A study of the way of writing of the Vedic mystics, their philosophic system,
their system of symbols and the truths they figure, and translations of selected
hymns of the Rig-Veda. Is there at all or is there still a secret of the Veda?
Sri Aurobindo asks in the opening sentence of this book. He examines the
ritualistic and naturalistic theory of nineteenth-century European scholars and
then sets forth his own view: The hypothesis I propose is that the Rig-veda is
itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of
human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were