Re: [INDOLOGY] Speaking of plagiarism: Satya Prakash Sarasvati and Satyakam Vidyalankar’s Ṛgveda

[David and Nancy Reigle]

No, I did not intend to imply anything about Malhotra's writings, which I
have never read. I wanted to call attention to two other cases of
plagiarism, far more extensive than Malhotra's. Even if the possibility
that something might be done about them is remote, it may be useful to know
about them.

I was very disappointed when I saw what T. G. Mainkar had done with
the Sāṃkhyakārikā
and Gauḍapāda’s commentary, copying even omissions and typographical errors
in Har Dutt Sharma's translation. It seems that all he did was read and
edit the English, without even consulting the Sanskrit. He improved some
English words here and there, and deleted all the parentheses that Sharma
had used to distinguish his own additions from what is in the Sanskrit. Yet
Sharma's superior translation has fallen into oblivion, while Mainkar's was
again reprinted in 2004. I have scanned and posted Sharma's book in three
parts here:
http://prajnaquest.fr/blog/sanskrit-texts-3/sanskrit-hindu-texts/

Similarly, I was very disappointed to see that Satya Prakash Sarasvati and
Satyakam Vidyalankar had largely only copied Wilson's translation of
the Ṛgveda,
substituting God for the Vedic gods. The notes they added are helpful, and
they reproduced Aufrecht's romanized text, and also a devanagari text. But
I expected their translation to follow the Arya Samaj line of
interpretation throughout, so that we could see how it differs from Sāyaṇa’s
interpretation. What unsuspecting readers got instead, other than God for
the gods, was in fact Sāyaṇa’s interpretation, by way of the silent
appropriation of Wilson's translation.

My own work is textual, and these two cases of plagiarism are more
important to me than is Malhotra's case. I wanted to use the opportunity
that this discussion of plagiarism provided to call attention to these two
cases. Sorry that I did not distinguish them more clearly from Malhotra's
case.

Best regards,

David Reigle
Colorado, U.S.A.

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Two wrongs don't make a right.  (If that's what you meant.)
> ​
> ​
> Dominik Wujastyk​
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20150719/b1f34ef8/attachment.htm>