Topic started by Vishvesh Obla (@ unknown-24-9.pilot.net) on Thu Jan 18 14:57:43 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

This is an interesting chapter by Sri Aurobindo from his book "The Secret of the Veda". I post it here since it gives another perspective in looking at language, which appears to me much more saner than the conjectures and half-truths of modern philology. I couldn't find in the web a more interesting piece by Sri Aurobindo himself titled "The origins of Aryan Speech".

http://intyoga.freeservers.com/veda05.htm

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Bhadraiah Mallampalli (@ slip-32-101-169-219.nj.us.prserv.net) on: Thu Feb 8 01:03:48
  
  Dear Sugrutha
  
  In Brhadaranyaka Upanishat Yajnavalkya says "It is not for the sake of the wife that one loves the wife, it is for one's own sake. It is not for the sake of husband that one loves, but for one's own sake...".
  
  If any one loves Sanskrit or Tamil it is for their own sake that they love it, not for the sake of Sanskritists or Tamilians. Ultimately the buck stops at oneself. So for whose sake anybody should read tamil or Sanskrit or Vedas?
  
  Just think for a while why people are ready to immolate themselves for the sake of some political leaders? I think most people (no one excluded) are misdirected, and not using proper judgement of what is good or bad for them.
  I suggest people should read all books and find out for themselves what is in there for them. But unfortunately some people may pass a comment on other works that "they think" are not important. This is universal, and happened/happening to Vedas also, you will be surprised to know, from the very Sankara mutts (I accuse them) when they say they are "also maintaining Vedas" (as additional baggage) over and above advaita which is their top priority. This itself is a false claim. Aurobindo was the last scholar I heard of who had a burning desire to understand vedas. Today every scholar including the traditional scholars have been thoroughly brain washed to think vedas are animalistic, ritualistic, and so on.
  
  We will discuss Tamil literature when you open a topic for discussion seriously. Please take a book and read it out for us. Let us not blame the books for the sake of some people's attitudes. Don't you see many western scholars read Vedas inspite of their distaste for them, only to show the books in poor light, or to study a set of words that suit their agendas?
  
  So ultimately nobody is "gaining" anything in this lose-lose game except the people who want us to be divided. My favorite example is the story of a brahmin who bought a goat and carrying it home. Some thieves insist it is a pig. When he dumps the goat, the thieves walk away with it. Now substitute anything you like for the goat (Tamil, Sanskrit, Veda or what you like).
  
  Everybody is just doing what is comfortable for them and denouncing the rest. This has become a habit. We will improve once we understand that everything is important. Then we will also find that all these subjects are intricately inter-related. The human mind is capable of gasping a lot more than we feed it.
  
  By the way please check my site. Also follow the URL to the yahoogroup VedicRitual.
  http://homes.acmecity.com/friends/harmonica/301
  Regards
  Bhadraiah
  
  
• From: Sugrutha (@ cc785269-c.avnl1.nj.home.com) on: Sat Feb 10 16:38:35
  
  Mr.Mallampalli,
  
  There is a separate section in this forum to discuss Tamil literature. I dont need to open one. If you know how to read Thamizh, there is plenty of interesting stuff there.
  
  One can study Sanskrit or Swahili or whatever for the love of it. That is their business. They can also write that Swahili is the mother to all African tongues or that Sanskrit is the mother of all Indian languages. It is again their business.
  
  But if someone tries to say that these books are indeed the defacto textbooks for African or Indian Histoy and cultures (in this forum), I have the right to dissent.
  
  
• From: santosh (@ 209.137.67.9) on: Mon Feb 12 18:12:19
  
  Vish,
  I have a question. I am not so sure if the Aryans are basically foreigners to India and to our past. If that is true, is there anything which links to our past in all those countries who are supposed to be Aryans too?
  
