The Devil is in the Details
The Axial Age theory Can Only Ignore the Rig Veda
In addition to the 2 instances that I mentioned in my (above) post and video where the precise title and symbol of the Brahman, “The Skambha (Pillar) of Heaven”, is used mystically in the earliest layer of the Rig Veda (circa 1500 B.C.) (RV 4.14.4-5 and RV 4.13.5):
“With what autonomous power does he [the Sun] journey? Who has seen it? As skambha [pillar] of heaven, utterly fixed, he protects the vault.”
and the one instance in the middle layer (RV 9.86.46),
there is another hymn from the earliest layer (and certainly others) that also strongly points to a well-established ideology of an Imperishable Unity underlying the Gods.
Jamison and Brereton, the translators of the most recent scholarly Rig Veda (2014) and the most prominent Vedic scholars you are likely to know, even emphasize this fact, stating that this hymn typifies the “Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity”. And again this is the earliest layer of the Rig Veda, which is the earliest-composed complete Indo-European religious text we have, the very beginning of the Indo-European theological record.
So what basis do sociologists and historians have for stating that the Rig Veda and thus the Indo-European tradition affirmatively does NOT refer to any mystical unity or Absolute in its earliest layer, if Rig Veda scholars themselves actually say otherwise?
There isn’t one. Or, often, this is a misrepresentation of those historians. As usual this claim is entirely based on perceived gaps in the theological record and an assumption that anything that doesn’t explicitly label itself as an Absolute, up to our standard of clarity, cannot be referring to one. But this is plainly fallacious.
As Jamison and Brereton state of this hymn, RV 3.55.1:
“The most obvious feature of this hymn is the refrain found in every verse: “great is the one and only lordship of the gods,” notable for its emphasis on unity (ékam “one and only” is the final word of each verse) and for the juxtaposition and implied identity of asura(tvám) “lord(ship)” and devā́nām “gods,” given that in later Vedic the Asuras and the Devas are locked in eternal enmity.
This familiar Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity is further exemplified by the references to numerous gods (generally unnamed, but usually recognizable), especially in the second part of the hymn, in the manner of many All God hymns.”
Here is the hymn in their translation:
RV 3.55.1: “Then when the ancient dawns dawned forth, in the track of the cow a great imperishable (syllable) was born [/ was discerned],
which tends to the commandments of the gods: great is the one and only lordship of the gods.”
Aurobindo translates the final phrase as: “the vast, the mightiness of the Gods, the One (Ekam)" (III.55.1), which is validated by the fact that Ekam, One, is indeed the final word of each line on which the thematic emphasis lands.
The repeated use of “Ekam” (that is “one and only”) is also significant because the Absolute which appears in the final mandala of the Rig Veda is called “Tad Ekam,” “That One,” whereas of course the Absolute was known to the Greek philosophers as “The One,” “To Hen.”
Aurobindo also notes that words such as “The Timeless” or “Imperishable” are common descriptors of this eternal Absolute in Vedic scripture. Griffith translates the word for Imperishable in this hymn as “Eternal” and Aurobindo as “Unmoving.”
This indeed matches the special quality of the Brahman as found in other texts where it is characterized as the Eternal, having Unmoving Fixedness, and for specifically these reasons being the Foundation of all. Note that the Skambha of Heaven mentioned in the previous hymn is likewise said to be “utterly fixed”, which again is this special characteristic of nothing but the Absolute alone throughout the entire Vedic corpus.
What else indeed can have such a quality of Unmoving Imperishableness but an Eternal Absolute? Is there a response?
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