Dayananda and The Vedas-II

To start with the negation of his work by his critics, in whose mouth does it lie to accuse Dayanandas’s dealing with the Veda of a fantastic or arbitrary ingenuity ? Not in the mouth of those who accept Sayana’s traditional interpretation. For if ever there was a monument of arbitrarily erudite ingenuity, of great learning divorced, as great learning too often is, from sound judgement and sure test and a faithful critical and comparative observation, from direct seeing and often even from plainest common sense, or of a constant fitting of the text into the procuration bed of preconceived theory, it is surely this commentary, otherwise so imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and laborious left to us by the Acharya Sayana. Nor does the reproach lie in the mouth of those who take as final the recent labours of European scholarship. For if ever there was a toil of interpretation in which the loosest vein has been given to an ingenious speculation, in which doubtful indications have been snatched at as certain proofs, in which the boldest conclusion have been insisted upon with the scantiest justification, the most enormous difficulties ignored and preconceived prejudice maintained in face of the clear and often admitted suggestions of the text, it is surely this labour so eminently respectable, otherwise, for its industry, good will and power of research, performed though a long century by European Vedic scholarship.

जीवन जीने की सही कला जानने एवं वैचारिक क्रान्ति और आध्यात्मिक उत्थान के लिए
वेद मर्मज्ञ आचार्य डॉ. संजय देव के ओजस्वी प्रवचन सुनकर लाभान्वित हों।
वेद का सन्देश - कल की उपासना करने वाले सुखी नहीं होते

Ved Katha Pravachan _32 (Vedic Secrets of Happy Life & Happiness) वेद कथा - प्रवचन एवं व्याख्यान Ved Gyan Katha Divya Pravachan & Vedas explained (Introduction to the Vedas, Explanation of Vedas & Vaidik Mantras in Hindi) by Acharya Dr. Sanjay Dev

What is the main positive issue in this matter? An interpretation of the Veda must stand or fall by its central conception of the Vedic religion and the amount of support given to it by the intrinsic evidence of the Veda itself Here Dayananda’s view is quite clear its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the one Deity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express. His qualities and powers. Was the conception of Dayananda’s arbitrary conceit fetched out of his own too ingenious imagination? Not at all : it is the explicit statement of the Veda itself, “One existent, sages’’- not the ignorant, mind you, but the seers, the men of knowledge- “Speak of in many ways, as Indra and Yama, as Matariswan, as Agni’’. The Vedic Rishis cought surely to have known something about their own religion more, let us at hope, than Roth or Max muller, and this is what they knew.

We are aware how modern scholars twist away from the evidence. This hyman, they say, was a late production, this loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up somehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed buy those ignorant fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, skyworshippers, from their cultured and philosophic Dravedian enemies. But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory hymns and expressions. Agni or any other is expressly hymned as one will all the other gods. Agni contains all other divine powers within himself, the Maruts are described as all the gods, one deity is addressed by the names of others as well as his own or, most commonly. He is given as Lord and king, of the universe, attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. Ah, but that cannot mean ought not to mean, must not mean the worship of One; let us invent a new word, call it henotheism and suppose that the Rishis did not really believe Indra or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or every god as such for the none, perhaps that he might feel the more flattered and lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a compliment! But why should not the foundation of Vedic thought be natural monotheism rather than this newfangled monstrosity of henotheism? Well, because primitive barbarians could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions and, if you allow them to have so risen, you imperil our theory of evolutionary stages of human development and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns ann their place in the history of man kind. Truth must hide herself, common sense disappear from the field so that a theory may flourish? I ask, on this point, and it is the fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, Dayananda or the Western scholars?

But if this fundamental point of Dayananda’s is granted, if the character given their god’s is admitted, we are bound whenever the hymns speak of Agni or another, to see behind that name present always to the thought of the Rishi the one Supreme Deity or else one of His powers with its attendant qualities or workings. Immediately the whole character of the Veda is fixed in the sense Dayananada gave to it, the merely ritual, mythological, polytheistic interpretation of sayana collapses the meteorological and naturalistic European interpretation collapses. We have instead a real Scripture, one of the world’s sacred books and the divine word of a lofty and noble religion. - Yogi Aurobindo Ghosh

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Dayananda and The Vedas-II

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