(RV 7.59.12)
tray-ambakam yajāmahe
sugandhim puşhţi-vardhanam,
urvārukam-iva bandanān mŗtyor makshīya,
ma-amrtāt.
We adore the Father of the three worlds,
Trayambaka, Of auspicious fame, increaser of fullness and
strength;
May I be detached from the bondage of Death Like the cucumber from
the shell, Not from immortality.
The Rishi aspires towards immortality for himself and for others
who have engaged themselves in the Yajna, the antar-yajna. He has
a claim for immortality as a child of the Gods, a position he has
attained not merely by his endeavours but by the benign grace of
the Gods themselves. But this high status of immortality cannot be
won and retained by any one without a certain elevation and
strength of purity; the utmost that human effort can build up in
the direction is inadequate. Only the Divine can promote and shape
the requisite all-round strength and fitness. Again desire, want,
greed, lust bring in their train disappointment, grief,
unhappiness, disease and ultimately death. And for those that
aspire for immortality there should be nothing in them which
clings to its opposite, viz. death and agents of death. He that
would share in the high status above has necessarily to be aloof
and separate, even while living, from the envelope of ignorance
and darkness that characterize the human world. He should be like
a cucumber separate from its shell of the agents of death, says
the rishi; like the ripe coconut loosened from its shell, say the
saints and sages of later times.
As pointed out in the beginning, Brahmanaspati of the Rig Veda,
the later Brahma is the creator by the Word; he speeds the
formations of conscious being upward to their supreme goal. For
the upward movement of Brahmanaspati's formations, Rudra supplies
the force. He is the violent One, intolerant of defect and
stumbling, the one of whom alone the Vedic rishis have any fear.
Vishnu supplies the necessary static elements.
The idea that Shiva was a later conception borrowed from the
Dravidians and represents a partial conquest of the Vedic religion
by the indigenous culture it had invaded is without support in
Veda. There is absolutely no support, archaeology or otherwise for
the so called Aryan Invasion.
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