  
• From: Vishvesh Obla (@ unknown-24-10.pilot.net) on: Thu Feb 15 14:32:55
  
  Hi San,
  
  The Aryan race that is found elsewhere seems to be much different from what it became in India. The origin of the Aryan race becomes disputable when one sees the way it developed in India and what it has been in other countries. The problem is there have been too many political factors involved in tracing the history of the Aryan race as it is found in India which makes it only more obscure. If the Hindutvadis are supposed to have crooked it up, the other alternative of looking at it with the impartial historical eye of Western scholarship also doesn't seem to be devoid of any political factor. It seems to me that it is much sensible to take it as it is, as a unique kind of race that was born due to the fusion of a few pre-historic cultures, instead of forcing some kind of reasoning to believe a particular way of thinking. I believe what we as Indians are today is not because we derived from one particular source but from a kind of amalgamated culture and to deny one part of it is to deny one's very own identity. Well, Pal, I am surprised that you too have started to look at things in this manner. (Maybe, this forum got too much into your head, I guess!!!)
  
  
• From: Srini (@ 203.117.167.130) on: Wed Mar 14 02:18:44
  
  Vish: I agree with your opinion that whatever India is today is an amalgam of various learnings.
  
  
• From: santosh (@ 209.137.67.16) on: Thu Apr 5 14:38:21
  
  Vish,
  Here is a better translation of the "song of creation", though it is in prose. But then can you let me know what you mean when you say that the consciousness exhibited in the Vedas is dynamic ?
  
  "The non-existent was not; the existent was not at that time. The atmosphere was not nor the heavens which are beyond. What was concealed? Where? In whose protection? Was it water? An unfathomable abyss?
  
  There was neither death nor immortality then. There was not distinction of day or night. That alone breathed windless by its own power. Other than that there was not anything else.
  
  Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning. All this was an indistinguishable sea. That which becomes, that which was enveloped by the void, that alone was born through the power of heat.
  
  Upon that desire arose in the beginning. This was the first discharge of thought. Sages discovered this link of the existent to the nonexistent, having searched in the heart with wisdom.
  
  Their line [of vision] was extended across; what was below, what was above? There were impregnators, there were powers: inherent power below, impulses above.
  
  Who knows truly? Who here will declare whence it arose, whence this creation? The gods are subsequent to the creation of this. Who, then, knows whence it has come into being?
  
  Whence this creation has come into being; whether it was made or not; he in the highest heaven is its surveyor. Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not."
  
  
• From: Vishvesh Obla (@ 1cust203.tnt2.albany.ny.da.uu.net) on: Fri Apr 6 14:09:35
  
  Hi San,
  
  It is a complex question, for it involves one's response to a range of experiences and the choices that one takes in one's life. I can only crudely explain it. Why is it that one work of art is considered to be better to another? One could show so many reasons, personal or even technical, but it really depends on the creative spirit it exhibits. Now comes the complex question : what is this creative spirit ? I can again explain it crudely that it is the life of the work that arises inexhaustible feelings of response to it. When can a response be inexhaustible ? Can a thought produced at one period of time, or to be a little more specific, a solution given to an issue that is of paramount importance at one particular time be of permanent importance, so that the inward responses to it are inexhaustible? A work of art deals with life primarily and life, as it evolves, moves in different directions. Even morality can only be a delicate adjustment of the soul, as Lawrence would say. Nothing is static. Given such conditions, what can be of permanent value to be inexhaustible? Our consciousness is only a product of certain mental and emotional responses and it is arrested or stunted as long as the object that affects it tends to be static. An idea, for instance, has only fixed associations. But an idea can be associated with a living moment of truth as experienced by an artist and that moment is forever dynamic, for it expresses an inward state of mind. It could be an intense experience, a living moment of truth, which could exceed the idea itself. This living moment of truth constitutes the very essential relations between man and his universe has a permanent value.
  
