It is needless to multiply instances. The value and importance of the Rig Veda Samhita for linguistic, mythological and historical research is commonly acknowledged, if not fully realised in India. It is not an exaggeration to say that the imposing structures of Indo-germanic Philology and Mythology have been reared on—and would have been impossible to rear without— the solid and broad foundation of Rig Vedic tradition And this Rig Veda is our heritage.
We have the prior right to its exploitation. It is our duty to exercise that right. Furthermore it is improper to impose on European scholars the burden of interpreting our literature, our past We must fit ourselves to shoulder our own burdens. The twentieth century is a century of specialists. It is a sign of the times that the Bombay University, recently reorganising its Department of Post-graduate Studies has inaugurated a course of lectures on the Rig Veda.
It is anticipated that the arrangement will be a permanent one. Here is, an opportunity for young Indians to learn, under competent guidance, the correct method and the results of latest researches in the interpretation of the Rig Veda. It may be confidently hoped that the new scheme launched by the University will meet with ready response from the student world, and, in the fullness of time, will fructify in reawakening in India the interest in Vedic studies.
Nothing could serve better as an elementary guide to Vedic studies than this little hand-book, which embodies the lectures delivered under the auspices of the University of Bombay by the late Dr.
Ghate, whose dissertation on the Vedanta, accepted as a doctor thesis by the University of Paris, entitles him to a rank among the leading Sanskritists of the present generation. It has served—and served well—the needs of the graduate students for over a decade and a call for a second edition is a clear indication of its just merits end well-deserved popularity. The lectures have been re-printed here, with the exclusion of what appeared to the editor as superfluous matter: the correction of some minor errors and inaccuracies : and finally addition of an index compiled by Mr.
Kulkarni, B. These latter are mainly intended to draw the attention of the student to important works in this field which have appeared since the book was written. For the convenience of Indian students, with a view to facilitate reading and study, Sanskrit words and names have throughout been printed in Devanagari characters. The student may further consult with advantage the chapters by Professor A. They contain views which, if not wholly convincing, are highly interesting and suggestive.
It is not impossible that the next generation will require and produce another translation and another dictionary of the Rig Veda. If so, may it come to pass that they are from the pen of one who is proud to regard this ancient Samhita of the hymns of Rishis as his own, proper heritage!
Complaints are often made by students that the study of the Rig Veda, which is very dry, is absolutely wanting not only in interest but also in utility.
The same spirit animates our pandits and munshis, who spend their whole lives in the study of one or more branches of philosophy or sciences like grammar and rhetoric, but none of whom seems ever to have given even a passing thought to the study of the Vedas. And this spirit seems to have been handed down from generation to generation, from very old times, to judge by the fact that even Panini, the oldest known grammarian, whose sutras and shlokas and Astadhyayi has the honour of being regarded by the orthodox people as one of the greatest works specially intended as helps to the study of the Veda, deals with the grammar of the Vedic language only in a perfunctory manner.
And the same is the case with the modern, highly popular manual of grammar, with which every begins the study of the subject, and whose knowledge is quite essential to every Sanskrit scholar whether of the ancient or the modern type—I mean, the aspects dealing with the Vedic idiom have been put together in a section by itself called the smritis and srutis, studied by very few.
The class of brahmins who can recite the Vedic texts from beginning to end without a mistake, but who are absolutely ignorant of the meaning thereof, also testifies to the fact, that the systematic exegesis of the Veda has been woefully neglected. How and why this spirit came over the votaries of Sanskrit is an enigma, especially when we remember that in the Mukti Upanishad, the oldest known work dealing with the exegesis of the Veda, the author concludes his introduction to the work with a high eulogium of him who understands the meaning of the Veda and a scathing censure of him who only repeats the words without knowing their meaning.
The disappointment experienced by the present student of the Veda is due more to the wrong standpoint which the student takes than to the nature of the study itself. The archaic character of the language and the distance by which we are removed from the Vedic times no doubt contribute to make the study difficult and tedious, but these drawbacks are nothing compared to the utility of the study and the interest which would follow from it, if it is only pursued in the right spirit.
