A Review of a Review (by Swami Narasimhananda) of the
Rigveda as Translated by Jamison and Brereton
Shrikant G Talageri
I just received (from academia.edu.in) a copy of a very short review of the famous and now most widely acclaimed translation of the Rigveda by Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton. It is a very short review, hardly two pages, by Swami Narasimhananda, editor of Prabuddha Bharata, so I would not have thought it necessary to pay any critical attention to the translation were it not that, within this short space, it resorts to some degree of “Griffith-bashing” in its zeal to present the Jamison-Brereton volume as a brilliant exercise by contrast:
“To translate the Rig Veda into English requires great patience and great scholarship. Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton have successfully achieved this mammoth task. The earlier English translation of Rig Veda by Ralph T. H. Griffith was done without taking into account the innumerable nuances of the tradition within which the Vedas originated. Jamison and Brereton make it clear that Griffith’s translation “conceals rather than reveals the wonders” of the RigVeda (1.3)”.
The point is that while the reviewer does seem to point to some shortcomings (though mainly or solely consisting of what more could have been given in the volumes rather than what is wrong in the translations as they are given) in Jamison-Brereton’s work, it ends this exercise in a show of awestruck respect for the work in sharp contrast to the contempt shown for Griffith:
“It would have been better if the reader was given a more annotated translation alongside this “imaginative” one, as it would have helped to make better sense of the translation. But just as the original text has been dropped because of the obvious reason of length, annotations also could not be given. The translators have refrained from giving explanatory notes and point their readers to the copious notes in the German translation done by Karl Friedrich Geldner in 1951. While the language of Jamison and Brereton’s translation is brief and poetic for the most part, it fails to convey sense to the modern reader. Probably this compelled the translators to give annotations and commentary and make them available online for the benefit of the reader. This is still a work in progress. The reader is completely awestruck when going through this online”
Yes, I accept that, whether the translation of the Rigveda by any particular translator is right or wrong, it is certainly a matter to make the reader awestruck by the great labor and intensive study which must have been made by the translator in executing the monumental task. But this should have left the reviewer to feel even more awestruck by the work of Griffith (or of Wilson, both of whom were the only persons perhaps to carry out English translations of the entire text of the Rigveda in the late 19th century, well more than a century before Jamison-Brereton). They did it when there were no complete translations available before them for them to consult or compare, and when there were no sweeping computer techniques available for them to make use of in their translations.
But then not only is it surprising that the reviewer feels so contemptuous of Griffith’s translation, but even more that he seems to see no faults in the Jamison-Brereton translations. Whatever he praises in the Jamison-Brereton translation is equally present in Griffith’s translation, e.g. “Scholarship on the Rig Veda and the various extant English translations are discussed in here.” Although Griffith had no translations of the full Rigveda to discuss (since only Wilson had done it slightly before him), he does discuss in his footnotes all those points where earlier partial-translators, analysts and commentators on the Rigveda sharply differed from himself in their translations. Which is why so many very significant historical points (the name of Kavi Cāyamāna, the participants in the dāśarājña battle, etc. for example) come to light in the translations of various schoilars, which would have remained hidden if he had not presented those details.
I have pointed out in some detail in earlier articles both, why Griffith has my respect, as well as the faults in Jamison-Brereton’s translation. I will not give the URLs of those articles here. I will directly give the relevant material in appendices below.
It is unfortunate that a Swami who is editor of Prabuddha Bharata should adopt such a blind attitude of praise for Jamison-Brereton and contempt for Griffith.
APPENDIX I: GRIFFITH:
II. A Tribute to a very great Indologist: Ralph T. H.
Griffith
Griffith is regularly derided by Hindu scholars for his AIT outlook, but he is also derided by western scholars.
In his vicious critique “WESTWARD HO! The Incredible Wanderlust of the Rgvedic Tribes Exposed by S. Talageri” of my second book “The Rigveda – A Historical Analysis”, Michael Witzel wrote that I rely “throughout on Griffith’s outdated Victorian translation (1889), which even in its own day was aimed at a popular (and not scholarly) audience” (WITZEL 2001b:Summary), and, naturally, “depending totally on” (WITZEL 2001b:Edit), and “blindly using, any translation – let alone one as inadequate as Griffith’s – can easily lead one astray” (WITZEL 2001b:§3)."
In a more recent issue of Witzel's internet journal JIES, Stefan Zimmer reviews the recent English translation of the Rigveda by Stephanie Jamison, and declares it to be "the first complete Rigveda [,,,] in English […] which may be taken serious by the scholarly world", and takes a swipe at Griffith: "only two complete translations of the Rigveda have been published in the past, viz. by Horace H. Wilson (1850-57, with reprints) and Ralph T.H. Griffith (1889-92, with revised later reprints). Both have been deservedly blamed for being philologically unreliable even in their own times, and both, consequently, played no role at all in subsequent Indological studies" (ZIMMER 2015:477).
