THE CLAIM THIS INTRODUCTION IS BUILT ON. A first translator of the Veda is not translating but deciphering, and owes the reader the same accounting an epigrapher owes: translators "ought to be decipherers, and ... are bound to justify every word of their translation in exactly the same manner in which the decipherers of hieroglyphic or cuneiform inscriptions justify every step they take." He called his the first traduction raisonnée. The consequence he draws is the one that matters for any edition: the notes "must always constitute the more important part in a translation or, more truly, in a deciphering of Vedic hymns." Not apparatus around the text — the larger half of the work.
Vedic Hymns, Part I — SBE Vol. 32 (trans. F. Max Müller, 1891)
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
The notes will necessarily have to be reduced to smaller dimensions, but they must always constitute the more important part in a translation or, more truly, in a deciphering of Vedic hymns.’
This was written more than twenty years ago, but though since that time Vedic scholarship has advanced with giant steps, I still hold exactly the same opinion which I held then with regard to the principles that ought to be followed by the first translators of the Veda. I hold that they ought to be decipherers, and that they are bound to justify every word of their translation in exactly the same manner in which the decipherers of hieroglyphic or cuneiform inscriptions justify every step they take. I therefore called my translation the first traduction raisonnée. I took as an example which I tried to follow, though well aware of my inability to reach its excellence, the Commentaire sur le Yasna by my friend and teacher, Eugéne Burnouf. Burnouf considered a commentary of 940 pages quarto as by no means excessive for a thorough interpretation of the first chapter of the Zoroastrian Veda, and only those unacquainted with the real difficulties of the Rig-veda would venture to say that its ancient words and thoughts required a less painstaking elucidation than those of the Avesta. In spite of all that has been said and written to the contrary, and with every wish to learn from those who think that the difficulties of a translation of Vedic hymns have been unduly exaggerated by me, I cannot in the least x VEDIC HYMNS.
modify what I said twenty, or rather forty years ago, that a mere translation of the Veda, however accurate, intelligible, poetical, and even beautiful, is of absolutely no value for the advancement of Vedic scholarship, unless it is followed by piéces justificatives, that is, unless the translator gives his reasons why he has translated every word about which there can be any doubt, in his own way, and not in any other.
It is well known that Professor von Roth, one of our most eminent Vedic scholars, holds the very opposite opinion. He declares that a metrical translation is the best commentary, and that if he could ever think of a translation of the Rig-veda, he would throw the chief weight, not on the notes, but on the translation of the text. ‘A translation,’ he writes, ‘must speak for itself. As a rule, it only requires a commentary where it is not directly convincing, and where the translator does not feel secure.’
Between opinions so diametrically opposed, no compromise seems possible, and yet I feel convinced that when we come to discuss any controverted passage, Professor von Roth will have to adopt exactly the same principles of translation which I have followed.
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The notes will necessarily have to be reduced to smaller dimensions, but they must always constitute the more important part in a translation or, more truly, in a deciphering of Vedic hymns.’
This was written more than twenty years ago, but though since that time Vedic scholarship has advanced with giant steps, I still hold exactly the same opinion which I held then with regard to the principles that ought to be followed by the first translators of the Veda. I hold that they ought to be decipherers, and that they are bound to justify every word of their translation in exactly the same manner in which the decipherers of hieroglyphic or cuneiform inscriptions justify every step they take. I therefore called my translation the first traduction raisonnée. I took as an example which I tried to follow, though well aware of my inability to reach its excellence, the Commentaire sur le Yasna by my friend and teacher, Eugéne Burnouf. Burnouf considered a commentary of 940 pages quarto as by no means excessive for a thorough interpretation of the first chapter of the Zoroastrian Veda, and only those unacquainted with the real difficulties of the Rig-veda would venture to say that its ancient words and thoughts required a less painstaking elucidation than those of the Avesta. In spite of all that has been said and written to the contrary, and with every wish to learn from those who think that the difficulties of a translation of Vedic hymns have been unduly exaggerated by me, I cannot in the least x VEDIC HYMNS.
modify what I said twenty, or rather forty years ago, that a mere translation of the Veda, however accurate, intelligible, poetical, and even beautiful, is of absolutely no value for the advancement of Vedic scholarship, unless it is followed by piéces justificatives, that is, unless the translator gives his reasons why he has translated every word about which there can be any doubt, in his own way, and not in any other.
