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VI
THE DIVINE DAWN
Rig-veda III.61
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Dawn, richly stored with substance, conscious cleave
to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou of the
plenitudes. Goddess, ancient, yet ever young thou movest
many-thoughted following the law of thy activities, O bearer
of every boon.
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Dawn divine, shine out immortal in thy car of happy light
sending forth the pleasant voices of the Truth. May steeds
well-guided bear thee here who are golden-brilliant of hue
and wide their might.
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Dawn, confronting all the worlds thou standest high-uplifted
and art their perception of Immortality; do thou move over
them like a wheel, O new Day, travelling over an equal field.
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Dawn in her plenitude like one that lets fall from her a sewn
robe moves, the bride of the Bliss; creating Swar, perfect in
her working, perfect in her enjoying, she widens from the
extremity of Heaven over the earth.
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Meet ye the Dawn as she shines wide towards you and with
surrender bring forward your complete energy. Exalted in
heaven is the force to which she rises establishing the
sweetness; ,she makes the luminous worlds to shine forth
and is a vision of felicity.
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By heaven's illuminings one perceives her a bearer of the
Truth and rapturous she comes with its varied light into the
two firmaments. From Dawn as she approaches shining out on thee, O Agni, thou seekest and attainest to the substance
of delight.
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Putting forth his impulsions in the foundation of the Truth,
in the foundation of the Dawns, their Lord enters the
Vastness of the firmaments. Vast the wisdom of Varuna,
of Mitra, as in a happy brightness, orders multitudinously
the Light.
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COMMENTARY
Surya Savitri in his task of illumination follows the progress of
the Dawn. In another hymn the movements of the mind have
been described as growing conscient and brilliant by the bright
power of the continuous Dawns. Throughout the Veda Usha,
daughter of Heaven, has always the same function. She is the
medium of the awakening, the activity and the growth of the
other gods; she is the first condition of the Vedic realisation. By
her increasing illumination the whole nature of man is clarified;
through her he arrives at the Truth, through her he enjoys the
Beatitude. The divine dawn of the Rishis is the advent of the
divine Light throwing off veil after veil and revealing in man's
activities the luminous godhead. In that light the Work is done,
the sacrifice offered and its desirable fruits gathered by humanity.
Many are the hymns, indeed, in which rich and beautiful
figures of the earthly dawn veil this inner truth of the goddess
Usha, but in this hymn of the great Rishi Vishwamitra the psychological symbolism of the Vedic Dawn is apparent from
beginning to end by open expressions and on the surface of the
thought. "O Dawn rich of store in thy substance," he cries to her,
"conscient cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou who hast the plenitudes." The word pracetas and the
related word, vicetas, are standing terms of Vedic phraseology;
they seem to correspond to the ideas expressed in later language
by the Vedsmtic prajñāna and vijñāna. Prajnana is the conscious
ness that cognizes all things as objects confronting its observation; in the divine mind it is knowledge regarding things as their
source, possessor and witness. Vijnana is comprehensive know
ledge containing, penetrating into things, pervading them in
consciousness by a sort of identification with their truth. Usha
is to occupy the revealing thought and word of the Rishi as a
power of Knowledge conscient of the truth of all that is placed
by them before the mind for expression in man. The affirmation,
it is suggested, will be full and ample; for Usha is vājena vājini,
maghoni; rich is the store of her substance; she has all the
plenitudes.
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This dawn moves in her progression always according to
the rule of a divine action; many are the thoughts she brings in
that motion, but her steps are sure and all desirable things, all
supreme boons, the boons of the Ananda, the blessings of the divine existence, — are in her hands. She is ancient and eternal,
the dawn of the Light that was from the beginning, purāṇi, but in
her coming she is ever young and fresh to the soul that receives
her.