Incredible but true: no "scholar" was able to translate the whole Rigveda into English in the course of 123 years between 1892 to 2015, and this is the disrespectful way in which the western scholars treat the two great pioneering scholars who did the job on their own in the earliest days.
Of course, just because they were the earliest they do not merit compulsory praise, but was their work really so bad as to deserve this condemnation? Obviously, the "scholarly audience" that Witzel refers to above did not find Griffith's (or Wilson's) translation sufficient to prove their agenda: his AIT interpretations do not usually appear in his actual translations (whether correct or incorrect), which are more objective, but in his footnotes, which provide the subjective note.
Griffith's translation definitely has its limits and faults. The language and style are Victorian, as also his moral inhibitions: he omits translating certain hymns and verses into English in the main body of his work, for their erotic content, and puts them in a separate appendix at the end of the book but translated into Latin (not meant for the "popular" audience but only for the "scholarly audience"). Moreover, his ill-advised use of Roman numerals for the hymn-numbers, and detachment of the Vālakhilya hymns from the middle of Book 8 and placing them in an appendix to Book 8 (changing the hymn-numbers of the hymns in Book 8 in the process), also add to the confusion.
But the great advantage of his translation is that, in spite of the countless mistakes made by him (because of the AIT blinkers worn by him), it gives us a greater insight into the Rigveda than any single translation by any other scholar. He has not only studied all the studies and partial translations of the Rigveda till his time (he mentions in his preface the works of Ludwig, Peterson, Müller, Wilson, Grassmann, Weber, Oldenberg, Bergaigne, Wallis, Kaegi, Monier-Williams, Goldstücker, Benfey, Muir, Roth, Cowell, Geldner, Colebrooke, etc.), but more important, he often points out the differences in their interpretations in the footnotes when his own translations differ: no other scholar does this to the same extent and in the same manner (including the Geldner and Jamison praised by Witzel and Zimmer when condemning Griffith), and therefore all other translations, even the best of them, give us limited perspectives (the views of only the single translator) on the actual verses being translated.
Thus, for example, he correctly translates VII.18.7 as "Together came the Pakthas, the Bhalānas, the Alinas, the Śivas and the Viṣāṇins", but in the footnotes points out Wilson's literalistic translation as "Those who dress the oblations, those who pronounce auspicious words, those who abstain from penance, those who bear horns (in their hands), those who bestow happiness (on the world by sacrifice)".
He incorrectly translates VII.18.8 as "Lord of the earth, he with his might repressed them: still lay the herd and the affrighted herdsman", but in the footnotes mentions Wilson's more accurate translation: "But he by his greatness pervades the earth, Kavi, the son of Chayamāna, like a falling victim, sleeps (in death)".
He incorrectly translates VII.83.1 as "armed with broad axes" and in the footnotes he not only gives Wilson's translation as "armed with large sickles", but, more important, notes: "Professor Ludwig notes that the former meaning is perfectly impossible, and argues that pṛthuparśavah must mean 'the Pṛthus and the Parśus'".
Many such instances can be produced, The Rigveda is a difficult text to translate, and the translation of a single scholar cannot reveal the full or correct picture. Griffith's work is therefore of great utility in understanding many contradictory translations, or even in understanding that there are indeed contradictory translations.
Incidentally, in condemning Griffith, both Witzel and Stefan Zimmer praise the German translation of Geldner (apart from the latest English translation of Jamison):
"the far more accurate scholarly translations made by K.F. Geldner (1951, German)…" (WITZEL 2001b:§3)
"up to now the standard translation into any language was Karl F. Geldner's German one, published in 1951 by the American Oriental Society, already written in the beginning of the century. An excellent work by the great Avestan and Vedic scholar, constantly consulted by everybody, much admired for its ample philological notes…" (ZIMMER 2015:478).
But note:
1. Jamison for example, translates the three verses referred to above as follows:
VII.18.7: "The Pakthas ["cooked oblations"?] and the Bhalānases ["raiders"?], spoke out, and the Alinas, the Viṣānins and the Śivas".
VII.18.8: "With his greatness he [Indra? Turvaṣa?] enveloped the earth, being master of it. The poet lay there, being perceived as (just) a (sacrificial) animal".
VII.83.1: "the broad-chested ones".
Note that Jamison's translation of VII.18.7 alternately translates Pakthas and Bhalānases as names or literal phrases, and the other three words only as names, creating a non-existent division in the five names (unlike Griffith, who consistently treats all five as names, and Wilson, who treats all five as literal phrases).
