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X
THE ASHWINS, LORDS OF BLISS
Rig-veda IV.45
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Lo, that Light is rising up and the all-pervading car is being
yoked on the high level of this Heaven; there are placed
satisfying delights in their triple pairs and the fourth skin
of honey overflows.
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Full of honey upward rise the delight; upward horses and
cars in the wide-shinings of the Dawn and they roll aside
the veil of darkness that encompassed on every side and
they extend the lower world into a shining form like that
of the luminous heaven.
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Drink of the honey with your honey-drinking mouths, for
the honey yoke your car beloved. With the honey you gladden the movements and its paths; full of honey,
O Ashwins,
is the skin that you bear.
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Full of the honey are the swans that bear you, golden-
winged, waking with the Dawn, and they come not to hurt,
they rain forth the waters, they are full of rapture and touch
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that which holds the Rapture. Like bees to pourings of
honey you come to the Soma-offerings.
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Full of the honey the fires lead well the sacrifice and they
woo your brightness, O Ashwins, day by day, when one with
purified hands, with a perfect vision, with power to go
through to the goal, has pressed out with the pressing-stones
the honeyed Soma-wine.
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Drinking the wine near them, the. fires ride and run and extend the lower world into a shining form like that of the
luminous heaven. The Sun too goes yoking his steeds; by
force of Nature's self-arranging you move consciously
along all paths.¹
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I have declared, O Ashwins, holding the Thought in me,
your car that is undecaying and drawn by perfect steeds,
— your car by which you move at once over all the worlds
towards the enjoyment rich in offerings that makes through
to the goal.
¹Or, 'you take knowledge of all the paths in their order.'
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COMMENTARY
The hymns of the Rig-veda addressed to
the two Shining Twins,
like those addressed to the Ribhus, are full of symbolic expressions and unintelligible without a firm clue to their symbolism. The three leading features of these hymns to the Ashwins
are the praise of their chariot, their horses and their rapid all-
pervading movement; their seeking of honey and their joy in
the honey, madhu, and the satisfying delights that they carry in
their car; and their close association with the Sun, with Suryā the daughter of the Sun and with the Dawn.
The Ashwins like the other gods descend
from the Truth-Consciousness, the ṛtam; they are born or manifested from Heaven, from Dyau, the pure Mind; their movement pervades all
the worlds, — the effect of their action ranges from the body
through the vital being and the thought to the superconscient
Truth. It commences indeed from the ocean, from the vague of
the being as it emerges out of the subconscient and they conduct
the soul over the flood of these waters and prevent its foundering
on its voyage. They are therefore nāsatyā, lords of the movement, leaders of the journey or voyage.
They help man with the Truth which
comes to them especially by association with the Dawn, with Surya, lord of the
Truth, and with Suryā, his daughter, but they help him more
characteristically with the delight of being. They are lords of
bliss, śubhaspatī; their car or movement is loaded with the
satisfactions of the delight of being in all its planes, they bear the
skin full of the overflowing honey; they seek the honey, the
sweetness, and fill all things with it. They are therefore effective powers of the Ananda which proceeds out of the Truth-Consciousness and which manifesting itself variously in all the
three worlds maintains man in his journey. Hence their action
is in all the worlds. They are especially riders or drivers of the
Horse, Ashwins, as their name indicates, — they use the vitality
of the human being as the motive-force of the journey: but also
they work in the thought and lead it to the Truth. They give
health, beauty, wholeness to the body; they are the divine physicians.
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Of all the gods they are the
most ready to come to
man and to create for him ease and joy, āgamisthā, śubhaspatī.
For this is their peculiar and perfect function. They are essentially lords of weal, of bliss,
śubhaspatī.
This character of the Ashwins is
brought out with a continual emphasis by Vamadeva in the present hymn. In almost
every verse occurs with a constant iteration the words madhu,
madhumān, honey, honied. It is a hymn to the sweetness of
existence; it is a chant of the delight of being.
The great Light of lights, the Sun of
Truth, the illumination
of the Truth-Consciousness is rising up out of the movement of
life to create the illumined Mind, Swar, which completes the
evolution of the lower triple world. Eṣa sya bhānur udiyarti.
