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 433

INTRODUCTION.
xvii
able becomes conceived, and the unknowable becomes thoroughly known.”'
Dr. Ballantyne therefore felt exactly what I felt, that in our passage a strictly literal translation would be wrong, would convey no meaning, or a wrong meaning; and Mr. Nehemiah Goreh will see that he ought not to express blame, without trying to find out whether those whom he blames for want of exactness, were not in reality more scrupulously exact in their translation than he has proved himself to be.
Mr. Nehemiah Goreh has, no doubt, great advantages in interpreting the Upanishads, and when he writes without any theological bias, his remarks are often very useful. Thus he objects rightly, I think, to my translation of a sentence in the same chapter of the Khầndogya-upanishad, where the father, in answer to his son's question, replies :
Sad eva, Somya, idam agra âsîd ekam evâdvitiyam.' I had tried several translations of these words, and yet I see now that the one I proposed in the end is liable to be misunderstood. I had translated : 'In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is, one only, without a second.' The more faithful translation would have been: 'The being alone was this in the beginning. But the being' does not mean in English that which is, tò ởv, and therefore, to avoid any misunderstanding, I translated that which is.' I might have said, however, 'The existent, the real, the true (satyam) was this in the beginning, just as in the Aitareya-upanishad we read : 'The Self was all this, one alone, in the beginning?' But in that case I should have sacrificed the gender, and this in our passage is of great importance, being neuter, and not masculine.
What, however, is far more important, and where Mr. Nehemiah Goreh seems to me to have quite misapprehended the original Sanskrit, is this, that sat, tò ởv, and åtmâ, the Self, are the subjects in these sentences, and not predicates. Now Mr. Nehemiah Goreh translates : 'This was the existent one itself before, one only without a second ;' and he
1 Atmâ vâ idam eka evågra asit.
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