The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

594 Appendix
Again, I certainly did not intend to express my own idea
in the description of the Upanishads as a revolt of philosophic
minds against the ritualistic materialism of the Vedas. If I held
that view, I could not regard the earlier Sruti as an inspired
scripture or the Upanishads as Vedanta and I would not have
troubled myself about the secret of the Veda. It is a view held by
European scholars and I accepted it as the logical consequence,
if the ordinary interpretations of the hymns, whether Indian
or European, are to be maintained. If the Vedic hymns are, as
represented by Western scholarship, the ritualistic compositions
of joyous and lusty barbarians the Upanishads “have then to be
conceived as a revolt . . . against the ritualistic materialism of
the Vedas.” From both premiss and conclusion I have dissented
and I have finally described, not only the Upanishads, but all
later forms, as a development from the Vedic religion and not a
revolt against its tenets.
Our Indian doctrine avoids the difficulty in another way, by
interpreting the Veda as a book of ritual hymns and revering it as
a book of knowledge. It puts together two ancient truths without
reconciling them effectively. In my view, that reconciliation can
only be effected by seeing even in the exterior aspect of the
hymns not a ritualistic materialism, but a symbolic ritualism.
No doubt the karmakanda was regarded as an indispensable
stepping-stone to the knowledge of the Atman. That was an
article of religious faith, and as an article of faith I do not dispute
its soundness. But it becomes valid for the intellect — and in an
intellectual inquiry I must proceed by intellectual means, — only
if the karmakanda is so interpreted as to show how its performance
assists, prepares or brings about the higher knowledge.
Otherwise, however much the Veda may be revered in theory,
it will be treated in practice as neither indispensable nor helpful
and will come in the end to be practically set aside — as has
actually happened.
I am aware that some hymns of the Veda are interpreted
in a sense other than the ritualistic; even the European scholars
admit higher religious and spiritual ideas in the “later hymns”
of the Vedas. I am aware also that separate texts are quoted