite will be evident from a casual perusal of the Brahmanas. But to follow the Brahmanas in the amplification of their ritual system is difficult, for the simple reason that after all the elaborate explanations by means of stories some of which have had a historic basis, some fictitious, some symbolic, they arrive at and impress upon us in an overwhelming voice the supremacy and sublime ideal of the Vedic karma! If we are concerned with symbols, they are the symbols of the Vedic age; it is the symbolism that is inextricably woven into the texture of the hymns of the Rig Veda that is what matters to us at any rate in this context.

It is something that Sayana has not resorted to quoting the Puranas or the Mahabharata in which it is stated that the bones of the Sage Dadhichi were used for the construction of Indra’s thunderbolt! The earlier legend cut off the horse’s head of Dadhichi with Indra’s thunderbolt before the later stories fabricated it with Dadhichi’s bones! Howsoever unreasonable and inconsistent the method of explanation may be, it forms part of the plan of Sayana’s commentary to discover the meanings of Mantras with the help of Brahmanical legends and Puranic stories. Though these may be occasionally helpful and they may have been current in some form coeval with the times of the Vedic hymns or prior to them, they are likely to mislead us in a serious search for the sense of the hymns themselves. We want the Sun nd not flints to produce fire and light to see him. To explain the Riks with the help of dubious and absurd legends as Sayana does, giving them a historic colour is as unreasonable as unwarranted. For the external sense of the Veda it is indeed permissible to treat historic incidents as such, provided they are so mentioned in the original hymns themselves. But Sayana, when he mentions certain actual occurrences in the lives of sages and kings of Rig Vedic times to which the hymns themselves bear testimony, forgets that he is betraying the Mimamsakas, the ritualists whose cause he champions, and according to whom every letter in the Mantras and Brahmanas is eternal and anything that appears in the Veda as history is just seemingly so but in truth refers to something eternal.¹⁵³ Now let us consider the nature of the Pravargya ceremony which is introductory to the Soma sacrifice. That this Vedic rite is a symbolic act would be evident from the significant names and the substances used and the hymns uttered. Here Sayana is superbly dependable and this is the substance of his explanation and description of the rite given in his commentary (Taitti. V. II. and Shatap. Br. XIV. I. I-II). There are three terms which we must note and they are significant names—Mahavira, Gharma, Pravargya. Gharma is something prepared, an eatable cooked for offering in the ritual by pouring fresh milk in the heated clarified butter. This act of pouring of the milk is called pravrnjana which is the same as pravargya. Mahavira is the earthenware in the shape of a mortar in which the aforesaid gharma is prepared for offering. Sayana adds that though these three are three different things they all have come to be meant as one and the same thing figuratively, gauņi vrtti. But the whole rite is named pravargva after the aforesaid act of pravarga. For indeed it is often called pravargya karma as it is the act that is the important factor here, though by courtesy, upacara, it is called Vidya. But the Madhu Vidya which is called a limb, anga, of this rite is not an act but a knowledge, a secret which is represented by the chant of certain Riks, addressed to Ashvins.

