The Word akrá in the Rigveda ─ The Arbitrary Nature of Rigvedic Interpretation and Translation
Shrikant G. Talageri
In my article "Final version of the Chronological Gulf Between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda" (23/8/2022), I have given a (as far as possible) complete list of New Words in the Rigveda: i.e. words found only in the New Rigveda (Books 5, 1, 8, 9, 10) and in the Redacted Hymns in the other 5 books (Books 6, 3, 7, 4, 2 in that chronological order), but completely missing in the (Old Hymns of the) Old Rigveda (Books 6, 3, 7, 4, 2, minus the Redacted Hymns).
To set out the bare facts here, I gave a long list of New Words (as well as New Meters) which are totally missing in the Old Rigveda, the distribution of these being as follows:
1. Old Rigveda Books 2,3,4,6,7: 0/280 Hymns, 0/2368 verses, 0 words. +0 C + 0 M.
2. Redacted Hymns in Old Books 2,3,4,6,7: 61/62 Hymns, 470/873 verses, 724 words. +1 C + 6 M.
3. New Rigveda Books 1,5,8,9,10: 684/686 Hymns, 4256/7311 verses, 6828 words. +300 C + 96 M.
The importance of delineating the extremely sharp difference between the vocabulary of the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda is that it gives us a clear perspective about the evolution of the Rigvedic language during these two very distinct historical epochs during which the Rigveda was composed, and provides us with a touchstone to evaluate all kinds of historical data and to solve all kinds of historical problems in the study of not just Rigvedic (or "Indo-Aryan") history but also "Indo-Iranian" and Indo-European history.
The most important and obvious application of this data, as I have repeatedly made clear( in subsequent articles and my fourth book later in 2019) since my third book (The Rigveda and the Avesta - The Final Evidence, in 2008), is in proving that the common culture of the Rigveda, the Avesta and the Mitanni inscriptions belongs to the period of the New Rigveda and is very clearly posterior to the period of the Old Rigveda:
1. Since the geography of the New Rigveda spreads out from westernmost UP in the east to Afghanistan in the west ─ and that of the Old Rigveda is originally restricted to westernmost UP and Haryana with clear historical data on the step-by-step expansion westwards ─ this proves that the ancestors of the Mitanni kings, and of the composers of the Avesta, migrated from this region during (or after) the period of composition of the New Rigveda.
2. Since the presence of the ancestors of the Mitanni kings in Syria-Iraq in West Asia is attested from well before 1500 BCE (and this ancestral heritage is already a remnant of the past), this proves that those ancestors had much earlier (before 2000 BCE at the least) migrated from the Rigvedic area, and this places the period of the earlier Old Rigveda (located in westernmost UP and Haryana) well before 2500 BCE. This is one huge step in completely demolishing the Steppe Homeland theory and the AIT, and in proving the Indian Homeland and the OIT.
So far, it has been for me an exercise in identifying New Words (and other features like new meters, etc) which are found in the New Rigveda but apparently did not exist in the period of the Old Rigveda.
An exercise in the opposite direction would be to identify Old Words which existed during the period of the Old Rigveda, and may have survived into the period of the New Rigveda, but became more and more rare or perhaps died out completely in the period of the three subsequent Veda Samhitas (except in the case of what may be called "repetitions", or Rigvedic verses borrowed and repeated in these subsequent Samhitas) and in later Vedic and post-Vedic texts (unless artificially revived later for their archaic value). Just as a study of the New Words clinches the solution to many major historical problems, it is possible that a study of the Old Words could likewise prove to be of some use in historical analysis. What that use could be is something that I cannot guess at the moment ─ but such analysis would require linguistic study of the possible cognate words in other IE branches. As this would require a knowledge of many of the oldest IE languages, as well as of the methods of evaluating comparative IE vocabulary, I cannot do this work, and must leave it to future analysts (if, that is, this kind of study and analysis acquires enthusiastic adherents, which does not seem very likely from present trends).
My purpose in writing this article is merely to highlight the problems that would arise if anyone tried to undertake such a comparative historical analysis of any such Old Words in the Rigveda. It would not be too difficult to produce a list of such Old Words, from a detailed study of the Rigveda (vis-à-vis the other three Samhitas) but, apart from the fact that it would be a difficult task to find cognate forms for these Old Words in other IE branches (since I do not think any such study has ever been carried out), the first big problem would be to correctly identify even the correct meaning of any Old Word in the Rigveda. This is what I found when I tried to go through the Rigvedic data to try to produce at least a small list of such words. The very first word that I examined, the word akrá, shows how such Old Words, in the absence of well-attested native translations and known cognate forms in other branches, can lead to a multiplicity of contradictory and arbitrary interpretations of meaning.
