Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1whereby the unheard-of becomes heard, the inconceiv- PSS es te ee inne, STE ' Lecture on the Vedanta, embracing the text of the Vedanta-Sara, Allahabad, 1851, p. 69. Vedantasara, with Nrdsimha-Sarasvati’s Subodhinf, and Ramatirtha’s Vidvanmanorafgini, Calcutta, 1860, p. Sy. Here we tind the right reading, aprakshas,
2INTRODUCTION, Xvii Ea nn A able becomes conceived, and the unknowable becomes thoroughly known.”’ Dr. Ballantyne therefore felt exactly what I felt, that in our passage a strictly literal translation would be wrong, would convey no meaning, or a wrong meaning; and Mr. Nehemiah Goreh will see that he ought not to express blame, without trying to find out whether those whom he blames for want of exactness, were not in reality more scrupulously exact in their translation than he has proved himself to be. Mr. Nehemiah Goreh has, no doubt, great advantages in interpreting the Upanishads, and when he writes without any theological bias, his remarks are often very useful. Thus he objects rightly, I think, to my translation of a sentence in the same chapter of the A /#andogya-upanishad, where the father, in answer to his son’s question, replies: ‘Sad eva, Somya, idam agra Asid ekam evadvitiyam.’ I had tried several translations of these words, and yet I see now that the one I proposed in the end is liable to be misunderstood. I had translated: ‘In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is, one only, without a second.’ The more faithful translation would have been: ‘ The being alone was this in the beginning.’ But ‘the being’ does not mean in English that which is, ré év, and therefore, to avoid any misunderstanding, I translated ‘that which is.’ I might have said, however, ‘ The existent, the real, the true (satyam) was this in the beginning,’ just as in the Aitareya-upanishad we read: ‘The Self was all this, one alone, in the beginning ?.’ But in that case I should have sacrificed the gender, and this in our passage is of great importance, being neuter, and not masculine. What, however, is far more important, and where Mr. Nehemiah Goreh seems to me to have quite misapprehended the original Sanskrit, is this, that sat, rd dv, and 4tma, the Self, are the subjects in these sentences, and not predicates. Now Mr. Nehemiah Goreh translates: ‘This was the existent one itself before, one only without a second ;’ and he
3explains: ‘This universe, before it was developed in the present form, was the existent one, Brahma, itself.’ This cannot be. If ‘idam,’ this, i.e. the visible world, were the subject, how could the Upanishad go on and say, tad aikshata bahu sy4m pragdyeyeti tat tego ’srigata, ‘that thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. This can be said of the Sat only, that is, the Brahman!. Sat, therefore, is the subject, not idam, for a Vedantist may well say that Brahman is the world, or sent forth the world, but not that the world, which is a mere illusion, was, in the beginning, Brahman. This becomes clearer still in another passage, Maitr. Up. VI, 17, where we read: Brahma ha va idam agra asid eko ‘nanta4, ‘In the beginning Brahman was all this. He was one, and infinite.’ Here the transition from the neuter to the masculine gender shows that Brahman only can be the subject, both in the first and in the second sentence. In English it may seem to make little difference whether we say, ‘Brahman was this, or ‘this was Brahman.’ In Sanskrit too we find, Brahma khalv idam vava sarvam, ‘Brahman indeed is all this’ (Maitr. Up. IV, 6), and Sarvamz khalv idam Brahma, ‘all this is Brahman indeed’ (KAand. Up. III, 14,1). But the logical meaning is always that Brahman was all this, i.e. all that we see now. Brahman being the subject, idam the predicate. Brahman becomes idam, not idam Brahman. Thus the Pa#kadasi, I, 18, says: Ekadasendriyair yuktya sdstrezApy avagamyate Yavat kimkid bhaved etad idamsabdoditam gagat, which Mr. A. Venis (Pandit, V, p. 667) translates: ‘ Whatever may be apprehended through the eleven organs, by argument and revelation, i.e. the world of phenomena, is expressed by the word idam, this.’ The Paskadasi then goes on: Idam sarvam pura srishfer ekam evAdvitiyakam Sad evasin namarfpe ndstam ity Arumer vakah. This Mr. Venis translates: ‘Previous to creation. all this
