Page 5 - Seers and Sages of India

Rishi – Head of the Human World

In the early days of the Indian civilization, the Rishi was the

head of the human world. The deep and significant ways in

which the stamp of the Rishi was imprinted on the entire life

and culture of the people has been described poetically by

Sri Aurobindo in the following passage:

“He was at once sage, poet, priest, scientist, prophet,

educator, scholar and legislator. He composed a song, and it

became one of the sacred hymns of the people; he emerged

from rapt communion with God to utter some puissant

sentence, which in after ages became the germ of mighty

philosophies; he conducted a sacrifice, and kings and peoples

rose on its seven flaming tongues to wealth and greatness; he

formulated an observant aphorism, and it was made the

foundation of some future science, ethical, practical or

physical; he gave a decision in a dispute and his verdict was

seed of a great code or legislative theory.

“In Himalayan forests or by the confluence of great rivers he

lived as the centre of a patriarchal family whose link was

thought-interchange and not blood-relationship, bright-eyed

children of sages, heroic striplings, earnest pursuers of

knowledge, destined to become themselves great Rishis or

renowned leaders of thought and action.”

(CWSA, Vol. 36, p. 134)