The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Chapter XII
The Herds of the Dawn
THE SEVEN Rivers of the Veda, the Waters, āpah. , are usually
designated in the figured Vedic language as the seven
Mothers or the seven fostering Cows, sapta dhenavah. .
The word āpah. itself has, covertly, a double significance; for the
root ap meant originally not only to move from which in all
probability is derived the sense of waters, but to be or bring
into being, as in apatya, a child, and the Southern Indian appā,
father. The seven Waters are the waters of being; they are the
Mothers from whom all forms of existence are born. But we
meet also another expression, sapta gāvah. , the seven Cows or the
seven Lights, and the epithet saptagu, that which has seven rays.
Gu (gavah. )andgo (gāvah. ) bear throughout the Vedic hymns
this double sense of cows and radiances. In the ancient Indian
system of thought being and consciousness were aspects of each
other, and Aditi, infinite existence from whom the gods are born,
described as the Mother with her seven names and seven seats
(dhāmāni), is also conceived as the infinite consciousness, the
Cow, the primal Light manifest in seven Radiances, sapta gāvah. .
The sevenfold principle of existence is therefore imaged from the
one point of view in the figure of the Rivers that arise from the
ocean, sapta dhenavah. , from the other in the figure of the Rays
of the all-creating Father, Surya Savitri, sapta gāvah. .
The image of the Cow is the most important of all the Vedic
symbols. For the ritualist the word go means simply a physical
cow and nothing else, just as its companion word, a´sva, means
simply a physical horse and has no other sense, or as ghr.ta means
only water or clarified butter, vīra only a son or a retainer or
servant. When the Rishi prays to the Dawn, gomad vīravad
dhehi ratnam us.o a´svāvat, the ritualistic commentator sees in
the invocation only an entreaty for “pleasant wealth to which
are attached cows, men (or sons) and horses”. If on the other