Yaska : author of the Nirukta, the oldest known but not the first commentator on Vedic hymns, for he refers to earlier commentators.
... 454 But Yaska Ni. 10.21 तृतीयोऽग्निस्तो पतिरित्यपि निगमो भवति Or, says S, he is the जनिनां पालयिता because he gives the fruit by the sacrifices performed. I.66 (5) चराथा चरथया—चरथः पशुः । तत्प्रभवैर्हृदयादिभिः साध्याहुतिरपि चरथेत्युच्यते—the effect being expressed by the cause वसत्या पुरोडाशाद्याहुत्या (in the Sadhyahuti)—निवसतीति स्थावरो व्रीह्यादिर्वसतिः—Yaska नक्षंते So... दीप्तः—keen flaming समत्सु समानं माद्यंत्येष्विति समदः संग्रामाः यद्वा सम्यगत्ति भक्षयति वीरानिति समत् I.66 (4) सेना इनेन सह वर्वत इति सेना अंम दधाति भयं करोती बलं दधाति वा = is strong—Yaska. दिद्युत् वज्रनाम here = इषु like the shining faced arrow of the shooter it frightens the enemy यमः Agni is giver of desires to praisers यच्छतीति or twin because born with Indra. All creatures... जरसे स्तुयस इति यदस्ति स्वे दमे S. उत्तरवेदिलक्षणे निवासस्थाने । स्वो लोको यदुत्तरवेदीनाभिरिति श्रुतेः (b) रत्नं रमणीयं कर्मफलं वा (15) सर्वताता. S. सर्वासु कर्मततिषु यद्वा सर्वेषु यज्ञेषु. Yaska सर्वाः स्तुतयो येषु यागेषु । अदिते अखंडनीय (b) भद्रेण भजनीयेन तल्याणेन चोदयासि S. संयोजयसि “He whom thou yokest with happy force, becomes wealthy; and let us be yoked with wealth accompanied ...
... Philology. But Yaska the etymologist does not rank with Yaska the lexicographer. Scientific grammar was first developed by Indian learning, but the beginnings of sound philology we owe to modern research. Nothing can be more fanciful and lawless than the methods of mere ingenuity used by the old etymologists down even to the nineteenth century, whether in Europe or India. And when Yaska follows these... When Yaska gives as a lexicographer the various meanings of Vedic words, his authority is great and the help he gives is of the first importance. It does not appear that he possessed all the ancient significances, for many had been obliterated by Time and Change and in the absence of a scientific Philology could not be restored. But much also had been preserved by tradition. Wherever Yaska preserves... for the recovery of the lost secret the two millenniums of scholastic orthodoxy have left us some invaluable aids, a text determined scrupulously to its very accentuation, the important lexicon of Yaska and Sayana's great commentary which in spite of its many and often startling imperfections remains still for the scholar an indispensable first step towards the formation of a sound Vedic learning. ...
... then, was there and it was prolonged after the Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation, the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explanation by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore... clear and positive." Modern scholarship, which dates the Rigveda to c. 1500 B.C., computes that Yaska compiled his Nirukta in the period c. 700-400 B.C. His status as an authority is therefore fairly ancient even by the rather over-short modern chronology. Nor is it Yaska alone who has pressed the adhyatmic view. In the 13th century A.D., a hundred years before Sayana, Anandatirtha... affined to it in principle, by its thoroughness, its flexibility and its insight. He has used penetrative scholarship of the highest order as well as the "meditation and tapasya" recommended by Yaska to reach it. And it is not only a number of learned commentators who have anticipated Sri Aurobindo in their own inadequate ways. He²¹ has noted about the hymns: "In the fixed tradition of ...
... was there and it was prolonged after the Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation, Page 8 the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explanation by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore... present, however well-concealed by an occult language or behind a technique of symbols, and if it is there it must be to some extent discoverable.It is true that an antique language, obsolete words,—Yaska counts more than four hundred of which he did not know the meaning,—and often a difficult and out-of-date diction helped to obscure their meaning; the loss of the sense of their symbols, the glossary... Brahmanas themselves often symbolic and obscure. But still to make this discovery will be the sole way of getting at the true sense and the true value of the Veda. We must take seriously the hint of Yaska, accept the Rishi's description of the Veda's contents as "seer-wisdoms, secret words", and look for whatever clue we can find to this ancient wisdom. Otherwise the Veda must remain for ever a sealed ...