We are not concerned with the further details of the Pravargya rite, but what has been stated is necessary and sufficient to enable us to understand the significance of the ritual act of which the knowledge of Madhu is an important limb. Light is thrown on the symbolic character by the suggestive names of the substance that is cooked, of what is poured into it, and of the vessel in which the preparation takes place. In the system of Vedic symbolism, gharma is brilliant heat; it is a kindred of ghrta and ghrni, all of the same family meaning “to shine, to burn"; payas is milk, luminous yield of the Cow of Light; mahāvira, the earthen vessel, is the human body of great heroic mettle. Now the sacrificer, the human soul, after his consecration for the performance of the Soma sacrifice which is the offering of all one’s experiences and delight of existence to the Gods, the Universal Powers of the supreme Godhead, starts with an act by which the nourishing rays of Light, the yield of the luminous Cow, enter into the vessel of human body of heroic strength for the sustenance and completion of the substance that is cooked. It is the brilliant heat of Tapas held in the human vessel that is trained, kept under control and so purified and disciplined by the rigours of tapasya, mahāvirasamskära, that it can hold the healthy and brilliant heat of the substances of being to be offered to the Gods. To make the process of preparation pleasant and intelligible, more and more of the soothing luminous rays of knowledge enter into the course of the sadhana at work in the body. This is still an introductory stage, when the human soul with disciplined life and mind prepares for the ultimate goal, needs the help of the higher powers, and has consecrated itself for offering its all to the Gods. This indeed requires a heroic strength, for the soul’s giving of itself is not a mental offering done in a metaphysical manner; it is a felt abandoning of itself, its strength and knowledge and material lodgement to the care and joy of the Gods. For such a consummation aimed at, the soul whose embodiment is feeble is not competent to aspire and receive what it gets in response; for it will break, cannot hold the gifts of the Gods in their turn. For, as is stated in a different connection by the seer Pavitra, “He tastes not that Delight who is unripe and whose body has not suffered in the heat of the fire; they alone are able to bear that and enjoy who have been prepared by the flame.” (Sri Aurobindo, Rv, IX. 83.)

Therefore when the human soul, the sacrificer, is engaged in the act of putting all his enlightenment and the whole substance of his being at the disposal of the Gods, he avoids the risk of breaking and requires help. Whose help does he seek at this stage? Agni, the Divine Flame, is already kindled, the Divine Will and Strength is at work in him, and he has turned to fulfil his Dharma, entered the path of sacrifice by the help of the God who is of all the Gods the nearest to him, to the Earth; for Agni is the messenger and voice of the Gods. Who then is the God who is to come for help now? Indra is not yet to come; he is the Lord of the triple world and its Gods, comes at a stage when the Soma juice is ready for offering. At the present preparatory stage he requires the help of a God or Gods who could give him health, strength and joy to sustain him in his effort so that he can later continue the journey in the Sacrifice. Now he calls upon the Twin Powers, the riders on the horse signifying Life-energy, Ashvins; for they are “ the effective Powers of the Ananda which proceed out of the Truth-Consciousness and which manifesting variously in all the three worlds maintain man in his journey”. They use the vitality of the human being as the motive-force of the journey. They give health, beauty, wholeness to the body, ease and joy; they are the lords of weal and bliss. It is thus that the Ashvins figure in the Madhu Vidya without which the initial stages of the sacrifice cannot be gone through. For it is the offering to the Ashvins of the Sweet, madhu, the Delight of life that evokes their response and they come with their swift-moving powers of healing and health and strength and joy. It is by the completion of the introductory stage in the now-forgotten path of the Vedic Yoga by the help of the Ashivins, that the sacrificer, the Sadhaka enters into a higher status, to a wider existence outgrowing the bounds of the normal mind and life that persist not in the earlier stages alone of the Sadhana, but a good deal later also. When a luminous knowledge of the Delight of Being in the physical existence becomes fixed in the intellectual mind, then the condition is present for the fulfilment of the limited life and mind, for their self-exceeding handed over to the charge of the higher Powers. This, then, is to be noted of the Twin Divine Powers, that they are the riders on the path, symbolic of Force, especially of life-energy and nervous force; they are seekers of honey, Madhu, Gods of enjoyment, physicians, bring back youth to the old, health to the sick, wholeness to the maimed. Though they are also “ Powers of Truth, of intelligent action and right enjoyment,” their special function is “to perfect the nervous or vital being in man in the sense of action and enjoyment."

