Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
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

Page 499

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
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which we can only guess. Here, no doubt, a continued study will remove some of our difficulties, and many a passage that is now dark, will receive light hereafter from a happy combination. Much has already been achieved by the efforts of European scholars, but much more remains to be done; and our only chance of seeing any rapid progress made lies, I believe, in communicating freely what every one has found out by himself, and not minding if others point out to us that we have overlooked the very passage that would at once have solved our difficulties, that our conjectures were unnecessary, and our emendations wrong. True and honest scholars whose conscience tells them that they have done their best, and who care for the subject on which they are engaged far more than for the praise of benevolent or the blame of malignant critics, ought not to take any notice of merely frivolous censure. There are mistakes, no doubt, of which we ought to be ashamed, and for which the only amende honorable we can make is to openly confess and retract them. But there are others, particularly in a subject like Vedic interpretation, which we should forgive, as we wish to be forgiven. This can be done without lowering the standard of true scholarship or vitiating the healthy tone of scientific morality. Kindness and gentleness are not incompatible with earnestness,-far from it!-and where these elements are wanting, not only is the joy embittered which is the inherent reward of all bona fide work, but selfishness, malignity, aye, even untruthfulness, gain the upper hand, and the healthy growth of science is stunted. While in my translation of the Veda and in the remarks that I have to make in the course of my commentary, I shall frequently differ from other scholars, I hope I shall never say an unkind word of men who have done their best, and who have done what they have done in a truly scholarlike, that is, in a humble spirit. It would be unpleasant, even were it possible within the limits assigned, to criticise every opinion that has been put forward on the meaning of certain words or on the construction of certain verses of the Veda. I prefer, as much as possible, to vindicate my own translation, instead of
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