Vedas/Upanishads

[Guest guest]

> Personally, I find the dryness of the Upanishadic / Vedantic pompous

> intellectualism and denial of things earthy quite pallid in comparison to

> the Vedas that are pretty much chock full of verve =) I encourage people to

> give them a second look. As a suggestion, avoid common Indian authors and

> commentators, they seem to hidebound by tradition and a denial of what

> the Vedas express, in light of the aforementioned straitlaced and straight

> faced tradition to publish the "interesting" parts or even consider them

> *griN!* It's kind of like reading the Song of Solomon in a Catholic Bible -

> with repeated admonitions to " wake not love before its time".. *griN!*

> Which is a little different, you must admit from the sensual import of

> " O cluster of Henna blossoms! Thy satchel of myrrh! "

>

> Oh well =) Maybe I *am* an anachronist at heart...

>

> - SUndar

>

Sundar,

I am glad you put forward your opinion boldly. For an un-common

*Indian* interpretation of the Vedas, read Sri Aurobindo's exciting

work "The Secret of the Vedas", Sri Aurobindo Centenary Library Vol. 10.

 

I was completely gripped by the brilliant originality of his method.

His hypothesis is that Vedas used its language with dual meanings -

an external ritualistic and an internal psychological one.

 

Sri Aurobindo first rejects Sayana's commentary on the basis of its fluctuating

and gross interpretation of important words.

 

"Sayana gives to the words dhI, rtam, etc., very variable significances. Rtam

which is almost the key-word of any psuchological or spiritual interpretation

is rendered by him sometimes as "truth", more often "sacrifice", occassionally

in the sense of Water. DhI is rendered by Sayana variously "thought", "prayer"

"action", "food" etc... Moreover Sayana's tendency is to obliterate all fine

shades and distinctions between words and to give them their vaguest general

significance. All epithets conveying ideas of mental activity mean for him

simply "intelligent", all words suggesting various ideas of force, and the

vedas overflow with them, are reduced to the broad idea of strength. I found

myself, on the contrary, impressed by the great importance of fixing and

preserving the right shade of meaning and precise association to be given to

different words, however close they may be to each other in their general

sense...."

 

As a clue to his own interpretations, Sri Aurobindo points:

 

"The vedic sacrifice consists of three features, - omitting for the moment the

god and the mantra, - the persons who offer, the offering and the fruits of

the offering. .., Yajna is works, internal or external, the yajaman must

be the soul or the personality as the doer. But there were also the officiating

priests, hota, rtvij, purohita, brahma, ashvaryu etc.What was their part

in the symbolism? ... the use of the word purohita in its separated form

with the sense of the representative "put in front" and a frequent reference

to the god Agni who symbolises the divine Will or Force in humanity that

takes up the action in all consecration of works. ...

But I found that ghrta was constantly used in connection with thought

or the mind, that heaven in Veda was a symbol of the mind, that Indra

represented mentality and his two horses double energies of that mentality

and even that the Veda sometimes speaks plainly of offering the intellect

(dhisaNA) as purified ghrta, to the gods, ghrtam na pUtam dhisaNAm.

The word ghrta counts also among its philological significance the sense of a

rich or warm brightness....

The fruits of the offering were in appearance purely material - cows, horses

gold, offspring, men, physical strength, victory in battle. ... The word gO

means both cow and light and in a number of passages evidently meant light

even while putting forward the image of the cow... The cow and horse, gO and

asva are constantly associated. Usha, the Dawn, is described as goMatI and

asvavatI; Dawn gives to the sacrificer horses and Cows. As applied to the

physical dawn, gOmatI means accompanied by or bringing the rays of light

and is an image of the dawn of illumination in the human mind...

A study of the Vedic horse led me to the conclusion that go and asva represent

the two companion ideas of Light and Energy, Consciousness and Force, which to

the Vedic and Cedantic mind were the double or twin aspect of all the activties

of existence."

 

I strongly recommend reading the full work. But, be warned that it is a massive

albeit lucid work.

 

Raghu

[Guest guest]

Greetings =) My node has been down for two weeks, and it's nice to get back

into the thick of things..

 

"IN%"sreekrishna" 24-AUG-1995 21:02:11.38

 

I think this is a ver valid comment. Brahmins drove

Buddhism pretty much out of India, but still remained vegetarian. It is hard

us to say whether it was their preference(ie., vegetarian meals) even before

Buddha's time. Nevertheless, the fact that meat lost importance in Brahmin's

 

This is a knotty question, given the vide variation in Brahminic practice

through India.. eg. "jal tori" in Bengal

 

"life indicates that they never cared for that or found it more beneficial to

their health and spiritual life. Also the Vedic sacrifices ( of Vedas) had

already been reduced in the Jnana Yagna of the Upanishads (Vedanta), for eg.,

Yasvaivam vidusho yagnasyatma .............., where all the beastly things of

Vedic sarifice has been substituted symbolically with spiritual things like

shraddha. I don't know whether these mantras pre date Buddha. In any event,

Jnana Yagna mantras are part of the Sri Vaishnava Aradhanam.

 

I remember hearing in one place that one of the

reasons yagnya is not practiced is that kali yuga is too polluted to actually

perform something with the mantra siddhi potential of yagnya..

 

However, we still do see some vajapeya yagnyas ( mainly ) around !

 

Let us do remember what the purusha sookta says :

 

" yagnyena yagnyam ayajanta deva - taani dharmaani prathamaani aasa"

 

By sacrifice, the Gods sacrificed, TO sacrifice - these were the First Dharmas.

