The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Modern Theories 25
The modern theory of the Veda starts with the conception,
for which Sayana is responsible, of the Vedas as the hymnal of
an early, primitive and largely barbaric society crude in its moral
and religious conceptions, rude in its social structure and entirely
childlike in its outlook upon the world that environed it. The ritualism
which Sayana accepted as part of a divine knowledge and
as endowed with a mysterious efficacy, European scholarship accepted
as an elaboration of the old savage propitiatory sacrifices
offered to imaginary superhuman personalities who might be
benevolent or malevolent according as they were worshipped or
neglected. The historical element admitted by Sayana was readily
seized on and enlarged by new renderings and new explanations
of the allusions in the hymns developed in an eager hunt for
clues to the primitive history, manners and institutions of those
barbarous races. The naturalistic element played a still more
important role. The obvious identification of the Vedic gods in
their external aspects with certain Nature-Powers was used as
the starting-point for a comparative study of Aryan mythologies;
the hesitating identification of certain of the less prominent
deities as Sun-Powers was taken as a general clue to the system of
primitive myth-making and elaborate sun-myth and star-myth
theories of comparative mythology were founded. In this new
light the Vedic hymnology has come to be interpreted as a halfsuperstitious,
half-poetic allegory of Nature with an important
astronomical element. The rest is partly contemporary history,
partly the formulae and practices of a sacrificial ritualism, not
mystic, but merely primitive and superstitious.
This interpretation is in entire harmony with the scientific
theories of early human culture and of the recent emergence from
the mere savage which were in vogue throughout the nineteenth
century and are even now dominant. But the increase of our
knowledge has considerably shaken this first and too hasty generalisation.
We now know that remarkable civilisations existed
in China, Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria many thousands of years ago,
and it is now coming generally to be agreed that Greece and India
were no exceptions to the general high culture of Asia and the
Mediterranean races. If the Vedic Indians do not get the benefit