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Introduction
Sarasvati or Sarasvatī is described in 72 mantra-verses of Rig
Veda Samhita, some of which are repeated in Yajur Veda. Even
though there was a river of that name flowing in North India in
Rig Vedic times which is now dry, the mantrās deal primarily with
the goddess of inspiration and this was recognised by the rişhis
even though the commoners of that age, like the moderns, believe
that Sarasvati described in Veda is a mere river or atmost a
river-goddess, whatever it may mean.
We will pose here some popular questions and give our answers in
the next several sections. The first question is, “what is
inspiration, why is it needed?'' The more aggressive ones declare,
“inspiration is needed only by poets and writers; it is irrelevant
for others''.
It is this attitude of judging an issue without even bothering to
get its essentials that is preventing many persons from deriving
the benefit of Veda mantrās. The attitude of these persons is
similar to those who have no interest in the topic of well-ness or
health till sickness hits them.
Questions of
the second group state, “we have read in the translations of Rig
Veda by eminent Western Indologists like Wilson (or even the
famous Sāyaņa) that Sarasvati is a physical river which rises in
the Himalayas; here and there she may be described as dealing with
prose and poetry (described as gadya padya, commentary of
Sāyaņa on RV (3.54.13)). You state that she represents the power
of inspiration. What is your basis? Why should we believe you
instead of the earlier mentioned eminent scholars''. We give a
glimpse of the foundations of the Vedic interpretation according
to Sri Aurobindo. The first principle is that we should focus only
on the mantrās of Rig Veda Samhita and not introduce passages from
Purāņa, Rāmāyaņa, Brāhmaņa books like Taittirīya Brāhmaņa etc.,
which are thousands of years later than the Veda mantrās. Secondly
fix one meaning for each word and not give ten or twenty meanings
to the same word as Sāyaņāchārya does to force ritualists meaning
he wants. In the fifth section we detail many epithets for
Sarasvati from the Veda such as awakening the consciousness (chetanti),
the thoughts (dhiya), etc. All these epithets are
consistent with the labeling of Sarasvati as the goddess of
inspiration, only a few epithets are consistent with Sarasvati as
a physical river.
The questions
of the third group state, “There are many stotras of Sarasvati in
Purāņa and Rāmāyaņa. There is also the Mahasarasvati stotra in the
Durga Saptashati. What is the difference between them and Veda
mantra? Why are Veda mantrās regarded as more powerful?
We give the
annotated translation of most of the mantrās, divided into 3
categories. In the first group, we consider the sūkta and mantrās
specifically dedicated to Sarasvati such as the complete sūkta
(6.61), (7.95) and (7.96) the subhymns each having 3 mantrās in RV
(1.3), RV (2.41) and others. We give the detailed translation of
all these mantrās.
In the Rig Veda
there are 10 sūktās called Apri sūktās in which there is one
mantra (in each sūkta) dealing with the three goddesses Sarasvati
(inspiration), Iļā and Mahī or Bhārati.
There are 25 mantrās dedicated to other
gods like Agni or Vishvedevās, in which the word Sarasvati occurs.
Nature of Inspiration
Inspiration is
a power of Truth (satyam). Truth is intimately connected
with beauty and harmony, sundaram and shivam, not
only at the individual level but at the community level. In a
sense Truth is the path and all-round bliss is the goal. Sin or
falsehood is merely wrongly inspired emotion, wrongly directed
will and action. We tell a lie because our ego tells us that the
actual telling of the limited truth on the occasion is not
palatable to the emotion. Similarly a person indulges in an
illegal or immoral action because the ego directs the will for its
own reasons of security. For most of us the central idea of our
everyday life is permeated by falsehood. The wrongly directed
emotion, will and action leads to a completely distorted results.
Inspiration is
that power which leads to a perfect action (perfect with respect
to time and space) by means of steps which are not perceivable to
our mind. The perfection is all-round; beneficial to the
individual and the community, harmonious. The result of the action
directed by inspiration leads to a result pervaded by beauty and
harmony.
The action may
occur in any field, poetry, carpentry, science, technology, music.
But we cannot
order the inspiration to come; it comes to us when it likes; we
have to understand its operation for its manifestation.
