The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

124 The Secret of the Veda
hand these words are symbolic, the sense will run, “Confirm in
us a state of bliss full of light, of conquering energy and of force
of vitality.” It is therefore necessary to decide once for all the
significance of the word go in the Vedic hymns. If it proves to
be symbolic, then these other words, — a´sva, horse, vīra, man
or hero, apatya or prajā, offspring, hiran. ya, gold, vāja, plenty
(food, according to Sayana), — by which it is continually accompanied,
must perforce assume also a symbolic and a kindred
significance.
The image of the Cow is constantly associated in Veda with
the Dawn and the Sun; it also recurs in the legend of the recovery
of the lost cows from the cave of the Panis by Indra and Brihaspati
with the aid of the hound Sarama and the Angiras Rishis.
The conception of the Dawn and the legend of the Angirases are
at the very heart of the Vedic cult and may almost be considered
as the key to the secret of the significance of Veda. It is therefore
these two that we must examine in order to find firm ground for
our inquiry.
Now even the most superficial examination of the Vedic
hymns to the Dawn makes it perfectly clear that the cows of the
Dawn, the cows of the Sun are a symbol for Light and cannot
be anything else. Sayana himself is obliged in these hymns to
interpret the word sometimes as cows, sometimes as rays, —
careless as usual of consistency; sometimes he will even tell us
that go like r.tam, the word for truth, means water. As a matter of
fact it is evident that we are meant to take the word in a double
sense, “light” as the true significance, “cow” as the concrete
image and verbal figure.
The sense of “rays” is quite indisputable in such passages as
the third verse of Madhuchchhandas’ hymn to Indra, I.7, “Indra
for far vision made the Sun to ascend in heaven: he sped him all
over the hill by his rays,” vi gobhir adrim airayat. 1 Butatthe
same time, the rays of Surya are the herds of the Sun, the kine
1 We may also translate “He sent abroad the thunderbolt with its lights”; but this does
not make as good and coherent a sense; even if we take it, gobhir must mean “radiances”
not “cows”.