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1whereby the unheard-of becomes heard, the inconceiv- PSS es te ee inne, STE ' Lecture on the Vedanta, embracing the text of the Vedanta-Sara, Allahabad, 1851, p. 69. Vedantasara, with Nrdsimha-Sarasvati’s Subodhinf, and Ramatirtha’s Vidvanmanorafgini, Calcutta, 1860, p. Sy. Here we tind the right reading, aprakshas,
2INTRODUCTION, Xvii Ea nn A able becomes conceived, and the unknowable becomes thoroughly known.”’ Dr. Ballantyne therefore felt exactly what I felt, that in our passage a strictly literal translation would be wrong, would convey no meaning, or a wrong meaning; and Mr. Nehemiah Goreh will see that he ought not to express blame, without trying to find out whether those whom he blames for want of exactness, were not in reality more scrupulously exact in their translation than he has proved himself to be. Mr. Nehemiah Goreh has, no doubt, great advantages in interpreting the Upanishads, and when he writes without any theological bias, his remarks are often very useful. Thus he objects rightly, I think, to my translation of a sentence in the same chapter of the A /#andogya-upanishad, where the father, in answer to his son’s question, replies: ‘Sad eva, Somya, idam agra Asid ekam evadvitiyam.’ I had tried several translations of these words, and yet I see now that the one I proposed in the end is liable to be misunderstood. I had translated: ‘In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is, one only, without a second.’ The more faithful translation would have been: ‘ The being alone was this in the beginning.’ But ‘the being’ does not mean in English that which is, ré év, and therefore, to avoid any misunderstanding, I translated ‘that which is.’ I might have said, however, ‘ The existent, the real, the true (satyam) was this in the beginning,’ just as in the Aitareya-upanishad we read: ‘The Self was all this, one alone, in the beginning ?.’ But in that case I should have sacrificed the gender, and this in our passage is of great importance, being neuter, and not masculine. What, however, is far more important, and where Mr. Nehemiah Goreh seems to me to have quite misapprehended the original Sanskrit, is this, that sat, rd dv, and 4tma, the Self, are the subjects in these sentences, and not predicates. Now Mr. Nehemiah Goreh translates: ‘This was the existent one itself before, one only without a second ;’ and he
3explains: ‘This universe, before it was developed in the present form, was the existent one, Brahma, itself.’ This cannot be. If ‘idam,’ this, i.e. the visible world, were the subject, how could the Upanishad go on and say, tad aikshata bahu sy4m pragdyeyeti tat tego ’srigata, ‘that thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. This can be said of the Sat only, that is, the Brahman!. Sat, therefore, is the subject, not idam, for a Vedantist may well say that Brahman is the world, or sent forth the world, but not that the world, which is a mere illusion, was, in the beginning, Brahman. This becomes clearer still in another passage, Maitr. Up. VI, 17, where we read: Brahma ha va idam agra asid eko ‘nanta4, ‘In the beginning Brahman was all this. He was one, and infinite.’ Here the transition from the neuter to the masculine gender shows that Brahman only can be the subject, both in the first and in the second sentence. In English it may seem to make little difference whether we say, ‘Brahman was this, or ‘this was Brahman.’ In Sanskrit too we find, Brahma khalv idam vava sarvam, ‘Brahman indeed is all this’ (Maitr. Up. IV, 6), and Sarvamz khalv idam Brahma, ‘all this is Brahman indeed’ (KAand. Up. III, 14,1). But the logical meaning is always that Brahman was all this, i.e. all that we see now. Brahman being the subject, idam the predicate. Brahman becomes idam, not idam Brahman. Thus the Pa#kadasi, I, 18, says: Ekadasendriyair yuktya sdstrezApy avagamyate Yavat kimkid bhaved etad idamsabdoditam gagat, which Mr. A. Venis (Pandit, V, p. 667) translates: ‘ Whatever may be apprehended through the eleven organs, by argument and revelation, i.e. the world of phenomena, is expressed by the word idam, this.’ The Paskadasi then goes on: Idam sarvam pura srishfer ekam evAdvitiyakam Sad evasin namarfpe ndstam ity Arumer vakah. This Mr. Venis translates: ‘Previous to creation. all this
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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