DADHYAN ATHARVA

Wherever the name Dadhyan occurs in the Rig Veda it is expressively or by implication or allusively associated with the Twin Honey-seekers, the Ashvins, who are Divine Powers embodying the constant" Vedic dualism of Power and Light, Knowledge and Will, Consciousness and Energy.” Who is this Dadhyan? Why are the Ashvins attracted to him? What is the Madhu that Dadhyan knows and gives out to Ashvins? In our attempt to get at the inner sense of such Riks as mention these things we shall confine ourselves to the internal evidence of the hymns themselves and keep aside the legends or any traditions that are employed to explain them. For if legends are often a morbid growth covering a vital truth or a crust over the kernel difficult to separate, traditional knowledge in such cases frequently proves a false light, a light that rather obscures than illuminates. Even if a legend wholly or in part bears on the face of it a symbolic significance, it is prudent and advisable to depend mainly on the earlier symbolism of the Vedic seers for arriving at the substance of the Riks. Let us, then, take up the question of Dadhyan; for we have already got an idea of the Ashvins who are the seekers of honey, Madhu; and Madhu is decidedly honey in later literature, though it often means in the Rig Veda anything sweet used as a food, especially drink. But it denotes more precisely Soma Rasa, the juice of the Soma plant in the external sense, and in the sense of the mystics Soma is the Lord of Delight and Immortality and the rasa is the Delight of Existence.

That Dadhyan is the son of Atharvan and had the Knowledge of Madhu, that he gave it to Ashvins on their providing him with a horse’s head, that the Ashvins drew into themselves the mind of Dadhyan and then the horse’s head uttered his words to them, that he himself had got that secret knowledge from Tvashtri, that Indra with the bones of Dadhyan slew ninety-nine vritras—these are all the accounts we meet with repeatedly in the hymns—everything else belongs to the legends.¹⁵⁴Now it is necessary to fix the sense of dadhyan. When this is done, the rest of the names that figure in these Riks referring to Dadhyan offer no difficulty whatever as we shall see presently. We note that names in the Rig Veda are used with a special stress on their significance, markedly evident in the case of the names of sages, e.g., Jamadagni, Bharadwaja, Atri and of kings such as Sudas, or of Gods, Ushas, Indratama. Dadhyan Atharva is a fine illustration of this truth. The name is applied to the family of Angirasas who are mentioned as Gods as well as the Fathers. Discussing the facts about Angirasas Sri Aurobindo remarks that " They may have been originally human beings deified by their descendants and in their apotheosis given a divine parentage and a divine function; or they may have been originally demi-gods, powers of Light and Flame who became humanised as the Fathers of the race and the discoverers of its wisdom.” This eminently applies to Atharva. Whether he is a deified sage or a humanised Higher Divine Power, the Riks always mention him as the first to bring forth Agni by churning from the pușkara, the Supreme Heaven, from the summit (lit. head) of the universe (vi śvasya mūrdhnaḥ), while his son Dadhyan set ablaze Agni, the slayer of Vritras and the shatterer of their fortresses (Rig Veda VI. 16. 13-14). Elsewhere in the hymns we are told that it was Atharva who first by sacrifices held together the Devas (X.92. 10); or it was he who by sacrifices made or spread the path leading to the discovery of the luminous Cow taken away concealed by the paņis (yajñair atharvā prathamaḥ pathas tate) (1. 83.5). These accounts go to show that he is prominent if not the foremost among the Angirasas, radiant lustres of the Divine Agni born in Heaven, and that thence he brought him forth and fixed him here in the human existence. Atharva like other Vedic names is a significant word meaning “ not moving out", but fixing himself, disposed to consolidation. That" fixation ” or “not moving” is the meaning of the word will be evident from another kindred word atharvyam, an adjective meaning, according to Sayana, “unable to move (gantum asamarthām, Rv. I. 112. 10.). Atharva then is the first original Flame-power of Agni in general, fixed in the human being, generating Dadhyan, a special form of himself, a development, a particular manifestation with a definite status and function as a radiant lustre of the Divine Flame, ātharvaņa āngirasa agni.