This word akrá is found five times in the Rigveda, twice in the Old Hymns of the Old Rigveda and thrice in the latest books I and X:
I. 143.7; 189.7.
III. 1.12.
IV. 6.3.
X. 77.2.
The word is not found after the Rigveda, not even in the three other Veda Samhitas (not even as a repeated Rigvedic verse).
As per Cappeller's Vedic dictionary, the word means "banner/flag". Monier-Williams' Sanskrit dictionary also gives the Rigvedic meaning as "banner", but adds that as per the commentary by Durga (an ancient commentator on Yaska's Nirukta) the word can also mean "wall/fence". Grassmann in his German translation of the Rigveda translates the word as "banner" in four verses, but as "buttress/supporting wall" in III.1.12. Griffith likewise translates it as "supporter" in III.1.12, but is more ambiguous in his translation of the word in the other four verses.
Wilson, in his translations, gives a totally different meaning to the word. In his footnote to I.143.7, he tells us that the word "is derived from kram, to go, and is explained by ákránta or anukranta, 'surpassed or exceeded by'", and proceeds to give ambiguous translations in the different verses.
Most interesting of all, the two scholars who are usually recommended as the best translators (by, for example, Witzel), regularly translate the word as the name of an animal, but two different animals: Geldner translates it as "elephant" and Jamison translates it as "foal [?]" (with, as indicated, a question mark). While it is not clear on exactly what basis Geldner translates it as "elephant", Jamison's dubious translation of the word as "foal" is certainly totally without any basis.
A glance at the original Rigvedic verse (admittedly difficult of translation) III.1.12, and the five different translations by these scholars shows the amount of guesswork and arbitrary interpretation involved in the process. Even where the meaning of every word is known, it is often difficult to translate the entire verse in a coherent manner, since the language of the Rigveda is the language of the oldest full text in the world not only in any IE language but in any language, and therefore it is not (and never was even in Classical India) easy to understand the exact meaning of what the composers wanted to say. This is not because "Sanskrit is untranslatable", but because the Rigvedic language goes so far back into the past (well beyond 3000 BCE in its earliest parts) that even if the meaning of every individual word in a verse is known, as Max Müller pointed out in his book Vedic Hymns, "It is difficult to explain to those who have not themselves worked at the Veda, how it is that, although we may understand every word, yet we find it so difficult to lay hold of a whole chain of collected thought" (p.xxii). How much more this would be so when there are words whose meaning is itself not known for sure, can be seen from the different, and differently incoherent, ways in which even a single verse can be translated by the different scholars. We will take the example of a single verse (with the word akrá in it), III.1.12:
Rigveda III.1.12:
akro na babhriḥ samithe mahīnām didṛkṣeyaḥ sūnave bhāṛjīkaḥ
ud usriyā janitā yo jajānāpām garbho nṛtamo yahvo agniḥ
Grassmann: As a buttress in the rush of waves, the son who radiated light is worth seeing; he who produced the light as the producer, the water sprouted, the strong, swift Agni.
Griffith: As keen supporter where great waters gather, light-shedder whom the brood rejoice to look on; he who begat and will beget the dawn-lights, most manly, child of floods, is youthful Agni.
Wilson: The invincible Agni, the cherisher of the valiant in battle, the seen of all, shining by his own lustre, the generator (of the world), the embryo of the waters, the chief of leaders, the mighty is he who has begotten the waters for the benefit of the offerer of the libation.
Geldner: Like a carrying elephant in the
confluence of the high waters, a coveted sight for the son, spared his lustre;
he who, as producer, produced the cows, the child of the waters, the manliest,
the youngest Agni.
Jamison: Like a burden-bearing foal [?], at the meeting place of the great (waters?), the one desirable for a son to see and foaming with radiance; the begetter who gave birth to the ruddy (cows of dawn), the embryo of waters, and the best of men is young Agni.
Many other verses would be even more ludicrous in their different arbitrary interpretations.
Therefore, it is necessary to examine the Rigveda and draw out a list of Old Words, but, at the same time, to exercise caution in assigning arbitrary abstract meanings to those words and interpretations to the verses in which the words occur.