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II
THE SCHOLARS
The text of the Veda which we possess has remained uncorrupted for over two thousand years. It dates, so far as we know,
from that great period of Indian intellectual activity, contemporaneous with the Greek efflorescence, but earlier in its
beginnings, which founded the culture and civilisation recorded in the classical literature of the land. We cannot say to
how much earlier a date our text may be carried. But there are
certain considerations which justify us in supposing for it an
almost enormous antiquity. An accurate text, accurate in every
syllable, accurate in every accent, was a matter of supreme importance to the Vedic ritualists;
for on scrupulous accuracy depended the effectuality of the sacrifice. We are told, for instance,
in the Brahmanas the story of Twashtri who, performing a sacrifice to produce an avenger of his son slain by Indra, produced,
owing to an error of accentuation, not a slayer of Indra, but one
of whom Indra must be the slayer. The prodigious accuracy of
the ancient Indian memory is also notorious. And the sanctity
of the text prevented such interpolations, alterations, modernising revisions as have replaced by the present form of the Mahabharata the ancient epic of the Kurus. It is not, therefore, at all
improbable that we have the Sanhita of Vyasa substantially as
it was arranged by the great sage and compiler.
Substantially, not in its present written form. Vedic prosody
differed in many respects from the prosody of classical Sanskrit
and, especially, employed a greater freedom in the use of that
principle of euphonic combination of separate words (sandhi)
which is so peculiar a feature of the literary tongue. The Vedic
Rishis, as was natural in a living speech, followed the ear rather
than fixed rule; sometimes they combined the separate words,
sometimes they left them uncombined. But when the Veda came to be written down,
the law of euphonic combination had assumed a much more despotic authority over the language and
the ancient text was written by the grammarians as far as possible
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in consonance with its regulations. They were careful,
however, to accompany it with another text, called the Padapatha, in which all euphonic combinations were again resolved
into the original and separate words and even the components of
compound words indicated.
It is a notable tribute to the fidelity of
the ancient memorisers that, instead of the confusion to which this system might so
easily have given rise, it is always perfectly easy to resolve the
formal text into the original harmonies of Vedic prosody. And
very few are the instances in which the exactness or the sound
judgment of the Padapatha can be called into question. We have,
then, as our basis a text which we can confidently accept and
which, even if we hold it in a few instances doubtful or defective,
does not at any rate call for that often licentious labour of emendation to which some of the European classics lend themselves.
This is, to start with, a priceless advantage for which we cannot
be too grateful to the conscientiousness of the old Indian
learning.
In certain other directions it might not be safe always to
follow implicitly the scholastic tradition, — as in the ascription of
the Vedic poems to their respective Rishis, wherever older tradition was not firm and sound. But these are details of minor
importance. Nor is there, in my view, any good reason to doubt
that we have the hymns arrayed, for the most part, in the right
order of their verses and in their exact entirety. The exceptions,
if they exist, are negligible in number and importance. When the
hymns seem to us incoherent, it is because we do not understand
them. Once the clue is found, we discover that they are perfect
wholes as admirable in the structure of their thought as in their
language and their rhythms.
It is when we come to the interpretation of the Veda and seek
help from ancient Indian scholarship that we feel compelled to
make the largest reserves. For even in the earlier days of classical
erudition the ritualistic view of the Veda was already dominant,
the original sense of the words, the lines, the allusions, the clue to
the structure of the thought had been long lost or obscured; nor
was there in the erudite that intuition or that spiritual experience
which might have partly recovered the lost secret. In such a field
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mere learning, especially when it is accompanied by an ingenious
scholastic mind, is as often a snare as a guide.
In Yaska's lexicon, our most important help, we have to
distinguish between two elements of very disparate value. 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 this
tradition and does not use a grammarian's ingenuity, the meanings he assigns to words, although not always
applicable to the text to which he refers them, can yet be confirmed as possible senses by a sound 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 methods, we are obliged to part company
with him entirely. Nor in his interpretation of particular texts is.
he more convincing than the later erudition of Sayana.
The commentary of Sayana closes the period of original
and living scholastic work on the Veda which Yaska's Nirukta
among other important authorities may be said to open. The
lexicon was compiled in the earlier vigour of the Indian mind
when it was assembling its prehistoric gains as the materials of
a fresh outburst of originality; the commentary is almost the last
great work of the kind left to us by the classical tradition in its
final refuge and centre in Southern India before the old culture
was dislocated and broken into regional fragments by the shock
of the Mahomedan conquest. Since then we have had jets of
strong and original effort, scattered attempts at new birth and
novel combination, but work of quite this general, massive and
monumental character has hardly been possible.
The commanding merits of this great legacy of the past are
obvious. Composed by Sayana with the aid of the most learned
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scholars of his time, it is a work representing an enormous labour
of erudition, more perhaps than could have been commanded at that time by a
single brain. Yet it bears the stamp of the coordinating mind. It is consistent in the mass in spite of its many
inconsistencies of detail, largely planned, yet most simply,
composed in a style lucid, terse and possessed of an almost literary grace one would have thought impossible in the traditional
form of the Indian commentary. Nowhere is there any display of
pedantry; the struggle with the difficulties of the text is skilfully
veiled and there is an air of clear acuteness and of assured, yet
unassuming authority which imposes even on the dissident.
The first Vedic scholars in Europe admired especially the rationality of Sayana's interpretations.