“Truth comes to
us as a light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a
new discernment of ourselves and all around us. Truth of thought
creates truth of vision and truth of vision forms in us the truth
of being, and out of the truth of being (satyam) flows
naturally truth of emotion, will and action. This is the central
idea of the Veda.'' (Sri Aurobindo)
Developing Inspiration
Inspiration
cannot be developed by any mechanical procedure. The three mantra
verses RV (1.3.10) - RV (1.3.12) give us some hints only to
develop the inspiration, that too in stages. The full text and
translation of the three verses is in section 8, along with
others.
The first step
is to become conscious of the work to be done in all its details,
i.e., we become aware of the details noting both the things we
claim to know and those which we do not know. We must establish
some measure of mental tranquillity in us. Then the person has to
become conscious that he is an instrument and the real doer is the
supreme energy. Even though the supreme spirit or shakti is
pouring in the energies, the person is blocking its flow by his
feelings of egoism, petty emotion etc. He/she must try to counter
the psychological foes like greed, delusion etc., systematically.
Then we have to regard the work on hand, in which the inspiration
is needed, as a self-offering (yajňa) to the divine. Next
recognize that Sarasvati can give plenty of everything in all
possible forms. The Sanskrit word is vaja, the plenitude,
plenty of everything or all-forms. Hence there is no reason for us
to indulge in the inimical acts like hoarding or being greedy,
jealous, arrogant etc. We always get our turn, there is no need to
be jealous etc. She is also rich in thought or rich in the
substance of thought (dhiyavasu). First she uses her powers
to purify (pavaka) us, i.e., remove the layers of falsehood
embedded in our emotions, will and action. These are all negative
thoughts and they can be neutralized by positive thoughts. The
falsehood should go. She can do it because she is rich in the
substance of thought.
Next she
introduces her positive powers of thought and consciousness. She
is the impeller (chodayitri) of happy truths (sūnŗtānām)
and the awakener in consciousness (chetanti) of right
mentalising. Sarasvati's power makes us became more and more
conscious so that our emotions do not jump to the path of
falsehood. She creates in us the right states of emotion and right
movement of thought which are in accordance with the supreme
Truth. She pours her illumination; she impels the truth to
manifest in our emotion, will and action. She thus liberates our
life and being (the so called individuality) from falsehood,
weakness and limitation. Then only are the un-opened doors of
supreme felicity become open.
By this
constant awakening and impulsion represented by the word ketu,
Sarasvati brings down the great flood of Truth into the active
consciousness in the human being. She illumines all the aspects
with this consciousness. Thus our emotion, will and action become
coordinated with this divine truth; and action naturally leads to
a stage of perfection consistent with the time and space. Complete
perfection cannot come in a single step.
Action is very
much necessary even if we have ample inspiration. Completely false
is the idea that chanting of the mantra will yield the required
physical results without any physical action.
Anecdote 1
We will give
here an anecdote of an eminent yogi and engineer (MKG) regarding
the play of inspiration. MKG has a bachelor's degree in biology
and he has no degree in engineering. Still he became a senior
engineer in a company which had collaboration with the famous
Japanese company Mitsubishi. Different metals like steel,
aluminium, silicon have different properties of strength. The
properties of many metals are complimentary, i.e., the properties
which are weak in one will be strong in other and vice versa. So
combining two or more metals into a single one is called a
composite so that the composite has all the good properties of its
constituents. But the constituents have to be bonded, a procedure
which is a secret of the supplier to the Japanese Company. MKG was
faced with developing a composite. He could easily fix the types
of the constituents with his intuition. However he had no clue to
the bonding. He focussed all his thought to apparently no avail.
The next day was Sunday; in the afternoon nap, he distinctly heard
the sound ‘four' repeatedly. It was around 5 pm. MKG got the clue
that, “for bonding, the requisite metals should be dipped in the
liquid aluminium-silicon bonding material for about 4 minutes''.
He went to the workshop and did the experiment. The new composite
had properties which even the Japanese material did not have. MKG
promptly sent a sample to the head office of the Mitsubishi in
Japan. Reply by cable came 2 days later, “we are amazed at your
achievement, we have not been able to develop a composite with
such properties. Your product has one hundred and fifty percent
strength of our product.''
Other
anecdotes:
The biography of the famous fighter for freedom, poet and savant
entitled, The glory of Vasishtha Ganapati Muni (published by
SAKSIVC, 1999) has numerous anecdotes dealing with the inflow of
inspiration in a variety of circumstances including the harassment
by police, composition of poetry, accidents etc. Many persons who
have done some spiritual practice can relate incidents involving
inspiration in their lives. The disciples of Sri Aurobindo have
written many books detailing their own experiences.
