Fwd: Why Rig Veda has resisted decipherment

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Sacred mysteries

Karen Thomson

Why the Rigveda has resisted decipherment

 

The place in literary history of the earliest Indo-European poems remains

unrecognized. Composed long before Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, they form an

anthology of over 1,000 songs of considerable merit and sophistication,

celebrating the power and beauty of the natural world. Traditionally known as

the Rigveda, these poems, in an archaic and unfamiliar language, were handed

down in prehistoric India as a sacred mystery, and ancient assumptions about

their subject matter played a vital role in the development of Indian religious

thought.

 

Translators, however, still have difficulty making sense of many of them. As

with other supposedly religious texts, any challenge to fundamental beliefs is

invidious. But I suggest that these important poems continue to appear not to

make sense because a significant part of their vocabulary has always been

mistranslated.

 

How and where they were composed is unknown. Believed to be of divine origin,

this body of material was passed down by a priestly elite, its

incomprehensibility, but highly metrical form and poetic style, making it

ideally suited to ritual recitation. Many centuries later it was adopted by the

new religion, Hinduism, as its most ancient sacred text.

 

The language of the Rigveda is the earliest surviving form of the Indian branch

of the Indo-European family of languages. It is commonly known as Sanskrit, but

the language described by the word " Sanskrit " came several hundred years later,

and there are considerable differences. Classical Sanskrit is characterized by

stylistic peculiarities that make it very different from the ancient languages

of Europe, and from the vernacular of these poems. It was a scholarly language,

written according to rules laid down by a grammarian, PaEini, who flourished

some 400 years bc.

 

Like medieval Latin, it was a lingua franca, and had to be studied and mastered.

 

The name Sanskrit, which dates from PaEini's time, means " perfected,

cultivated " , as opposed to Prakrit, " natural, vernacular " . Because its form had

been prescribed at an early date, Sanskrit was unable to change and develop in

the way that natural languages constantly do.

 

Writers resorted to a range of contrivances in an attempt to avoid the

exigencies of a grammar that was no longer natural to them. The simple

adjectival past participle came to be preferred as a way of representing past

tense: not " I led the horse " but " the horse is having-been-led by me " .

 

Massive compounds, words strung together in stem form to avoid the necessity for

inflection, became the mark of a highly developed literary style. The

description of an eminent king at the beginning of the Pancatantra, a collection

of fables generally dated to around 300 ad, " his feet were reddened with the

mass of rays from the jewels in the crowns of foremost kings " , is a single

adjective; the king is literally " foremost-king-

crown-jewel-ray-mass-reddened-foot-paired " .

 

The very length of the compound is honorific. The analysis of such compounds

calls for algebraic, rather than linguistic skill. " Classical " Sanskrit, in

other words, is a somewhat misleading name. The language of what is regarded as

the great period of Sanskrit literature lacks much of the grammatical

sophistication that we associate with an ancient classical language.

 

The language of the Rigveda, as the earliest poetry is traditionally known, is

very different. It was a rich and varied vernacular, with a wealth of nominal

and verbal forms. Like ancient Greek, it had a musical accent, which no longer

exists in Classical Sanskrit. Its compounds are of the familiar Homeric kind:

 

" weapon-armed " , " lovely-handed " . Some of the words in its vocabulary survive

into Classical Sanskrit, but a large number are unfamiliar to scholars of the

later language. It is as different from Classical Sanskrit as the language of

Beowulf is from modern English.

 

The endeavour to " wrench " sense from the text, as Professor Stephanie Jamison

recently put it, is itself ancient. The earliest surviving attempt was composed

around 500 bc. Its author, Yaska, quotes extensively from the poems, so that we

know that they have remained unchanged for well over 2,000 years. He cites an

assertion, made by a sceptic named Kautsa, that " the poems of the Rigveda have

no meaning " , which he tries to refute in his study. Kautsa's opinion

demonstrates that knowledge of later Sanskrit is of little help when it comes to

understanding the Rigvedic lexicon and its forms, and modern Sanskrit scholars

labour under the same difficulties as Kautsa did. Perhaps it is not surprising

that pundits continue to echo the beliefs of antiquity about the

indecipherability of the Rigveda, and to enjoin those who are inclined to its

study to develop a taste for obscurity. But a taste for obscurity stands in the

way of philological inquiry, and the Rigveda is, I suggest, far from

indecipherable.

 

If this ancient text, in a complex early Indo-European vernacular, had been dug

up from, say, the Caspian Sea ten years ago, its discovery would have generated

considerable excitement. It would have provided an opportunity for ground

breaking research. Scholars would have pored over it, comparing passages,

working out straightforward ones first and then applying what they learnt to the

more difficult ones, little by little pinning down meanings -in other words,

trying to decipher it in the way that texts in unfamiliar languages have always

been studied. And by now we would have a fairly good idea of what it meant. But

the Rigveda has been preserved for us, not by geographical accident, but by

tradition.