Do you, young readers, come to the Rig Veda with the hope of finding in it the most sublime poetry? Then I am not surprised at the disappointment which would be in store for you. You must not expect to find in the Rig Veda the smooth and melodious verses of Kalidasa, nor the deep and heart-rending emotions of Bhavabhuti nor the polished and jingling music of anyone else nor the elaborate and highly finished art of Bhana, nor the deep significance of Magha nor the bewilderingly complex phrases of Bharavi.
All the same it cannot be denied that the hymns of the Rig Veda, at least some of them, are such as the goddess of poetry would be proud of. The freshness and beautiful imagery which characterize the hymns addressed to the Aurora, the heroic simplicity of some of the hymns addressed to the Thundering Bull, the homeliness which pervades some of the hymns to sTftr, cannot but appeal to a sympathetic and appreciating reader.
Though the Rig Veda as a work of poetry cannot at all stand comparison with best specimens of Sanskrit classical poetry, still it has something indescribable in it which cannot be lightly passed over. This is a controversial subject to say the least. Different date are assigned to the composition of each of the Vedas. It must be remembered here that the Vedas are essentially an oral tradition, passed by recitation and memory from one generation to the next.
They were only written down supposedly at the end of the 10th Century BC after a devastating 12 year famine. As to the Rig Veda, it is likely that the last of hymns were put in place with a terminus ante quem of BC.
The earliest of the hymns is however a different matter. A terminus post quem given by Max Mueller would be BC. Dates given for the earliest compositions also stand at around BC, with astronomical observations corresponding to this date present in the Veda. The fixing of the samhitapatha by keeping Sandhi intact and of the padapatha by dissolving Sandhi out of the earlier metrical text , occurred during the later Brahmana period.
Some of the names of gods and goddesses found in the Rigveda are found amongst other belief systems based on Proto-Indo-European religion, while words used share common roots with words from other Indo-European languages. The horse ashva , cattle, sheep and goat play an important role in the Rigveda.
There are also references to the elephant Hastin, Varana , camel Ustra, especially in Mandala 8 , ass khara, rasabha , buffalo Mahisa , wolf, hyena, lion Simha , mountain goat sarabha and to the gaur in the Rigveda. The Aitareya-brahmana [41] and the Kaushitaki- or Sankhayana- brahmana evidently have for their groundwork the same stock of traditional exegetic matter.
They differ, however, considerably as regards both the arrangement of this matter and their stylistic handling of it, with the exception of the numerous legends common to both, in which the discrepancy is comparatively slight. There is also a certain amount of material peculiar to each of them.
The Kaushitaka is, upon the whole, far more concise in its style and more systematic in its arrangement features which would lead one to infer that it is probably the more modern work of the two. It consists of thirty chapters adhyaya ; while the Aitareya has forty, divided into eight books or pentads, pancaka , of five chapters each. BC , if, as seems probable, one of his grammatical sutras, regulating the formation of the names of Brahmanas, consisting of thirty and forty adhyayas, refers to these two works.
In this last portion occurs the well-known legend also found in the Shankhayana-sutra, but not in the Kaushitaki-brahmana of Shunahshepa, whom his father Ajigarta sells and offers to slay, the recital of which formed part of the inauguration of kings. Sayana, in the introduction to his commentary on the work, ascribes the Aitareya to the sage Mahidasa Aitareya i. Regarding the authorship of the sister work we have no information, except that the opinion of the sage Kaushitaki is frequently referred to in it as authoritative, and generally in opposition to the Paingya—the Brahmana, it would seem, of a rival school, the Paingins.
Probably, therefore, it is just what one of the manuscripts calls it—the Brahmana of Sankhayana composed in accordance with the views of Kaushitaki. Each of these two Brahmanas is supplemented by a "forest book", or Aranyaka. The Aitareyaranyaka is not a uniform production. It consists of five books aranyaka , three of which, the first and the last two, are of a liturgical nature, treating of the ceremony called mahavrata , or great vow.
