A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

68 Thus in progenitive deities, especially Varuna, Brahma, Kubera, and Ganapati, also in the case of the Patriarch and Prophet Agastya (twin of Vasistha, and like him probably = Prajapati), the great belly is a symbol of pregnancy : such types embodying simultaneously chthonic (£.) and celestial (m.) powers. When Prakrti is represented not thus as She is in him nityayutau, but as She is in herself, ayuta, in a wholly feminine form, then the promise of her infinite maternities is revealed more explicitly in her heavy breasts and swelling hips, told of in her litanies and seen in her images from prehistoric times to the present day. Clear indications of pregnancy are recognizable similarly in the iconography of medizval Mariolatry.

68a On the connection between Intellect (manas) and the life of the body, see Rg Veda, X, 58, an incantation employed to recall the Intellect of a man at the point of death “ that thou mayst live and sojourn here,’

69 Here the powers of the soul are called “ angels,’ and all these leaving (utkram) the body at death, together with the five breaths (prvdna), return to their source.

The root kram can be used in connection with any change of state (“all change is a dying”): do not only of procession, but also of recession, as in Maitri Up., VI, 30, where attkrvamya is used with respect to ascession from Brahmaloka to the “ final stage,” parama gati.

70 For example, when the Bodhisattva descends from the Tusita heaven to take birth on earth, Barhat inscription bhagavato akramti, see Barua and Sinha, Barhut inscriptions, 1926, pp. 52-53. Cf. Re

Veda, I, 164, 19, ““those had come hitherward larvanic) they call departing (pardcah).”’

71 For the universal symbolism of the cross, see René Guénon, La symbolisme de la Croix, Paris, I93t. Observe also that the Cross is both a “‘tree’’ and a sacrificial ‘‘post.’’ Similarly in Vedic texts the sacrificial post (vipa) is often spoken of as a tree (vanaspatt, “ forest lord,”’ Rg Veda, I, 13,11; I, 65, 2; I1I,8; X, 70, 10). As pointed out by Oldenberg, S.B.E., XLVI, p. 254, the ritual acts associated with the setting up of the sacrificial post “seem to be connected with ancient tree worship,” cf. the accounts in Satapatha Brahmana, VII, 6, 4, and 7, 1. The three parts of the post, base, middle, and crest, correspond to the Three Worlds (SBr., III, 7, I, 14 and 25), cf. Brhadaranyaka Up., Il, 2, 1, where the “ new-born infant ” ($i$u = the “‘ Year ” of our text) is compared to the sacrificial post, “ his base (@dhana, i.e., the part set into the earth) is this (Earth), his top (pratvadhana) is (Heaven), his trunk (sthtiaa) midmost (madhyamah) is Spirit (praéna), the fetter (dama) food (anna).”” The same simile is implied in 4 itareya Aranyaka, II, 1, 6, where “ language (vac) is the rope (éanti), names its slip-knot

(dama) . . . whereby all things are bound.”’ The Tope and its knot by which the victim is held are more fully described in SBr., III, 7, 1, 19 and 20 as “ triple’ and as “‘ food ’’’: it is bound about the navel of the

post (nabhidaghne, Taittiviya Samhita, V1, 3, 4, 5) and thought of as the clothing of the post. In SBr.,, loc. cit. and Kausitaki Br., X, 1, the post is called a vajva. These passages taken together suffice to show that the sacrificial post was envisaged as the Tree of Life, the body of Prajapati, its trunk the axis of the universe, the support of all existences, to “ support existence ’’ being indeed the very object of the sacrifice ; and that which is the support of all existences is also the place of their extinction, at which the breaths of life are returned to their source, “ pradnah to préna”’ as the Vedas and Upanisads express what is

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