 

There is a vast accretion of ancient scholarly material devoted to the Rigveda.

 

This was an essential component of the Indian oral tradition. As H. T.

 

Colebrooke had reported to Western readers at the very beginning of the

nineteenth century, " it is a received and well-grounded opinion of the learned

in India, that no book is altogether safe from changes and interpolations until

it have been commented " .

 

That commentary then itself had a commentary, and the commentary upon a

commentary was for the same reason commented on -studies piled back on back,

ever further from the original, like Swift's fleas - So, naturalists observe, a

flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller yet to bite

'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

 

Not only was the text of the Rigveda preserved in this way, but assumptions made

at a very early date about its subject matter and meaning were also rendered

unassailable. Sanskrit scholars today are interested in the history of Indian

culture and thought, often describing themselves as Indologists. As the opening

sentence of the prospectus to Sanskrit Studies at the University of Oxford makes

clear, " Sanskrit is the key to Indian civilisation, and it is in this spirit

that it is taught at Oxford " . When Indologists come to the consideration of this

ancient and venerated text, whose influence on Indian religious thought has been

so profound, they inevitably focus on that influence. The text is viewed, as it

were, through a telescope backwards. Their translations struggle to make

interpretations found in a mass of derivative scripture, known loosely as " the

Veda " , fit. But it is an impossible task. They don't fit.

 

Three beliefs are firmly held. The first is that the Rigveda is intentionally

obscure, " designed to puzzle " . The second, which grew out of the first, explains

this obfuscation as the secret encoding of ancient ritual procedure.

 

The third is that the poems are fundamentally indecipherable, and that no

satisfactory translation will ever be possible. I believe that all three of

these are wrong.

 

But the first two, in discouraging linguistic and critical attention from being

paid to the text, help to uphold the third. The faithful transmission of this

material, remarkable in the history of ancient literatures, has proved a

double-edged sword.

 

To decipher a text is to discover its meaning. It is only when our translations

make sense that we can be confident that we are making progress in decipherment.

 

If our attempts to understand a passage were to lead us, for instance, to the

Chomskian " colourless green ideas sleep furiously " , we could not be sure that

our understanding of any of the words in the sentence was correct. We might

reasonably suspect at least four of them of being wrong.

 

Decipherment refines meaning by the comparison of contexts. Hapax legomena are

often doubtful because they appear only once in a text. The more frequently a

word occurs, the more likely it is that we will understand it correctly. If, for

example, we have a sentence containing an unfamiliar verb, " Mothers (verb) their

offspring " a number of possible translations suggest themselves: " adore " ,

" protect " or possibly " indulge " . But if the verb occurs again in another

context, " We (same verb) the gods with our thoughts " we might feel that

" protect " is less likely, and incline to prefer " adore " . Another context could

suggest a new translation for the word, one that had not previously occurred to

us. As Stephen Ullmann stressed in Semantics: An introduction to the science of

meaning (1962), " The meaning of a word can be ascertained only by studying its

use. There is no short cut to meaning, through introspection or any other

method. The investigator must start by collecting an adequate sample of contexts

and then approach them with an open mind, allowing the meaning or meanings to

emerge from the contexts themselves " . This was not new; Wittgenstein had said

the same in the Philosophical Investigations. " How a word functions cannot be

guessed at. We must observe its usage and learn from that. " But if we begin with

the assumption that our text is deliberately puzzling, and characterized by

bizarre collocations, decipherment is hamstrung from the start.

 

These ancient poems, averaging ten verses in length, were composed in a variety

of metres whose rhythm is generally iambic in type. I have given the short poem

to the wind in parallel text (see right) to show a typical metrical form. The

relationship that the poets describe with their surroundings is a sophisticated

one. Their poems serve as talismans, ensuring that the natural world will

continue to provide welfare and shelter for man. The belief in the power of

poetry pervades the Rigveda.

 

They indeed were comrades of the gods, Possessed of truth, the poets of old;

 

The fathers found the hidden light And with effective prayer brought forth the

dawn. (VII, 76, 4) The forces of nature are vividly depicted, and frequently

deified. The supreme god is Varuna, whose mysterious laws govern the universe.

 

That far off constellation set on high That shows itself at night, where does it

go by day?

 

Inviolable are the holy laws of Varuna, The shining moon goes radiant by night.

 

(I, 24, 10) The meaning of much of the Rigveda lies entangled in inherited

mistranslations.

 

But the following example of a word occurring in a context that is otherwise

largely clear serves to illustrate how these poems have come to be understood as

bizarre and unintelligible. Towards the end of III, 33, a poem that takes the

form of a dialogue between the poet and the waters of two confluent rivers, the

poet addresses the streams.

 

Swell forth, refreshing, bringing good gifts, Fill full the fertile places,

travel swiftly.

