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

APPENDIX

is seen ‘“‘ above,” the Supernal Sun “‘rises in the zenith,” and its obscuration is “‘ below,” it “sets in the Nadir” ; and this must and will be maintained “ so long as” any awareness of duality, even conscience of Sonship in relation, persists in him, whatever be the level of manifestation. That “so long as” will be figuratively speaking, during the “ hundred years” of Brahma’s life, until the end of time. Only when all conscience of duality has passed away, amaunami ca maunam ca nirvidya atha brahmanah, “‘ laying aside both manifestation and nonmanifestation, then is he Brahmana,’* brahmavid, “ knowing the Brahman in identity,” Brhadaranyaka Up., III, 5. Then the Axis of the Universe is contracted to a point, that point al cui la prima rota va dintorno, all forms subsisting in a single form; then only is the Supernal Sun “forever risen, there is no more rising and setting, He is verily One (eka¢a), in the Middle Place} (madhye sthane = nabha amrtasya, “in the navel of non-mortality ’’), ‘‘ without duality,” aduvaita.

The applications of a diagram such as that here illustrated are indefinitely numerous. For example, the line extending from the Southern Sun in the world, to the central Light of the World, and continuously thence by a right turn upward to the Supernal Sun, represents that one amongst the many paths that Agni knows, which leads through the Solar Gateway of the Worlds (/okadvara, cf. JUB. 1, 3 and John x, 1-18) to the Empyrean (pavama vyoman), the Motionless Pleroma. Agni being the Herdsman of the Flocks, who wanders in the worlds unfalteringly, and stands way-wise at the cross-roads (Rg Veda, I, 164, 31; X, 5,6; X, 19; and X, 177, 3). “ There is no side path here in the world” (Maitri Up.,

* For this special use of the word brahmara, cf. in Rg Veda, X, 71, 11, brahma, “‘ the Brahman,”’ viz., that one of the four sacrificial priests who vadati jatavidyam, “ utters the lore of genesis’’; Sayana’s comment being brahma hi sarvasn veditum yogya bhavati khalu, ‘‘* Brahman’ refers to the one associated in that he knows everything but is merely present.”” Hence Agni’s epithet, /atavedas.

{ Or ‘‘ Place Within,” i.e., guha nihitam, antarbhiiasya khe,

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