Geldner's RV in English?-- no!

[witzel at HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU]

There have been several attempts that I know of. But only trials, no 
sustained effort and certainly no complete translation. Ingalls was 
interetsed toget it translated and tried in his time, to no avail; the 
quality of the translation wasn't good enough. 

Motilal had a plan as well and sent me a trial tranlation of some 5 or 10 
hymns some years ago: again, the translation was not correct. He must 
have dropped the plan since.

Of course, I have thought about it was well. There is no one here who 
could do it well. Geldner's German is not easy, sometimes outright 
medieval. And I don't have the time myself. 

Should anyone of the esteemed readers have a proposal, please convey it to 
me. (Harvard Oriental Series, 53 Church Street Cambridge MA 02138, USA).
We have the copyright and I would seriously consider to print a good 
translation, preferably at a cheap rate (paperback).


It would be of *great importance* to get Geldner translated since it is 
the only adequate, in fact the only complete translation since Griffith (a 
hundred years ago), as O'Flaherty's translation of a tenth, 108 hymns, 
(in Penguin) is idiosyncratic and unreliable just like her Jaiminiya 
Brahmana or Manu (re-)translations, and as no complete translation is in 
sight, 

-- except for T.Elizarenkova's translation into Russian (which -- just like 
L. Renou's incomplete transl. into French seems to rely on Geldner-- I 
have checked hers only here and there, still). Her second vol. (RV 5-8) has 
just come out: 

Rigveda. Mandaly V-VIII, Moskva (Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk: Literaturnye 
pamyatniki) 1995,  pp. 743, incl. her comm. on the hymns (pp. 526-731), and 
two very useful studies: One on the world view of the Rgvedic Aryans, pp. 
452-486 by T. Eliz., and a study on the "realia" / Woerter 
und Sachen of the RV, pp. 487-525, by T. Eliz. and V. I. Toporov.

Printed in 2500 copies only (unlike the 40,000 of the first vol., in 
Soviet times!), so hurry up to buy it. Price unknown. Address:

Izdatelstvo "Nauka", 117864 GSP-7, Moskva V-485, Profsoyuznaya Ul. 90, 
Russia.



M. Witzel,  617- 496 8570. fax 496 9571.





On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

> James A. Santucci, in his _An Outline of Vedic Literature_ (AAR, 1976),
> p. 3, says that Geldner's German translation of the RV is "being
> translated into English and will be appearing in print shortly".
> 
> What happened to this project?  Who was doing it?
> 
> Dominik Wujastyk
> 
>  
>