Understanding Veda - Sri Aurobindo's Approach
The Rig Veda is
dated much prior to 4000 B.C.E. Still Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950)
was the first person to write in detail defending the Rig Veda
mantrās as dealing with knowledge, specifically the philosophical
and psychological wisdom. In addition to writing essays of about
1500 pages, he translated roughly 3000 mantrās out of 10,512 in
Rig Veda, often giving a detailed explanation for the assignment
of the meanings of words.
There are 4 key
steps in his unraveling the secret in the Veda:
1.
Fundamentally Veda is a spiritual document, Veda is book of
knowledge, not of rituals.
2. In the
Indian tradition, the rişhis to whom the mantrās were revealed are
regarded as yogins or men of wisdom. However in the current
translations of Rig Veda Samhita by Griffith or Wilson who follow
closely the Sanskrit commentary of Sāyaņa, many mantra-verses do
not have any coherent meaning; there is no coherence between the
several mantrās in the same sūkta. Then there are only two
alternatives:
a) Accept the
validity of ritualist commentary of Sāyaņa in which there is no
coherence in many verses in the same sūkta and thus accept that
rişhis are not men and women of wisdom.
b) Accept the
rişhis as men and women of wisdom, accept that mantrās are
coherent, then automatically reject the supreme authority of the
Sāyaņa commentary; the commentary is still very useful even though
it is not accepted as the final authority.
Sri Aurobindo
clearly prefers the alternative (b). As he would say, the
obscurantist tendency in the decadent era is so strong that the
mutual exclusiveness of the two alternatives is not even
acknowledged; the people want to venerate both the rişhis and the
commentary of S, but refuse to acknowledge the incoherence in the
meanings of the mantrās in the commentary.
3) Assignment
of meaning for words in the Veda: collect all the verses having a
given Samskŗt word and assign the most appropriate meaning to it
valid in all these verses. Each word should have one meaning. To
force his ritualist interpretation, Sāyaņa gives ten to twenty
meanings for the same word. For instance he assigns 30 meanings
for the word gau, cow in popular parlance. In Veda gau
means a ray of knowledge. Hence Sri Aurobindo translated gau
as Ray-Cow. Similarly dhi in Veda is thought or intellect;
S would accept this meaning in some places, but also translate
dhi as anna (food) in many places.
4) Veda reveals
its own secret. Trying to understand Veda through the legends in
Purāņa or Rāmāyaņa or the Brāhmaņa books leads to incoherent
results. The symbolism and aims of these books are different.
Brāhmaņa books emphasise rituals only and scarcely acknowledge any
wisdom in the mantrās. Purāņa and Rāmāyaņa emphasise the strife
between rişhis or gods. Veda simply states that the Gods overcome
the demon of falsehood and help the human beings.
Sarasvati is not a mere river - epithets of
Sarasvati dealing with consciousness
River Sarasvatī: Sarasvatī was undoubtedly a mighty river
in the Rig Vedic age which flowed from the mountain heights to the
sea as declared in RV (7.95.2). The Sarasvatī verses were revealed
or composed more than eight thousand years before the present era.
According to geologists, “this time synchronizes with the first
interglacial period in the Holocene age marking the break up of
the glaciers and release of the pent up waters which was the
source for the rivers Sarasvatī and Sindhu. The next three
thousand years did not witness major changes in climate as
revealed by the lake sediments. At the end of this period,
tectonic disturbances caused major changes in drainage. As a
consequence the upper course of Sarasvatī in the mountain - bound
Himālaya was diverted South Eastward to Yamuna; Sutlej, which
earlier had joined Sarasvatī, changed its course, migrated
westward and became a tributary of Indus... The consequence of
these changes was the drying up of the river Sarasvatī which was
cut off from the perennial source of water from the snowy Himālaya.
It became an ephemeral stream, and finally lost itself in the
sandy desert of Thar.'' [B.P. Radhakrishna, Jour. Geological Soc.
of India, Vol. 51, June 1998]. The drying up of Sarasvatī made its
inhabitants move westwards resulting in the new civilization- the
Indus Valley Civilisation (3100-1900 BCE). In January 1997, the
scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Energy Research Center have
reconfirmed the existence of the Sarasvatī river and its
associated ground water sanctuaries and aquifers by using water
samples collected from the deep wells in the Jaisalmer regions and
North Eastern Rajasthan to conduct tritium (hydrogen isotope)
analysis to establish the quality of water, flow and the age of
water [ranging from 4000 to 8000 years before the present era].
