The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Chapter XI
The Seven Rivers
THE VEDA speaks constantly of the waters or the rivers,
especially of the divine waters, āpo devīh. or āpo divyāh. ,
and occasionally of the waters which carry in them the
light of the luminous solar world or the light of the Sun, svarvatīr
apah. . The passage of the waters effected by the Gods or by man
with the aid of the Gods is a constant symbol. The three great
conquests to which the human being aspires, which the Gods
are in constant battle with the Vritras and Panis to give to man
are the herds, the waters and the Sun or the solar world, gāapah.
svah. . The question is whether these references are to the rains
of heaven, the rivers of Northern India possessed or assailed
by the Dravidians — the Vritras being sometimes the Dravidians
and sometimes their gods, the herds possessed or robbed from
the Aryan settlers by the indigenous “robbers” — the Panis who
hold or steal the herds being again sometimes the Dravidians and
sometimes their gods; or is there a deeper, a spiritual meaning?
Is the winning of Swar simply the recovery of the sun from its
shadowing by the storm-cloud or its seizure by eclipse or its
concealment by the darkness of Night? For here at least there
can be no withholding of the sun from the Aryans by human
“black-skinned” and “noseless” enemies. Or does the conquest
of Swar mean simply the winning of heaven by sacrifice? And in
either case what is the sense of this curious collocation of cows,
waters and the sun or cows, waters and the sky? Is it not rather a
system of symbolic meanings in which the herds, indicated by the
word gāh. in the sense both of cows and rays of light, are the illuminations
from the higher consciousness which have their origin
in the Sun of Light, the Sun of Truth? Is not Swar itself the world
or plane of immortality governed by that Light or Truth of the
all-illumining Sun called in Veda the vast Truth, r.ta ˙mbr.hat,and
the true Light? and are not the divine waters, āpo devīh. , divyāh.