What then is distinctive about Dadhyan? The word itself suggests the sense and gives the clue to discover his status and ascertain his function. The task becomes easier if we remember the symbolic senses indicated by the double meanings of three words go, dadhi, yava, (milk, curds, grain) with which the triple draughts of Soma juice are prepared. And this is the inner meaning: Soma is the Delight extracted from existence; it is mixed with milk which is that of the luminous Cows, with the curds, the fixation of their yield in the intellectual mind, and with the grain, the formulation of the light in the force of the physical mind. The two parts of the word Dadhyan, dadhi and anc give us the meaning that it is a distinct lustrous power moving in the yield of Light fixed in the intellectual mind. It must be noted that while Atharvan brought forth and fixed the Divine Flame, Agni, in human existence which includes in a general way all that man is, mind and life and soul, Dadhyan representing a specially developed power, moves, in the fixed light of intellectual mind, a higher rung, if not the highest, in the ladder of the progress of human mind. Because he moves towards further progress he is not bound to the fixed light of the intellect, though from the height of that illumined understanding he knows the delights of all life and mind and existence and can offer them to the higher Powers, the Cosmic Gods, whose function it is to accept the offering from the human levels below so that they can come down and help the human to rise to the higher ones. But the Powers do not and cannot offer help until they are satisfied that the conditions to rise to a higher plane, to extend to a vaster existence have been fulfilled. This truth is elucidated by Sri Aurobindo in his explanations of the hymns of Agastya-The Colloquy of Indra and Agastya. But Dadhyan is the Power and Light of a Cosmic principle at work in the high enlightened levels of knowledge fixed in the mould of human intellect and so is unlike Agastya who strove to reach the Highest, to the Beyond ignoring the conditions of fulfilment in the Cosmic existence. And Dadhyan is a Flame-power; to move onward and progress towards the higher levels is inherent in him; beyond a certain limit, beyond the sphere of his function, if he is to proceed he has to change his form become a different God (vide Atri’s hymns to Agni, V. 3), put on a different facet of the cosmic Godhead to adjust himself to the laws and conditions of the higher level differently constituted to which he moves. Or, as a Cosmic Power he stays on where his function demands, on the higher status of enlightened intellect and gives his assent to the sacrificer, to the human soul, to go still further if the conditions are answered by the achievement of the divine aspirant. And this is the achievement of the human soul in its ascent towards the hill of Being that it halts at a point when it is satisfied with the delight of being in the physical existence. But howsoever wide and exalted it may look, it is still limited and bounded by a vaster existence, outreached and over-topped by many layers, levels, planes of worlds constituted and governed by the Cosmic Godhead. To reach the next stage a higher and wider and freer vitality and superb nerve-force is necessary. It is for this that the Ashvins are invoked; and they are to be satisfied first that the madhu, the delight of existence in the sphere of Dadhyan is realised, possessed and ready to be let known or offered to them, so that they can accept the offerings enabling them to return their responsive gifts of health and ease and joy for the reinforcing and renewal of life-force, for a sublime and expansive movement of the Soul’s progress. This is the sense of the madhu vidyā that the Ashvins received from Dadhyan. Whether Dadhyan, like the Atharvan or the Angirasas, is a deified sage or humanised god, he represents a flame Power of the Divine Agni standing for upward human progress, embracing and guarding the fixed light in the intellectual mould of mind-power. For he is an Angiras, a nine-rayed one, navagva, active, copens the stalls of the Cows (of Light) hidden by the Panis. (IP. 108.4). If Atharva prepares the path to discover the luminous cows, Dadhyan, his offspring, opens the gate of the prison-house where they are kept in secret. He is an Agni power, for all Agnirasas are flame-powers of Agni presiding over the Earth, the physical existence. But he receives the light on the level of the luminous mind and that light is the light of the Divine Mind, Indra. He guards the knowledge of the secret Delight, Madhu, and gives it out as a password to the Ashvins when the ascending or voyaging soul reaches the limit or a point when a still higher Power of a different order of existence has to intervene and take charge. But the password cannot be given in the language of the intellectual mind which is after all a term of lower light and knowledge howsoever illumined and saturated with the delight of existence it may be. It has to be communicated through something forceful and dynamic and therefore Dadhyan is provided with the horse’s head by the Ashvins; it represents the dynamic strength and motive-force of the swift-moving powers of Life which in the main is a higher and wider constituent of the Cosmos engulfing, pressing upon and penetrating into the physical existence. That the symbolic significance of the name Dadhyan is primarily suggested by the word dadhi itself has been already stated. It will be interesting to note that the word is used in Ry. X 46.1 as an adjective, meaning "sustainer" or "one who firmly holds intact (the sacrifice)” according to Sayana. This use of the word in the Rig Veda goes to some extent to support the symbolic meaning of Dadhi as fixation (of the yield of the Cow in the intellectual mind). But more important is the dadhikra or dadhikrava, the horse who occupies and possesses the dadhi. In Vamadeva’s hymns to Dadhikrava (VI. 38-40) and elsewhere Sayana says that he is some god, kaścana devah; he also calls him a horse often. That Agni takes the form of a horse is often quoted by Sayana from the Brahmanas; but the Riks themselves speak of Agni becoming a horse. That the inner sense of dadhikrava is a special power of extraordinary dynamic energy taking possession of the force fixed in the illumined intellect will be clear from the contexts wherever the word occurs if we grasp the symbolic figure of dadhi as applied to Dadhyan. Another episode connected with him can be easily explained. In the hymns we find it stated that Indra slew ninety-nine Vritras with the bones of Dadhyan and that he found the horse’s head in the hills in śaryaņāvat (1.84, 13, 14). The bones, the skeleton represents the physical frame; it has absorbed enough of the light of the Divine Mind and emanates powerful rays to dispel and annihilate almost all the surrounding darknesses of a many-sided ignorance typified by the ninety-nine vrtrāņi. For the complete destruction of all and not almost all the Vritras, the full number hundred is required. The last death blow to effect the absolute destruction of the Vrita comes directly from Indra, not by the instrumentation of the secondary lustre emanating from the physical frame that lodges the radiant light fixed in the force of the illumined mind of intellect, Dadhyan.

