Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 5. The honey: the Self shining in all beings
New to these pages?
Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
Dadhyac declares the honey
This indeed is that honey which Dadhyac Atharvana declared to the two Asvins. Seeing this, the seer said: That fierce deed you did for the sake of gain, O men, I make manifest as thunder makes manifest the rain: the honey that Dadhyac Atharvana declared to you through the head of a horse.
This is that very honey-knowledge (madhu-vidya) which Dadhyac, the son of Atharvan, taught to the two Asvins. A seer (rsi), beholding it, sang the Rgveda verse: O Asvins in human form, the terrible deed you did out of desire for this knowledge I now disclose, as thunder discloses the coming rain, namely how Dadhyac Atharvana taught you the honey by speaking through a horse's head.
In the commentaries
Sankara turns to the lineage that carried this honey. This very knowledge, he notes, is the madhu that Dadhyac, versed in the Atharvan, taught the two Asvins, and the seer's hymns are quoted to seal it. He treats the strange tale, the Asvins fixing a horse's head on Dadhyac so the secret could be told through it without breaking his vow, as praise of the teaching's worth, not as its substance: a knowledge so guarded that it had to be smuggled past Indra's threat shows how rare and high it is. The point for him is continuity, that the truth of the one Self in all has a transmission, teacher to taught, and is not a private fancy.