The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

194 The Secret of the Veda
three gods Surya, Indra and Soma, and the Soma also is offered
in three parts, on the three levels of the hill, tris.u sānus.u. We
may hazard the conjecture, having regard to the nature of the
three gods, that Soma releases the divine light from the sense
mentality, Indra from the dynamic mentality, Surya from the
pure reflective mentality. As for the pasture of the cow we are
already familiar with it; it is the field or ks.etra which Indra
wins for his shining comrades from the Dasyu and in which the
Atri beheld the warrior Agni and the luminous cows, those of
whom even the old became young again. This field, ks.etra, is
only another image for the luminous home (ks.aya) towhichthe
gods by the sacrifice lead the human soul.
Vishwamitra then proceeds to indicate the real mystic sense
of all this imagery. “He having Dakshina with him held in his
right hand (daks.in. edaks.in. āvān) the secret thing that is placed
in the secret cave and concealed in the waters. May he, knowing
perfectly, separate the light from the darkness, jyotir vr.n. īta
tamaso vijānan, may we be far from the presence of the evil.”
We have here a clue to the sense of this goddess Dakshina who
seems in some passages to be a form or epithet of the Dawn
and in others that which distributes the offerings in the sacrifice.
Usha is the divine illumination and Dakshina is the discerning
knowledge that comes with the dawn and enables the Power
in the mind, Indra, to know aright and separate the light from
the darkness, the truth from the falsehood, the straight from
the crooked, vr.n. īta vijānan. The right and left hand of Indra
are his two powers of action in knowledge; for his two arms
are called gabhasti, a word which means ordinarily a ray of the
sun but also forearm, and they correspond to his two perceptive
powers, his two bright horses, harī, which are described as suneyed,
sūracaks.asā and as vision-powers of the Sun, sūryasya
ketū. Dakshina presides over the right-hand power, daks.in. a,and
therefore we have the collocation daks.in. edaks.in. āvān. Itisthis
discernment which presides over the right action of the sacrifice
and the right distribution of the offerings and it is this which
enables Indra to hold the herded wealth of the Panis securely, in
his right hand. And finally we are told what is this secret thing