Thus far we have taken up all the main references to Dadhyan in the Rig Veda and seen that he is an Atharvana, a specialised flame-power, an Angirasa, stationed actively in the domain of light fixed in the power of the intellectual mind, possessed of the secret of delight in the physical existence and passes it on to Ashvins; and they are the Twin Divine Powers who bestow on us harmony and beauty and health and ease by taking in and giving more, something of themselves, their sweetnesses, their luminous life-force and increasing raptures of joy in the Soul of Being in the individual and Cosmic existence.

THE TWIN DIVINE POWERS

Now we proceed to consider the aspect of dualism represented by the Twin Powers, Ashvins. Why are they always mentioned as an inseparable dual Godhead? There are some Gods who join with other Gods individually for effective action directed towards a definite purpose, and these are figured in the Vedic rites and are mentioned in the hymns also. Mitra and Varuna, Agni and Soma, Indra and Agni, Soma and Pushan are a few examples of dual Godheads but they are different and combine to form into a dual Divinity on occasions and then separate. But the Ashvins are not separated from each other. They always appear together, never singly and in this sense they are inseparable. Not that they are identical or interchangeable, but are co-existent, interdependent for their effective functioning which they discharge in common. Therefore separate, they appear and act together. They are born "separately, spotless nānā jātau arepasā", so sings the seer Paura Atreya (Rv. V. 73.4). They always act together for the same purpose like two press-stones (Rv. II. 39). Gritsamada’s hymn to Ashvins likens them to a splendid married pair, to the two lips that speak sweet words, to the two nostrils, two hands and to many other pairs all of which have common objects in their respective functions. What then, is the nature of the dualism that the Ashvins represent in principle? Earlier we mentioned the double principle of Light and Power that is constantly figured in the hymns of the Rishis. Certainly, no effective action anywhere in creation is possible without a biune principle governing it. Creation itself sprouts, grows, branches out, bears fruit from a root above, beyond the all we can comprehend and that is a biune principle inherent in the Absolute, the One-without-a-second in the parlance of the ancient Vedanta. It is the Force that inheres in the Consciousness of the Absolute Being which is the momentum for Creation. Consciousness without Force is unthinkable and beyond expression; Force is nothing without its capital reserve and basis in the Consciousness of which it is a revelation and expression. One in being and purpose, yet they are two in principle; distinct in formation they vary in kind and degree, Knowledge and Will or Light and Power; always the underlying double principle of all movements in Nature maintains itself and governs every field of creation. Even where appears a predominance of Will or Power there is the element of Knowledge or Light and vice versa. Therefore in the Vedic symbolism Ashvins are two distinct formations of the same Godhead for the same purpose but representing severally Light and Power or Knowledge and Will, with an intimacy of understanding and a mutual dependence. Because of their immediate relation of mutuality they embody the forces of harmony and beauty and health and joy. Their own archetypal interdependence and harmony in the cosmic functioning brings to bear on us the necessity of realising the interdependence of things and beings, the balance and harmony that is preserved among them by a unifying principle, by the great secret. Their mutual relation is that of a balance and harmony but neither of them can be explained by itself without the term of the other and therefore their mutual dependence and balance and harmony can be explained by that one secret, the Madhu, the Delight of being in all existence which affects, supports and holds them in close affinity. It is this Delight that makes possible the harmony and explains and unfolds the necessity of diverse forms in the manifested existence and gives them their value.