By this rising of Sun in man, the full movement of the Ashwins
becomes possible; for by the Truth comes the realised Delight,
the heavenly beatitude. Therefore, the chariot of the Ashwins
is being yoked upon the height of this Dyau, the high level or
plane of the resplendent mind. That chariot is all-pervading;
its motion goes everywhere; its speed
runs freely on all planes
of our consciousness. Yujyate rathaḥ parijmā divo asya sānavi.
The full all-pervading movement of the Ashwins brings with it the fullness of
all the possible satisfactions of the delight of being. This is expressed
symbolically in the language of the Veda by saying that in their car are found
the satisfactions, pṛkṣāsaḥ, in three pairs, pṛkṣāso asmin mithunā adhi trayaḥ. The
word pṛkṣa, is rendered food in the ritual interpretation like the
kindred word prayas. The root means pleasure, fullness, satisfaction, and may have the material sense of a "delicacy" or satisfying food and the psychological sense of a delight, pleasure or
satisfaction. The satisfactions or delicacies which are carried
in the car of the Ashwins are, then, in three pairs; or the phrase
may simply mean, they are three but closely associated together.
In any case, the reference is to the three kinds of satisfaction or
pleasure which correspond to the three movements or worlds
of our progressive consciousness, —satisfactions of the body,
satisfactions of vitality, satisfactions of the mind. If they are in
three pairs, then we must understand that on each plane there is
a double action of the delight corresponding to the double and
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united twinhood of the Ashwins. It is
difficult in the Veda itself
to distinguish between these brilliant and happy Twins or to discover what each severally represents. We have no such indication as is given us in the case of the three Ribhus. But perhaps
the Greek names of these two Dioskouroi, divo napātā, sons of
Heaven, contain a clue. Kastor, the name of the elder, seems to
be Kashitri, the Shining One; Poludeukes¹ may possibly be Purudansas, a name which occurs in the Veda as an epithet of
the Ashwins, the Manifold in activity. If so, the twin birth of the
Ashwins recalls the constant Vedic dualism of Power and Light,
Knowledge and Will, Consciousness and Energy, go, and aśva.
In all the satisfactions brought to us by the Ashwins these two
elements are inseparably united; where the form is that of the
Light or Consciousness, there Power and Energy are contained;
where the form is that of the Power or
Energy, there Light and
Consciousness are contained.
But these three forms of satisfaction
are not all that their
chariot holds for us; there is something else, a fourth, a skin full
of honey and out of this skin the honey breaks and overflows on
every side. Dṛtis turīyo madhuno vi rapśate. Mind, life and body,
these are three; turīya, the fourth plane of our consciousness,
is the superconscient, the Truth-Consciousness. The Ashwins
bring with them a skin, dṛti, literally a thing cut or torn, a partial
formation out of the Truth-Consciousness to contain the honey
of the superconscient Beatitude; but it cannot contain it; that
unconquerably abundant and infinite sweetness breaks out and
overflows everywhere drenching with delight the whole of our
existence.
With that honey the three pairs of
satisfactions, mental,
vital, bodily, are impregnated by this all-pervasive overflowing
plenty and they become full of its sweetness, madhumantaḥ.
And so becoming, at once they begin to move upward. Touched
by the divine delight all our satisfactions in this lower world
soar upward irresistibly attracted towards the superconscient,
towards the Truth, towards the Beatitude. And with them, —
¹The k of Poludeukes points
to an original ś; the name would then be purudamśas; but
such fluctuations between the various sibilants were common enough in the early
fluid state
of the Aryan tongues.
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for, secretly or openly, consciously or
subconsciously it is the
delight of being that is the leader of our activities, — all the
chariots and horses of these gods take the same soaring upward
movement. All the various movements of our being, all the forms
of Force that give them their impulsion, all follow the ascending
light of Truth towards its home. Ud vām pṛkṣāso madhumanta īrate, rathā aśvāsa uṣaso vyuṣṭiṣu.
