Xxviii Preface to the
not fit them. If therefore the reader finds some
of these translations rather rugged, if he meets with
expressions which sound foreign, with combinations
of nouns and adjectives such as he has never seen
before, with sentences that seem too long or too
abrupt, let him feel sure that the translator has had
to deal with a choice of evils, and that when the
choice lay between sacrificing idiom or truth, he has
chosen the smaller evil of the two. I do not claim,
of course, either for myself or for my fellow-workers,
that we have always sacrificed as little as was
possible of truth or idiom, and that here and there
a happier rendering of certain passages may not be
suggested by those who come after us. I only wish
to warn the reader once more not to expect too
much from a translation, and to bear in mind that,
easy as it might be to render word by word, it is
difficult, aye, sometimes impossible, to render thought
by thought.
I shall give one instance only from my own
translation of the Upanishads. One of the most
important words in the ancient philosophy of the
Brahmans is Atman, nom. sing. Atma. It is
rendered in our dictionaries by ‘breath, soul, the
principle of life and sensation, the individual soul,
the self, the abstract individual, self, one’s self, the
reflexive pronoun, the natural temperament or dis-
position, essence, nature, character, peculiarity, the
person or the whole body, the body, the understand-
ing, intellect, the mind, the faculty of thought and
reason, the thinking faculty, the highest principle
of life, Brahma, the supreme deity or soul of the
universe, care, effort, pains, firmness, the sun, fire,
wind, air, a son.’
Sacred Books of the East. Xxix
This will give classical scholars an idea of the
chaotic state from which, thanks to the excellent
work done by Boehtlingk, Roth, and others, Sanskrit
lexicology is only just emerging. Some of the mean-
ings here mentioned ought certainly not to be
ascribed to 4tman. It never means, for instance,
the understanding, nor could it ever by itself be
translated by sun, fire, wind, air, pains or firmness.
But after deducting such surplusage, there still
remains a large variety of meanings which may,
under certain circumstances, be ascribed to Atman.
When Atman occurs in philosophical treatises,
such as the Upanishads and the Vedanta system
which is based on them, it has generally been trans-
lated by soul, mind, or spirit. I tried myself to use
one or other of these words, but the oftener I
employed them, the more I felt their inadequacy,
and was driven at last to adopt self and Self as
the least liable to misunderstanding.
No doubt in many passages it sounds strange in
English to use self, and in the plural selfs instead
of selves; but that very strangeness is useful, for
while such words as soul and mind and spirit pass
over us unrealised, self and selfs will always ruffle
the surface of the mind, and stir up some reflection
in the reader. In English to speak even of the
I and the Non-I, was till lately considered harsh ;
it may still be ,called a foreign philosophical idiom.
In German the Ich and Nicht-ich have, since the
time of Fichte, become recognised and almost
familiar, not only as philosophical terms, but as
legitimate expressions in the literary language of
the day. But while the Ich with Fichte expressed
the highest abstraction of personal existence, the
Xxx Preface to the
corresponding word in Sanskrit, the Aham or
AhankAra, was always looked upon as a secondary
development only, and as by no means free from all
purely phenomenal ingredients. Beyond the Aham
or Ego, with all its accidents and limitations, such
as sex, sense, language, country, and religion, the
ancient sages of India perceived, from a very early
time, the Atman or the self, independent of all such
accidents,
The individual 4tman or self, however, was with
the Brahmans a phase or phenomenal modification
only of the Highest Self, and that Highest Self
was to them the last point which could be reached
by philosophical speculation. It was to them what
in other systems of philosophy has been called by
various names, 76 év, the Divine, the Absolute. The
highest aim of all thought and study with the
Brahman of the Upanishads was to recognise his
own self as a mere limited reflection of the Highest
Self, to know his self in the Highest Self, and
through that knowledge to return to it, and regain
his identity with it. Here to know was to be, to
know the Atman was to be the Atman, and the
reward of that highest knowledge after death was
freedom from new births, or immortality.
