The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

154 The Secret of the Veda
even in the blind darkness, so andhe cit tamasi jyotir vidat, itis
evident that the reference is to the same light which Agni and
Soma found, one light for all these many creatures, avindata ˙m
jyotir eka ˙m bahubhyah. , when they stole the cows from the
Panis (I.93.4), “the wakeful light which they who increase truth
brought into birth, a god for the god” (VIII.89.1), the secret
light (gūd. ha ˙m jyotih. ) which the fathers, the Angirases, found
when by their true mantras they brought to birth the Dawn. It
is that which is referred to in the mystic hymn to all the gods
(VIII.29.10) attributed to Manu Vaivaswata or to Kashyapa, in
which it is said, “Certain of them singing the Rik thought out
the mighty Sāman and by that they made the Sun to shine.”
This is not represented as being done previous to the creation
of man; for it is said in VII.91.1, “The gods who increase by
our obeisance and were of old, without blame, they for man
beset (by the powers of darkness) made the Dawn to shine by
the Sun.” This is the finding of the Sun that was dwelling in the
darkness by the Angirases through their ten months’ sacrifice.
Whatever may have been the origin of the image or legend, it is
an old one and widespread and it supposes a long obscuration
of the Sun during which man was beset by darkness. We find it
not only among the Aryans of India, but among the Mayas of
America whose civilisation was a ruder and perhaps earlier type
of the Egyptian culture; there too it is the same legend of the Sun
concealed for many months in the darkness and recovered by the
hymns and prayers of the wise men (the Angiras Rishis?). In the
Veda the recovery of the Light is first effected by the Angirases,
the seven sages, the ancient human fathers and is then constantly
repeated in human experience by their agency.
It will appear from this analysis that the legend of the lost
Sun and its recovery by sacrifice and by the mantra and the
legend of the lost Cows and their recovery, also by the mantra,
both carried out by Indra and the Angirases, are not two different
myths, they are one. We have already asserted this identity
while discussing the relations of the Cows and the Dawn. The
Cows are the rays of the Dawn, the herds of the Sun and not
physical cattle. The lost Cows are the lost rays of the Sun; their