The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Lost Sun and the Lost Cows 157
unless this means, as is possible, that the Dawns called by the
Angirases, “our human fathers”, who are mentioned in the preceding
verse, drove up for them the Cows. Then in VI.17.5 we
have the breaking of the pen as the means of the outshining
of the Sun; “Thou didst make the Sun and the Dawn to shine,
breaking the firm places; thou didst move from its foundation
the great hill that enveloped the Cows”; and finally in III.39
the absolute identification of the two images in their legendary
form, “None is there among mortals who can blame (or, as I
should rather interpret, no mortal power that can confine or obstruct)
these our fathers who fought for the Cows (of the Panis);
Indra of the mightiness, Indra of the works released for them
the strongly closed cow-pens; when a friend with his friends
the Navagwas, following on his knees the cows, when with the
ten, the Dashagwas, Indra found the true Sun (or, as I render
it, the Truth, the Sun,) dwelling in the darkness.” The passage
is conclusive; the cows are the Cows of the Panis which the
Angirases pursue entering the cave on their hands and knees,
the finders are Indra and the Angirases who are spoken of in
other hymns as Navagwas and Dashagwas, and that which is
found by entering the cow-pens of the Panis in the cave of the
hill is not the stolen wealth of the Aryans, but “the sun dwelling
in the darkness”.
Therefore it is established beyond question that the cows
of the Veda, the cows of the Panis, the cows which are stolen,
fought for, pursued, recovered, the cows which are desired by the
Rishis, the cows which are won by the hymn and the sacrifice,
by the blazing fire and the god-increasing verse and the godintoxicating
Soma, are symbolic cows, are the cows of Light,
are, in the other and inner Vedic sense of the words go, usrā,
usriyā, the shining ones, the radiances, the herds of the Sun,
the luminous forms of the Dawn. By this inevitable conclusion
the corner-stone of Vedic interpretation is securely founded far
above the gross materialism of a barbarous worship and the
Veda reveals itself as a symbolic scripture, a sacred allegory
whether of Sun-worship and Dawn-worship or of the cult of a
higher and inner Light, of the true Sun, satya ˙m sūryam, that