[INDOLOGY] RV tr. by J&B: reviews? scans of earlier translations?

[Jan E.M. Houben]

Long awaited, but finally frequently and in several respects disappointing:
the RV translation by Stephanie Jamison & Joel Brereton (2014).
Are any further major reviews known apart from Pinault 2015, Zimmer 2015
and Thomson 2016 (see below)?
Are scans available of earlier translations such as the one by Grassmann,
or of the one by Ludwig?

Background to my request:
Since its publication in 1951, K.F. Geldner's translation into German  --
prepared before WWII -- has for several decades remained, also in RV
studies written in English, the only complete scholarly translation worth
quoting and worth critical discussion, next to the almost complete
translation into French by Louis Renou. (Another complete translation is
the one into Russian by Tj. Elizarenkova.)

The J&B 2014 translation of the RV has therefore been an important
contribution to the field, but cannot replace the annotated translation by
Geldner, even if we do not take into account the limits the authors
themselves imposed on their new translation, who decided to refer only
sparingly to secondary literature on each of the Ṛgvedic hymns. More
problematic is that the translation uncritically continues habitual
mistakes such as the translation of -dh'ātamam in RV 1.1.1 as if it would
have been -d'ātamam (Geldner, not in his translation but in his note ad
loc., pointed the way to a better interpretation); it sows confusion
through hasty and totally wrong claims such as that the first hymn of the
Ṛgveda would contain the word agní in the “accusative, nominative,
instrumental, dative, and again nominative”: the dative agnáye, in fact,
occurs nowhere in the hymn (neither did T. Elizarenkova, in her Language
and Style of the Vedic Ṛṣis (1995), to whom J&B refer at this place, ever
say erroneously that the first hymn of the Ṛgveda would contain the dative
agnáye; nor did Ferdinand de Saussure to whom Elizarenkova, in turn,
referred); verses and verbs are forcefully interpreted in the light of
post-rgvedic language and culture, for instance the verb "ribh" (neglecting
inter alia Renou EVP III p. 52 and Gonda Vision 1963 p. 49, 79; Rix et al.
2001 wisely stick to the meaning "singen" and add "Vgl.* aber* Jamison ...
2000" without even mentioning the alternative meaning proposed there:
"squawk"); the brief introduction to RV 10.90 consists mainly of clichés
and interprets the reference to the four "estates" (neither = varṇa nor =
caste) Brāhmaṇa, Rājanya, Vaiśya, Śūdra, as hierarchical, although it is in
the context of the hymn evidently heterarchical; by rigidly interpreting
yajñá as "sacrifice" throughout the RV (PW, Grassmann's WB and MW justly
distinguish earlier and later usage of yaj and yajñá -- as I discussed
further elsewhere) this concept, and hence almost the entire RV, is drained
of all personal engagement of the inspired poets and priests: this prepares
the RV for an interpretation in terms of an utterly "meaningless" Vedic
ritual; on the basis of the dispersed occurrence of the syllables ya and bha in
another verse the translators assume a reference to a well-known Sanskrit
verb -- a cognate is still in use in Russian -- discussed by Karl Hoffmann
in a famous article, although the verb is nowhere part of the RV
vocabulary, not even in other plain-worded erotic hymns; ... etc., etc. ...

I am aware of three major, quite divergent reviews of the J&B translation:
one by Georges-Jean Pinault (Bulletin d’Etudes Indiennes, vol. 31 (2015):
307-322);
one by Stefan Zimmer (Journal of Indo-European Studies, vol. 43.3-4 (2015):
477-544); and
one by Karen Thomson (The Times Literary Supplement of January 8, 2016, p.
3-4, discussed earlier on this list; now also on her website), in an
approach partly inspired by the Indo-Europeanist Winfrid Lehman and partly
by Shri Aurobindo’s endeavour to interpret the Ṛgveda as exclusively
adhyātmam, personal and "spiritual", by avoiding and evading the adhidaivam
and adhiyajnam dimensions of interpretation which were fully recognized
already in the texts of the Brāhmaṇa-genre -- this over-inspired approach
therefore runs the risk of being un-Vedic according to the traditional
definition of the Veda: mantra-brāhmaṇayor veda-nāmadeyam ...

More than ever before it has become necessary to consult earlier
translations of the RV: by Geldner, Renou, Ludwig, Grassmann (and of course
Oldenberg's notes).

Best regards,
Jan

-- 

*Jan E.M. Houben*

Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology

*Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite*

École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL - Université Paris)

*Sciences historiques et philologiques *

54, rue Saint-Jacques, CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

*johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr <johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr>*

*johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu <johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu>*

*https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
<https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben>*

[image: 1506959459738_Signature]


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