The last of these books, composed in sutra form, is, however, doubtless of later origin, and is, indeed, ascribed by Hindu authorities either to Shaunaka or to Ashvalayana.
The second and third books, on the other hand, are purely speculative, and are also styled the Bahvrca-brahmana-upanishad. Again, the last four chapters of the second book are usually singled out as the Aitareyopanishad , ascribed, like its Brahmana and the first book , to Mahidasa Aitareya; and the third book is also referred to as the Samhita-upanishad.
As regards the Kaushitaki-aranyaka , this work consists of 15 adhyayas, the first two treating of the mahavrata ceremony and the 7th and 8th of which correspond to the 1st, 5th, and 3rd books of the Aitareyaranyaka, respectively, whilst the four adhyayas usually inserted between them constitute the highly interesting Kaushitaki brahmana- upanishad , of which we possess two different recensions.
The remaining portions 9—15 of the Aranyaka treat of the vital airs, the internal Agnihotra, etc. This statement stresses the underlying philosophy of the Vedic books that there is a connection bandhu between the astronomical, the physiological, and the spiritual [ citation needed ]. Yaska was an early commentator of the Rigveda by discussing the meanings of difficult words. Since the 19th and 20th centuries, some reformers like Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj and Sri Aurobindo have attempted to re-interpret the Vedas to conform to modern and established moral and spiritual norms.
Dayananda considered the Vedas which he defined to include only the samhitas to be source of truth, totally free of error and containing the seeds of all valid knowledge.
Contrary to common understanding, he was adamant that Vedas were monotheistic and that they did not sanction idol worship. Dayananda's work is not highly regarded by Vedic scholars and IndologistLouis Renou, among others, dismissed it as, "a vigorous and from our point of view, extremely aberrant interpretation in the social and political sense.
Dayananda and Aurobindo moved [ clarification needed ] the Vedantic perception of the Rigveda from the original ritualistic content to a more symbolic or mystical interpretation. Questions surrounding the Rigvedic Sarasvati River and the Nadistuti sukta in particular have become tied to an ideological debate on the Indo-Aryan migration termed "Aryan Invasion Theory" versus the claim that Vedic culture, together with Vedic Sanskrit, originated in the Indus Valley Civilization termed "Out of India theory" , a topic of great significance in Hindu nationalism, addressed for example by K.
Sethna and in Shrikant G. Subhash Kak claimed that there is an "astronomical code" in the organization of the hymns. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, also based on astronomical alignments in the Rigveda, in his "The Orion" had claimed presence of the Rigvedic culture in India in the 4th millennium BC, and in his The Arctic Home in the Vedas even argued that the Aryans originated near the North Pole and came south during the ice age. Debate on alternative suggestions on the date of the Rigveda, typically much earlier dates, are mostly taking place outside of scholarly literature.
Some writers out of the mainstream claim to trace astronomical references in the Rigveda, dating it to as early as BC, [46] a date well within the Indian Neolithic. The first published translation of any portion of the Rigveda in any Western language was into Latin, by Friedrich August Rosen Rigvedae specimen , London Wilson was the first to make a complete translation of the Rig Veda into English, published in six volumes during the period — In , Ralph T.
Geldner's translation was the philologically best-informed to date, and a Russian translation based on Geldner's [ citation needed ] by Tatyana Elizarenkova was published by Nauka — [52]. Jamison as project directors for a new original translation to be issued by Oxford University Press. Numerous partial translations exist into various languages. Notable examples include:. Rigveda for free download in pdf Yajurveda for free download in pdf Samaveda for free download in pdf Atharvaveda for free download in pdf.
Connect to Facebook. This article is about the collection of Vedic hymns. For the manga series, see RG Veda.
Text The surviving form of the Rigveda is based on an early Iron Age c. Rishis See also: Anukramani.
0コメント