The Rig Veda

We begin our discussion of the evolution of Indian spiritual thought with that most ancient of texts, the
Rig Veda. The Vedas are written in Sanskrit. The word ‘Sanskrit’ literally means that which is refined or
polished. Some linguists feel that it had an antecedent which they call ‘Prakrit’. We find that in many
Indo-European languages, there is a common thread of words and their meaning. Some linguists think
this means that Sanskrit and these other languages had a common origin. Other linguists think that
Sanskrit itself is the common origin and these other languages are derived from it. Sanskrit grammar is
quite involved and has been systematically presented by Panini in the Ashtadhyayi. However, this came
much later and Vedic Sanskrit is an even more ancient form of the language.

The word ‘Veda’ comes from the verb ‘vid’ which is ‘to know’. Then, ‘veda’ means that which is known,
or knowledge. What we today call the Vedas largely belonged to an oral tradition. The Vedas consist of
many thousands of hymns and they were all committed to memory and regularly recited to preserve
them. It is said that a large part of those verses has been lost, so that when they were finally compiled in
written form, we have only a portion of the original. Still, even this portion is quite vast and even a
casual study reveals the depth and breadth of the ideas that they contain.

Swami Vivekananda, in one of his speeches to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, tried to
explain what the Vedas represent. He said “The Hindus have received their religion through revelation,
the Vedas.”1 Some of our knowledge comes through cogitation, that is deliberate thought based on
observation and reasoning. But some other aspects of our knowledge come to us apparently like a flash
of insight. We recognize the value of such insight but are left wondering where it came from. This is
what is meant by revelation. Knowledge is revealed to us and is not the outcome of our own thought
process. Every religious tradition feels that the truths which form the basis of the tradition are not the
outcome of human thought, but are revelations from some other source. Usually, this source is
attributed to a divine being, a God. But wherever it comes from, the insights are a fact and can be
further reasoned upon. These insights or revelations form the scriptures of the religious tradition. Thus,
in the case of the Hindus, Swami Vivekananda says that the Vedas contain the revelations of the Hindu
religion and are its scriptures.

It is interesting to note that the word ‘Hindu’ does not occur in the Vedas (or, for that matter, any other
scripture of the Hindus). We have discussed elsewhere the origin of this word as referring, roughly, to
people who live east of the Indus river. Thus, it is more a geographic rather than a religious designation.
However, over the course of centuries, it has acquired a religious significance.

Swami Vivekananda continues that the Hindus “…hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without
end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the
Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by
different persons in different times.”2 Thus Swami Vivekananda refers to the revelations and the
knowledge as the ‘Vedas’ and not necessarily the written record. Moreover, note the use of the phrase
‘spiritual laws’. He goes on to explain this. “Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery,
and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world.”3

1
Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, pp. 6.
2
Ibid, pp. 6-7.
3
Ibid, p. 7.

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This raises several questions. Firstly, what do we mean by the ‘spiritual world’? The world of matter is
known to us through our senses. We can touch, smell, see, and taste matter, and a little more abstractly,
we can hear vibration of matter. The physical world around us plays an important part in our life, but
there is something more. This is the world of thoughts. We cannot sense thoughts in the same way that
we can sense matter. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that thoughts are real. Now the question is
whether there is anything else other than matter and thought?

In Indian philosophy, consciousness is beyond matter and thought and belongs to a spiritual reality or
spiritual world. It is this world that Swami Vivekananda is referring to above. He says that just as in the
material world and in the thought world, there are laws of nature, so are there laws that govern the
spiritual world. And he says that the revelations contained in the Vedas are a description of those laws.

We all know that the material world is governed by laws and it is the subject of science to discover those
laws. And this is done through what we call the scientific method, namely objective observation and
analysis and formulation of some model by which we can explain what was observed. The explanation is
scientific if it can be expressed quantitatively and has predictive power. For example, primitive man
knew that there is a force that pulls us towards the earth. That knowledge would not be called science.
It becomes science when we are able to formulate a mathematical law in such a way that it gives us
precise predictive power about that force.