 

The word I have translated " fertile places " was assumed at an early date to

refer to a part of the body. Its occurrence in the Rigveda is therefore rendered

variously by translators as " belly " , " womb " , " breasts " or " udders " .

 

Although scholars have not been able to agree about which body part is intended,

the interpretation, bolstered by the usage of a later text, is never questioned.

The word occurs twelve times in the Rigveda, and its form is always plural. The

belief that vak 1/2aEa describes a body part causes problems in nearly every

occurrence of the word, but scholarship has not been able to cast it off. The

eminent Viennese linguist Manfred Mayrhofer suggests " belly " in his recently

published dictionary (reviewed in the TLS, February 16, 2001), with the comment

" Not adequately explained " . Linguists often have to work on the assumption that

such perplexing but uncontested interpretations must be correct.

 

The current standard translation of the Rigveda, made by a German scholar in the

1920s, translates the word " udders " in this poem, with a footnote explaining

that the streams are pictured in cows. But others understand it differently. A

French version published in the 1960s offers " entrails " :

 

" emplissez (vos) entrailles! " .

 

More recently, Peter Kwella, the author of a monograph devoted to III, 33,

translates " womb " here, and argues that the invitation to the rivers to " fill up

(their) womb " demonstrates that this apparently straightforward lyrical poem in

fact has a solely ritual application, which operates through the medium of

sexual imagery. The first two translators, at a blow, render the poem absurd;

and the argument of the third guarantees that those for whom ritualism -and

inapt sexual imagery -have little charm will turn their attention away from the

text.

 

Such translations, and such explanations, have always preserved the Rigveda from

scholarly attention.

 

There is an underlying belief, which I do not share, that our remote

predecessors were rude fellows, insensitive to infelicity in their compositions.

A parallel with early Old English scholarship, before the application of " the

new philology " in the 1830s, is hard to resist. John Mitchell Kemble, writing to

his friend W. B. Donne in 1838, is characteristically forthright about similar

infelicities in the translations of earlier Old English scholars.

 

Wilkins gives me an example: he represents it as a Saxon law that " no man shall

kill another man except in the presence of two or three witnesses; and then he

shall keep his skin for four days " . Wilkins read hwy;er, and thought it meant

other or another, which it does not: I had not yet told all these gentry that

hry;er meant an " ox " , familiar in its present new high-dutch form Rind; old

high-dutch Hrintar & c. But still one marvels the utter absurdity of the thing

had not struck him at once.

 

I have come to the Rigveda, not with an interest in primitive myth and ritual,

as others have done, but out of curiosity about the poetic outpourings of our

ancestors. I respect poetry, and am naturally disposed to find it meaningful. I

find it hard to accept that highly structured verse can move from sophistication

of conception in one passage to fatuity in the next. When I encounter the lines

Moving in formation like geese, clothed in light, The (plural noun) have come to

us, and am assured that the subject is " sacrificial posts " -my instincts revolt,

and cry out that something is wrong. And often, quite clearly, something is

wrong.

 

The beauties of these early poems remain hidden from view, like the Maltese

Falcon beneath layers of black enamel. But the fact that this remarkable body of

material is not yet deciphered has significant repercussions for other

disciplines. In 1997, an article by Michael Witzel, Professor of Sanskrit at

Harvard University, drew on evidence from the text of the Rigveda to provide a

date for the arrival of the Indo-Aryans into northern India.

 

Referring to recent findings in archaeology which suggest a date for the

collapse of the Indus civilization, he concludes, " as the RV does not speak of

cities but only of ruins (armaka), even larger ones, ((maha-) vailasthana), we

may suppose that the Indo-Aryans immigrated, or rather, gradually trickled in,

tribe by tribe and clan by clan, after 1900 bc " .

 

This is shortly to be repeated in a forthcoming volume, Studies on Hinduism, in

an article written jointly with another American Indologist. The argument, which

is available on Harvard's website, should be of great interest to historians and

archaeologists.

 

But the words cited as providing evidence for this date occur in one passage

only, and the translations " ruins " , or " large ruins " are simply a matter of

opinion.

 

Professor Mayrhofer's dictionary understands them entirely differently: he

suggests " Brunnen " , " spring " , for armaka, with a possible parallel in Tocharian

B, and describes vailasthana, which is a hapax legomenon (*maha-vailasthana does

not in fact occur) as " without a certain interpretation " .

 

One day the Rigveda will be able to provide important information for scholars

in other disciplines, but not until there is a better consensus about its

meaning.

 

Modern scholarship has reason to be grateful to " the learned in India " , whose

attentions have preserved the text of these poems so faithfully. But ancient

scholars did not have the resources now available to us, the concordances, the

ability to make comparisons with other Indo- European languages. It is time for

their guesses about what they contain to be set aside. A fresh approach to the

decipherment of this ancient material is urgently needed, and the opportunity

for exciting new research remains open.

 

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