... had begun with Yaska and his Nirukta, and even Page 2 Yaska acknowledges that there were in his times at least three alternatives, — ādhibhautika, ādhidaivika and ādhyātmika. In due course, the ritualistic interpretation of the Veda tended to become more and more predominant, and when we come to Sayana, whose commentary closes the period which began with Yaska, we find his... systems. In developing the psychological theory, Sri Aurobindo has taken the help of ancient and modem systems of Page 5 interpretations. As Sri Aurobindo points out: "Sayana and Yaska supply the ritualistic framework of outward symbols and their large store of traditional significances and explanations. The Upanishads give their clue to the psychological and philosophical ideas of ...
... orthodox Page 681 tradition. What it amounts to is an objection to go behind the authority of Sayana, who belongs to an age at least two or three thousand years later than the Veda, and of Yaska, the ancient lexicographer. Besides, the Veda is currently regarded as karmakânda , a book of ritual works, the Vedanta only as jnânakânda , a book of knowledge. In an extreme orthodox standpoint... far-fetched ingenuities, which not unoften light-heartedly do violence to grammar, syntax, order, connection, on the idea that the Rishis were in no way restrained by Page 682 these things. Yaska is full of etymological and other ingenuities, some of them of a most astonishing kind. The scholarship of Europe has built up by a system of ingenious guesses and deductions a new version and evolved... The Brahmanas are too full of ingenuities; they read too much and too much at random into the text. The Upanishads give a better light and we may get hints from later work and even from Sayana and Yaska, but it would be dangerous at once to read back literally the ideas of a later mentality into this exceedingly ancient Scripture. We must start from and rely on the Veda to interpret the Veda. We have ...
... Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajnavalkya and Ajatashatru understood. We shall yet have to go back from the Nature-worship and henotheism of the Europeans, beyond the mythology and ceremonial of Sayana, beyond even the earlier intimations of Yaska and recover—nor is it the impossible task it ...
... first attempt at preserving the Vedic knowledge current in Yaska's time. Yaska is prior to Sayana, and he admits triple interpretation of every hymn -Tan-Adhibhautik, Adhidaivik, Adhyatmik-and in the course of his exegesis mentions more than twenty schools and individuals who give different interpretation of the hymns. Yaska in his introduction admits ten unknown-anavagaam- categories showing clearly ...
... many more decades were to elapse before the seeds sown by him were to sprout. In his time it was, as he put it, "After the ingenious toils of Roth and Max Muller, as after the erudite diligence of Yaska and Sayana, the Vedic mantras remain for us what they have been for some thousands of years, a darkness of lost light and a sealed mystery." Yet the Veda has been the bedrock of all Hindu creeds. But... not only so, but he has shown me a new Science of Philology showing the process and origins of human speech so that a new Nirukta can be formed and the new interpretation of the Veda based upon it." Yaska was the author of the original Nirukta, an etymological text, mentioned in the Mahabharata. Page 365 Sri Aurobindo worked on Nirukta over a period of time. The work progressed, a ...
... successful & vigorous in the Panjab, is not likely to command acceptance among the more subtle races of the south & east. It was based like the European rendering on a system of philology,—the Nirukta of Yaska used by the scholastic ingenuity & robust faith of Dayananda to justify conclusions far-reaching & even extravagant, to which it is difficult to assent Page 114 unless we are offered stronger... we are to disregard the whole structure & rhythmic movement of Śunahśepa’s sentence. The other epithet Násatyá has long been a puzzle for the grammarians; for the ingenious traditional rendering of Yaska & Sayana, na asatyá, not untruthful, is too evidently a desperate shift of entire ignorance. The word by its formation must be either a patronymic, “Sons of Nasata”, or an adjective formed by the t ...
... meaning of Veda; its true meaning if not all its significance. Nor need we be discouraged, if we have to disagree with Sayana & Yaska in the actual rendering of the hymns no less than with the Europeans. Neither of these great authorities can be held to be infallible. Yaska is an authority for the interpretation of Vedic words in his own age, but that age was already far subsequent to the Vedic & the ...