Yet, even for the external sense of the Veda, it is not possible
to follow either Sayana's method or his results without the
largest reservation. It is not only that he admits in his method
licenses of language and construction which are unnecessary and
sometimes incredible, nor that he arrives at his results, often, by
a surprising inconsistency in his interpretation of common
Vedic terms and even of fixed Vedic formulae. These are defects
of detail, unavoidable perhaps in the state of the materials with
which he had to deal. But it is the central defect of Sayana's
system that he is obsessed always by the ritualistic formula and
seeks continually to force the sense of the Veda into that narrow
mould. So he loses many clues of the greatest suggestiveness
and importance for the external sense of the ancient Scripture, — a problem
quite as interesting as its internal sense. The outcome is a representation of the Rishis, their thoughts, their culture, their aspirations, so narrow and poverty-stricken that, if
accepted, it renders the ancient reverence for the Veda, its sacred
authority, its divine reputation quite incomprehensible to the
reason or only explicable as a blind and unquestioning tradition
of faith starting from an original error.
There are indeed other aspects and elements
in the commentary, but they are subordinate or subservient to the main
idea. Sayana and his helpers had to work upon a great mass of
often conflicting speculation and tradition which still survived
from the past. To some of its elements they had to give a formal
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adhesion, to others they felt bound to grant minor concessions.
It is possible that to Sayana's skill in evolving out of previous
uncertainty or even confusion an interpretation which had firm
shape and consistence, is due the great and long-unquestioned
authority of his work.
The first element with which Sayana had to deal, the most
interesting to us, was the remnant of the old spiritual, philosophic
or psychological interpretations of the Shruti which were the true
foundation of its sanctity. So far as these had entered into the
current or orthodox¹ conception, Sayana admits them; but they
form an exceptional element in his work, insignificant in bulk and in
importance. Occasionally he gives a passing mention or concession to less current psychological renderings. He mentions,
for instance, but not to admit it, an old interpretation of Vritra
as the Coverer who holds back from man the objects of his desire
and his aspirations. For Sayana Vritra is either simply the enemy
or the physical cloud-demon who holds back the waters and has
to be pierced by the Rain-giver.
A second element is the mythological, or, as it might almost
be called, the Puranic, — myths and stories of the gods given in
their outward form without that deeper sense and symbolic fact
which is the justifying truth of all Purana.²
A third element is the legendary and historic, the stories
of old kings and Rishis, given in the Brahmanas or by later
tradition in explanation of the obscure allusions of the Veda.
Sayana's dealings with this element are marked by some hesitation. Often he accepts them as the right interpretation of the
hymns; sometimes he gives an alternative sense with which he
has evidently more intellectual sympathy, but wavers between
the two authorities.
More important is the element of naturalistic interpretation.
Not only are there the obvious or the traditional identifications,
Indra, the Maruts, the triple Agni, Surya, Usha, but we find that
Mitra was identified with the Day, Varuna with the Night, Aryaman
¹I use the word loosely. The terms orthodox and heterodox in the European
or sectarian sense have no true application to India where opinion has always been free.
²There is reason to suppose that Purana (legend and apologue) and Itihasa (historical tradition) were parts of Vedic culture long before the present forms of the Puranas and historical
Epics were evolved.
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and Bhaga with the Sun, the Ribhus with its rays. We have
here the seeds of that naturalistic theory of the Veda to which
European learning has given so wide an extension. The old
Indian scholars did not use the same freedom or the same systematic minuteness in their speculations. Still this element in
Sayana's commentary is the true parent of the European Science
of Comparative Mythology.
But it is the ritualistic conception that pervades; that is
the persistent note in which all others lose themselves. In the
formula of the philosophic schools, the hymns, even while
standing as a supreme authority for knowledge, are yet principally and fundamentally concerned with the Karmakanda, with
works, — and by works was understood, pre-eminently, the ritualistic observation of the Vedic sacrifices. Sayana labours always
in the light of this idea. Into this mould he moulds the language
of the Veda, turning the mass of its characteristic words into the
ritualistic significances, — food, priest, giver, wealth, praise,
prayer, rite, sacrifice.
Wealth and food; —for it is the most
egoistic and materialistic objects that are proposed as the aim of the sacrifice,
possessions, strength, power, children, servants, gold, horses,
cows, victory, the slaughter and the plunder of enemies, the
destruction of rival and malevolent critic. As one reads and
finds hymn after hymn interpreted in this sense, one begins to
understand better the apparent inconsistency in the attitude of
the Gita which, regarding always the Veda as divine knowledge¹
yet censures severely the champions of an exclusive Vedism²,
all whose flowery teachings were devoted solely to material
wealth, power and enjoyment.
It is the final and authoritative binding of the Veda to this
lowest of all its possible senses that has been the most unfortunate result of Sayana's commentary. The dominance of the
ritualistic interpretation had already deprived India of the living
use of its greatest Scripture and of the true clue to the entire
sense of the Upanishads. Sayana's commentary put a seal of
finality on the old misunderstanding which could not be broken
for many centuries. And its suggestions, when another civilisation
¹Gita XV.15.
²Gita 11.42.
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discovered and set itself to study the Veda, became in the
European mind the parent of fresh errors.
Nevertheless, if Sayana's work has been a key turned with
double lock on the inner sense of the Veda, it is yet indispensable
for opening the antechambers of Vedic learning. All the vast
labour of European erudition has not been able to replace its
utility. At every step we are obliged to differ from it, but at
every step we are obliged to use it. It is a necessary springing-board, or a stair that we have to use for entrance, though we must
leave it behind if we wish to pass forwards into the penetralia.
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