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DECEMBER, 1894.] BULLETIN OF THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
But this is the Veda of
existence, and that consequently no one could drink there the soma. M. Regnaud, and we must not begin by believing in it if we are to criticize it. There remain then for us only the texts, the unfortunate texts, to which we must at last return. Sad to say they exist only to be the victims of the theory. All this is purely à priori construction, though M. Regnaud were to assert the contrary a hundred times. It is not from the texts that he has learned that prithivi... yachha naḥ sarma saprathaḥ means, "libation, make flow on our libation which extends itself," that Indrávaruna.. asmabhyam sarma yuchhatam means "fire alight and fire enveloping, make the libation flow on for us." No, once in possession of his "key," he applies it to every "lock" to see if it will fit. And it fits, but at what a price! This fourth chapter, not to speak of others, is so marvellous that we ask if it is not meant as a refutation of the whole system by a reductio ad absurdum. That the Vedic dictionary is far from perfect, no one will deny. The later literature, from the brahmanas onwards, the next oldest monuments, is an uncertain guide, partly because certain words have gone out of use, or because their meanings have undergone an essential change of meaning; still more, because the writers indulge in trifling speculations with some of them,50 and this again is a point in which every one is agreed. Our task is not to create a system that questions everything, by starting with what is obscure, but to go on continuously from the known to the unknown, from what is certain to what is doubtful, and above all to be content with moderate gains. Has M. Regnaud taken this course? I can only compare his procedure to that of a woodman in a forest which must be cleared. Everything falls before him, not only technical words, terms which are uncommon, or which have early gone out of use, but the best authenticated, the commonest words, which have always remained in the language, and have given rise to derivatives, and passed into the dialects. How can we take seriously oracles like the following, in which prishtha, which is identified at a stroke of the pen with prishta, means no longer "back," but "that which is turned;" in which parvan does not mean "joint," but " that which flows;" in which parvata, adri, giri, sánu do not mean "the rock, the mountain," but "the libation;" in which gravan is not "the stone," but the libation, inasmuch as it is "rapid; " in which barkiss no longer "the grass," but the libation, inasmuch as it is "strengthening;" in which dyaus is no longer "the heaven," prithivi is no longer "the earth," but the libation, inasmuch as it is "set on fire or not set on fire;" in which antariksha "the atmosphere," becomes the libation "enveloped," that is to say, "not lit;" vyoman "space" becomes the libation "which nourishes;" in which manushvant, an adjective which does not exist and for good grammatical reasons, but which is said to mean "provided with soma," is made in the nenter into manushvat which is a synonym of another adjective manurhita, and means like this, "so far as provided with soma;" in which pavitra is what serves not to "purify," but to "light;" in which pur does not mean "town," but the libation as "nourishment; " in which arani is not a piece of wood, but the libation as "moving," and in the dual "the libation which moves, and which does not move;" in which samvatsara is not the year, but the libation, as" having its calf with it?" All these little etymological jokes are brought about by means of Sanskrit of all periods, and one-half of the dictionary is used to destroy the other. We may imagine after this what will become of phrases, combinations of words and whole hymns when reconstructed with the same skill and philological care.
We have an example of this in chapters six and seven, where M. Regnaud examines in order, at the expense of several hymns, "the metaphorical origin of the myth of the Dawn," which is also, to him, merely a form of the ever-recurring libation, and "the alleged myth of the descent of Soma," i. e., its descent from heaven, one of the best ascertained beliefs in the whole Veda. We find other examples in the last part of the book (which is not so much a book as a collection of articles printed together) an appendix which gives an explanatory translation of the thirteenth book of the Atharvaveda, undertaken as a reply to that of M. Henry, and intended to shew M. Henry how it should have been done. It is an occasional essay, only included in
59 Exactly as M. Regnaud does in all seriousness.
