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

NOTES

on high and here below, the two fires are “ one Angel” as in our text {see p. 37); just as in Christian phraseology, ‘‘I and my Father are One,” Son being also Sun (see p. 43 and cf. Notes ro and 48).

49 Tn this sense the whole ritual may be regarded as ‘“‘ Mysterium und Mimus,’’ and the question whether or not any particular Vedic hymn should be regarded as “‘ dramatic’’ loses its significance.

50 ‘‘ This eternal Brahman is at once the Imperishable-Word (azsara) and the Word-that-can-be-spoken (vacya),’ Brhad Devata,1, 62. Utterance (vy@hrti) is further discussed below, Note 62. Bhan=Fiat Lux.

51 T.e., what could be called in Greek the ‘‘ Eniautos-Daimon.”’

52 For Buddhism, and the doctrine of the identity of all teaching, see particularly the Saddharma Pundarika. Inall but name the Tathagata is identified with Brahma-Prajapati.

53 Likewise no more and no less ‘“‘ demiurge ”’ than is the “ Perfect Man” (al-insanu’l kamil) of Islamic theology, viz., Allah’s Word or Fiat (amy) and Spirit (yah) manifested in the transcendental being of the Prophet (Muhammad) as the principle and archetype of all existences.

54 “ Good, pious souls, are hindered too from their proper object by lingering with holy joy over the human form of our Lord Jesus Christ.... To them his manhood is a hindrance so long as they cling to it with mortal pleasure ; they ought to follow God in all his ways and not keep solely to his way of manhood who reveals to us the way of Godhood,”’ Eckhart, I, 187.

54a On the significance of the begetting of a son, see Aitaveya Brahmana, VII, 13 (HOS., Vol. 25, pp. 299, 300).

55 For example, ‘‘ God's speaking is his child-bearing,’ St. Augustine ; “The Word proceeding is properly called begotten and Son... conception and birth,” St. Thomas, Sum. Th., 1, 0.27, A. 2. Solus ante principium = pirpna apravartin, Kausitaki Up., IV, 5.

58 Also Brhadaranyaka Up.,\, 4,17, pradna praja ; and Taittiviya Up., Wy, sk

To render vac consistently by one and the same English word would be impossible. A distinction of Vac, synonymous with Sarasvati in Rg Veda, I, 3, 12, and representing an aspect of Maya, Prakrti, Sakti, Omnipotentia, from vac, ““ word”’ or “ language’’ must be clearly recognized. In the beginning, as conjoint principle with Intellect, Vac is Sophia, Dante’s “‘ Wisdom”: “in highest praise of Wisdom, I say that she is the mother of all first principles, affirming that she was with God when in the beginning he made the world, and specially the movement of the heaven which engenders all things, whereby every other movement is originated and set going; adding, ‘she was the thought of Him who set the universe in motion’; I mean that she was in the divine thought, which is very intellect, when He made the world. Whence it follows that she made it ; and therefore Solomon on the book of Proverbs says speaking in the person of Wisdom, * When God prepared the heavens, I was there, when he fenced the depths with a fixed law and a fixed circle, when He set fast the firmament above, when He hung aloft the fountains of the waters, when he encircled the sea with its boundary, and laid down a decree for the waters that they should not pass their borders, when he laid the foundations of the earth, I was with Him disposing all things, and I took my pleasure every day,’”’ Convivio, III, 15; cf. Rg Veda, X, 71 and X, 95.

87 G