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

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

116 The discussion above covers only one of the numerous classes of angels; actually the hosts (gana) of the angels include beside the Vigve Devah, also the Adityas, Vasus, Maharajikas, Sadhyas and others. In Taittiviya Up., Il, 8, three hierarchies of angels are teferred to, of whom the highest are simply ‘‘ Angels ” (deva@fi), and next to these are the ‘‘ angels with respect to works ”’ (karma-devah), “* who reach the angels by their works” (ye karmana devanapyanti) evidently the same as the “‘ angels whose self is works ’’ (kavmdaimanah devah) of the Manava Dharmaégastra, I, 22; third in rank are the “ begotten angels’ (ajanajah devah), and all these are superior to the Patriarchs (pitarah). In the words of Dionysius, “ our knowledge of the angels is imperfect ’’ (Coel. Hier., V1).

It can hardly be doubted that Williams Jackson, J.A.O.S., Vol. 21, pp. 168 and 181, rightly interprets Avestan vitha as derived from vispa (Skr, visva) “all,” and that the ‘‘ All-gods” often mentioned in connection with Ahura Mazda were precisely the ‘‘ Several Angels ”’ of Vedic texts.

117 With further reference to ‘“‘ Daksa’’: the two posthumous voyages, devayana and pityyana are described in the Upanisads as respectively ‘‘ northern ”” (uttara) and “ southern” (daksina). Observe now that utfava means primarily “yonder,” “higher,” “ transcendent,” etc., daksina primarily “of or belonging to Daksa,” the meanings northern and southern being secondary. Daksa’s “ way” is precisely that of the pityydna (inasmuch as he is himself by his works and sacrifice the cause of his own return to embodied existence at the dawn of every “‘creation’’) and that is why the pitrydana is called daksina, “‘ southern.”

118 Note that yajaa = dulia, pija = latvia. Yajiia, “ sacrifice,” is properly speaking a metaphysical (or as anthropologists express it, “ magical’’), not a devotional rite. The bull sacrifice in Atlantis, described by Plato (Krit, 119 D and E) well illustrates what is meant by “4 metaphysical rite.’ The Greek Bouphonia (for which, with its significance, see Harrison, Themis, 2nd ed., pp. 141 ff.) very closely parallels the Indian ASvamedha ; both are” mimetic representations,” apomimema. And just as the ASvamedha was later claimed by Indra, so the Bouphonia by Zeus, in reality both sacrifices antedate anthropomorphic conceptions of deity. If Christian dulia now implies devotion, that is only what took place elsewhere, in Greece and India alike, the figure of an anthropomorphic deity being as it were superimposed upon the original formula, in accordance with the requirements of the religious (devotional) extension of the original “ mystery.”

An excellent example of a metaphysical (certainly not a “ religious ”) rite may be instanced in the Vajapeya ceremonies, where ritual racing takes place, and the sacrificer mounts the sacrificial post, cf. Paficaviiisa Brahmana, XVIII, 7, 9 and 10, “ They run a race course, and make the Sacrificer win; thereby they make him gain the world of heaven. He mounts to the sky; to the world of heaven he thereby ascends.”’ All Vedic rites are of this sort, viz., that described by anthropologists as ‘‘ magical.”

An admirable account of a metaphysical rite may be found in H. Blodget, The worship of Heaven and Earth by the Emperor of China,

J.A.O.S., XX, 58 fi.

119 ‘What are opposites? Good and bad, white and black are in opposition, a thing which has no place in real being,” Eckhart, I, 207. 104

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