That Highest Self which had become to the
ancient Brahmans the goal of all their mental ef-
forts, was looked upon at the same time as the
starting-point of all phenomenal existence, the root
of the world, the only thing that could truly be said
to be, to be real and true. As the root of all that
exists, the Atman was identified with the Brahman,
which in Sanskrit is both masculine and neuter, and
with the Sat, which is neuter only, that which is,
Sacred Books of the East. Xxxi1
or Satya, the true, the real. It alone exists in the
beginning and for ever; it has no second. What-
ever else is said to exist, derives its real being from
the Sat. How the one Sat became many, how
what we call the creation, what they call emanation
(mpéodos), constantly proceeds and returns to it, has
been explained in various more or less fanciful ways
by ancient prophets and poets. But what they
all agree in is this, that the whole creation, the
visible and invisible world, all plants, all animals,
all men are due to the one Sat, are upheld by it,
and will return to it.
If we translate Atman by soul, mind, or spirit,
we commit, first of all, that fundamental mistake
of using words which may be predicated, in place of
a word which is a subject only, and can never be-
come a predicate. We may say in English that
man possesses a soul, that a man is out of his mind,
that man has or even that man is a spirit, but we
could never predicate 4tman, or self, of anything
else. Spirit, if it means breath or life; mind, if it
means the organ of perception and conception ;
soul, if, like faitanya, it means intelligence in
general, all these may be predicated of the Atman,
as manifested in the phenomenal world. But
they are never subjects in the sense in which the
Atman is: they have no independent being, apart
from Atman. Thus to translate the beginning of the
Aitareya-upanishad, Atma va idam eka evagra
Asit, by ‘ This (world) verily was before (the creation
of the world) soul alone’ (Réer); or, ‘ Originally
this (universe) was indeed soul only’ (Colebrooke),
would give us a totally false ideas M. Regnaud
in his ‘ Matériaux pour servir a | histoire de la philo-
Xxxii Preface to the
sophie de I’Inde’ (vol. ii, p. 24) has evidently felt
this, and has kept the word 4tman untranslated,
‘Au commencement cet univers n’était que l’atman.’
But while in French it would seem impossible to
find any equivalent for 4tman, I have ventured to
translate in English, as I should have done in
German, ‘Verily, in the beginning all this was
Self, one only.’ |
Thus again when we read in Sanskrit, ‘ Know the
Self by the self, A4tmanam A4tmana pasya, tempt-
ing as it may seem, it would be entirely wrong to
render it by the Greek yr@& ceavrév, The Brahman
called upon his young pupil to know not himself,
but his Self, that is, to know his individual self as
a merely temporary reflex of the Eternal Self.
Were we to translate this so-called Atmavidya,
this self-knowledge, by knowledge of the soul, we
should not be altogether wrong, but we should never-
theless lose all that distinguishes Indian from Greek
thought. It may not be good English to say to know
his self, still less to know our selfs, but it would be
bad Sanskrit to say to know himself, to know our-
selves; or, at all events, such a rendering would
deprive us of the greatest advantage in the study
of Indian philosophy, the opportunity of seeing in
how many different ways man has tried to solve the
riddles of the world and of his soul.
I have thought it best therefore to keep as close
as possible to the Sanskrit original, and where I
could not find an adequate term in English, I have
often retained the Sanskrit word rather than use a
misleading substitute in English. It is impossible, for
instance, to find an English equivalent for so simple
a word as Sat, 75 6v, Wecannot render the Greek 73
SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. XXXIll
ov and ro uy dv by Being or Not-being, for both are
abstract nouns; nor by ‘the Being, for this would
almost always convey a wrong impression. In Ger-
man it is easy to distinguish between das Sein,
i.e. being, in the abstract, and das Seiende, ro 6v.
In the same way the Sanskrit sat can easily be ren-
dered in Greek by ro év, in German by das Seiende,
but in English, unless we say ‘that which is,’ we are
driven to retain the original Sat.
From this Sat was derived in Sanskrit Sat-ya,
meaning originally ‘endowed with being,’ then ‘true.’
