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prati va enā namasāhamemi sūktena bhikşhe sumati turāņām
rrāņatā maruto vedyābhirni heļo dhatta vi muchadhvamashvān
1. To you I
come with this obeisance, by the perfect word I seek right
mentality from the swift in the passage. Take delight, O Maruts,
in the things of knowledge, lay aside your wrath, unyoke your
steeds.
eşha vaĥ stomo maruto namasvānhŗdā taşhţo manasā dhāyi devāĥ
upemā yāta manasā juşhāņā yūyam hi şhţhā namasā idvŗdhāsaĥ
2. Lo, the
hymn of your affirmation, O Maruts; it is fraught with my
obeisance, it was framed by the heart, it was established by the
mind, O ye gods. Approach these my words and embrace them with the
mind; for of submission are you the increasers.
stutāso no maruto mŗļayantūta stuto maghavā shambhavişhţhaĥ
ūrdhvāĥ naĥ santu komyāvanānyahāni vishvā maruto jigīşhā.
3. Affirmed
let the Maruts be benign to us, affirmed the lord of plenitude has
become wholly creative of felicity. Upward may our desirable
delights be uplifted, O Maruts, upward all our days by the will
towards victory.
asmādaham tavişhādīşhamāņa indrādbhiyā maruto rejamānaĥ
yuşhmabhyam havyā nishitānyāsantānyāre chakŗmā mŗļtā naĥ
4. I,
mastered by this mighty one, trembling with the fear of Indra, O
Maruts, put far away the offerings that for you had been made
intense. Let your grace be upon us.
yena mānāsashchitayanta usrā vyuşhţişhu shavasā shashvatīnām
sa no marudbhirvŗşhabha shravo dhā ugra ugrebhiĥ sthaviraĥ sahodāĥ
5. Thou by
whom the movements of the mind grow conscient and brilliant in our
mornings through the bright power of the continuous Dawns, O Bull
of the herd establish by the Maruts inspired knowledge in us—by
them in their energy thou energetic, steadfast, a giver of might.
tvam pāhīndra sahīyaso nŗbhavā marudbhiravayātaheļāĥ
supraketebhiĥ sāsahirdadhāno vidyāmeşham vŗjanam jīradānum.
6. Do thou,
O Indra, protect the Powers in their increased might; put away thy
wrath against the Maruts, by them in thy forcefulness upheld, who
have right perceptions. May we find the strong impulsion that
shall break swiftly through.
COMMENTARY
A Sequel to the colloquy of Indra and Agastya, this Sukta is
Agastya's hymn of propitiation to the Maruts whose sacrifice he
had interrupted at the bidding of the mightier deity. Less
directly, it is connected in thought with the 165th hymn of the
(First) Mandala, the colloquy of Indra and the Maruts, in which
the supremacy of the Lord of Heaven is declared and these lesser
shining hosts are admitted as subordinate powers who impart to men
their impulsion towards the high truths which belong to lndra.
"Giving the energy of your breath to their thoughts of varied
light, become in them impellers to the knowledge of my truths.
Whensoever the doer becomes active for the work and, the
intelligence of the thinker creates us in him, O Maruts, move
surely towards that illumined seer", - such is the closing word of
the colloquy, the final injunction of Indra to the inferior
deities.
These verses fix clearly enough the psychological function of
the Maruts. They are not properly gods of thought, rather gods of
energy; still, it is in the mind that their energies become
effective. To the uninstructed Aryan worshipper, the Maruts were
powers of wind, storm and rain; it is the images of the tempest
that are most commonly applied to them and they are spoken of as
the Rudras, the fierce, impetuous ones, - a name that they share
with the god of Force, Agni. Although Indra is described sometimes
as the eldest of the Maruts, - indrajyestho marudganah,
- yet they would seem at first to belong rather to the domain of
Vayu, the Wind-God, who in the Vedic system is the Master of Life,
inspirer of that Breath or dynamic energy, called the Prana, which
is represented in man by the vital and nervous activities. But
this is only a part of their physiognomy. Brilliance, no less than
impetuosity, is their characteristic. Everything about them is
lustrous, themselves, their shining weapons, their golden
ornaments, their resplendent cars. Not only do they send down the
rain, the waters, the abundance of heaven, and break down the
things best established to make way for new movements and new
formations, - functions which, for the rest, they share with other
gods, Indra, Mitra, Varuna, -but, like them, they also are friends
of Truth, creators of Light. It is so that the Rishi, Gotama
Rahugana, prays to them, "O ye who have the flashing strength of
the Truth, manifest that by your might; pierce with your lightning
the Rakshasa. Conceal the concealing darkness, repel every
devourer, create the Light for which we long" (1.86.9,10). And in
another hymn, Agastya says to them, "They carry with them the
sweetness (of the Ananda) as their eternal offspring and play out
their play, brilliant in the activities of knowledge" (1.166.2).
