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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1894.
the language. But this mode of procedure is comparatively harmless when M. Regnaad has to deal with a fully commented text as here, though even then it sometimes plays him a bad trick. Further on, for instance," he takes Hymn III. 1, which has been translated and annotated in the Vedic Studies by Prof. Geldner, to whom, we may mention, he deigns to give a certificate for proficiency in grammar, such as he has given to Bergaigne. Prof. Geldner thinks he sees in this hymn a very clear distinction between the celestial and the terrestrial Agni, and has naturally drawn a little on his imagination, for things like that are never clear in the Veda. M. Regnaud, who, from the first, holds fast by his "system," and will not hear of a celestial Agni at any price, thinks he sees in it only the terrestrial Agni, the fire on the altar, and, as a matter of course, composes another romance. Let us admit that his notion is the better of the two; all that I wish to do is to shew, by an example, at what price he has gained it, and what confidence we can have in its author. In the socond verset gih becomes a masculine, which it certainly is not here, becanse of the formula in which it occurs ; vardhatán, a middle form, is translated like a causative; the division of the pá das is neglected in the most awkward way ;46 at the same time the question whether the priest who recited the hymn also fed the fire is got over very summarily;47 lastly duvasyan, which is a third person plural (it has no accent), is taken as a participle, and, I am very much afraid, a future participle, which would be one barbarism more. All this in nine words, because M. Regnaud has understood Prof. Geldner's German quite as little as the Sanskrit original. As methods go this is one, but not a good one, I shall only mention the strange interpretation of VIII., 102 (91), 4, where Aurva becomes the outpoured butter, metaphorically personified. Bhrigu, the flame also personified, and Apnavana, another metaphorical synonym of fire which M. Regnaud refrains for the moment from explaining, but for which he will certainly have an explanation ready when wanted. And they were not only such in their origin, to be re-discovered now by the clear eyes of M. Regnaud; they were 80 for the fishi too, who could recite without a laugh ; "I invoke the fire, as Butter poured forth, as Flame, as Fire (invoke it)." Daring as this may seem, M. Regnaud affords us plenty more examples ; for, in the meantime, the "system" has been brought to perfection and reduced to a formula; the key of the Veda has been detected and M. Regnaud does not need to take any further precautions. This key is, that there are no deities in the Rigveda, there are only two igneous elements, fire and an inflammable liquid, agri and soma, whose constant union is the sole theme of the rishis; all the rest is delusion and rhetoric. Like most wrong-headed. ideas, it has not sprung up of itself, but has its origin in a grain of truth. It has long been noticed that divine personages are not always taken seriously as such in the Veda, and that the sacrifice is at least as much an opus operans as an opus operatum, and that not in the sense in which every act of witchcraft is, but as a primitive rite, anterior to every thing, and rendering the gods, in a way, superfluous. A whole school of the Mimamså went, in this respect, quite as far as M. Regnaud : for them the gods existed only in the sabda (we would say in the letter) of the Veda. And so in spite of their scrupulous piety in the ritual, they were looked on as atbeists. This, in the rishis, has been called syncretism, and has been regarded as the result of advanced speculation, acting on a religion, which was in process of dissolution, not of formation. In M. Regoaad's view, it is quite the other way; it is neither syncretism, nor mysticism, nor speculation of any sort, the simple union of the fire and the liquid batter is the primitive germ, the key of the Veda, and of all Indo-European mythology. To attain this result, we must first clear the ground a little. If there are no gods, it is clear we cannot speak of believ
* T. XXII. p. 802.
45 T. XXII. p. 311. " Still more so in the second half verae, where nearly every word is taken wrongly, tidatha, among the rest, whose etymology M. Regnaud fancies he has proved, without having been able to convince any one else of its truth.
•T TO M. Regpand this presents no difficulty, but with the standpoint which he occupies, is there anything that presents a difficulty ?
T. XXXIII. p. 318. 41 This tastefal interpretation is only a part of a long proof of how the myth of Aurva took its rise in the misunderstanding of this verse, where the appearance of such-like misapprehensions is exhibited as a discovery. Does M. Regnaud not know this is as old as the beginning of Vedic studies P Can be have forgotten the god Ka?