And her translations of VII.18.8 and VII.83.1 camouflage all the names in the form of literal phrases. Without Griffith (and Wilson in the first case) would the reader even have known that the concerned verses contain names?
This is why I give tribute to Griffith as a truly great Indological scholar. Even where he was wrong most of the time, it was not because of ideology or insincerity, but because of the AIT blinkers which were worn by him as a scholar of his time. And a study of his translations (and footnotes) is indispensable.
2. Further, the endorsement of Geldner while condemning Griffith, by both Witzel and Stefan Zimmer (I mention his name Stefan, since there was also an earlier Zimmer referred to by Griffith) is not very consistent when they find Geldner's translations inconvenient to their AIT interpretations.
Thus, the word ibha in the Rigveda is variously translated by Griffith as "servant/attendant" in IV.4.1 and VI.20.8, and as "household" in I.84.17. Geldner correctly translates the word as "elephant" in IV.4.1 and I.84.17, and leaves it untranslated as ibha in VI.20.8.
In this case, needless to say, Witzel and Stefan Zimmer would find Griffith's translations to be "scholarly" or "far more accurate scholarly translations", and would reject Geldner's as "inadequate" and "philologically unreliable".
Such is the hypocrisy of modern western Indological "scholars". And so much is the value you can place on their praise and condemnation of early Indologists.
As for the criticism that my analysis of the Rigveda solely "relies on" or is "based on" Griffith's translation:
Not one single person, neither Witzel who initially made this claim, nor the numerous brainless moronic clods on the internet who frequently repeat his words, can point out a single instance where I have "relied on", or "based" my analysis on, Griffith's translations and consequently have been led into any conclusions. That I have given a detailed critique of Griffith's translations in my second book (TALAGERI 2000:339-343) is not even worth mentioning in this regard.
Therefore and nevertheless, I pay my tributes to this great Indologist (as I already paid tribute in my books to Edward Hopkins, another great Indologist). However many mistakes these two particular Indologists, and many others, may have made — and, after all, human beings do make mistakes — they are not fools or villains, but great scholars who deserve respect.
APPENDIX II: JAMISON-BRERETON:
An
Incredibly Blatant Mistranslation in Jamison's translations of the Rigveda
Shrikant G,. Talageri
The English translation of the Rigveda by Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, "The Rigveda - The Earliest Religious Poetry of India" (Univ. of Texas South Asia Institute, and Oxford University Press, 2017) is now regularly put forward as the most standard, in fact the latest and most deeply researched, translation of the Rigveda into the English language.
As I have been studying the Rigveda, based on earlier translations and studies, but even more pertinently on the basis of the primary sources (the text itself and various Rigvedic grammar texts and Word Concordances, etc.) since more than twenty years now, it was never necessary for me to examine this new translation in great depth, and indeed I always generally assumed that it could be that her translations were more accurate in many ways than earlier ones since she had the benefit of studying those before she undertook her own work, although I have always found the contemptuously critical attitude that not only Indian opponents of the AIT but even AIT warriors like Witzel have towards earlier translations (such as that of Griffith) to be totally subjective, unreasonable and pompous "armchair" criticism.
The only thing I had noticed, from the incidental examination of her translations, was that she, like some other western academicians who write on Indian texts, seemed to love to indulge in dirty talk (like small children who feel thrilled when they use "dirty words"), and many of her translations of verses are not just outright vulgar in meaning but even the terms used indicate a rather deliberately selected sleazy street lingo style. However, this would be a rather subjective assessment of her writing, and perhaps particularly notable only because it stands in sharp contrast to the translations of earlier "Victorian" translators like Griffith who chose not to translate certain erotic hymns and verses into English in the main body of his work, but gave the Latin translations (meant only for the scholars and not for the pedestrian readers) in an appendix. But I still assumed that her work must in general (though of course strictly within the blinkers-restricted AIT paradigm) be sincere otherwise.
Which is why I got a shock today when a reader on the subject brought to my notice the fact that her book contains certain deliberate and motivated mistranslations calculated to misdirect and sabotage genuine historical inquiry into Rigvedic history. Apparently, her translations contain references to "spoked wheels" where no such references exist in the text.
