287p., Plts., Index, 23 cm. (Life and Vision of Vedic Seers, Vol.1)
CONTENTS
CONTENTS:- I. Life of Visvamitra: 1. Eminence. 2. Visvamitra as figuring in Valmiki's Ramayana. 3. Visvamitra in the Mahabharata. 4. Symbolism of struggle and Tapas. 5. Probable explanation of the duration of the Tapas. 6. Identity of the Vedic and post-Vedic Visvamitra. 7. Visvamitra as a Rigorous Tapasvin. 8. Devotion to Indra. 9. Pedigree of Visvamitra. 10. Family of Visvamitra. 11. Age of Visvamitra. 12. Feud between Visvamitra and Vasistha. 13. Visvamitra and the Candala. II. Cultural background: 1. Relationship between creative work and its environment. 2. Visvamitra's contact with foothills of the Himalayas. 3. Acquaintance with the sea. 4. Reference to Vast Plain and fertile land. 5. Reference to tall fruit-Laden trees. 6. Flora and fauna. 7. Reference to destructive people coming from the west. 8. Visvamitra and the Aryan problem. 9. Circumscription of Visvamitra's native place. III. Sacrificial background: 1. Complementarity of sacrifice and Tapas. 2. Sacrifice as a means to associating oneself with the cosmic rhythm. 3. Rta, Dharma and sacrifice. 4. Sacrifice as the principle of creation. 5. Sacrifice as the path of universal concord. 6. Sacrifice as a source of plenty. 7. Sacrifice and self-purification. 8. Sacrifice and vision of Mantra. 9. Vedic seer's role in the spiritualisation of the institution of sacrifice. IV. Sadhana and vision of Mantra: 1. Sadhana versus innate seerhood. 2. Probable reference to the teacher of Visvamitra. 3. Devotion to agni. 4. Yajna and Yoga. 5. Realisation of agni as self. 6. Sadhana of identity of the devotee with the deity. 7. Agni and revelation of Mantra. 8. Meaning of Mantra-Darsana and Mantra-Jagarana. 9. Seerhood of the Gayatri Mantra. V. Vision of the supreme being: 1. The primeval word Om. 2. Elucidation of the supreme being through agni. 3. Elucidation of the supreme being through the Sun. 4. The supreme as symbolised by Usas. 5. The supreme being as brought out by the Heaven and the Earth. 6. Rta as a pointer to the supreme being. 7. Time and space as a sheath of the supreme being. VI. Cosmogonic visions: 1. Agni. 2. Indra. 3. Heaven and earth. 4. Dharma. VII. Ethical visions: 1. Basis of ethics. 2. Idea of transformation of the mortal into the immortal and its bearing on ethics. 3. Yoga and Yajna as tools of transformation. 4. Rta and Satya as fundamentals of the Vedic ethics. 5. Attitude towards Purusarthas. 6. Problem of evil. 7. Sin and purgation. 8. Law of Karma. VIII. Scientific visions: 1. Expansion of space through the agency of Agni. 2. Velocity of light. 3. Mobility of the earth. 4. Possibility of scientific vision through intuition. 5. Visvamitra as innovator of the idea of zero.
DESCRIPTION
Life and vision of Vedic seers is a series aiming at reconstructing lives and thought contents of prominent Vedic seers so that they may emerge out in their individual capacities as great contributors to the history of human vision, ideation and understanding. The series is intended to cover as many seers as possible. This is the first volume of the series dealing with the life and attainments of Visvamitra, the seer of the sacred Gayatri Mantra. It retraces penetratively the contours of sadhana proceeding along which the great seer could get the vision of the Gayatri and predict prophetically enough the unparalleled longevity of the Indian culture and ethos under its aegis: Visvamitrasya raksati brahmedam bharatam janam.
