The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Cow and the Angiras Legend 141
the other sense of go “the luminous wideness”, the vast wealth
of the shining herds. To recover this lost wealth the sacrifice
has to be performed; the Angirases or else Brihaspati and the
Angirases have to chant the true word, the mantra; Sarama the
heavenly hound has to find out the cows in the cave of the
Panis; Indra strong with the Soma wine and the Angirases, the
seers, his companions, have to follow the track, enter the cave
or violently break open the strong places of the hill, defeat the
Panis and drive upward the delivered herds.
Let us, first, take note of certain features which ought not to
be overlooked when we seek to determine the interpretation of
this parable or this myth. In the first place the legend, however
precise in its images, is not yet in the Veda a simple mythological
tradition, but is used with a certain freedom and fluidity which
betrays the significant image behind the sacred tradition. Often it
is stripped of the mythological aspect and applied to the personal
need or aspiration of the singer. For it is an action of which Indra
is always capable; although he has done it once for all in the type
by means of the Angirases, yet he repeats the type continually
even in the present, he is constantly the seeker of the cows,
gaves.an. a, and the restorer of the stolen wealth.
Sometimes we have simply the fact of the stolen cows and
the recovery by Indra without any reference to Sarama or the
Angirases or the Panis. But it is not always Indra who recovers
the herds. We have for instance a hymn to Agni, the second
of the fifth Mandala, a hymn of the Atris, in which the singer
applies the image of the stolen cows to himself in a language
which clearly betrays its symbolism. Agni, long repressed in
her womb by mother Earth who is unwilling to give him to
the father Heaven, held and concealed in her so long as she is
compressed into limited form (pes. ī), at length comes to birth
when she becomes great and vast (mahis. ī). The birth of Agni is
associated with a manifestation or vision of luminous herds. “I
beheld afar in a field one shaping his weapons who was goldentusked
and pure-bright of hue; I give to him the Amrita (the
immortal essence, Soma) in separate parts; what shall they do
to me who have not Indra and have not the word? I beheld