She is to shine wide, she that is the divine Dawn, as the light
of the immortal existence bringing out in man the powers or the
voices of Truth and Joy, (sūnṛtāḥ, — a word which expresses at
once both the true and the pleasant); for is not the chariot of her
movement a car at once of light and of happiness ? For again,
the word candra in candrarathā, — signifying also the lunar
deity Soma, lord of the delight of immortality pouring into man, ānanda and amṛta, —means both luminous and blissful. And
the horses that bring her, figure of the nervous forces that sup
port and carry forward all our action, must be perfectly con
trolled; golden, bright in hue, their nature (for in this ancient
symbolism colour is the sign of quality, of character, of temperament) must be a dynamism of ideal knowledge in its concentrated luminousness; wide in its extension must be the mass of
that concentrated force, —pṛthupājaso ye.
Divine Dawn comes thus to the soul with the light of her
knowledge, prajñāna, confronting all the worlds as field of that
knowledge, — all provinces, that is to say, of our universal
being, — mind, vitality, physical consciousness. She stands up
lifted over them on our heights above mind, in the highest
heaven, as the perception of Immortality or of the Immortal,
amṛtasya ketuḥ, revealing in them the eternal and beatific existence or the eternal all-blissful Godhead. So exalted she stands
prepared to effect the motion of the divine knowledge, progressing as a new revelation of the eternal truth, navyasi, in their
harmonised and equalised activities like a wheel moving smoothly
over a level field; for they now, their diversities and discords re
moved, offer no obstacle to that equal motion.
In her plenitude she separates, as it were, and casts down
from her the elaborately sewn garment that covered the truth of
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things and moves as the wife of the Lover, the energy of her
all-blissful Lord, svasarasya patnī. Full in her enjoyment of the
felicity, full in her effectuation of all activities, subhagā sudamsāḥ,,
she brings into existence in us by her revelations Swar, the concealed luminous mind, our highest mental heaven; and thus from
the farthest extremities of mental being extends herself over the
physical consciousness.
As this divine Dawn pours out widely its light upon them,
so have men by submission to the law other divine act and movement to bring forward for her the fully energised completeness of
their being and their capacities as a vehicle for her light or as a
seat for her sacrificial activities.
The Rishi then dwells on the two capital works of the divine
Dawn in man, — her elevation of him to the full force of the
Light and the revelation of the Truth and her pouring of the
Ananda, the Amrita, the Soma-wine, the bliss of the immortal
being into the mental and bodily existence. In the world of the pure mind, divi, she rises into the full force and mass of the Light,
ūrdhvam pājo aśret, and from those pure and high levels she
establishes the sweetness, madhu, the honey of Soma. She makes
to shine out the three luminous worlds, rocanā; she is then or she
brings with her the beatific vision. By the effectual illuminations
of the pure mentality, through the realising Word, divo arkaiḥ.,
she is perceived as the bearer of Truth and with the Truth she
enters from the world above Mind, full of the delight, in a varied
play of her multiple thought and activity, into the mental and
bodily consciousness, those established limits between which
man's action moves. It is from her, as she comes thus richly
laden, vājena vājini, that Agni, the divine Force labouring here in
body and mind to uplift the mortal, prays for and attains to the
Soma, the wine of the Beatitude, the delightful substance.
The supramental world in us, foundation of the Truth, is
the foundation of the Dawns. They are the descent upon mortal
nature of the light of that immortal Truth, rtamjyotih. The Lord
of the Dawns, Master of Truth, Illuminer, Creator, Organiser,
putting forth in the foundation of Truth, above mind, the impulsion of his activities, enters with them by this goddess into a
bodily and mental existence no longer obscured but released from
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their limits and capable of vastness, mahī
rodasī. The Lord of
Truth is the sole Lord of things. He is Varuna, soul of vastness
and purity; he is Mitra, source of love and light and harmony.
His creative Wisdom, mahī mitrasya varuṇasya māyā, unlimited
in its scope, — for he is Varuna, — appearing, candreva, as a
light of bliss and joy, — for he is Mitra, — arranges, perfectly
organises, in multitudinous forms, in the wideness of the liberated nature, the luminous expansions, the serene expressions of
the Truth. He combines the various brilliancies with which his
Dawn has entered our firmaments; he blends into one harmony
her true and happy voices.
Dawn divine is the coming of the Godhead. She is the light
of the Truth and the Felicity pouring on us from the Lord of
Wisdom and Bliss, amṛtasya ketuḥ, svasarasya patnī.
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