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PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
WHEN some twenty years ago I decided on undertaking the first edition of the two texts and the commentary of the Rig-veda, I little expected that it would fall to my lot to publish also what may, without presumption, be called the first translation of the ancient sacred hymns of the Brahmans. Such is the charm of deciphering step by step the dark and helpless utterances of the early poets of India, and discovering from time to time behind words that for years seemed unintelligible, the simple though strange expressions of primitive thought and primitive faith, that it required no small amount of self-denial to decide in favour of devoting a life to the publishing of the materials rather than to the drawing of the results which those materials supply to the student of ancient language and ancient religion. Even five and twenty years ago, and without waiting for the publication of Sâyana's commentary, much might have been achieved in the interpretation of the hymns of the Rig-veda. With the MSS. then accessible in the principal libraries of Europe, a tolerably correct text of the Samhitâ might have been published, and these ancient relics of a primitive religion might have been at least partially deciphered and translated in the same way in which ancient inscriptions are deciphered and translated, viz. by a careful collection of all grammatical forms, and by a complete intercomparison of all passages in which the same words and the same phrases occur. When I resolved to devote my leisure to a critical edition of the text and commentary of the Rig-veda rather than to an independent study of that text, it was chiefly from a conviction that the traditional interpretation of the Rig-veda, as embodied in the commentary of Sâyana and other works of a similar
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What a translation of the Rig-veda ought to be.
| SR No. | 007685 |
| Book Title | Grihya Sutras |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Hermann Oldenberg |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1886 |
| Total Pages | 2642 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |