The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

142 The Secret of the Veda
in the field as it were a happy herd ranging continuously, many,
shining; they seized them not, for he was born; even those (cows)
that were old, become young again.” But if these Dasyus who
have not Indra, nor the word, are at present powerless to seize
on the luminous herds, it was otherwise before this bright and
formidable godhead was born. “Who were they that divorced
my strength (maryakam; my host of men, my heroes, vīra) from
the cows? for they (my men) had no warrior and protector of
the kine. Let those who took them from me, release them; he
knows and comes driving to us the cattle.”
What, we may fairly ask, are these shining herds, these cows
who were old and become young again? Certainly, they are not
physical herds, nor is it any earthly field by the Yamuna or the
Jhelum that is the scene of this splendid vision of the goldentusked
warrior god and the herds of the shining cattle. They are
the herds either of the physical or of the divine Dawn and the
language suits ill with the former interpretation; this mystical
vision is surely a figure of the divine illumination. They are
radiances that were stolen by the powers of darkness and are
now divinely recovered not by the god of the physical fire, but
by the flaming Force which was concealed in the littleness of the
material existence and is now liberated into the clarities of an
illumined mental action.
Indra is not, then, the only god who can break up the
tenebrous cave and restore the lost radiances. There are other
deities to whom various hymns make the attribution of this great
victory. Usha is one of them, the divine Dawn, mother of these
herds. “True with the gods who are true, great with the gods who
are great, sacrificial godhead with the gods sacrificial, she breaks
open the strong places, she gives of the shining herds; the cows
low towards the Dawn!” (VII.75.7). Agni is another; sometimes
he wars by himself as we have already seen, sometimes along
with Indra — “Ye two warred over the cows, O Indra, O Agni”
(VI.60.2) — or, again, with Soma, — “O Agni and Soma, that
heroic might of yours was made conscient when ye robbed the
Pani of the cows” (I.93.4). Soma in another passage is associated
in this victory with Indra; “This god born by force stayed, with