... consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive... Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent... in the passage about the Bees need not mean honey and much more probably means the honeyed wine of Soma, the rendering “bees” is one of the novel, conjectural & highly doubtful suggestions of European scholarship. All the other proofs that are heaped on us are of a like nature & brilliantly flimsy ingenuity, & we end our sceptical scrutiny admiring, but still sceptical. We feel after all that an accumulation ...
... structure and entirely childlike in its outlook upon the world that environed it. The ritualism which Sayana accepted as part of a divine knowledge and as endowed with a mysterious efficacy, European scholarship accepted as an elaboration of the old savage propitiatory sacrifices offered to imaginary superhuman personalities who might be benevolent or malevolent according as they were worshipped or... highest heaven or to the lowest abyss. It is obvious that a philology so imperfect may be a brilliant aid, but can never be a sure guide to the sense of Veda. We have to recognise in fact that European scholarship in its dealings with the Veda has derived an excessive prestige from its association in the popular mind with the march of European Science. The truth is that there is an enormous gulf between... up new theories which if established, would considerably alter our view of the external sense of the hymns. Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in the Vedas has accepted the general conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows and the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended ...
... literary, historical and practical value. It is certainly not creditable to European scholarship that after so many decades of Sanscrit research, the problem of the Mahabharata which should really be the pivot for all the rest, has remained practically untouched. For it is not exaggeration to say that European scholarship has shed no light whatever on the Mahabharata beyond the bare fact that it is ...
... body of poetry. Being so it is the pivot on which the history of Sanscrit literature, and incidentally the history of Aryan civilisation in India, must perforce turn. To the great discredit of European scholarship the problem of this all-important work is one that remains not only unsolved, but untouched. Yet until it is solved, until the confusion of its heterogeneous materials is reduced to some sort... coherent nor reliable. All that we know of the Mahabharata at present is that it is the work of several hands and of different periods—this is literally the limit of the reliable knowledge European scholarship has so far been able to extract from it. For the rest we have to be content with arbitrary conjectures based either upon an unwarrantable application of European analogies to Indian things or ...
... entirety the traditional interpretation of the Indian scholar Sayana and we have in our own day the interpretation constructed after an immense labour of comparison and conjecture by modern European scholarship. Both of them present one characteristic in common, the extraordinary incoherence and poverty of sense which their results stamp upon the ancient hymns. The separate lines can be given, whether... discipline of self-culture which were then the highest achievement of the human race. The ritual system recognised by Sayana may, in its externalities, stand; the naturalistic sense discovered by European scholarship may, in its general conceptions, be accepted; but behind them there is always the true and still hidden secret of the Veda,—the secret words, niṇyā vacāṁsi , which were spoken for the purified ...
... to henotheism and from henotheism to pantheism which we can trace to some extent in the Vedas themselves and of which the Upanishads are the culmination. Some, notably the Indian disciples of European scholarship—interpreting these ancient movements by the light of our very different modern intellectuality or pushed by the Page 322 besetting Occidental impulse to search in our Indian origins... grand lines in the Upanishads. If I am right, we have here an illuminating fact of the greatest importance to the Hindu religion, a fact which will light up, I am certain, much in the Veda that European scholarship has left obscure and will provide our modern study of the development of Hindu Civilisation with a scientific basis and a principle of unbroken continuity; we may find the earliest hymns of ...
... A System of Vedic Psychology [A] Prefatory The successes of European science have cast the shadow of their authority & prestige over the speculations of European scholarship; for European thought is, in appearance, a serried army marching to world-conquest and we who undergo the yoke of its tyranny, we, who paralysed by that fascination and overborne by that domination... imagination. The greater part of the discoveries of European Science (its discoveries, not its intellectual generalisations) belong to the first category; the greater part of the conclusions of European scholarship to the second. The best European thought has itself no illusions on this score. One of the greatest of European scholars & foremost of European thinkers, Ernest Renan, after commencing his ...
... this Page 3 theory? Did the writers of the Upanishads foist upon the Riks a meaning which was not there but read into it by their imagination or a fanciful interpretation? Modern European scholarship insists on having it so. And it has persuaded the mind of modern India. In favour of this view is the fact that the Rishis of the Veda were not only seers but singers and priests of sacrifice... Veda as a source of Indian civilisation, its religion, its philosophy, its culture is more in consonance with historical fact than the European scouting of this idea. The nineteenth-century European scholarship writing in a period of materialistic rationalism regarded the history of the race as a development out of primitive barbarism or semi-barbarism, a crude social life and religion and a mass of ...
... and explanations. The Upanishads give their clue to the psychological and philosophical ideas of the earlier Rishis and hand down to us their methods of spiritual experience and intuition. European scholarship supplies a critical method of comparative research, yet to be perfected, but capable of immensely increasing the materials available and sure eventually to give a scientific certainty and firm... and each god as having specific position in the hierarchy of the gods. The Vedic system is thus neither clearly monotheistic nor pantheistic, nor deistic; it is not even clearly polytheistic. European scholarship has called it henotheistic. But when we examine this system, we find it ultimately to be monotheistic and monistic. The polytheism of the Veda is subordinate to monotheism and monism. The gods ...
... statement of the problem and its solution. It is interesting to note that Sri Aurobindo himself had, to begin with, accepted without examination, before himself reading the Veda, the conclusions of European scholarship both as to religious and historical as well as ethical sense of the Vedic hymns. It was only after his arrival in Pondicherry in 1910 that in the course of his yogic experiences, his thoughts... explanations. In the Upanishads, he found various clues to the psychological and philosophical ideas of the Vedic Rishis, and he underlined their-method of spiritual experience and intuition. In European scholarship, he appreciated the critical method of comparative research, which when perfected, would be found capable of increasing immensely the materials available and, therefore, eventually, of giving ...