To go straight to the point, the Rigveda refers to ara, "spokes" in the following verses:
I. 32.15; 141.9; 164.11-13
V. 13.6; 58.5.
VIII. 20.14; 77.3.
X. 78.4.
There is no reference to "spokes" anywhere else in the Rigveda. These references clearly indicate that spoked wheels (which were invented and used in the manufacture of spoked wheels at some point of time in the second half of the third millennium BCE, i.e. 2500-2200 BCE) were totally unknown to the Old Rigveda (Books 2-4, 6-7), and only became known during the period of composition of the New Rigveda (Books 1, 5, 8-10). This shows that the composition of the Old Rigveda goes back beyond the invention of spokes. Of course, one single word cannot prove anything, but my investigation into New Words started in the year 2001 following an internet debate on spoked wheels (between Witzel and Farmer on one side, and a group of NRIs on the other), it further led on to my analysis of the Mitanni name types and later the common Rigvedic-Avestan name types and words, and to my book "The Rigveda and the Avesta - The Final Evidence" (2008), followed by my article "the Chronological Gulf Between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda" (August 2020) and will now lead to my forthcoming article "The New Words and Other New Elements in the Rigveda". The combined effect of all this massive data shows that the Old Rigveda goes back beyond 2500 BCE, and it was composed in the region to the east of the Sarasvati river in modern Haryana.
The evidence that I have given (both textual and linguistic) has left the AIT academic lobby completely flabbergasted, and the only way it knows how to counter all the evidence is to completely stonewall it and to continue to write academic paper after academic paper in "peer-reviewed" journal after "peer-reviewed" journal simply reiterating what they have been writing before.
But there is a further "academic" development. It has now become necessary for them to start academic disinformation on a massive scale on crucial issues in order to try and sabotage the search for the Truth, by executing sharp u-turns to try to salvage the AIT. Thus, while the western academia has been claiming for over 200 years that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra river-complex of Haryana: now suddenly all of western academia is on a campaign to stoutly reject this identification! A western academic scholar Johanna Nichols, who had written a deep linguistic study showing that the locus of the spread of Indo-European languages was from Bactria-Margiana to the west, has now been made to (reluctantly) recant from that position by way of a Stalin-era-style written confession accepting that she was wrong. Then a western scholar, W. E. Clark, in an academic paper, has tried to show that the Mitanni rulers had no Indo-Aryan connections at all.
Now here, Jamison has taken up the gauntlet to show that spoked wheels are not found mentioned only in the New Books, but are found mentioned all over the Rigveda!
In her book, Jamison correctly translates all the above references to ara as "spokes". But, wonder of wonders, she discovers that the Rigveda has plentful references not only to the above "spokes" but actually to "spoked wheels" themselves!!
The following are the verses in the Rigveda identified by Jamison as referring to "spoked wheels":
I.59.2; 128.6,8.
II.2.2,3; 4.2.
III.17.4.
IV.1.1; 2.1.
V.2.1.
VI.3.5; 7.1; 12.3; 15.4; 49.2.
VII.5.1; 10.3; 16.1.
VIII.19.1,21.
X.3.1,2,6,7; 61.20.
Now there has to be a word for her to translate as "spoked wheels". The word she chooses, above, is arati. [For some unknown reason, in five other references to arati, I.58.7; IV.38.4; VI.67.8; X.45.7; 46.4, she makes no reference to spokes].
Now does this word mean "spoked wheels"? Note what two prominent western Sanskrit-English dictionaries have to say:
Monier Williams: "'moving quickly'; a servant, assistant, manager, administrator".
Cappeller: "1. assistant, minister, disposer. 2. discomfort, uneasiness".
Let us see how the other eminent western academic translators of the Rigveda have translated this word. For that we will take the first half of one of the above verses, I.59.2: mūrdhā divo nābhir agnih pṛthivyā athābhavad aratī rodasyoh.
Griffith: "The forehead of the sky, earth's center, Agni became the messenger of earth and heaven".
Wilson: "Agni the head of heaven, the navel of earth, became the ruler over both earth and heaven".
Grassmann: Des Himmels Haupt, der Erde Nabel, agni, ist beider Welten Diener er gewarden:
"The head of heaven, the navel of earth, Agni has become the servant of both worlds".
Geldner: Das Haupt des Himmels, der Nabel der Erde ist Agni, und er war der Lenker beider Welten:
"The head of heaven, the navel of the earth is Agni, and he was the ruler of both worlds".
Contrast this with Jamison's motivated mistranslation:
"The head of heaven the navel of the earth is Agni. And he became the spoked wheel of the two world-halves".
This one single, but very crucial, fraudulently mistranslated word by Jamison exposes the abysmally low and political nature of "peer-reviewed" western academic scholarship, which is held in such high, blind and worshipful reverence by many Indian sepoys in Indian academia and on the internet.
[In the course of many other articles, I have pointed out many more faults in the Jamison-Brereteon translations, particularly in respect of the identification of participants in the dāśarājña battle or other historically relevant matters. But I will not go into them in detail here. this much should suffice here]
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