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INTRODUCTION.
prose, than if he has to make any concessions, however small, on the side of faithfulness in favour of rhythm and rhyme.
If a metrical, an intelligible, and, generally speaking, a beautiful translation were all we wanted, why should so many scholars clamour for a new translation, when they have that by Grassmann? It rests on Böhtlingk and Roth's Dictionary, or represents, as we are told, even a more advanced stage of Vedic scholarship. Yet after the well-known contributors of certain critical Journals had repeated ever so many times all that could possibly be said in praise of Grassmann's, and in dispraise of Ludwig's translation, what is the result? Grassmann's metrical translation, the merits of which, considering the time when it was published, I have never been loth to acknowledge, is hardly ever appealed to, while Ludwig's prose rendering, with all its drawbacks, is universally considered as the only scholarlike translation of the Rig-veda now in existence. Time tries the troth in everything.
There is another point also on which I am quite willing to admit that my adversaries are right. "No one who knows anything about the Veda,' they say, 'would think of attempting a translation of it at present. A translation of the Rig-veda is a task for the next century.' No one feels this more strongly than I do; no one has been more unwilling to make even a beginning in this arduous undertaking. Yet a beginning has to be made. We have to advance step by step, nay, inch by inch, if we ever hope to make a breach in that apparently impregnable fortress If by translation we mean a complete, satisfactory, and final translation of the whole of the Rig-veda, I should feel inclined to go even further than Professor von Roth. Not only shall we have to wait till the next century for such a work, but I doubt whether we shall ever obtain it. In some cases the text is so corrupt that no conjectural criticism will restore, no power of divination interpret it. In other cases, verses and phrases seem to have been jumbled together by later writers in the most thoughtless manner. My principle therefore has always been, Let us translate what we can, and thus reduce the untranslateable
Digitized by Google
| SR No. | 007673 |
| Book Title | Zend Avesta Part 03 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | L H Mills |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1887 |
| Total Pages | 2618 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |