Vinaya Texts

SR No.: 007684
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2523
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 432

xvi
UPANISHADS.
Any classical scholar knows how often we must translate invictus by invincible, and how Latin tolerates even invictissimus, which we could never render in English by 'the most unconquered,' but 'the unconquerable.' English idiom, therefore, and common sense required that avigñata should be translated, not by inconceived, but by inconceivable, if the translation was to be faithful, and was to give to the reader a correct idea of the original.
Let us now examine some other translations, to see whether the translators were satisfied with translating literally, or whether they attempted to translate thoughtfully.
Anquetil Duperron's translation, being in Latin, cannot help us much. He translates : 'Non auditum, auditum fiat; et non scitum, scitum ; et non cognitum, cognitum. " Rajendralal Mitra translates: 'Have you enquired of your tutor about that subject which makes the unheard-of heard, the unconsidered considered, and the unsettled settled ?'
He evidently knew that Brahman was intended, but his rendering of the three verbs is not exact.
Mr. Gough (p. 43) translates: 'Hast thou asked for that instruction by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought thought, the unknown known?'
But now let us consult a scholar who, in a very marked degree, always was a thoughtful translator, who felt a real interest in the subject, and therefore was never satisfied with mere words, however plausible. The late Dr. Ballantyne, in his translation of the Vedanta-Sâra?, had occasion to translate this passage from the Khândogya-upanishad, and how did he translate it? The eulogizing of the subject is the glorifying of what is set forth in this or that section (of the Veda); as, for example, in that same section, the sixth chapter of the Khândogya-upanishad, the glorifying of the Real, besides whom there is nought else, in the following terms: “Thou, O disciple, hast asked for that instruction whereby the unheard-of becomes heard, the inconceiv
... Lecture on the Vedanta, embracing the text of the Vedanta-Sara, Alla
habad, 1851, p. 69. Vedântasara, with Nrisimha-Sarasvati's Subodhini, and Râmatîrtha's Vidvanmanoranginî, Calcutta, 1860, p. 89. Here we find the right reading, aprakshah.
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