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The Uttararchika consists of twenty one chapters (mantras
651-1875).
The theme of Samaveda is, predominantly, musical
celebration of three attributes of the Godhead, Parama Brahma:
Agni, Indra and Soma. Here and there, there are other themes
too, but they are rare rather than frequent: Indragni, Mitra-Varuna,
Usha, Ashvins, Maruts, Aditya, Vishvedeva, Surya as Atma,
Sarasvati, Savita, Brahmanaspati, Vishnu, Brhaspati, and
Vishvakarma.
However, these themes do not mean different deities, they
are reflections of the existential manifestation of the same One
Brahma, immanent as well as transcendent. God is One, says
Rgveda (1, 164, 46), holy sages speak of It in many different
ways by different names such as Agni, Indra, Mitra, Varuna and
many more. Atharva-veda, in fact, has almost the last word: God
is one, only one, neither two nor three nor four, nor five, nor six,
nor seven, nor eight, nor nine, nor ten (13, 4, 12 and 16-18). The
celebration of Agni, Indra and Soma is celebration of the One
Supreme Divinity, the original, ultimate and eternal Unity of
existence reflecting in infinite variety, Aum.
Aum: this alone is the imperishable Divine, the Word.
This all is the expansive creative evolution of That, the living
articulation of That, the Veda, the Sama. That is the Seed (Gita,
7, 10), that is the womb, Hiranyagarbha (Rgveda 1, 121, 1), That
is the Tree of Existence (Rgveda 1, 164, 20), the Ashvattha
(Kathopanishad 2, 3, 1) which grows on and on from the root to
the expansive filaments (Gita, 15, 1-2), the germination as well
as the termination of a life cycle in Eternity. That is the Purusha,
self-conscious, self-articulative, self-generative, self-progressive,
self-recessive, Cosmic Personality (Rgveda 10, 90, 1-16). That
same is Agni, Indra, Soma and others of Samaveda. Sama
celebrates That in music in a state of Ananda.
All the 1875 mantras of Samaveda, each mantra being
like a note of a Raga, make up the symphony of the divine Rks of
the Sama, the Song Celestial of the variety, stability, unity, peace
and bliss of life for the yearning soul:
The celebration of Agni is the celebration of the divine
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