The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Human Fathers 191
and a great light of truth; prisoned by this evil is an infinite
content of good; in this limiting death is the seed of a boundless
immortality. Vala, for example, is Vala of the radiances, vala ˙m
gomantam, his body is made of the light, govapus.a ˙m valam, his
hole or cave is a city full of treasures; that body has to be broken
up, that city rent open, those treasures seized. This is the work
set for humanity and the Ancestors have done it for the race
that the way may be known and the goal reached by the same
means and through the same companionship with the gods of
Light. “Let there be that ancient friendship between you gods
and us as when with the Angirases who spoke aright the word,
thou didst make to fall that which was fixed and slewest Vala
as he rushed against thee, O achiever of works, and thou didst
make to swing open all the doors of his city” (VI.18.5). At the
beginning of all human traditions there is this ancient memory.
It is Indra and the serpent Vritra, it is Apollo and the Python,
it is Thor and the Giants, Sigurd and Fafner, it is the mutually
opposing gods of the Celtic mythology; but only in the Veda do
we find the key to this imagery which conceals the hope or the
wisdom of a prehistoric humanity.
The first hymn we will take is one by the great Rishi, Vishwamitra,
III.39; for it carries us right into the heart of our subject.
It sets out with a description of the ancestral Thought, pitryā
dhīh. , the Thought of the fathers which can be no other than the
Swar-possessing thought hymned by the Atris, the seven-headed
thought discovered by Ayasya for the Navagwas; for in this
hymn also it is spoken of in connection with the Angirases, the
Fathers. “The thought expressing itself from the heart, formed
into the Stoma, goes towards Indra its lord.” Indra is, we have
supposed, the Power of luminous Mind, master of the world of
Light and its lightnings; the words or the thoughts are constantly
imaged as cows or women, Indra as the Bull or husband, and the
words desire him and are even spoken of as casting themselves
upwards to seek him, e.g. I.9.4, girah. prati tvām ud ahāsata
vr.s.abha ˙mpatim.The luminous Mind of Swar is the goal sought
by the Vedic thought and the Vedic speech which express the
herd of the illuminations pressing upward from the soul, from