Ram Swarup explores how the ancient Ṛgveda and other Vedic literatures express the divine not through abstract theological concepts but through concrete images rooted in nature and human experience. He begins by situating this discussion within his broader theory of language: higher meanings reside within words and images, and names of gods are not arbitrary labels but expressions of deep psychic truths and spiritual consciousness implanted within the human soul. These meanings must be rediscovered through inner enquiry and devotion rather than merely observed on the surface. However, the problem that such a seeker faces at the very inception comes from the left-leaning anthropology. Scholars often regard these deities as products of an “early” mind struggling to conceptualize a unitary principle. But to do so is to misunderstand both the spiritual depth of the Vedic seers and their linguistic intuition.
Swarup questions the modern academic dismissal of Vedic gods as mere primitive nature worship. According to him, the new persecutors of the Vedic deities “are not theologians and religious zealots but staid academicians” to whom “these Gods are not false, but primitive” (p. 113). They see the formation of these gods as primitive mind’s incapability to understand the scientific mechanisms behind the natural phenomena, leading them with an urge to attribute divinity to all of them. Over time, men rose beyond their struggles with the sensuous world and evolved to the intellectual stage where the quest for one abstract god beyond sensory perception began. Thus, by labelling the Vedic gods as primitive, they debase their sanctity to pose the superiority of the Semitic monotheism which is deemed as man’s intellectual evolution and urge for unity. However, Ram Swarup ji questions that “if Gods are born of religious urges and spiritual intuitions, it is difficult to see how modern European Christians are superior in this respect” (p. 114).
Instead of reflecting a simplistic worldview, Vedic gods articulate an integrated vision where the concrete and the abstract interpenetrate— where sensuous images of fire, sun, sky, rivers, and horses serve as symbols of psychic forces, philosophical concepts, and spiritual realities. A key theme is that names of physical objects become names of ideas, psychic truths, and gods. Illustrating this, Swarup explains how words like vāja (horse) derive from roots that also yield concepts of power, zeal, strength, heroism, and vigour, subsequently appearing in the epithets of gods such as vājapati (lord of strength) which is an epithet of Agni. Here the sensuous meaning gives rise to an intellectual and then a spiritual meaning, showing how language naturally bridges worlds of experience and consciousness. “But when spiritual consciousness is withdrawn and a physical consciousness comes to the fore, objects and words too become dead and self-contained… The same old words are there but they do not mean the same things; the old scriptures are there but the light goes out of them. The new age deals with the shell only. And the hiatus is not linguistic but mental”, warns Ram Swarup ji (pp. 118-119).
Similarly, sun (sūrya), fire (agni), and wind (vāyu, marut) are not mere natural elements but living symbols of light, energy, transformation, and dynamic life forces. For the Vedic seers, such images were not ornamental; they invoked the divine presence within the believer. To them, the world became a text where every stone, every river, or the mere flame of the bonfire are visible signs of the invisible truth underlying them. Swarup further shows that this use of concrete imagery also links Vedic religious sensibility with ancient spiritual traditions beyond India.
For example, he notes that early words for ‘god’ in other Indo-European languages (such as gotse in German and guth in Gothic) connected to images or figures and that even the Hebrew term Elohim was originally plural in form — all indicating a shared human impulse to express the divine through vivid, worldly images before later theological abstraction.
To conclude, the Vedic gods are not relics of primitive thought but articulations of deep linguistic and spiritual insight. Their names and images are vehicles for higher meanings, connecting sensuous experience, mind (manas), intellect (buddhi), and spiritual consciousness (ātman). In doing so, Swarup defends the Vedic tradition against reductive interpretations and reveals its prescient understanding of language as a bridge between the manifest and the Unmanifest.
