Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 160

THE RGVEDA-SAMHITAKARA AND FATHER ESTELLER
115
No wonder Fr. E. speaks in terms of catching the SK "red-handed at his little game."
Unfortunately the story does not end here. The Father can use language replete with violence. He speaks in terms of the use of the knife in a surgical room : " ... what kind of a radical redactorial surgeon that SK was who brought his scalpel to bear on the archaic hymns of the ancient Rgvedic bards. Scarcely anything escapes his operating touch"; or to the use of the knife outside the surgical room - but still leaving the unfortunate victim alive : "(the "improvements" of the SK ) ... lamed and maimed the verses, and with them, figuratively, their innocent authors "; or " Add to this the brutally mangled ..."
And much to one's regret one notes that Fr. E chooses to speak even in terms which leave the victim altogether dead. The reference may be in terms of a child-sacrifice : "... they (i. e. the SKs ) went so far that for the sake of their new-fangled correctness they ruthlessly sacrificed to their own "modern" fashionable "ista-devatās" ("Siksā" and "vyākarana") the pet child of every self-respecting poet, "chandas" the archaic metre and rhythm of the rşi-kavis..."; "... hence his second rhythmical murder at the analogical Moloch's altar..." (Moloch was the Cannanite god to whom children were sacrificed); or it may be an act of butchery : "This is the way our Samhită palimpsest was butchered innumerable times"; or it may refer to guillotines and murders: "... which has been practically everywhere systematically guillotined (by the Procrustean Redactor ) ..." [Prokroustēs, a robber who made victims fit his bed by stretching or lopping them );"... which has throughout been redactorially tampered with in a most cavalierly-procrustean style ..."; "The latter (i. e. the SK) has no scruple to "murder” the original rhythm ..."; "But SK has his own system ... which he clamps upon the original text even if it murders the meter (sic) and rhythm." (Italics in the original, not mine).
No wonder Fr. E considers the Samhită text a "dessicated (sic) mummy." I venture to ask : If Fr. E really means what he says, what chance has he of reconstructing the original mantras in their freshness and vigour on the basis of a desiccated mummy, or the material which he looks upon as maimed, butchered or murdered ?
Another question: Is it proper to use such strong and unbecoming language in academic writings? True, these child-sacrifices, guillotines and murders are all metaphorica). But is this play of rhetoric, emphasized occasionally by italicizing or printing in bold type, in place ?
You will kindly note that all I have said regarding the use of the word 'palimpsest' or of the other exaggerated expressions is not a part of my argument against Fr. E's thesis. It is not that if this was removed from his writings everything will be all right.
87 ABORI Golden Jub. Vol. p. 16; JASB 41-42 (New Ser.) 42.
Madhu Vidyā/135