Vedic and Philological Studies

The Veda and European Scholarship

The handling of the Vedic hymns by the bold & ingenious scholarship of the Europeans has had at any rate one striking outcome,—it has converted the once admired, august & mysterious sacred books of the Hindus into a mass of incoherent rubbish. An Indian freethinker recently gave it as his opinion that the quickest & most effective way to make an end [to] the Hindu religion would be to translate the Vedas, its foundation, into the vernaculars & distribute them cheaply by the thousand throughout the peninsula.I have no doubt the method would be fairly effective, if not in destroying Hinduism, at least in driving it more exclusively into its stronghold of Vedanta. For, if the translation adopted were based on the work of European scholars, I can well imagine the idea that the mind of the coming generations would form about these ancient writings. I think there would be a general agreement that a more gross, meaningless & confused collection of balderdash had never been composed or penned. If this description should be thought too violent I would only ask the objector to read for himself Max Muller’s translation of the hymn by Kanwa son of Ghora to the Maruts, the 39th of the 1st Mandala and ask himself honestly what sense worth having he can make out of it—even leaving aside the language & images, looking beyond them to the thing the poet is trying to say. For my part all I can make out, [is]that some primitive savage named Kanwa with a hopelessly confused brain and chaotic imagination is greatly terrified by some idea, sight or imagination of ghost, fiend or devil and calls upon the storm-gods to get rid of the cause of his fear. The language in which he expresses his appeal, is as barbarous & confused as the thought. In one verse he leaps from one thought to another which has no visible connection with its predecessor. The similes & metaphors are grotesque & inappropriate, eg “you cast

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forwards your measure like a blast of fire”, “Come to us with your favours as lightnings go in quest of rain.” Half the verse presents, when sounded, no intelligible sense, but there is a good deal of half-insane sound & fury.

The European scholar will reply that he cannot help it—he deals with the Vedas according to his philology & his ideas of what the text ought to mean, & this is the result given by his scholarship & his philology. He is even well satisfied, for his theory, founded on Western Science, is that men writing so long ago must have been undeveloped semi-savages and their writing very likely to be the stuff of a barbarous imagination which to the modern mind makes neither good sense nor good poetry. The European is not at fault; he translates according to his knowledge.

But the Hindu who knows the depth & sublimity of the Upanishads, who has in his spiritual experience tested, realised & established Vedantic truth by a sure & unfailing experience as surely as the scientist has tested & established his laws of gravitation & the indestructibility of matter,—the Hindu perceiving many truths of Veda surviving in Purana & Tantra & Itihasa, already present in the deeper passages of the Brahmanas,—will not easily believe that the European scholars’ is the last word & that in this modern rubbish of Nature-worship & incoherent semi-savage poetry we have the secret of that Veda from which Vedanta, Purana, Tantra, Itihasa, Yoga&Brahmana spring, that Veda which was so admirable to the greatest minds of antiquity. He will ask whether no other interpretation can arise from the text,—whether the philology of the Europeans is so perfect & infallible as to forbid us to review & question their results.

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