The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Chapter XX
The Hound of Heaven
THERE yet remain two constant features of the Angiras
legend with regard to which we have to acquire a little
farther light in order to master entirely this Vedic conception
of the Truth and the discovery of the illuminations of
the Dawn by the primeval Fathers; we have to fix the identity
of Sarama and the exact function of the Panis, two problems of
Vedic interpretation which are very closely related to each other.
That Sarama is some power of the Light and probably of the
Dawn is very clear; for once we know that the struggle between
Indra and the original Aryan seers on the one hand and the sons
of the Cave on the other is no strange deformation of primitive
Indian history but a symbolic struggle between the powers of
Light and Darkness, Sarama who leads in the search for the
radiant herds and discovers both the path and the secret hold in
the mountain must be a forerunner of the dawn of Truth in the
human mind. And if we ask ourselves what power among the
truth-finding faculties it is that thus discovers out of the darkness
of the unknown in our being the truth that is hidden in it, we at
once think of the intuition. For Sarama is not Saraswati, she is
not the inspiration, even though the names are similar. Saraswati
gives the full flood of the knowledge; she is or awakens the
great stream, maho arn. ah. , and illumines with plenitude all the
thoughts, dhiyo vi´svā virājati. Saraswati possesses and is the
flood of the Truth; Sarama is the traveller and seeker on its path
who does not herself possess but rather finds that which is lost.
Neither is she the plenary word of the revelation, the Teacher
of man like the goddess Ila; for even when what she seeks is
found, she does not take possession but only gives the message
to the seers and their divine helpers who have still to fight for
the possession of the light that has been discovered.
Let us see, however, what the Veda itself says of Sarama.