... 418 Nasatyas, 213, 251, 280 Nausharo, 227 Navdatoli MI, 215 Nevasa, 246 Nighantu, 269, 409 ninety-nine ..., 283, 303-4, 327, 329, 332 Nirukta, see Yaska Norman, K.R., 255-9, 272, 280 Nuristan/Nuristanis, 280, 281-2 Nuristani languages, 282 obstructors, 187, 360-62 oceans (in the Rigveda) 187, 396-7, 413-14 ... Saṁhitās, 264, 344, 371, 378 Yaksus, 356 Yamna culture (see also Pit Grave culture), 247 Yamuna, 163, 283, 290, 354, 356, 357, 358 YarimTepe, 311, 312 Yaska, 193-4, 283, 288 Yaz complex, 228 Yenisei, 323 Zarathustra, 270, 271, 402 Zarathustrianism/Zoroastrianism, 210, 271 Zeuner, Frederick, 249 Zimmer, 344 ...
... meaning and secret."² Sri Aurobindo proceeded, in due course, to study Brahmanas and the Upanishads, and various other interpretations of the Veda. He examined Vedic scholars, beginning from Yaska ending with Sayana, studied the mythological, legendary and historical elements, tested the modern theories and other reliance on comparative philology, Studied Tilak's contributions, Swami Dayananda's... Centenary Edition, p. 4 ³ Sri Aurobindo: The Secret of the Veda, Centenary Edition, p. 30 Page 56 interpretation and found in each of them an indispensable assistance. He found that Yaska and Sayana supplied the ritualistic framework of outward symbols and the large store of traditional significances and explanations. In the Upanishads, he found various clues to the psychological and ...
... picked out a few relevant notes as Sri Aurobindo jotted them down in July 1912, so that we all may know when it happened and how it happened. 1 Nirukta, Vedic etymology, composed by Yaska. Let us note at once that Sri Aurobindo did not write a 'new Nirukta' but his Origins of Aryan Speech" shows to where he was leading. Page 337 "July 13 th . Ananda Mimansa 1 begun... my lover and my friend; for this is the highest of all the inner truths." If Yogas could be lost, why not languages? That is what really happened. Too great was the lapse of time. For not only Yaska but a long line of etymologists and glossarists before him had made attempts at preserving the original sense of the Vedic words. In India the real meaning of the original passages was forgotten: "Even ...
... meanings of Vedic words are often extremely disputable & it would be unsafe to rely whether on the significances fixed by the European scholars or on those fixed centuries ago by Sayana or even by Yaska. It is better, & quite sufficient for the immediate purpose, to rely upon the classical tongue with its undoubted & well-ascertained meanings. These are the lines upon which I have conducted my enquiry ...
... firm(?), the form of the dappled Cow of Light. रूपः. Sy. takes as 6th case of रुप् = earth. आरोपयति स्वात्मनि सस्यादीनि रुबिति भूमिरुच्यते, पृश्रि = द्युलोक, आरुपितं = आरोपितं, जबारु = जवमानरोहि (Yaska). All these are forced derivations & forced senses. चर्मन्—Sy. चर्मणे चरणाय & ससस्य = निश्चलस्य. 8) प्रवाच्यं वचसः किं मे अस्य गुहा हितमुप निणिग्वदंति । यदुस्रियाणामप वारिव व्रन् पाति प्रियं ...
... early culture & history that accompanies and supports this theory rests equally on new interpretations of Vedic words and riks in which with the progress of scholarship the authority of Sayana and Yaska has been more & more set at nought and discredited. My contention is that anarya, dasa and dasyu do not for a moment refer to the Dravidian races,—I am, indeed, disposed to doubt whether there was ever ...
... freedom for the most extravagant gambols of his ingenuity; but more serious results need not be expected from his labour. After the ingenious toils of Roth & Max Muller, as after the erudite diligence of Yaska & Sayana, the Vedic mantras remain for us what they have been for some thousands of years, a darkness of lost light and a sealed mystery. Driven from its ancient reverence for the mystic Veda, Indian ...
... used for their expression also a glowing web of myth and parable which expressed to the initiates a certain order of psychic experience and inner realities. II. Inner Meaning of the Veda Yaska has spoken of several schools of interpretation of the Vedas. He has declared that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge ...
... moving (director) located in the heart. May that mind of mine be filled with Good Will." Prayer and Bhakti Yoga Among the four Vedas, Samaveda occupies a special place. According to Yaska, Sama has three alternative meanings: (1) Union of heaven, life-breath and song; (2) Union of knowledge and works; (3) Union of divine power and individual soul. The mantras of Samaveda ...