"In the wide-shinings of the
Dawn" they rise; for Dawn is
the illumination of the Truth rising upon the mentality to bring
the day of full consciousness into the darkness or half-lit night
of our being. She comes as Dakshina, the pure intuitive discernment on which Agni the God-force in us feeds when he aspires
towards the Truth or as Sarama, the discovering intuition, who
penetrates into the cave of the subconscient where the niggard
lords of sense-action have hidden the radiant herds of the Sun
and gives information to Indra. Then comes the lord of luminous
Mind and breaks open the cave and drives upward the herds,
udājat, upwards towards the vast Truth-Consciousness, the own
home of the gods. Our conscious existence is a hill (adri) with
many successive levels and elevations, sānūni; the cave of the
subconscient is below; we climb upwards towards the godhead
of the Truth and Bliss where are the seats of Immortality,
yatrāmṛtāsa āsate.¹ By this upward movement of the chariot
of the Ashwins
with its burden of uplifted and transformed satisfactions the
veil of Night that encompasses the worlds of being in us is
rolled away. All these worlds, mind, life, body, are opened to
the rays of the Sun of Truth. This lower world in us, rajas, is
extended and shaped by this ascending movement of all its
powers and satisfactions into the very brightness of the luminous
intuitive mind, Swar, which receives directly the higher Light.
The mind, the act, the vital, emotional, substantial existence,
all becomes full of the glory and the intuition, the power and the
light of the divine Sun, — tat savitur vareṇyam bhargo devasya.2
The lower mental existence is transformed into an image and
reflection of the higher Divine. Aporṇuvantas tama ā parīvṛtam,
svar ṇa. śukram tanvanta ā rajaḥ.
¹Rv. K.15.2. 2 The great
phrase of the Gayatri (Rv. m.62.10).
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This verse closes the general
description of the perfect and
final movement of the Ashwins. In the third the Rishi Vamadeva
turns to his own ascension, his own offering of the Soma, his
voyage and sacrifice; he claims for it their beatific and glorifying
action. The mouths of the Ashwins are made to drink of the
sweetness; in his sacrifice, then, let them drink of it. Madhvaḥ
pibatam madhupebhir āsabhiḥ. Let them yoke their chariot for
the honey, their chariot beloved of men; uta priyam madhune
yuñjatham ratham. For man's movement, his progressive activity, is made by them glad in all its paths with that very honey
and sweetness of the Ananda. Ā vartanim madhunā jinvathas
pathaḥ. For they bear the skin full and overflowing with its
honey. Dṛtim vahethe madhumantam aśvinā. By the action of
the Ashwins man's progress towards the beatitude becomes
itself beatific; all his travail and struggle and labour grows full
of a divine delight. As it is said in the Veda that by Truth is the
progress towards the Truth, that is to say, by the growing law of
the Truth in the mental and physical consciousness we arrive
finally beyond mind and body to the superconscient Truth, so
here it is indicated that by Ananda is the progress towards the
Ananda, — by a divine delight growing in all our members,
in all our activities we arrive at the superconscious beatitude.
In the upward movement the horses that
draw the chariot
of the Ashwins change into birds, into swans, hamsāsaḥ. The
Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and
upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being,
winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy,
the Horse, aśva. Such are the energies that draw the free car of
the Lords of Delight, when there dawns on us the Sun of the
Truth. These winged movements are full of the honey showered
from the overflowing skin, madhumantaḥ. They are unassailable, asridhaḥ, they come to no hurt in their flight; or, the sense
may be, they make no false or hurtful movement. And they are
golden-winged, hiraṇyaparṇāḥ. Gold is the symbolic colour of
the light of Surya. The wings of these energies are the full,
satisfied, attaining movement, parṇa, of his luminous knowledge.
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For these are the birds that awake with
Dawn; these are the
winged energies that come forth from their nests when the feet
of the daughter of Heaven press the levels of our human mentality,
divo asya sānavi. Such are the swans that bear the swift-riding
Twins. Hamsāso ye vām madhumanto asridho hiraṇyaparṇā uhuva
uṣarbudhaḥ.
Full of the honey these winged energies shower on us as they rise the abundance
of the waters of heaven, the full outpouring of the high mental consciousness; they are instinct with
ecstasy, with rapture, with the intoxication of the immortal wine;
and they touch, they come into
conscious contact with that superconscient being which is eternally in possession of the ecstasy,
rapturous for ever with its divine intoxication. Udapruto mandino mandinispṛśah. Drawn by them the Lords of delight come
to the Rishi's Soma-offering like bees to tricklings of honey;
madhvo na makṣaḥ savanāni gacchathaḥ.
Makers themselves of
the sweetness, they like the bees seek whatever sweetness can
serve them as their material for more delight.