More information is available in the monographs, “Vedic Sarasvatī
River'', by Kalyanaraman and “Vedic Sarasvatī'', by B.P.
Radhakrishna and S.S. Merh (ed), published by the Geological
Society of India, 1999.
Epithets
chodayatri sūnŗtānām: impelling happy truths, (1.3.11)
chetanti sumatīnām: awakening right thinkings, (1.3.11)
prachetayati ketuna:
makes (us) conscious by constant awakening and impulsion, (1.3.12)
yaste stana shashayo: O Sarasvati, the word of yours that
is asleep in you, (1.164.49)
yo ratnadha vasuvid: the word that holds the ecstasy and
knows the substance, (1.164.49)
divyam suparņam vāyasam: the bird divine of beautiful
wings, (addressed to Sarasvati) (1.164.52)
sarasvatīm sādhayantīm dhiyam: perfecting our
understanding, (2.3.8)
prashastim naskridhi: make us well known, (2.41.16)
ŗtāvari: possessed of the truth, (2.41.18)
sarasvati vīrapatni dhiyam dhāt: may she, the mate of
hero-power, hold our thought, (6.49.7)
shushmebhiĥbisakha ivārujat sānum girinām: by her forces she
broke the peaks of mountains (ignorance) like weak fibres,
(6.61.2)
sarasvati devanido ni barhaya: Sarasvati destroys the
censurers of the gods and the creator of illusory forms, (6.61.3)
dhinām avatryavatu: May the guardian of thoughts protect
us, (6.61.4)
vŗtraghnī: slayer of the demonic covering force Vŗtra,
(6.61.7)
atannaheva sūrya: she has extended us like the Sun the
day, (6.61.9)
trishadhastha saptadhātu: abiding in triple session, with
seven elements, (6.61.12)
mahināsu chekite dyumnebhiĥ: becomes fully conscious by the
thoughts, (6.61.13)
payasa māna ā dhak: do not burn us with knowledge (payasa),
(6.61.14)
eka chetat: she alone became conscious, (7.95.2)
Sarasvati mantras in the Veda and the prayers in Purāņās
There are
several prayers or stotrās addressed to Sarasvati in the Purānās.
Whereas the prayers in the Purāņās are composed by some spiritual
persons, the Rig Veda mantra directly comes from the supreme
ether and are revealed to the rişhi. RV (1.164.39) of Rişhi
Dīrghatamas states, “The riks abide in the unchangeable supreme
Ether (parame vyoman) where are seated all the gods; what
can he do with the rik who knows not that?''
There is
another mantra RV (1.164.45): “The voice, vāk, is measured out in
four steps; the wise persons (brāhmaņa) know them. Three of
them concealed in the profound secrecy cause no movements; the
fourth step is what men call the human speech''.
Thus the
mantrās of Rig Veda were not composed but were seen by the seer (kavi),
the hearer of the Truth (satyashrut). Because the
paramevyoman the abode of the Gods and the original source of
the Veda mantrās is not a creation of anyone, the Veda mantras are
also eternal and all-powerful. Hence the common belief that the
mantra is an extraordinary means of achieving all the ends of
life.
All these
powers associated with the Veda mantrās are not associated with
any purāņic prayer, even the Vişhņu Sahasranāma or popular verses
in praise of Sarasvatī.
Sarasvati in the Tantra Books
The goddess
Sarasvati appears in the Tantra as the, ‘secret channel or river'
(guptagāmini). Recall the three channels connecting the
bottom centre Moolādhāra to the centre between the eye-brows Ajňa
chakra, namely Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. The first two are
identified with the subtle currents of the names Ganga and Jamuna.
The subtle current flowing in the Sushumna, the middle channel, is
Sarasvati. She is asleep normally. When she is activated by
spiritual practises, she rises up indicating her manifestation
(see RV (1.164.49)). She reaches the ājňā chakra and starts to
descend. Her descent indicates the manifested inspirational power
is being directed to the performance of actions. The importance of
the tāntrik experience and explanation is that it
acknowledges that the power of inspiration or Sarasvatī is not
only in cosmos (brahmānda) but also in our subtle body (pindānda).
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