It has been many days since we visited any vedic passage. Today, until few days, let us enter the vast immerse exploration of Purusha Sūkta.
SŪKTAM = Su + Uktam -> means a good utterance. Due to lack of words in English, I am sticking with the word “Good”. In absolute sense, a sūktam is an utterance of the splendor of “THAT or IT or HIM or HER” that utters forth through a seer in the highest state of “Existence”. Now, who is PURUSHA? It doesn’t mean MAN in its gender bias sense. Purusha is the ONE in all of us that expresses as “I AM” behind the egoistic “i am”. It is interesting to note here that Purusha and person has same etymological basis. HE or IT is the substratum of the very creation and its entities (matter and non-matter). His splendor which were realized by the seers was uttered forth in the form of this PURUSHA SUKTAM. When we recite it (of course the meaning should run in the background) with the help of all the keys like intonation, astrological, etc., and resonate with it, the PURUSHA expresses in US and we will merge the small i-am in the big I-AM (a collective unit of all the consciousness of this cosmos) – like a drop into an ocean.
This whole symbolism forms a backbone for this Sūkta.
Now let us go into each stanza and look at the import, meaning and explanation. Every sūkta starts and ends with a peace invocation for the welfare of every one. Its a kind gesture and a symbol of selflessness as well as a tradition. This sūktam also has a peace invocation at the start and at the end. I will not contrast the sūktam with the prevailing translations as my aim is only to establish ONE TRUTH and not to compare and contrast the multitude of its variegated expressions.
The reader is requested to keep an open mind as my commentary might vary from orthodox notions, as I include ideas of Master.E.K, my own interpolations and few concepts from basic Sciences.
“The purusha has thousand heads, thousand eyes and thousand feet. He has encompassed the earth and pervaded the space around. He is beyond the count with ten digits/inches.”
Sahasra generally means thousand. But in this context, it should imply infinite. We are comprised of three primary sets — Brain (the seat of mind, intelligence, intellect, etc.), “sense organs (eyes, ears etc.)” and “organs of action (hands, feet, etc.)”. We perceive this universe with help of our sense organs, analyse in the brain and reciprocate with the help of organs of action. As they say “Man is made in the image of GOD“, we can use this axiom and look at purusha as our image. But not in the sense of physical mapping, but in the sense of conceptual mapping. Here, you can see that the seers speaking of Purusha’s HEAD, EYES and FEET. They not only imply the functionality of all the three sets which I mentioned above, as existing for purusha, but also imply that they are expressed in infinite ways, which we can’t comprehend yet (with our limited functionality of awareness). Our set(s) is a subset of HIS. So, that entity or being whom the seers are addressing as PURUSHA, has a multi dimensional functionality. Also, the three sets above can be instead differentiated to only TWO sets — Matter and Non-Matter — i.e. the Intellect, Mind, sense of sight, etc., are non-matter; where as the rest of them are matter. So, the purusha in a way is described to surpass matter and non-matter (basically everything and everyone) in the ways incomprehensible to us .
Instead of earth, one can take the import to mean ‘globe of creation’ and thus the seers are speaking of the whole cosmos as a unit-space here. They are saying that this PURUSHA whom they discovered, is surrounded and filled in the whole COSMOS i.e. he is being the substratum of this creation. Also, it seems that he is beyond the count by ten fingers which would mean that number of ways of his standing beyond is un-countable. But daśāṃguḷam can also mean ten digits. If we take import to be that the purusha has surpassed the creation by ten digits, it will reveal a very nice interesting point. You see, we all are supposed to have 10 fingers (more or less entails of un-commonality). The sense of count and sense of discrimination that makes us realize we have ’10’ fingers is already in us. This sense or consciousness is called number consciousness. Consider digits from 0 to 9. Any other integer is repetition of these 10 digits in periodical way. i.e. 12 is a second cycle count of 0 to 9 till 2 and symbolized by 1 and 2. So, the basic set is {0,1,2,…..9}. Any thing in this universe can be represented by these 10 digits (if properly coded — as it is a basis set). But the seers say that PURUSHA even surpassed this counting system (that is most natural to us – the decimal) and is beyond these 10 digits.
Note 1: Also, the number 10 has a symbolic meaning — ‘0’ representing cycles or periodicity and ‘1’ representing the Unified or ONE-ness of Purusha and thus 10 = 1 + 0 = 1; meaning how much ever you search this creation which is made up of potencies of 10 digits (numerical mapping of numbers to created entities), what you will find in essence is HIM alone (‘1’).
Note 2: ’10’ here can imply directions i.e. 8 on a plane (E-W-N-S and NE-NW-SE-SW) and one above and one below — basically to say that he pervaded all directions of space
Note 3: Beyond Comprehension doesn’t mean we will never understand and that seers are just playing around. It means that our way of comprehension is to be fine tuned.
Note 4: Akṣam also means spokes. The one with 1000 or infinite spokes is the SUN. So, Purusha is the inner-SUN of solar god. He is named as Sūrāṃtarvarti.
Note 5: Speciality of Sahasra: ‘SAHASRA’ is made up of ‘SA + HA + SA + RA’. Close your eyes and listen to the breath that you take, by closing your mouth and only through the nose. The sound it makes, as it passes through nostrils is a hissing sound — symbolized by ‘ssssssss’ or ‘Sa‘. When you exhale, it exists through vocal region causing a “Haaaaaaa” kind of sound symbolized by ‘Ha‘. The second ‘SA’ symbolizes the recurrence in the breath and hence is symbolic for periodicity. ‘RA‘ is the expressive ability and here, it is the vibration that occurs in vocals which is necessary for externalizing a WORD as an utterance. So, SAHASRA, means the ONE who inhales, exhales and utters the creation as a periodic breath. That is why, the creation is called BREATH of BRAḤMAN.
PhD (Quantum Physics), M.Sc. (IIT Madras), B.Tech. (LNMIIT).
Bridging the depths of Science and the wisdom of the Vedas
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