 

This is the importance of sacrifice to ANY system based on the Vedas. This

is the glory , the path of " poorve saadhyaah:" - those who went before us,

the great achievers.

 

Denigrating their ways as " beastly " doesn't quite seem right to me.

 

"Perhaps, tha anology for consuming meat but not truely caring for it is

evident in our own life in the Americas. Many Hindus, who never tasted meat in

India have started enjoying meat here. As much as they enjoy meat, perhaps

they won't miss it if meat is totally banned.

 

Okay.. here I will take issue with SRikrishna =) I don't think the "not truly

caring for it" is pretty much asking for Hamlet's " lay not that holy

unction to your soul".. More on this soon.

 

"Also Vedic sacrifices belong to the Vedas. Vedanta philosophy is of the

Upanishads. Most Hindus consider Upanishads and Vedas as the two faces of a

same coin. However, many Western scholars hold the view that the Vedas and

Upanishads originated from different sources. They claim that the Vedas are

foreign to India and the Upanishads are strictly of indigenous origin. Joseph

campbell further comments that the Brahmins of the Vedas were the best

interpreters of the myth the world had ever known at that time (now of course

it would be Joseph Campbell!) and once they came across the Upanishads (forest

 

 

This is very valid and plausible. Consider the fact that the Vedic Aryans were

a pretty happy devil may care bunch who went about cattle raiding,

annihiliating people on whims, and fornicating without too much guilt.. =)

In fact, if you look at specifically Bhaargava mythos ( Aurva, Ushanas Kaavya/

Shukracharya, Rama Jaamadagnya ( Parashurama) etc. ) you find people who go

around regularly tweaking the devas' ears. SUaknya's husband Chyavana is the

sage credited with including the Ashvinis in the soma offerings ( vital to

the Gods' well being ) in exchange for youth so that he could enjoy Sukanya's

charms.

 

Lo and behold these cattle barons settle down in India and become positively

strait-laced and strait-jacketed ( sometimes) in their attitudes.. *grin!*

 

As for being the best interpreters of myth - I would hold this very valid.

If one goes by Kunhan Raja's exposition on the "asya vamasya palitasya hotuh:"

series of hymns in Rg Veda, ( this theory is supported by other researchers

too ) - It appears that a significant part of the sacrifice was the part where

the hotr engaged in ritual competition, as it were, reciting verses with

a roman-a-clef format. The verses are full of obscure references, the

significance of which is lost to us, mostly. They must have made sense to

Dirghatamas' audience, however.. SO they were very "up" on their mythos.

 

Then again, look at the Rks that describe Apala Atreyi's 'coming of age' ..

A presumably innocent maiden, Apala Atreyi, goes to the river bank, bathes,

picks the appropriate herbs, and chews them, pressing out the Soma juice.

Indra hears her teeth grinding as he is wandering around, and comes to claim

his share of the soma.. in return, she asks for hair on her belly - a reference

to sexual maturity. By seemingly innocent accident, Apala follows the exact

soma sacrifice formats with appropriate invocations to Indra, and offerings -

something that begs the question of whether she KNEW what she was doing =)

Again, suggested by her name, Atreyi - which means both fertile woman and

daughter of Atri.

 

Personally, I find the dryness of the Upanishadic / Vedantic pompous

intellectualism and denial of things earthy quite pallid in comparison to

the Vedas that are pretty much chock full of verve =) I encourage people to

give them a second look. As a suggestion, avoid common Indian authors and

commentators, they seem to hidebound by tradition and a denial of what

the Vedas express, in light of the aforementioned straitlaced and straight

faced tradition to publish the "interesting" parts or even consider them

*griN!* It's kind of like reading the Song of Solomon in a Catholic Bible -

with repeated admonitions to " wake not love before its time".. *griN!*

Which is a little different, you must admit from the sensual import of

" O cluster of Henna blossoms! Thy satchel of myrrh! "

 

Oh well =) Maybe I *am* an anachronist at heart...

 

- SUndar

[Guest guest]

SUndar said:

>>Let us do remember what the purusha sookta says :

>>" yagnyena yagnyam ayajanta deva - taani dharmaani prathamaani aasa"

>>By sacrifice, the Gods sacrificed, TO sacrifice - these were the First

>>Dharmas.

>>This is the importance of sacrifice to ANY system based on the Vedas. This

>>is the glory , the path of " poorve saadhyaah:" - those who went before us,

>>the great achievers.

>>Denigrating their ways as " beastly " doesn't quite seem right to me.

 

I truely apologize for my mistake in expressing my thoughts. What I meant to

say is

the BEAST RELATED THINGS have been replaced with spiritual things such as

Shraddha. I wrongly used the word BEASTLY to indicate BEAST RELATED THINGS.

My apologies are to Saadhyaahs as well as Mareechi.

 

I personally consider "Yagnena Yagnam......" of Purusha Suktam as one of

the greatest products of the Hindu mind. No wonder, this mantra is part of all

ceremonies. It reminds us that DHARMA is not some blind-sentiment, but truely

is the basis of life itself. I can write pages on that.

Suffice to say the popular lines of

Purandara Dasaru, which is the sense translation of the Yagnena Yagna of

P.Suktam into Kannada:

 

Kereya neeranu kerege chelli

varava padedavarante kaniro

Hariya karuneyolada bhagyava

Hari samarpane madi badukiro

 

Offer the water of the pond(river) back to the pond

and feel blessed

Lead your life by submitting to Hari all the wealth

which we have obtained out of Hari's grace.