The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

146 The Secret of the Veda
of Nature-worshipping barbarians or of rude Aryan invaders
warring with the civilised and Vedantic Dravidians.
Let us now pass rapidly through certain other passages in
which there is a more scattered collocation of these symbols.
First, we find that in this image of the cavern-pen in the hill,
as elsewhere, the Cow and Horse go together. We have seen
Pushan called upon to seek for the cows and protect the horses.
The two forms of the Aryan’s wealth always at the mercy of
marauders? But let us see. “So in thy ecstasy of the Soma thou
didst break open, O hero (Indra), the pen of the Cow and the
Horse, like a city” (VIII.32.5). “Break open for us the thousands
of the Cow and the Horse” (VIII.34.14). “That which thou
holdest, O Indra, the Cow and the Horse and the imperishable
enjoyment, confirm that in the sacrificer and not in the Pani; he
who lies in the slumber, doing not the work and seeking not the
gods, let him perish by his own impulsions; thereafter confirm
perpetually (in us) the wealth that must increase” (VIII.97.2 and
3). In another hymn the Panis are said to withhold the wealth
of cows and horses. Always they are powers who receive the
coveted wealth but do not use it, preferring to slumber, avoiding
the divine action (vrata), and they are powers who must perish
or be conquered before the wealth can be securely possessed by
the sacrificer. And always the Cow and the Horse represent a
concealed and imprisoned wealth which has to be uncovered
and released by a divine puissance.
With the conquest of the shining herds is also associated the
conquest or the birth or illumination of the Dawn and the Sun,
but this is a point whose significance we shall have to consider
in another chapter. And associated with the Herds, the Dawn
and the Sun are the Waters; for the slaying of Vritra with the
release of the waters and the defeat of Vala with the release of the
herds are two companion and not unconnected myths. In certain
passages even, as in I.32.4, the slaying of Vritra is represented as
the preliminary to the birth of the Sun, the Dawn and Heaven,
and in others the opening of the Hill to the flowing of the Waters.
For the general connection we may note the following passages:
VII.90.4, “The Dawns broke forth perfect in their shining and