To realise the interdependence of things and beings, human and others, is a necessary step towards a knowledge of the secret Delight that maintains the diversity for Self-expression and therefore for variations in form of the essential Self-delight. If it were a question of arriving at the Supreme Delight, the Ananda Brahman or Atman, the Self-delight, the doctrine of Madhu would not be necessary and the quoting of the Riks devoted to Ashvins would signify less than nothing. But the Madhu doctrine teaches that the diversity in creation is the manifestation of a secret Delight, that all things howsoever heterogeneous and warring they may appear, are held together by a secret harmony effected in them by the hidden creative Self-delight of the Supreme who is the effulgent Self, the Immortal. The Upanishad perceives the Vedic truth of Madhu and the Ashvins and teaches here the seeking of Madhu in the manifestation of all things and beings and not the delight that is unrelated to the Cosmic Existence. It concludes with four verses two of which are Riks addressed to Ashvins, one is a verse—not a Rik-describing the soul as a bird, and the last again is a Rik to Indra as the original typal Form of all forms and this last is indeed an appropriate conclusion to the topic as it is the Delight in created forms that is the subject of instruction in this section of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

THE MADHU DOCTRINE OF THE UPANISHAD¹⁵⁵

Here, then, is the Madhu doctrine as given in the text of this Vedantic Scripture. It gives fourteen illustrations to impress on us the truth that in this Creation everything and any part of it is Honey to the whole and the whole is Honey to every part of it; and that is because it is the Honey, the Secret Delight that abides in the whole creation and in every part and detail of it that manifests and makes possible the world-existence intact, and enjoyable, bhogya. “This earth”, begins the Upanishad, "is honey for all beings and all beings are honey for this earth—and he who is in this earth the effulgent, immortal Purusha and he who is within one’s being, in the body, the effulgent, immortal Purusha are indeed the same-He who is this Self, this Immortal, this Brahman, this All.” In the same manner the text proceeds to exemplify the root principle of Madhu as the basis of this manifold existence by referring to the Waters, the Fire, the Wind, the Sound, the Quarters, the Moon, the Lightning, the Thunder, the Space, the Law (Dharma), the Truth, the Mankind and at last this Self which crowns the series. It further adds that this Self does not merely represent the basic principle of Madhu, the Bliss that abides in the heart of things but he is the Master and King of all things and beings and holds together—as the hub and felly hold the spokes-all beings, all gods, all worlds, all lives, all selves. “This is that Madhu which Dadhyan Atharvana declares to the Ashvins; seeing this (truth) the Rishi said "—this is how the Upanishad justifies the quotation of the Riks in this context. We shall give here an English rendering of the Rik with as close a literalness as the English language would permit.

