The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Note on the Texts 603
a preconceived and well-ordered plan it was not published in
book-form and is therefore not yet available to the reading
public. It was accompanied by a number of renderings of the
hymns of the Rig Veda which were rather interpretations than
translations. . . .
Finally, when it was proposed in 1949 to bring out The Secret of the
Veda as a book, Sri Aurobindo dictated in reply:
The publication of the Secret of the Veda as it is does not enter
into my intention. It was published in a great hurry and at a
time when I had not studied the Rig Veda as a whole as well
as I have since done. Whole chapters will have to be rewritten
or written otherwise and a considerable labour gone through;
moreover it was never finished and considerable additions in
order to make it complete are indispensable.
Sri Aurobindo never found time for the necessary revision. After his
passing, however, aware of the value of the material that had appeared
in the Arya, the Sri Aurobindo International University Centre published
in 1956 The Secret of the Veda, Selected Hymns, Hymns of
the Atris, and seven of the “Other Hymns” under the title On the
Veda. A new edition of the same text was brought out by the same
publisher (renamed Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education)
in 1964. Both these editions included as an appendix an essay from Sri
Aurobindo’s manuscripts, “The Origins of Aryan Speech”.
In 1971, most of the same material was published as The Secret of
the Veda, volume 10 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library. In
that edition, “The Doctrine of the Mystics” was omitted from Hymns
of the Atris and printed in full in Hymns to the Mystic Fire, in place
of the excerpt originally included in that book; the section of “Other
Hymns” was augmented by the reproduction of a number of translations
from Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts; and the letter “Interpretation
of the Veda” was added. The Centenary edition has been reprinted
several times.
The present edition. The Secret of the Veda with Selected Hymns differs
in content from earlier editions of the corresponding book (On the
Veda and The Secret of the Veda) in that it contains all writings on