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

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

ship of Persons in Deity antecedent to procession, solus ante principium, all tradition is agreed that the notion of generation, taken from our knowledge of living things, is with respect to the Son analogically appropriate.°* Consistency then requires diversity of sex in the conjoint principles invoked : as explicitly in our Upanisad, I, 5, 7, “The Father is Intellect (manas), the Mother Wisdom (vac), the Child Spirit (prana).”** Wisdom, vac, is rightly feminine in Vedic thought, for She is the divine nature, the Waters antecedent to their counter-shining, mila-prakyti, dark undifferentiated, passive Godhead : not distinct from the Father in the Unity, but distinguished from him in the eternal act of generation, as the sea is from the sun. So the Mother is the second Person of the Vedic Trinity, as the Son, the Year, Prajapati, is logically the third. Spirit, prdna, is not here a distinct Person, but primarily an essential name of the Father ; and in hypostasis, an essential name of the Son. The procession of the Spirit is naturally a spiration (samtrana) : but when Spirit, Life, becomes an essential name of the Son, then the procession, ipso facto, must be called a filiation. In this sense the birth of the Son is a divided act, “‘ I proceeded out of the mouth of the Most High, to wit out of the natural conception of the essential word of the divine Father,” Eckhart, I, 269: and in Islamic theology, the Idea of Muhammad is at once the Spirit of Allah and his son.* Vedic Logos doctrine is better reflected in Greek than in orthodox Christian doctrine.** The problem is too complex for full discussion here, but it may be pointed out that Vedic yiam and dharman are “neuter” (aliiga, ‘‘ without specific gender,” but not excluding possibility of gender), and are to be thought of as essential names equivalent to later Brahman and the Imperishable- Word (aksaram) OM, also epicene: in other words, the Indian Logos doctrine neither excludes the unity of Essence and Nature, nor their distinction as conjoint principles linked in joint procession by way of generation or utterance. 20