Mantras & avatAra

Source: TW

“Merely by looking at Mantra samhita of Veda you cannot ascertain how the mantras were used”

On a side-note, several mantras are speech-acts ascribed to the enemies of the Devas & Devayājakas, etc. You cannot interpret the mantra without the factual context in which it was generated in the Ṛṣi’s mind. And that’s why you need the Brāhmaṇas to make sense of the Veda.

Just as an Avatāra existed before the universe but becomes manifest to most of us through birth within historical time, through the union of an actual father & mother, so too the mantras, though they exist beforehand in Īśvara, they manifest on historical time through the same process all sentences are generated: the union of external stimuli (events) & the mind with its unlimited capacity for finding the right combination of words, which happens to be that mantra that existed way before that Ṛṣi.

But just as one may perceive an Avatāra outside the context of the human reality in which it became incarnate, which perception may not have been available to even the Avatāra’s parents at that point in historical time, by way of viśeṣa-dṛṣṭi or a deep insight born of scriptural reflection,
one may also understand the inner meanings of a mantra which may not have been known to the Ṛṣi himself or anyone in his generation during his time on earth.