In the above passage, Swami Vivekananda likens the revelations of the Vedas to laws such as gravitation.
Continuing in this scientific vein, he says “The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour
them as perfected beings.”4 In the use of the phrase ‘perfected beings’, Swami Vivekananda suggests
that we as human beings are still evolving, and that there is a stage we can aspire of perfection.

Let us look at a few of the hymns of the Rig Veda. The record we have includes a thousand verses
arranged into ten books, and each book is called a mandala. The verses range greatly in the topics that
they cover, and this makes their study rather complicated.

In reading and understanding Vedic hymns, one is confronted with a difficulty of how to interpret the
words. The translation itself is complicated by the fact that Sanskrit grammar allows for very flexible
ways of joining and separating words. Even if we are able to formulate a consistent way of doing this,
there is then the question of the intended meaning. Are words being used in a literal sense or in a
metaphorical sense?

Our answer to this may depend on what preconceived notions we are bringing to the study. For
example, some scholars approach Vedic study from an anthropological perspective and interpret the
hymns literally. However, it is clear from the passages quoted above that Swami Vivekananda’s view is
that the verses are revelations and that they should be interpreted from a spiritual perspective.

The difficulty of how to interpret the hymns is felt more acutely in some verses than in others. For
example, the final hymn in the tenth mandala is clearly a prayer for unity and social harmony. On the
other hand, the opening hymn of the first mandala requires more thought. We will consider five hymns
and we begin the opening hymn.

4
Ibid, p.7.

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It is the following:

Agnimile purohitam yajnasya devam rtvijam hotaram ratna dhatamam.

The literal translation is

I adore the Fire, the sacrificial priest, luminous vibrations of Truth, the fierce warrior, the bestower of
delight.

Is agni to be interpreted literally as fire? Or is it a metaphor for something? Or should it be interpreted

in some anthropomorphic form such as a ‘god of fire’? Whichever of these we adopt, we have then to
understand how agni can be described as a ‘priest’, a ‘vibration of Truth’, a ‘warrior’ and as a ‘bestower
of delight’.

While there have been many explanations of this verse, let us consider the one given by the philosopher
and mystic Sri Aurobindo.5 He interprets this verse from a psychological, rather than literal, perspective.
According to him, an appropriate translation would be “I adore the fire of enthusiasm, the gateway to
higher knowledge, the destroyer of lethargy, the bestower of delight.”

To get to this interpretation, Aurobindo observes that fire is a symbolic agency to take us from where
we are to some deeper level. Indeed, before we make an effort to discover something, we have to have
enthusiasm for the goal to be attained. That enthusiasm enables us to work hard to reach our goal,
which in this case is higher knowledge or deeper knowledge. The obstacle to seeking anything is laziness
or lethargy. That laziness is destroyed, or at least mitigated, by enthusiasm.

Thus, fire is interpreted as enthusiasm. It is a priest in the sense that the priest is an intermediary
between us and our spiritual ideal. The priest is not absolutely necessary, but makes the process
simpler. Similarly, to reach our ideal, the mental condition of enthusiasm makes it easier to reach our
goal. The goal here is ‘higher knowledge’. Fire is a warrior that destroys lethargy which is a great
obstacle to reaching our goal. And we delight in reaching our goal, but even in the journey towards our
goal as long as we are enthusiastic.

Even if we accept Sri Aurobindo’s explanation as only one of many, we already see that the Vedic hymns
are quite rich and deep and make for very fascinating study.

The next hymn we want to briefly consider is Hymn 164 in the first mandala. It is the following:

Indram mitram varunam agni mahuradho divyah

Sa suparno garutman
Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti.

They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni as well as Garutman of heavenly plumage. That which exists is
One, sages call it by various names.

