This indeed is a wonderful surprise!
This indeed is a happy wonderful surprise, thanks to Facebook. It is about my book The First Hymn of Rishi Vāmadeva. The surprise is to see the beautiful and knowledgeable letter to me from the late Prof RL Kashyap of Bangalore, an authority on the Rig Veda and founder of SAKSHI Trust. I had completely forgotten about it.
About RLK: “In the field of Vedic studies, he has made contribution including the complete translation into English all the four major and most ancient collection of verses in Sanskrit namely Rigveda Samhita, Krishna Yajurveda Samhita, and Samaveda, and Atharvaveda, consisting together of about 25000 metrical verses in the Sanskrit of Vedas (different from classical Sanskrit). Kashyap is the only person in the world to translate all the 4 vedas .” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangasami_L._Kashyap
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The First Hymn of Rishi Vāmadeva
Rig Veda Mandal IV Sukta 1
by Ry Deshpande (Author), Dr David Frawley (Foreword)
The fourth Mandala of Rig Veda coming from Rishi Vamadeva is a masterpiece in the Vedic literature. It has 58 Sūktas or Hymns with 589 verses or Richās. The first 15 Suktas are devoted to Agni and the next 17 to Indra, the remaining to other Gods. For our present study we have picked up the opening Sūkta. It has all the necessary elements of Vedic thought, Vedic symbolism, Vedic esotericism, Vedic sadhana, Vedic aims and goals and, of course all the rich elements of Vedic poetry. It is felt that study of this Sukta itself should prove quite rewarding to get into the spirit of Vedic compositions.
The attached image shows the full cover.
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About the book the Foreword says:
RY Deshpande is a great Vedic scholar, prolific author, disciple and writer on Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, including how it relates to the Veda. He has taken one of the key hymns of Rishi Vamadeva that explains the mystery of the ancient seers and their spiritual origins, notably the great Angirasas, the oldest and most central of the Vedic rishi families (gotras). He studies the hymn as a point of entrance in the vast Rigvedic universe beyond the ordinary human mind and its limited perceptions.
The book addresses this monumental mantric hymn on all levels of meaning, application, chanting, symbolism and structure. Having examined the existing literature of translations and interpretations of Vedic hymns, I do not think that any such comparable detailed and comprehensive study of a single hymn of the Rigveda has been made, and certainly not from a deeper vision like that of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga.
Deshpande’s study approaches the Rigveda as a Book of Poems, primarily as a book of deep spiritual poems, a Book of Poetry, and other factors follow in the sequel afterwards. He searches out the sources from which these mantric poems originate, linking them to inspirations from the worlds of Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, and Overmind, the spiritual planes beyond Mind, as described in Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga. He follows Sri Aurobindo in his various writings about what he calls the Overmind Æsthetics.
This poetic study by Deshpande vis-à-vis Rigveda is perhaps the first of its kind in the field. It shows that the Rigveda constitutes a much more exalted type of mantric poetry that opens the mind to higher planes of awareness far beyond the concerns of poetry in ordinary aesthetics that are largely confined to the intellect. Our inner being can follow such a mantric poetic energy towards a fundamental change of consciousness to a level of truth perception that takes us far beyond the ignorance of the world.
Vamadeva Shastri
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The First Hymn of Rishi Vamadeva: Rig Veda Mandal IV Sukta 1
Prof Kashyap writes: 23 August 2018
My Dear Sri R.Y. Deshpande
Namaste.
Thanks for your book, ‘The First Hymn of Rishi Vamadeva’. The book is excellent. The cover page is beautiful. Hearty congratulations.
I am very happy to see your writing of 70 pages on the poetry of Rig Veda in 28 sections. Kapali Shastri pointed out the high poetic nature of the suktas (65-71) of Rishi Parashara Shaktya, RV (1.65-1.73), even as compared with that of Kalidasa.
“How Sri Aurobindo came to study the Veda via language study is described in Sri Aurobindo own words in Puranas ‘The Aurobindo Vedic Glossary’. Sri Aurobindo quotation on the view of moderns on poetry is interesting, “ a level of intellect and fancy, … the nautch girl of mind” (ibid of I-20) is very apt.
It would have been useful, if you had given the word by word meaning for all the 20 verses. You do it for some only. Some where you give 2 different meanings for vishvesham, occurring (4.1.20). It has only one meaning of ‘for all’ or ‘all’.
The Foreword writer (D.F.) in page (xxiii) omits major contributions of Rig Veda such as Prof. S.K. Ramachandra Rao (17 volumes), Kiran Sarma of Assam in whose honour the very interesting book titled “Veda Bharati’ was published in 2018. It has 50 chapters on many aspects of Veda by 50 scholars, with many quotations of veda. See
D.F. even omits the great Vedic scholars A.B. Purani. What is book on Veda written by Swami Veda Bharati? Page xx states that ‘Rig Veda is the oldest’, I tend to disagree. Sri Aurobindo accepts that all the 25,000 verses of veda was originally one collection, later divided into four samhitas. Some particular suktas like RV (10.70) is called ‘late’ by Sri Aurobindo.
The potential reader of your book has to have some exposure to Veda, Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri and your high class English which is beyond the pale of the most modern Indians of call-centre tradition.
SAKSHI is proud to publish the complete translation of four Vedas in 3 other Indian languages Kannada, Telugu and Tamil. Its smaller books are in 7 Indian languages. We teach veda chanting to children in govt. schools in low income area houses, 3500 students in about 50 schools in Karnataka. The Veda mantra are in Kannada script with meaning. The feedback from students is very very positive.
With best regards
R.L. Kashyap
Agni, pure 
The Winds of Wonder 
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