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

THREE VEDIC HYMNS

the Waters, where he lies hidden (i.e., not yet reflected in a counter-shining) until sought for and discovered by the Several Angels. The innumerable Vedic allusions to the finding of the Sun or Fire, lost in the Waters, in the Depths (guha), or in the Darkness (tamas)—e.g., Re Veda, V, 40, 6, gilham stryam tamasdpavratena—have primary reference to the obscuration of Light antecedent to the Dawn of a World-cycle, and to the finding of this Light by means of hymns or rites chanted or undertaken by Angels or men. Naturally enough the analogous rites are performed, and the same hymns are chanted at the dawn of every day, or during an eclipse, to effect the return of the hidden Light. But it must not be overlooked that the Waters, the Depths, and the Darkness, are also the Depths of the Heart, and that for him who understands, the same hymns and rites are means to the inward vision of that Supernal Sun of which the shining and the darkness are without succession, nor subject to any accident of time.

Of the begotten of Aditi, «‘ Children of the Liberty,” viz., the well-known group of the Eight Adityas, it is said that seven return upwards, that would be by the devayana to the source of their being: while one remains in the world, the manifested Sun in each of the Three Worlds, subject to mortality.1*4 Here then it is said that oneeighth of deity taking on mortality, remains incarnate in the universe: elsewhere we find a statement that only one-quarter of him is present here. Such expressions must not be understood to imply a partibility of becng, but only the incommensurability of the incalculable totality of existences in time with the infinite unity of being in eternity.

We have rendered yuga as “aeon”’ with intentional regard to the dual meaning of this word as (1) a great period of time, and (2) a power existing from eternity, in and of the Pleroma.’#? But in our three hymns, pirvya yuga, uttara yuga, etc., denote as much a place beyond