The seer Kakshivan, son of Dirghatamas, addresses the Ashvins: "O heroes, I proclaim, as the thunder (proclaims) the rain, that mighty deed of yours for the acquiring (of Madhu) when with the horse’s head provided by you Dadhyan, offspring of Atharvan, made known to you the secret knowledge of Madhu” (Rv. I. 116. 12). Again another Rik of the same seer (I. 117. 22) is cited in the text. “Ashvins, fulfillers of action, you sprang a horse’s head in the place of Atharvana Dadhyan’s; and he acting in the Truth revealed to you the Madhu, the secret of Tvashtri (the Divine architect).” The third verse is not from the Riks; but though the language appears to belong to comparatively later times, the idea is as old as the hymns of the Rig Veda. For the bird in the Riks is quite often a symbol of the liberated soul that soars to the heights of Being. We know the Hamsa bird is the symbol of the supreme Soul. The famous Rik of Vamadeva "hamsaḥ śucişad” has still more familiarised us with this truth. The Upanishad now declares that the Madhu so far described is also the Madhu whose secret Dadhyan revealed to Ashvins and is the same as the creative Spirit, the Purusha who "made the two-footed cities (bodies), who made the four-footed cities (bodies) and who having become the Bird entered into them”. And it further removes possible misconceptions as regards the embodied souls as independent self-separate finite entities which they certainly appear to be to our experience, by an affirmation that “This Purusha is the same as He who abides in all the cities (bodies) and there is nothing by which he is not enveloped, nothing by which he is not concealed.” The last part of the sentence is again significant, a reminder that this Purusha is immanent in everything as the secret Madhu, the potent Delight that is wakeful holding in its basic unity all forms and things and beings, the Madhu that is to be discovered in the smallest, in the biggest, in any part or whole of this manifested existence, which to instruct the section opens. And it gives a fitting close too. For in unequivocal terms it reiterates the Vedantic Truth that not only the Substance of all existences, the essential Delight in the all and in detail is the Ananda, Atman, Brahman, Purusha, but all Form also is himself, his creation, a mould of the Substance, a shape of his Being,-he is the supreme Lord, the Divine Being, is active, many-formed he moves about, he is the divine counterpart of every form, his countless life-powers are set in motion for ever. Thus closes the section with a Rik of Bharadvaja (Rv. VI.47.18), “To every form he has remained the counter-form: that is his form for us to face and see. Indra by his Maya powers (creative conscious powers) moves on endowed with many forms; for yoked are his thousand steeds."

This is the Madhu doctrine of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It is significant that it comes close upon the Maitreyi Brahmana which concludes with famous passages often quoted in support of the lofty Idealism represented in Shankara’s exposition of the Advaita doctrine of later times. It serves as a corrective to the metaphysical excesses to which the closing lines of the preceding section are often interpreted to lend support. It reconciles the Absolute Idealism to which the Maitreyi Brahmana tends with the relative Realism of World-existence in which an all-embracing dualism is the dominant note. It teaches that the secret Honey, kaksyam madhu, is the same as the Delight of the Purusha, the creative Spirit, the One and uncompromising Absolute of all dualisms, the unifying principle that balances, harmonises and maintains its own variations for self-expression. This, then, is the Madhu of the Rig Veda also, the Madhu that the Ashvins received from Dadhyan, as has been appropriately cited by the Upanishad itself. That this Madhu Vidya is part of the Mystic Wisdom of Rig Vedic seers, discovered and recorded by the sages and thinkers of the early Vedanta is evident from the note of relevancy that runs through the citations o the suitable Riks of Kakshivan and Bharadwaja with which the conclusion of the section closes the chapter. These facts we have been enabled to find because of the substantial help that Sri Aurobindo has kept at our disposal. And if we have not consigned the Madhu Vidya to the limbo of a timeworn rite, treating it as a formal chant subsidiary to the chief ceremony of the Pravargya ritual, karmānga vidyā, but have closely traced it —in spite of the Puranic legends that cover the truth like the accursed Vritra—from the Upanishad and the Brahmana to the Riks, it is because we apply the key that turns in many locks of the Vedic secrets, because we use the luminous clues that make the passages clear, because we have something that makes the hymns—what would be otherwise abracadabra in many places-intelligible, something that makes the hidden treasures of Vedic wisdom—what are otherwise invisible -visible, the magic collyrium siddhāñjana, that Sri Aurobindo has presented to us in his studies of the Rig Veda.