The Maruts, therefore, are energies of the mentality, energies
which make for knowledge. Theirs is not the settled truth, the
diffused light, but the movement, the search, the lightning-flash,
and, when Truth is found, the many-sided play of its separate
illuminations.
We have seen that Agastya in his colloquy with Indra speaks
more than once of the Maruts. They are Indra's brothers, and
therefore the god should not strike at Agastya in his struggle
towards perfection. They are his instruments for that perfection,
and as such Indra should use them. And in the closing formula of
submission and reconciliation, he prays to the god to parley again
with the Maruts and to agree with them so that the sacrifice may
proceed in the order and movement of the divine Truth towards
which it is directed. The crisis, then, that left so powerful an
impression on the mind of the seer, was in the nature of a violent
struggle in which the higher divine Power confronted Agastya and
the Maruts and opposed their impetuous advance. There has been
wrath and strife between the divine Intelligence that governs the
world and the vehement aspiring powers of Agastya's mind. Both
would have the human being reach his goal; but not as the inferior
divine powers choose must that march be directed, -rather as it
has been firmly willed and settled above by the secret
Intelligence that always possesses for the manifested intelligence
that still seeks. Therefore the mind of the human being has been
turned into a battlefield for greater Powers and is still
quivering with the awe and alarm of that experience.
The submission to Indra has been made; Agastya now appeals to
the Maruts to accept the terms of the reconciliation, so that the
full harmony of his inner being may be restored. He approaches
them with the submission he has rendered to the greater god and
extends it to their brilliant legions. The perfection of the
mental state and its powers which he desires, their clearness,
rectitude, truth-observing energy, is not possible with- out the
swift coursing of the Thought-Forces in their movement towards the
higher knowledge. But that movement, mistakenly directed, not
rightly illumined, has been checked by the formidable opposition
of Indra and has departed for a time out of Agastya's mentality.
Thus repelled, the Maruts have left him for other sacrificers;
elsewhere shine their resplendent chariots, in other fields
thunder the hooves of their wind-footed steeds. The Seer prays to
them to put aside their wrath, to take pleasure once more in the
pursuit of knowledge and in its activities; not passing him by any
more, let them unyoke their steeds, descend and take their place
on the seat of the sacrifice, assume their share of the offerings.
For he would confirm again in himself these splendid energies,
and it is a hymn of affirmation that he offers them, the stoma
of the Vedic sages. In the system of the Mystics, which has
partially survived in the schools of Indian Yoga, the Word is a
power, the Word creates. For all creation is expression,
everything exists already in the secret abode of the Infinite,
guha hitam, and has only to be brought out here in apparent
form by the active consciousness. Certain schools of Vedic thought
even suppose the worlds to have been created by the goddess Word
and sound as first etheric vibration to have preceded formation.
In the Veda itself there are passages which treat the poetic
measures of the sacred mantras, - anustuph, tristuph, jagati,
gayatri, - as symbolic of the rhythms in which the universal
movement of things is cast.
By expression then we create and men are even said to
create the gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we
have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by
the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our
inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we
form, by affirmation we establish. As a power of expression the
word is termed gih or vacas; as a power of
affirmation, stoma.
In either aspect it is named manma or mantra,
expression of thought in mind, and brahman, expression of
the heart or the soul, - for this seems to have been the earlier
sense of the word brahman, afterwards applied to the
Supreme Soul or Universal Being. The process of formation
of the mantra is described in the second verse along with the
conditions of its effectivity. Agastya presents the stoma,
hymn at once of affirmation and of submission, to the Maruts.
Fashioned by the heart, it receives its just place in the
mentality through confirmation by the mind. The mantra, though it
expresses thought in mind, is not in its essential part a creation
of the intellect. To be the sacred and effective word, it must
have come as an inspiration, from the supramental plane, termed in
Veda, rtam, the Truth, and have been received into the
superficial consciousness either through the heart or by the
luminous intelligence, manisa. The heart in Vedic
psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it
includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to
the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations,
emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and
inspirations that travel through these agencies before, they
arrive at form in the intelligence. This is the "heart" of Veda
and Vedanta, hrdaya, hrd, or brahman. There in the
present state of mankind the Purusha is supposed to be seated
centrally. Nearer to the vastness of the subconscient, it is there
that, in ordinary mankind, - man not yet exalted to a higher plane
where the contact with the Infinite is luminous, intimate and
direct, - the inspirations of the Universal Soul can most easily
enter in and most swiftly take possession of the individual soul.
It is therefore by the power of the heart that the mantra takes
form. But it has to be received and held in the thought of the
intelligence as well as in the perceptions of the heart; for not
till the intelligence has accepted and even brooded upon it, can
that truth of thought which the truth of the Word expresses be
firmly possessed or normally effective. Fashioned by the heart, it
is confirmed by the mind.
