I just asked ChatGPT for a 1,000-word essay on the Rigveda and received a predictable answer. It told me when it was probably composed and who some of the main gods were (including Indra, the god of storms and Agni, the god of fire). But it missed the text’s spirit and dense meanings.
The text is much less focused on describing details about things, events, and locations in the world than the most influential ancient Greek writings are. It has many levels of meaning. For example, Sri Aurobindo, in The Secret of the Veda, said that the word ghrta, which has been translated into English as clarified butter that priests poured over sacrifices, was also said in the Rigveda to drip from heaven, Indra’s horses, and the mind. Pointing out that these meanings wouldn’t make sense if ghrta only referred to clarified butter, he thought that it generally meant a rich or warm brightness that has spiritual energies which pervade the whole universe.
The word go meant cow, but it also sometimes meant light and mental illumination. Asva (horse) sometimes meant energy. Aurobindo thus thought that go and asva did not only refer to animals that Vedic priests prayed for, but also inner illumination and strength. He said that asva was also used as a figure of prana (the vital breath of the cosmos, which energizes and links mind and matter). Asva was also associated with ideas of impulsion, force, enjoyment, and possession.
Agni was the name of the second most frequently honored god in the Rigveda, and he was associated with fire, which burned sacrifices and transported them to the sky for the gods. But the word also meant strength, brightness, force, and brilliance. It’s etymologically related to the English word ignite and the Latin word for fire, ignis. Aurobindo thus thought that Agni’s name could invoke illuminated energy which builds up worlds and enables people to reach their highest spiritual potentials.
The meanings of many words in the Rigveda’s hymns are too abundant to be confined to one class of objects. Aurobindo wrote that words in them were originally energies full of undefined potential, which only later condensed into fixed signs and symbols with precise meanings. Several ancient Indian linguists wrote that this multitude of meanings of single words was common in the Rigveda; they held different assumptions about language than what Westerners have often maintained.
Instead of focusing on descriptions and stories of visible and distinct objects and people, language emanated from a more primary seed of energy called bija, which later differentiated into the things people conventionally see in the world. The Indologist David Frawley wrote that reality primarily consists of vibrations and that Sanskrit letters embody primeval sounds from them. Vedic rishis, who were supposed to have been unusually sensitive to subtle energies, heard them and transmitted them as the Rigveda’s verses. Some of the main purposes of language in ancient India were to more deeply immerse people’s consciousness in the vast field of energies that the universe came from and to employ them to benefit the community. Different assumptions about the most basic nature of language and meaning emerged in India and the West.
AI still has a long way to go before it can convey all the subtleties in different cultures’ ideas about reality and experience. It also doesn’t come close to capturing the varieties of ways in which cultures have emphasized sensual experience. Many have made sound more central than the modern West has. AI has largely inherited the modern West’s bias towards vision. The world’s cultures hold many more riches than what AI can currently process.