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

Wed Aug 29 16:28:02 UTC 2018

I make no claim to know the slightest thing about the RV, but dare to add
only a reference to a review:

 David Shulman, Indo-Iranian Journal, Volume 60, Issue 4 (2017), pages 419
– 426

On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Jan E.M. Houben via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> 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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-- 
J. Silk
Leiden University
Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
2311 BZ Leiden
The Netherlands

copies of my publications may be found at
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk

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