This is an adjective ; but the same word, as a neuter,
is also used in the sense of truth, as an abstract ;
and in translating it is very necessary always to dis-
tinguish between Satyam, the true, frequently the
same as Sat, ro év, and Satyam, truth, veracity.
One example will suffice to show how much the
clearness of a translation depends on the right ren-
dering of such words as 4tman, sat, and satyam.
In a dialogue between Uddalaka and his son
Svetaketu, in which the father tries to open his son’s
mind, and to make him see man’s true relation to
the Highest Self (AAandogya-upanishad VI), the
father first explains how the Sat produced what we
should call the three elements}, viz. fire, water, and
earth, which he calls heat, water, and food. Having
produced them (VI, 2, 4), the Sat entered into them,
but not with its real nature, but only with its ‘living
self’ (VI, 3, 3), which is a reflection (abhasamatram)
of the real Sat, as the sun in the water is a reflection
1 Devatas, literally deities, but frequently to be translated by powers or beings. - Mahadeva Moreshvar Kunte, the learned editor of the Ved4nta-sfitras, ought not (p. 70) to have rendered devata, in Kh’. Up. I, 11, 5, by goddess.
Xxxiv Preface to the
of the real sun. By this apparent union of the Sat
with the three elements, every form (rapa) and
every name (naman) in the world was produced;
and therefore he who knows the three elements is
supposed to know everything in this world, nearly
in the same manner in which the Greeks imagined
that through a knowledge of the elements, every-
thing else became known (VI, 4, 7). The same
three elements are shown to be also the constituent
elements of man (VI, 5). Food or the earthy ele-
ment is supposed to produce not only flesh, but
also mind; water, not only blood, but also breath ;
heat, not only bone, but also speech. This is more
or less fanciful; the important point, however, is
this, that, from the Brahmanic point of view, breath,
speech, and mind are purely elemental, or external
instruments, and require the support of the living
self, the givatman, before they can act.
Having explained how the Sat produces pro-
gressively heat, how heat leads to water, water to
earth, and how, by a peculiar mixture of the three,
speech, breath, and mind are produced, the teacher
afterwards shows how in death, speech returns to
mind, mind to breath, breath to heat, and heat to
the Sat (VI, 8, 6). This Sat, the root of every-
thing, is called para devatda, the highest deity, not
in the ordinary sense of the word deity, but as
expressing the highest abstraction of the human
mind. We must therefore translate it by the
Highest Being, in the same manner as we translate
devata, when applied to heat, water, and earth, not
by deity, but by substance or element.
The same Sat, as the root or highest essence of all material existence, is called aziman, from
Sacred Books of the East. Xxxv
azu, small, subtile, infinitesimal, atom. It is an
abstract word, and I have translated it by subtile
essence.
The father then goes on explaining in various
ways that this Sat is underlying all existence,
and that we must learn to recognise it as the root,
not only of all the objective, but likewise of our
own subjective existence. ‘Bring the fruit of a
Nyagrodha tree,’ he says, ‘break it, and what do
you find?’ ‘The seeds,’ the son replies, ‘almost |
infinitesimal.’ ‘Break one of them, and tell me
what you see.’ ‘Nothing, the son replies. Then
. the father continues: ‘My son, that subtile essence
which you do not see there, of that very essence
this great Nyagrodha tree exists.’
‘After that follows this sentence: ‘ Etadétmyam
idayz sarvam, tat satyam, sa Atma, tat tvam asi
Svetaketo.’
This sentence has been rendered by Rajendralal
Mitra in the following way: ‘All this universe has
the (Supreme) Deity for its life. That Deity is
Truth. He is the Universal Soul. Thou art He,
O Svetaketu !’
This translation is quite correct, as far as the
words go, but I doubt whether we can connect any
definite thoughts with these words. In spite of the
division adopted in the text, I believe it will be
necessary to join this sentence with the last words
of the preceding paragraph. This is clear from
the commentary, and from later paragraphs, where
this sentence is repeated, VI, 9, 4,&c. The division