5
In this discussion, we are following R. Murty, Indian Philosophy: An introduction, Chapter 1, Broadview Press,
Peterborough, 2013. Sri Aurobindo’s explanation can be found in his work Secret of the Veda which occurs in
Volume 10 of his Collected Works.

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This amazing hymn asserts that the one reality manifests itself diversely and is called variously. This is a
very important idea and one of the greatest contributions to human thought. In many religious
teachings, we find stated the superiority of one tradition over others. This verse however says that one
reality is manifesting itself variously. It is because of this verse that Indian thought tends to be so
inclusive and liberal.

In his paper on Hinduism at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda said “Unity in
variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognised it. … It is the same light coming through
glasses of different colours. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in
the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as
Krishna ‘I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest
extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am
there.’ And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of
Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others.”6

Thus, there is a tremendous catholicity in Indian thought and we can at least partially trace it to this Rig
Vedic hymn. In a later lecture in 1894 delivered in New York, Vivekananda said that as a result, “… we
Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedan, worshipping before the fire
of the Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross of the Christians, knowing that all the religions, from
the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and
realise the infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of them
marking a stage of progress. We gather all these flowers and bind them with the twine of love, making a
wonderful bouquet of worship.”7

In another lecture in England, Vivekananda said “A man is journeying towards the sun and takes a
photograph at each step. How different would be the first photograph from the second and still more
from the third or the last, when he reaches the real sun! But all these, though differing so widely from
each other, are true, only they are made to appear different by the changing conditions of time and
space. It is the recognition of this truth, which has enabled the Hindus to perceive the universal truth of
all religions, from the lowest to the highest…”8

The third hymn to consider is the famous Gayatri mantra which occurs in Hymn 62 of the third mandala:

Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi

Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.

Let us meditate on the glory of that Supreme Being that illumines everything. May That illumine our
understanding.

It is very interesting that the prayer here is not for anything material, but for knowledge, wisdom and
understanding. It asks that our understanding may be informed and illumined by the awareness, the
radiance and the glory of the Supreme Being.

6 Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Volume 1, pp. 17-18.

7 Ibid, pp. 331-332.
8 Ibid, p. 385.

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In many Vedic hymns, light is an important symbol, usually representing knowledge or a heightened
awareness. We develop understanding of things through various methods involving study, observation,
reflection, analysis, organization of information and so on. In addition to these objective and rational
methods, this verse says that there is another component, namely some kind of universal light, and that
we should at the very least be cognizant of that. This prayer is an acknowledgement of and appeal to
that light to help us develop a complete understanding of things.

Moreover, it is not a selfish prayer because of the word ‘nah’: our. It is not only ‘my’ understanding that
I seek help with, but our collective understanding as well. This idea of praying for the community occurs
in several places, and most notably in the final hymn of the Rig Veda which we shall discuss below.

The fourth hymn to consider is the following which was quoted by Mahatma Gandhi and occurs in Hymn
89 of the first mandala:

Ano bhadrah kratvo yantu visvatah

Let noble thoughts come from all directions.

Again, this speaks to the catholicity of the Rig Veda in not wanting to exclude the possibility of noble
ideas coming from different sources.

The fifth hymn to consider is the famous unity prayer that is the final verse of the Rig Veda.

Sam gacchadvam, sam vadadhvam

Sam vo manamsi janatam…
Samano mantrah samite samani
Samanam manah saha cittamesam.

Let us walk in harmony, let us speak in harmony; Let our minds be harmonious.
Common be your prayers. Common be the goal of your meeting. Common be your purpose.
Common be your deliberations.

This amazing hymn of unity shows that the Rig Vedic people understood the importance of unity as a
foundation stone of a stable society. We may have different opinions and we gather together to discuss
them. But at the end of our meeting, we should emerge with a common idea. This is the meaning of
‘samiti samani’. Notice the similarity between the Sanskrit word samanam and the English word same.
The word samanam means equal which is, of course, also the meaning of the word same.