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This extolment and denigration was happening around
the time when the English language, English education and
missionary work had been introduced into India and was raging
on top. Swami Dayananda faced this challenge with boldness and
caution, still with an open mind, all prepared even for correction.
He based his interpretation of the Vedas on
Nirukta
and the
etymological principles of word interpretation, and interpretation
of the word in the context, both local and total, because the local
is an integral part of the total whole.
We are living in an age of science and reason, democracy
and freedom, globalism and global communication, and we feel
the need for a free and frank interfaith dialogue. In such an age,
ritualism and mythology is not enough. If we want to understand
and present Veda as a body of universal knowledge and articulation
of divine awareness of existence, there is no escape from Yaska,
Panini, Patanjali, Dayananda andAurobindo, because they provide
the key principles and practice of scientific interpretation of an
ancient scientific language such as Vedic Sanskrit which has no
historical parallel for comparison. The language of science tells
no stories, no myths. It states the truth pure and simple. Hence
the resort to Swami Dayananda, either before or after Sayana and
the western scholars, is indispensable.
There is one observation I must make on Swami
Dayananda. Swami Dayananda has given a socio-economic
orientation to the Vedic mantras because he underscores the
relevance of the Vedas to the social, economic and political
situation of humanity, especially in India, which was necessary
and highly meaningful. For example, the Ashwins, in general,
are the complementary powers of nature and humanity working
as twin forces like the positive and negative currents of electricity,
or like the theoretician and the laboratory man, or the curative
and recuperative powers of medicine and nature’s powers of
rejuvenation. Swami Dayananda often explains such powers in
the interest of practical understanding: he defines them as teacher
and preacher, or father and mother, sun and moon, fire and water,
prana andApana energy, ruler and council, scientist and engineer,
and so on, depending on the mantra context. Sometimes it appears
as if he is delimiting the open-ended general meaning of the Veda.
( xxviii )
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