The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

174 The Secret of the Veda
true godhead of these shining gods and these divine, luminous
sages.
The Angiras Rishis are at once divine and human seers. This
double character is not in itself an extraordinary feature or peculiar
in the Veda to these sages. The Vedic gods also have a double
action; divine and pre-existent in themselves, they are human in
their working upon the mortal plane when they grow in man
to the great ascension. This has been strikingly expressed in the
allocution to Usha, the Dawn, “goddess human in mortals”, devi
martes.u mānus.i. But in the imagery of the Angiras Rishis this
double character is farther complicated by the tradition which
makes them the human fathers, discoverers of the Light, the
Path and the Goal. We must see how this complication affects
our theory of the Vedic creed and the Vedic symbolism.
The Angiras Rishis are ordinarily described as seven in number:
they are sapta viprāh. , the seven sages who have come
down to us in the Puranic tradition 1 and are enthroned by
Indian astronomy in the constellation of the Great Bear. But
they are also described as Navagwas and Dashagwas, and if in
VI.22 we are told of the ancient fathers, the seven seers who
were Navagwas, pūrve pitaro navagvāh. sapta viprāso, yetin
III.39.5 we have mention of two different classes, Navagwas,
and Dashagwas, the latter ten in number, the former presumably,
though it is not expressly stated, nine. Sakhā ha yatra sakhibhir
navagvair, abhijñvā satvabhir gā anugman; satya ˙m tad indro
da´sabhir da´sagvaih. ,sūrya ˙m viveda tamasi ks.iyantam; “where,
a friend with his friends the Navagwas, following the cows Indra
with the ten Dashagwas found that truth, even the Sun dwelling
in the darkness.” On the other hand we have in IV.51 a collective
description of the Angiras seven-faced or seven-mouthed, ninerayed,
ten-rayed, navagve a ˙ngire da´sagve saptāsye. In X.108.8
we have another Rishi Ayasya associated with the Navagwa
Angirases. In X.67 this Ayasya is described as our father who
found the vast seven-headed Thought that was born out of
1
Not that the names given them by the Purana need be those which the Vedic tradition
would have given.