But another approval is also needed. The individual mind
has accepted; the effective powers of the Cosmos must also accept.
The words of the hymn retained by the mind form a basis for the
new mental posture from which the future thought- energies have to
proceed. The Maruts must approach them and take their stand upon
them, the mind of these universal Powers approve and unite itself
with the formations in the mind of the individual. So only can our
inner or our outer action have its supreme effectivity.
Nor have the Maruts any reason to refuse their assent or to
persist in the prolongation of discord. Divine powers who
themselves obey a higher law than the personal impulse, it should
be their function, as it is their essential nature, to assist the
mortal in his surrender to the Immortal and increase obedience to
the Truth, the Vast towards which his human faculties aspire.
Indra, affirmed and accepted, is no longer in his contact
with the mortal a cause of suffering; the divine touch is now
utterly creative of peace and felicity. The Maruts too, affirmed
and accepted, must put aside their violence. Assuming their
gentler forms, benignant in their action, not leading the soul
through strife and disturbance, they too must become purely
beneficent as well as puissant agencies.
This complete harmony established, Agastya's Yoga will
proceed triumphantly on the new and straight path prescribed to
it. It is always the elevation to a higher plane that is the end,
- higher than the ordinary life of divided and egoistic sensation,
emotion, thought and action. And it is to be pursued always with
the same, puissant will towards victory over all that resists and
hampers. But it must be an integral exaltation. All the joys that
the human being seeks with his desire, all the active energies of
his waking consciousness, - his days, as it is expressed in the
brief symbolic language of the Veda, - must be uplifted to that
higher plane. By vanani are meant the receptive sensations
seeking in all objectivities the Ananda whose quest is their
reason for existence. These, too, are not excluded. Nothing has to
be rejected, all has to be raised to the pure levels of the divine
consciousness.
Formerly Agastya had prepared the sacrifice for the Maruts
under other conditions. He had put their full potentiality of
force into all in him that he sought to place in the hands of the
Thought-Powers; but because of the defect in his sacrifice he had
been met midway by the Mighty One as by an enemy and only after
fear and strong suffering had his eyes been opened and his soul
surrendered. Still vibrating with the emotions of that experience,
he has been compelled to renounce the activities which he had so
puissantly prepared. Now he offers the sacrifice again to the
Maruts, but couples with that brilliant Name the more puissant
godhead of Indra. Let the Maruts then bear no wrath for the
interrupted sacrifice but accept this new and more justly guided
action.
Agastya turns, in the two closing verses, from the Maruts
to Indra. The Maruts represent the progressive illumination of
human mentality, until from the first obscure movements of mind
which only just emerge out of the darkness of the subconscient,
they are transformed into an image of the luminous consciousness
of which Indra is the Purusha, the representative Being. Obscure,
they become conscient; twilit, half-lit or turned into misleading
reflections, they surmount these deficiencies and put on the
divine brilliance. This great evolution is effected in Time
gradually, in the mornings of the human spirit, by the unbroken
succession of the Dawns. For Dawn in the Veda is the goddess
symbolic of new openings of divine illumination on man's physical
consciousness. She alternates with her sister Night; but that
darkness itself is a mother of light and always Dawn comes to
reveal what the black-browed Mother has prepared. Here, however,
the seer seems to speak of continuous dawns, not broken by these
intervals of apparent rest and obscurity. By the brilliant force
of that continuity of successive illuminations the mentality of
man ascends swiftly into fullest light. But always the force which
has governed and made possible the transformation, is the
puissance of Indra. It is that supreme Intelligence which through
the Dawns, through the Maruts, has been pouring itself into the
human being. Indra is the Bull of the radiant herd, the Master of
the thought-energies, the Lord of the luminous dawns.
Now also let Indra use the Maruts as his instruments for
the illumination. By them let him establish the supramental
knowledge of the seer. By their energy his energy will be
supported in the human nature and he will give that nature his
divine firmness, his divine force, so that it may not stumble
under the shock or fail to contain the vaster play of puissant
activities too great for our ordinary capacity.
The Maruts, thus reinforced in strength, will always need the
guidance and protection of the superior Power. They are the
Purushas of the separate thought-energies, Indra the one Purusha
of all thought-energy. In him they find their fullness and their
harmony. Let there then be no longer strife and disagreement
between this whole and these parts. The Maruts, accepting Indra,
will receive from him the right perception of the things that have
to be known. They will not be misled by the brilliance of a
partial light or carried too far by the absorption of a limited
energy. They will be able to sustain the action of lndra as he
puts forth his force against all that may yet stand between the
soul and its consummation.
So in the harmony of these divine Powers and their
aspirations may humanity find that impulsion which shall be
strong enough to break through the myriad oppositions of this
world and, in the individual with his composite personality or in
the race, pass rapidly on towards the goal so constantly glimpsed
but so distant even to him who seems to himself almost to have
attained.
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