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The First Hymn to Mitra-Varuna
THE LORDS OF THE THOUSAND-PILLARED HOME OF TRUTH AND BLISS
[The Rishi hymns the eternal and immutable Truth of which the Truth in mutable things is the veil; that is the goal of the journey of the manifested Sun of divine knowledge; it is the eternal unity of all things that are and the supreme Divine of which the Gods are various forms. Into it unite all the wealth of being and knowledge and power and bliss won by the sacrifice. It is the large vastness of the wide purities of Varuna and of the shining harmonies of Mitra. There, eternally stable, dwell the herds of the divine radiances of knowledge; for that is the happy field to which they here are travelling. The Impeller of the cosmic movement and journey pours out knowledge in us, the milk of the herds, by the dawns of the inner light and there descend the streams of the immortal existence followed by the single and perfect movement of Mitra-Varuna, the Light and the Purity, the Harmony and the Infinity. It is the rain of heaven which these two Godheads pour down, upholding the physical existence in its fruits and the celestial in its herding radiances of illumination. They thus create in man a force full of divine knowledge and a wide being which they guard and increase, a strewn seat for the sacrifice. This thousand-pillared force of knowledge they make a home for themselves and dwell there in the revelations of the Word. It is luminous in its form and its pillars of life have an iron strength and stability. They ascend to it in the dawning, in the rising of the Sun of knowledge and look with that eye of their divine vision on the infinite existence and the finite, the indivisible unity of things and their multiplicity. It is a home full and large with the sweetness and ecstasy of the supreme and inviolable peace and bliss which by their cherishing
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1. By the Truth1 is veiled that ever-standing Truth of yours where they unyoke the horses of the Sun;2 there the ten hundreds3 stand still together; That One, —I have beheld the greatest of the embodied gods.4
2. That is the utter vastness of you, O Mitra and Varuna; there the Lord of the movement milks the herds of his stable radiances by the days. Lo, you twain swell all the streams of the Blissful One and your one wheel5 moves in their path.
3. You uphold earth and heaven, O Mitra King and King Varuna, by your greatnesses; you increase the growths of earth, you nourish the shining herds of heaven, you pour forth the rain of its waters, O swift in strength.
1 The active cosmic Truth of things diffused and arranged in their mutability and divisibility of Time and Space veils the eternal and unchanging Truth of which it is a manifestation. 2 The eternal Truth is the goal of the divine Light which arises in us and journeys upward into higher and higher heavens through the shining upper ocean. 3 The entire plenitude of the divine wealth in its outpourings of knowledge, force and joy. 4 The One, the Deva veiled by his form of the divine Sun. Cf. Isha Upanishad, “That splendour which is thy fairest form, O Sun, that let me behold. The Purusha who is there and there, He am I.” 5 The unified movement, when the lower wheel of the Sun is struck away; the inferior truth is taken up into the unity of the higher truth from which it now seems to be separate in its motion.
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4. Let horses perfectly yoked with their well-governed reins of light bear you down to us; the form of the clarity follows in your coming and the Rivers flow in the front of heaven.
5. Increasing the strength that comes to our ear of knowledge, guarding by the sacrificial word6 your wide realm7 as if our seat of sacrifice, bringing obeisance, holding fast to judgment, you take your seat in your home, O Mitra, within the revealings of knowledge, O Varuna.
6. With hands that spare not, protectors of the beyond for the doer of perfect works whom you deliver and he dwells within the revealings of knowledge, kings free from passion, together you uphold a thousand-pillared strength.
7. Its form is of golden light, iron is its pillar and shines in heaven as if the swift lightning;8 in the happy field9 it is shaped or in the field of the gleaming.10 May we win possession of the sweet honey11 which is in that home.
6 Yajur. The Rik is the word which brings with it the illumination, the Yajur the word which guides the sacrificial action in accordance with the Rik. 7 Or, “increasing and guarding the wide strength”. 8 Or, “the Mare”, the energy of the Horse of Life. 9 The Ananda, the Bliss-World. 10 The field of the gleaming of the Dawns, the world of the Light. 11 Madhu, the Soma.
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8. To that home whose form is of the gold, whose pillars are of the iron, in the breaking of the Dawn, in the uprising of the Sun you ascend, O Varuna, O Mitra, and thence you behold the Infinite and the Finite.12
9. That bliss of yours which is most large and full and without a gap, O strong guardians of the world, so that none can pierce through and beyond it, by that cherish us, Mitra and Varuna; may we be victorious, who would take possession of that peace.
12 Aditi and Diti.
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