Dakshina is not what is paid to a priest

This time I have taken up the word dakshinaa, one of the most important words in the Vedic system of Yoga. The word dakshinaa is the feminine form of the word dakshina which usually means: right (not left), south, southern (as being on the right side of a person looking eastward), situated to the south, turned or directed southward, coming from south; straightforward, candid, sincere, pleasing, compliant; the right (hand or arm); able, clever, dexterous. The feminine word dakshinaa ordinarily means ‘a fee or present to the officiating priest, reward’. The root-sound from which these words are derived is daksh. The deeper implications of the words derived from this root-sound can be understood when we see their use in the Vedas. The root-sound daksh originally meant ‘to hurt, kill, be competent or able’. So the word daksha derived from daksh means: clever, skilful, competent, careful, and attentive. The word dakshinaa too has the above meanings and in addition it also refers to right-hand. In the Vedic period the word daksha signified strength and discernment. Dakshina, as a deity in the Vedas, represents the ‘separative intuitional discernment’. The root-sound daksh like other roots dash, dis, dah etc. refers to an aggressive pressure, division, cutting, crushing, burning etc. Sri Aurobindo in his writings on the Veda, explains that many of the words for strength had originally the idea of a force for injury, the aggressive strength of a fighter, slayer. According to Sri Aurobindo, in the psychology of the language development we find that when man wished to have words for mental conception his readiest method was to apply the figures of the physical action to the mental movement. Thus the idea of physical division or separation has converted into that of distinction, mental separation, discernment judgment etc. It is with this understanding we can very well say that the word daksha and dakshinaa refer to discernment, judgment, discriminative thought power etc. So, according to the psychological interpretation of the Veda, Sri Aurobindo considers dakshinaa as the separative intuitional discernment – one of the four faculties of Truth Consciousness. On the mental plane it refers to mental judgment. It is the discerning knowledge which comes with the dawn and enables the power in the mind to know aright and separate the light from the darkness, the truth from the falsehood, the straight from the crooked. She presides over the right hand power of Indra. This is the Goddess in the Vedas who discerns.