RECENT PROGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 269 



which, a void, was covered with nothingness, sprang into being as One, by the power of heat. 

 4. Desire was first produced in it, which is the first germ of mind. The wise, searching in their heart, 

 have, by their intellect, discovered in nonentity the bond of entity. 6. Who knows, who here can 

 declare, whence has sprung, whence, this development ? the gods are subsequent to the evolution of 

 this universe : who then knows whence it arose ? 7. From what source this development arose, and 

 whether any one created this universe or not, he who in the highest heavens is its ruler, he truly 

 knows, or he does not know."* 



An English translation of about half of the hymns of the Rigveda has been 

 published by the late Professor H. H. Wilson, who follows the interpretation 

 given by the native commentator Sayana. Though there is no reason to doubt 

 that this commentator has in general rendered the sense of the hymns with 

 tolerable correctness, it is scarcely less clear that, in regard to a large number of 

 words and phrases, his explanations are not satisfactory. The hymns, as I have 

 said, are separated by a wide chasm from all the later literature. Numerous 

 words which occur in them are found nowhere else ; and the tradition of the true 

 meaning appears to have been lost. Though the Brahmanas, if thoroughly ex- 

 plored, would, according to Professor Mullee,! supply most valuable materials for 

 the explanation of old Vedic words, yet many difficult terms would remain, of 

 which they would offer either no satisfactory interpretation, or none at all. The 

 Brahmanas are not commentaries. Their primary object is to prescribe the de- 

 tails of particular ceremonies, and the manner in which the texts of the Vedic 

 hymns are to be recited ; and though, in the course of their directions, they 

 introduce many etymologies, these are frequently fanciful, and accompanied by 

 mystical references. There is indeed one extant list of Vedic words partly ob- 

 solete, and a commentary on them by Yaska, called Nirukta, in which the author 

 gives his interpretation of many of the more difficult words in the Rigveda. This 

 writer is considered to have lived several centuries before Christ ; but as his in- 

 terpretations are always accompanied by etymologies, and are sometimes alter- 

 native, it would seem as if the true sense of many of the words which he expounds 

 had been already lost in his day, and even then could only be recovered by resort- 

 ing to the meaning of the roots with which they seemed to have most affinity. 

 But if such was the case at that early period, how much more difficult must the 

 explanation of the hymns have become in the age in which the commentator 

 Sayana wrote (the fourteenth century a.d.), when the Indian mythology, institu- 

 tions, and manner of thinking, had departed so much more widely from the Vedic 

 standard than it had in the time of Yaska. 



It should not therefore surprise us, that writers trained in the modern school 

 of philology and interpretation should be unwilling to regard Sayana's inter- 

 pretations as satisfactory and final ; and we accordingly find that Benfey, Roth, 

 MuLLER, AuFRECHT, and others, while they derive from the native commentators 



* See MiJLLER's fine remarks on this hymn, and the metrical version given by him, in Anc. 

 Sansk. Lit. p. 559, fF. 



•f Anc. Sansk. Lit. p. 153, f 



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