... and understood in mediaeval and modern India. The method followed assures a sound basis free from the vagaries of learned ignorance and unfettered ingenuity which render so much of the work of European scholarship on Indian subjects fantastic, unsound and ephemeral. It cannot, we think, be the final attitude; an independent scrutiny of the ancient scriptures and forms of philosophy and religion is needed ...
... these pieces as drafts for the work published in the Arya from 1914 to 1916. Many ideas and examples that occur in The Secret of the Veda are found in these earlier pieces. The Veda and European Scholarship . Early 1912. Heading in the manuscript: “Veda.” This piece follows directly after entries for the Record of Yoga dated 13 January to 8 February 1912. The Hymns of Madhuchchhandas ...
... the indigenous culture it had invaded. These errors arise inevitably as part of the total misunderstanding of Vedic thought for which the old Brahmanic ritualism is responsible and to which European scholarship by the exaggeration of a minor and external element in the Vedic mythology has only given a new and yet more misleading form. The importance of the Vedic gods has not to be measured by the ...
... reasoning to this difficult problem. Page 35 Like the majority of educated Indians I had passively accepted without examination, before myself reading the Veda, the conclusions of European Scholarship both as to the religious and as to the historical and ethnical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the ...
... strong and unquestioning orthodoxy dispenses from the obligations of the critical spirit, can for a moment imagine that Sayana holds for us the key to their meaning. The advent and labours of European scholarship have rescued these divine hymns from a long secrecy and neglect, but have thrown no trustworthy illumination on their secret. Rather, if Indians hardly understand the Vedas at all, the Europeans ...
... externalities, stand; the ¹³. Ibid., pp. 14-15. 14. The Secret of the Veda, SABCL VoL 10, p. 6. Page 201 naturalistic sense discovered by European scholarship may, in its general conceptions, be accepted; but behind them there is always the true and still hidden secret of the Veda, - the secret words, nin yā vachāmsi, which were spoken ...
... reasoning to this difficult problem. "² { I } " Like the majority of educated Indians I had passively accepted without examination; before myself reading the Veda, the conclusions of European scholarship both as to the religious and as to the historical and ethical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the ...
... Hindu Drama The origin of the Sanscrit drama, like the origin of all Hindu arts and sciences, is lost in the silence of antiquity; and there one might be content to leave it. But European scholarship abhors a vacuum, even where Nature allows it; confronted with a void in its knowledge, it is always ready to fill it up with a conjecture and this habit of mind while it has led to many interesting ...
... imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and laborious, left to us by the Acharya Sayana. Nor does the reproach lie in the mouth of those who take as final the recent labours of European scholarship. For if ever there was a toil of interpretation in which the loosest rein has been given to an ingenious speculation, in which doubtful indications have been snatched at as certain proofs, in ...
... of a single stock. But our new Western Pandits & authorities tell us that we are in error. All of us from ancient Yajnavalkya to the modern Vaidika have been making a huge millennial mistake. European scholarship applying for the first time the test of a correct philology to these obscure writings has corrected the mistake. It has discovered that the Vedas are of an entirely different character from ...
... and in it all fulfil their workings," ṛtasya preṣā ṛtasya dhītir, viśvādyur viśve apāṁsi cakruḥ . And in order that we may not, haunted by the unfortunate misconstruction of the Veda which European scholarship has imposed on the modern mind, carry with us the idea of the seven earthly rivers of the Punjab into the super-terrestrial achievement of the human forefathers, we will note what Parashara ...
... from which it came to signify full force, copiousness, strength, and by an easy transition substance & plenty in the sense of wealth and possessions. There can be no doubt about Vajin. But European scholarship has confused for us the approach to the sense of Arvan. Ar is a common Sanscrit root, the basis of ari, Arya, Aryama and a number of well known words. But the scholars tell us that it means ...
... teach,—no other renunciation. December, 1914 Like the majority of educated Indians I had passively accepted without examination, before myself reading the Veda, the conclusions of European Scholarship both as to the religious and as to the historical and ethnical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the ...
... content to insist on the inconclusiveness of the initial work of the philologists. I repeat, the common assumption in Europe and among English-educated Indians that the researches of European Page 318 scholarship have fixed for us correctly, conclusively & finally the meaning of Veda and the origin & process of development of Vedanta, is an assumption not yet justified and until it is justified ...
... 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 ...
... light, for that is Indra, - but of the highest covering ether and all oceans. All expanses are Varuṇa's; every infinity is his property and estate." Chattopadhyaya 496 comes down heavily on European scholarship: The name Varuṇa is not found outside India. Its equation with Greek Ouranós, though accepted by philologists, must be rejected on account of two differences, the quality of the second ...
... northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions". Our new culling reads: "Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in the Vedas has accepted the general conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows and the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended ...
... l discipline of self-culture which were then the highest achievement of the human race. The ritual recognised by Sayana may, in its externalities, stand the naturalistic sense discovered by European scholarship may, in its general conceptions, be accepted; but behind them there is always the true and still hidden secret of the Veda, the secret words Ninya Vacamsi, which were spoken for the purified ...
... hypothesis must be supported by facts. To support it by a mass of other hypotheses is to abuse & Page 342 exceed the permissibility of conjecture in scientific research." European scholarship had turned the light of its comparative philology on the Veda. It was floating some wild theories, among them the obnoxious 'Aryan invasion' theory. The result? We all know. A widely popularized ...
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