Page 17 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

Sanatana Dharma

Origins of Aryan Dharma
We see the first form and stage of this knowledge and this sad-
hana in the Rigveda, the earliest characters inscribed on the Stupa
near the entrance to the temple of the Aryan dharma at the begin-
ning of history. We cannot say with certainty that it finds expres-
sion for the first time in the Rigveda, because even the Rishis of the
Rigveda admit that those who were before them, the early ances-
tors of the Aryan race, 'the primeval fathers of the human race', had
discovered this path of truth and immortality for the later man. They
also say that the new Rishis were only following the path which had
been shown to them by the ancient Rishis. We find that the man-
tra of the Rigveda is the echo of the words of the 'fathers', of the
Divine speech they uttered; consequently, the form of the dharma
that we see in the Rigveda can be said to be its earliest form. The
knowledge of the Upanishads, the sadhana of the Vedanta are
only a very noble and generous transformation of this dharma. The
knowledge of the supreme Divine and the sadhana for attaining the
Divine life of the Vedas, the Self-knowledge and the sadhana for
realising the Brahman of the Upanishads, both of them are based
on a synthetic dharma; various aspects of the cosmic Purusha and
the cosmic Shakti, the supreme Divine unifying all the truths of the
Brahman, the experience and the pursuit of the All-Brahman are its
intimate subject-matter.
Writings in bengali: 61-62

Sanatana Dharma and India
We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatana
Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other re-
ligions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but
the Sanatana Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much
to be believed as lived. This is the dharma that for the salvation of

All India Magazine, August 2025 17