  Let me try to give you an example in poetry. This stanza is from Browning :
  
  God's in his heaven
  All's right with this world…
  
  As you can see, it deals with a state of mental peace and equilibrium in one's hope that God is there to look after him. Here are two more stanzas. This one is from Dante :
  
  In His will is our peace…
  
  And this one is from Gita :
  
  Thou who hast come to this unhappy and transient world, Love and Turn to me…
  
  Now if you have some experience in reading poetry, which I know that you do, you will find that the first stanza is so flat, and that it just expresses only a conceived idea. Read the next two lines aloud. Even while reading you could feel a warmth (which, I am sure, must be much more in its original language). Note the response you feel when you read the phrase 'our peace' in the second one and the word 'turn' in the third. The idea is there in the first one as well, but the response created by the next two are vastly different. It is not that your intellect alone is stimulated by the idea, but an internal response of something deeper. Such a response is not mental and hence remains permanent. Mind you, this is a very subjective experience and as I said earlier, it entirely depends on one's ability to receive various range of experiences that one develops in the choices that one makes in life. Nevertheless, it is a universal experience in various degrees and shades. This is the creative experience which one needs to look at in one's interpretation of the Vedas. The 'song of creation' is a great example of a subtle exhibition of the dynamic spirit of mankind in its early stages that breathes the life of creative experience behind it. What strikes one with any poetic sensibility is that there is no static reference in man's relation to nature and its forces. The consciousness that is exhibited doesn't move in a straight line to end up with a static solution of a fixed religion, but moves in circles with a thought as a base, complete itself, and move to another circle of thought, widening and widening in its perception. This way of thinking was characteristic of earlier mankind as we see it manifested in what all is left behind today of it. The traces and various levels of expressions of it, we still find in all our fine arts. It is there in almost every stanza of the Vedas, the breath of the dynamic creative spirit that always evolved in circles and sustained and gave vital nourishment to mankind. Even in the later development of the Hindu Religion we find the same, in a lesser degree though. The proliferation of the symbols of religious associations of the Hindu religion, which baffles the westerner, is because of this never-ending dynamic association of the mind, which has its origin in the Vedas. Every stanza in the Vedas is a coloring of a dynamically perceived thought of man's relation to nature personified as cosmic powers. Take this stanza chosen at random from the RigVeda :
  
  Him the growths of earth held as a child in the womb in whom was the order of the Truth, the Waters become the mothers of that Fire who gave him birth; he is the common child with whom the pleasance-woods and the plants of earth are pregnant and they are delivered of him always…
  
  You could easily observe that the association of images has something vast in its conception. Every feeling is so naturally associated with a living moment of inter-relatedness, which has no association to anything static. The Vedas, in a sense, are expressions of a vital life itself, which exist only in mankind's dynamic consciousness and in its perception of the essential inter-relatedness.
  
  I don't know if I answered you as you would have expected, but in such things, one needs to put an extra effort and also try to look at it not with our conventional eyes. One must always keep in mind that the Vedas has its own perspective and that it may look all crooked and only a wordy mass if you put your own perspective before it.
  
  By the bye, there is a wonderful link to the translation of the RigVeda at http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/rghmf_00.html (Hymns to the Mystic Fire by Sri Aurobindo).
  
  
• From: santosh (@ 209.137.67.13) on: Mon Apr 9 17:29:09
  
  Hey Vish,
  Thanks for ur time for a detailed reply. I also feel that we have put too much of our perspectives into the vedas and obscured it further. I am still unable to get into the poetic spirit of it though I can understand what you are trying to say. The images are really obscure, but I guess u r true that dynamic mind can percive things in assoications we have forgotten by our obsession to ideas. Thanks once again
  
  
• From: manasachandra (@ dialpool-210-214-118-242.maa.sify.net) on: Sat Jun 23 03:15:26
  
  i think that vedas as rabindranath tagore said is a outpuring of the first aryans as student of science it is difficult to belive that it has anything to do with modern science and if anybody relates it with moderen science it is stupidity
  
  

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