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

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

It follows that asat can be rendered correctly either as Non-being or as Non-existence: sat either as Being or as Existence, as may best suit the context. The problem arises only in connection with “ Being ”’: if we render asat and sat as Non-being and Being, then, sat must cover both Being in itself and Being in a mode. The terms are further discussed below, p. 102,

” Not that these are commensurable terms : Theistic and Nihilistic points of view are partial, and therefore in apparent opposition, as for example in the case of Saivism and Buddhism ; while Metaphysics, jnana-vada, underlies, justifies, and embraces all other points of view.

8 From the Vedic point of view, “ angelology ’’ would be more accurate.

® On this “kinship”? depends the “ incestuous” character of so many myths ofcreation. It should be observed that the term “‘ myth ”’ properly implies the symbolic (verbal, iconographic or dramatic) representation of the operation of power or energy: protons and electrons in this sense are “ mythical ” beings. A myth, such as the Grail myth, or the Birth of Brahma, is neither a “ fairy tale’’ nor a “‘ mnystery ’’ in the modern sense of the words, but simply a presentation. He who regards the myth or icon as a statement of fact, and he who regards it as fantasy, are equally misled : myth is to history as universal to particular, vaison d’étre to Vétre ; icon to species as exemplar to instance. Symbolism and imagery (pratika, pratibimba, etc.), the purest form of art, is the proper language of metaphysics : ‘‘ the symbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description, or formula, of a relatively unknown fact .. . which is none the less known or postulated as existing.”’ (Jung). Traditional symbolism is also more nearly a universal language than any other ; the greater part of its idiom is the common property and inheritance of nearly all peoples, and can be traced back at least to the fifth or sixth millennium B.c. (cf. Winckler, Die babylonische Getsteskultur, 1907, Jeremias, Handbuch des altovientalischen geisteskuliuy, 1929, and Langdon, Semitic mythology, 1931), and to the beginnings of agriculture or there beyond.

10 Cf. “He hath brought me forth His son in the image of His eternal fatherhood, that I should also be a father and bring forth Him,” Eckhart, Claud Field’s Sermons, p. 26 ; cf. Jili, cited by Nicholson, Studies . . . p. 112, ‘“‘ 1 am the child whose father is his son, and the wine whose vine is its jar. . . . I met the mothers who bore me, and I asked them in marriage, and they let me marry them.”’ “ The Snake’s Bull-Father—the Bull’s Father-snake ” is cited by Harrison, Prolegomena .. . p. 495, from frg. ap. Clem(ent) of Al(exandria), Pyoir., I, 2,12. Or again, of Agni, “ being the Son of the Angels, thou hast become their Father,”’ Reg Veda, I, 69, 1: Agni is the “ father of his father,’’ ibid., VI, 16, 35, and “whoever understands this (yasta vijanat) is his father’s father,’’ i.e., surpasses his father.

11 Also, of course, in science, “ philosophy,” psychology, and other “ practical ’’ disciplines.

12 Hence the constant use of essential names common to both, a certain indistinction of Father and Son, the distinction of Person being lost in their unity of Godhead, of the common nature.

13 Thus, antecedent to procession :

Person (Father)—Spirit (Will)—Nature (Mother) and posterior to procession : 78