It is well known that Professor von Roth, one of our most eminent Vedic scholars, holds the very opposite opinion. He declares that a metrical translation is the best commentary, and that if he could ever think of a translation of the Rig-veda, he would throw the chief weight, not on the notes, but on the translation of the text. ‘A translation,’ he writes, ‘must speak for itself. As a rule, it only requires a commentary where it is not directly convincing, and where the translator does not feel secure.’
Between opinions so diametrically opposed, no compromise seems possible, and yet I feel convinced that when we come to discuss any controverted passage, Professor von Roth will have to adopt exactly the same principles of translation which I have followed.
His measure of how much commentary is proportionate is worth knowing before judging any edition's apparatus as excessive. Burnouf, whom he took as his model, "considered a commentary of 940 pages quarto as by no means excessive for a thorough interpretation of THE FIRST CHAPTER of the Zoroastrian Veda." Nine hundred and forty pages, one chapter. Müller cites it without irony, as the standard he knew he could not reach.
He then decides the metre-versus-prose question against his own preference, which is the most persuasive way an argument of that kind can go. He concedes the point to his opponents outright — "a metrical rendering would convey a truer idea of the hymns of the Vedic Rishis than a prose rendering" — and says he has done it himself in German. And then: "I feel in honesty bound to confess that a metrical translation is often an excuse only for an inaccurate translation." Unless a man is Rückert, "great alike as scholars and poets", the scholar does his duty better in prose "than if he has to make any concessions, however small, on the side of faithfulness in favour of rhythm and rhyme."
And he settles it empirically rather than by assertion, testing a critical consensus against what scholars actually use. The journals had praised Grassmann's metrical Rig-veda and disparaged Ludwig's prose one, at length and repeatedly. "What is the result? Grassmann's metrical translation ... is hardly ever appealed to, while Ludwig's prose rendering, with all its drawbacks, is universally considered as the only scholarlike translation." Reviews said one thing; citation practice said another; he takes the citation practice as the evidence.
The sentence to carry away from this volume is about the scholar's obligation, and it is aimed at translations that simply pronounce. "A translation on the sic volo sic jubeo principle does far more harm than good. It may be true that a judge, if he is wise, will deliver his judgment, but never propound his reasons. BUT A SCHOLAR IS A PLEADER RATHER THAN A JUDGE, and he is in duty bound to propound his reasons." An unjustified rendering is not a modest translation; it is an unappealable one.
He then runs the comparison fairly, on ground his opponent chose. Von Roth had taken a hymn Müller had translated with notes — the 165th of the first Mandala — and rendered it metrically to demonstrate what a proper translation looks like. Müller accepts that text, and reports the agreements first: "On many points Professor von Roth adopts the same renderings which I had adopted, only that he gives no reasons, while I do so, at least for all debatable passages." His objection is never that the result is wrong but that it is unsupported: "Prof. von Roth brings forward no passage where mimikshire is used in the sense in which he uses it here, and therefore I say again, his rendering may be poetical, but it is not scholarlike."
To gloss sushma — from svas, to breathe, with the sense sliding from breath to strength — he reaches straight across to the Psalms, Job and Isaiah: "At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils"; "By the blast of God they perish"; "with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked". A Vedic semantic shift argued from Hebrew scripture, in a series he himself edited, on the assumption that his reader knows one of those books by heart and not the other.
The opposite pole is in this same series, fourteen years later. Thibaut, translating Râmânuja in SBE 48, admits he "aimed rather at making it intelligible and, in a certain sense, readable than scrupulously accurate" and would go further if he rewrote it — for the sake of reaching readers who find literal renderings from technical Sanskrit "strange and repellent". Müller's decipherer and Thibaut's intelligible version are two defensible answers to one question, printed under the same imprint.
contrasts in method with The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary of Râmânuja, Part III — SBE Vol. 48 (trans. George Thibaut, 1904)