... expression a fixed and yet variable body of other images and a glowing web of myth and parable which expressed to the initiates a certain order of psychic experience and actual realities. II Yaska has spoken of several schools of interpretation of the Vedas. He has declared that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial Page 81 or ...
... status with regard to man, 90 her subjection, 138 World War I, 124, 125 ,216 World War II , 211 , 238·239 Sri Aurobindo's support o f the Allie 231 , 236, 238 Y-Z Yajnavalkya, 96 Yaska,96 Yoga, 48 ,52,69, 109, 137 , 159 , 186 national Yoga, 93 old system o f, ISO, 194 Sri Aurobindo 's, 144-145, 171 , 189 , 191 ,193-194,201,202,203 yo u t h, the young, 44 , 52 , 57 , 154 see ...
... mediaeval India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers. Max Miller has understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajnavalkya and Ajatashatru's understood.... It is because Page 96 we do not understand the ...
... and self-culture. It is, therefore, this sense which has first to be restored. To this task each of the ancient and modern systems of interpretation brings an indispensable assistance. Sayana and Yaska supply the ritualistic framework of outward symbols and their large store of traditional significances and explanations. The Upanishads give their clue to the psychological and philosophical ideas of ...
... Sanscrit; cf अति रव्य etc; it is an old survival & therefore keeps more easily than other verbs the old tendency to have the same characteristic consonant for the second & third persons. उर्वशीः. Yaska उर्वभ्यश्रुत ऊरुभ्यामश्रुते & this we are to take as equivalent to प्रजाः! There is no need to drag in the human thighs & to argue lightly that "those who enjoy with the thighs" must naturally mean ...
... 1912, Volume II, p. 454 for all proper information on Sudās. But K. Chattopadhyaya 194 has penetratingly corrected Parpola's authorities: King Sudās has been called in the Rgveda Paijavana. Yaska in a Nirukta passage (11.24) ... paijavanah pijava-nasya putrah, says that Pijavana was the name of Sudās's father. King Divodāsa is also mentioned as the ancestor of Sudās. Professors Macdonell ...
... Sūtra (Samavaya XVIII) under the form Javana-niya (cf. also the same list in Pannavanā Sūtra)." And in the light of this we make a surprising discovery on referring back to Yaska's derivation. For, Yaska discusses Pijavana while considering it the name of the father of Sudās, a Rigvedic hero who in the Rigveda (VII .18.23) is given the epithet Paijavana. So "Javana" and therefore implicitly "Yavana" ...
... evidently with approval: "It appears to me that the aboriginal town-folk with whom the Aryas came into collision in the Indus Valley were called Panis in hymns of all the books of the Rgveda. Yaska 17. Ibid., pp. 78 - 79. 18. Ibid., pp. 80-81. Page 193 (Nirukta 6.27) in his comment on Rgveda 8.66.10 says, The Panis are merchants', and in his comment on R.V. 10 ...
... Indian philosophy. Page 47 In spite of this great tradition of the authoritativeness of the Veda, there came a school of interpretation, and a long line of interpretation, starting with Yaska, one of the great interpreters of the Veda. And this line ended with a great scholar of the fourteenth century AD called Sayana. He was himself the Prime Minister of a state in south India and also ...
... 46-7. 28. Rig-Veda, IV. 52-4. 29.Is ha Upanishad, 14. 30. Rig-Veda, III. 61-3. 31.IS ha Upanishad, 7. 32. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 33.Cf. 'R ṣ ir dar ś an ā t' (Yaska's Nirukta, II. 3.3). 34.Compare: "...All creation is an act of light" (Savitri, Book II, Canto XV). "...all-knowing Light." ( Savitri, Book II, Canto III). "A knowledge which became what ...
... Chhandas or metre, which arranged the archaic metres systematically. The third Vedanga is Vyakarana or grammar. (The most important information regarding pre-Paninian grammar is to be derived from Yaska's work.) The fourth Vedanga is Nirukta or etymology, as represented in the work ot'Yaska, which is a sort of etymological lexicography of Vedic terms. The fifth Vedanga is Kalpa, science of ceremonies ...
... or Book of Knowledge). Notwithstanding these vicissitudes, the text of the Veda - "a text determined scrupulously to its very accentuation" - had been carefully preserved, and in course of time Yaska's Lexicon (Nirukta) and Sayana's Commentary (Bhashya) came to be composed as aids to the understanding of the Veda. Faced by the intertwining complexity and baffling multiplicity of ritualistic, ...
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