In the sacrifice the same movement of
general illumination
already described as the result of the ascending flight of the
Ashwins is now described as being effected by the aid of the fires
of Agni. For the flames of the Will, the divine Force burning up in the soul,
are also drenched with the overflowing sweetness and therefore they perform
perfectly from day to day their great office of leading the sacrifice¹
progressively to its goal. For that progress they woo with their flaming tongues the daily visitation of
the brilliant Ashwins who are bright with the light of the intuitive
illuminations and uphold them with their thought of flashing
energy.² Svadhvarāso madhumanto agnaya usrā jarante prati
vastor aśvinā.
This aspiration of Agni happens when
the Sacrificer with
pure hands, with a perfectly discerning vision, with power in his
soul to travel to the end of its pilgrimage, to the goal of the
sacrifice through all obstacles, breaking all opposers, has pressed
¹Adhvara, the word for
sacrifice, is really an adjective and the full phrase is adhvara yajña,
sacrificial action travelling on the path, the sacrifice that is of the
nature of a progression or
journey. Agni, the Will is the leader of the sacrifice.
²Savirayā dhiyā Rv. 1.3.2.
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out the immortalising wine with the
pressing-stones and that too
becomes full of the honey of the Ashwins. Yon niktahastas
taraṇir vicakṣaṇah, somam susāva madhumantam adribhiḥ. For
the individual's delight in things is met by the Ashwins' triple
satisfactions and by the fourth, the delight pouring from the
Truth. The cleansed hands of the Sacrificer, niktahastaḥ, are
possibly symbolic¹ of the purified physical being; the power
comes from a fulfilled life-energy; the force of clear mental vision, vicakṣaṇa, is the sign of the truth-illumined mind. These are the
conditions in mind, life and body for the overflowing of the
honey over the triple satisfactions of the Ashwins.
When the sacrificer has thus pressed
out the honey-filled
delight of things in his sacrifice, the flames of the Will are able to
drink them from near, they are not compelled to bring them
meagrely or with pain from a distant and hardly accessible plane
of consciousness. Therefore, drinking immediately and freely,
they become full of an exultant force and swiftness and run and
race about over the whole field of our being to extend and build
up the lower consciousness into the shining image of the world
of free and luminous Mind. Ākenipāso ahabhir davidhvataḥ, svar
ṇa śukram tanvanta ā rajaḥ. The formula used is repeated with-
out variations from the second Rik; but here it is the flames
of the Will full of the fourfold satisfaction that do the work.
There the free upsoaring of the gods by the mere touch of the
Light and without effort; here the firm labour and aspiration of
man in his sacrifice. For then it is by Time, by the day, that the
work is perfected, ahabhiḥ, by successive dawns of the Truth
each with its victory over the night, by the unbroken succession
of the sisters of which we have had mention in the hymn to the
divine Dawn. Man cannot seize or hold at once all that the illumination brings to him; it has to be repeated constantly so that
he may grow in the light.
But not only the fires of the Will are
at work to transform
the lower consciousness. The Sun of Truth yokes also his
lustrous coursers and is in movement; sūraścid aśvān yuyujāna
īyate. The Ashwins too take. knowledge for the human consciousness
¹The hand or arm is often, however,
otherwise symbolic, especially when it is two hands
or arms of India that are in question.
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of all the paths of its progress so that
it may effect a complete, harmonious and many-sided movement. This movement advancing in many paths is combined in the light of the
divine knowledge by the spontaneous self-arranging action of
Nature which she assumes when the will and the knowledge are
wedded in the perfect harmony of a fully self-conscious, intuitively guided action. Viśvān
anu svadhayā cetathas pathaḥ.
Vamadeva closes his hymn. He has been
able to hold firmly
the shining Thought with its high illumination and has expressed
in himself by the shaping and fixing power of the Word the
chariot, that is to say, the immortal movement of* the delight of
the Ashwins; the movement of a bliss that does not fade or grow
old or exhaust itself, — it is ageless and undecaying, ajaraḥ, —
because it is drawn by perfect and liberated energies and not by
the limited and soon exhausted, soon recalcitrant horses of
the human vitality. Pra vām avocam aśvinā dhiyamdhāḥ, rathaḥ.
svaśvo ajaro yo asti. In this movement they traverse in a moment
all the worlds of the lower consciousness, covering it with their
speeding delight, and so arrive to that universal enjoyment in man
full of his offering of the Soma-wine by which they can lead
him, puissantly entering into it, through all opposers and to the
great goal. Yena sadyaḥ pari rajāmsi yātho haviṣmantam taraṇim
bhojam accha.
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