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

NOTES

The principle involved underlies and explains the offering of lights and music in devotional offices: that is as it were a re-flection of His light and sound upon Himself, whereby His likeness (murtti, pratima, or other pratika) is revealed to the officiant, which likewise otherwise remains unseen and uneloquent, alone in its dark shrine.

The metaphor of reflection implies, of course, a correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, cf. ‘‘ Yonder world is the counterpart (anurapam) of this world, and of yonder world this world is the counterpart,” Aitareya Brahmana, VIII, 2.

27 Cf, Béhme, “‘ even thy own earth also (that is, thy body),”’ Supersensual Life; Sayana, on Rg Veda, VI, 16, 13, bhimisca sarvajagatddhava-bhit‘ti, “‘ Earth is the support of every world”’; and Brhadavanyaka Up., II, 5, 1, ““ This Earth is honey for all creatures,’’ i.e., the support of their existence, each after its kind.

In Re Veda, I, 108, 9, and X, 59, 4, respectively, the Three Worlds, and Heaven and Earth, are spoken of as ‘ Earths.”

28 The root fap can also be employed transitively, as in Attareya Avanyaka, V1, 4, where aima ... purusam . . . abhyatapat, where abhyatapat has been rendered by Max Miller and others as “ brooded upon,” no doubt with reference to the idea of a brooding hen. Something like the transformation of energy into heat by an interposition of resistance is involved. With tapas may be compared not only Hebrew zimzum, but also German sude as used by Boéhme, and explained by Law as ‘a boiling or seething . . . the stirring of the seven properties in nature.”

29 Tn Christian art the Tree of Jesse corresponds to the Vedic descriptions of the Tree of Life (Rg Veda, I, 24, 7, Atharva Veda, X, 7, 38, Katha Up., and Maitri Up., as cited here), and to the later representations of the Birth of Brahma. See my Tree of Jesse, Art Bulletin, XI, 2, 1929, and Yaksas, II, 1931, also Strzygowski, A statische Miniaturmaleret, 1932, p. 167.

30 Not infrequently, e.g., in Brhad Devata, I, 60, “‘ Indra and Vayu”’ are counted as one Person in this Trinity. On Indra, see p. 73f.

It must, of course, be understood that Vedic “ theology’”’ takes account of two different kinds of Trinity, (1) ontological, analogous to the Christian concept, and (2) that of the Trimiirti of Persons distinguished functionally. Both are “ arrangements’’ of One Power, but made from different points of view. The Universe is three-fold from many distinct points of view.

31 It will be realised, of course, that Aditya, the Supernal-Sun, Child of Aditi, Petrarch’s il somme sol, Dante’s somma luce, is not merely our sidereal sun, but shines as the first principle of Light and Time throughout the “ hundred years” of the lifetime of Brahma-Prajapati, the one “ year’’ of our Upanisad. The Supernal-Sun is the “ Father of Lights ’ in the Three Worlds. “ As the Deity, viz., the divine light, is the centre of all life, so also in the manifestation of God, viz., in the figure (i.e., pratika), the sun is the centre of all life,’ Bohme, Signatura Rerum, IV, 18, cf. Maitri Up., VI, 30. As Swedenborg expresses it, “st is evident that in the spiritual world there is a different sun from that of the natural world.”

32 Onur rendering of nirvana, nirvata, as “‘ despiration,’’ etc., is based on etymological grounds, cf., avata, “without spiration’’ and on the fundamental connotation. But it should not be overlooked that in later and especially Buddhist usage it is an extinction rather of the flame