The earliest complete commentary on Rig Veda mantra Samhita is due to Sāyaṇa Ācharya in the fourteenth century CE.
There are two complete English translations of Rig Veda done in the nineteenth century namely the 7-volumes of H.H. Wilson (1850-1858 CE) and that of R.T.H. Griffith (1896 CE) in a single volume.
There are two complete translations of Rig Veda done in the twentieth century. The first is the 30 volume edition done in (1947-1955) in Kannada language by H.P. Venkata Rao with the patronage of Maharaja of Mysore. The second is, 13 volume translation in English, was produced by Veda Pratiṣhṭhāna of New Delhi in the period 1977-1984.
All other translations and commentaries cover only a part of Rig Veda.
a. Sāyaṇa Ācharya and the scope of his work
Sāyaṇa Ācharya (1315-1387 CE) was the only person to write (or edit) a commentary on all the five Veda mantra Samhita books and also the relevant Brāhmaṇa books. He is the only one to write a commentary on the entire Rig Veda Mantra Samhita. All lovers of Veda must be grateful to him for these works and the luminous introductions to these works. A brief look at his life and the times in which he lived will be very useful for us to appreciate the range of his efforts.
A study of his life and his times gives ample clues towards understanding the scope of his work or the boundaries set by Sāyaṇa for his work. Recall that he studied in the monastery associated with the great Vedānta teacher Shankara, under his guru Swami Vidyatirtha, who was its head at that time. Naturally he completely accepted the teachings of Shankara in toto, assigning the Veda mantrās to karmakānda. Only the Upanishads were regarded as the repository of wisdom. It is the common idea prevailing even today in many so-called places of learning mathas, in India.
Recall that Sāyaṇa was not a fulltime Pandit. He was a successful prime minister of the vast empire of Karnataka with its capital in Vijayanāgar and also participated in battles. He with Hukka and others was instrumental in bringing together many small kingdoms to form a single kingdom, known as the Karnataka empire, so as to withstand the Islamic onslaughts. The Karnataka empire was restored so as to bring resurgence of all aspects of Indian culture. Sāyaṇa , being its prime minister and one of its founders, could not afford to be partial to any group. In India, all ideas are traced to Veda in the minds of ordinary people. Specifically it was felt:
(i) Veda had the knowledge of rituals whose performance gives prosperity.
(ii) The basis of Purāṇās with all their anecdotes was Veda.
(iii) The grammarian scholars of the empire felt that every word in the Veda can be traced to its roots as suggested by the great Panini.
(iv) Most of the Hindus went to temples where elaborate worship was performed to the deities Viṣhṇu, Shiva etc. These people wanted to know the connection of the mantrās of Veda to these deities.
(v) The ordinary people used several Veda mantrās in their sandhya worship; they wanted to know their meaning and their context.
(vi) Among Hindus, the natural phenomena such as rainfall or dawn are associated with the divine powers. Persons wanted to know what Veda has to say on the natural phenomenon.
Thus, Sāyaṇa , assisted by numerous pandits, wrote this magnificent commentary to satisfy the aspirations of a variety of Hindus. Sāyaṇa in his commentary on RV (1.164) states that he is aware of the spiritual interpretation of some mantrās. However he feels that the discussion of the spiritual interpretation is outside the scope of his book.
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To understand the contribution of Sāyaṇa , we have to study carefully his five bhūmikās (introduction) for the five Veda Mantra Samhitas. All these bhūmikās along with a wealth of information both in English and Sanskṛt is in the book, Veda Bhashya Bhūmika Samgraha, by Padma Vibhushan Baladeva Upadhyaya, originally published in 1934 in Benares.
Many (but not all) western indologists are highly appreciative of Sāyaṇa s commentary. The translator H.H. Wilson states: although the interpretation of Sāyaṇa may be, occasionally, questioned, he undoubtedly had a knowledge of his text far beyond the pretensions of any European scholar, and must have been in possession, either through his own learning, or that of his assistants, of all the interpretations which had been perpetuated, by traditional teaching, from the earliest times.
We give here two other interesting estimates of Sāyaṇas work. Both Professors Benfey and Cowell do not accept the statement that Sāyaṇa s commentary represents the complete Indian tradition from the time of composition of the hymns to his time.
Professor Benfey notes: Everyone who has carefully studied the Indian interpretations is aware that absolutely no continuous tradition extending from the composition of the veda to their explanation by Indian scholars can be assumed; that, on the contrary, between the genuine poetic remains of vedic antiquity and their interpretations, a long continued break in the tradition must have intervened; out of which, at most, the comprehension of some particulars may have been rescued and handed down to later times by means of liturgical usage and words, formulae, and perhaps also poems connected therewith. This last work of rescue is exactly what Sāyaṇa s commentary represents (KS).
Another western scholar, Professor Cowell remarks, in his preface to one of the volumes of Wilsons translations that, This work does not pretend to give a complete translation of the Rig Veda, but only a faithful image of that particular phase of its interpretation which the mediaeval Hindus, as represented by Sāyaṇa , have preserved. This view is in itself interesting and of a historical value; but far wider and deeper study is needed to pierce to the real meaning of these old hymns. Sāyaṇa s commentary will always retain a value of its owneven its mistakes are interestingbut his explanations must not for a moment bar the progress of scholarship. KS adds, we appreciate the balanced and judicial statement of this Western scholar, for uttering these words of caution and wisdom, that Sāyaṇa s commentary represents a faithful picture of a particular phase of Vedic interpretation.
The shortcomings of the commentary by Sāyaṇa are well-documented by SA and also by KS, in his book, A New Light on the Veda published by SAKSI. I will focus here on only one aspect. For words such as vāja or ritam, which occur in more than 500 mantrās, he assigns twenty or more arbitrary meanings in different places to force the ritualist meanings. For details, see the book by A.B. Purani, Studies in Vedic Interpretation.
In our book, the word vāja has only one meaning namely plenitude; ṛtam means the Right or Truth in movement. svadha is Self-law, the law within the self which supports each entity. However, I have extensively utilised the work of Sāyaṇ
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Translation of Rig Veda in English
The earliest translation in English is due to H.H. Wilson, his first volume was published in 1850. He had high respect for Sāyaṇa s work and his translation follows the Sanskṛt commentary of Sāyaṇa without the grammatical details.
A new edition of his translation, prepared by Nag Publishers (1989) in 7 volumes, has also the mantrās in Devanāgari, the notes and several indices. The editor of this series, Prof. Dayanand Bhargava states, my teachers always taught me Sāyaṇa s commentary even when they had to teach the Vedic Reader by A.A. Macdonnell; my own experience of teaching for the last 20 years has shown that they were correct.
The work of R.T.H. Griffith, published in 1897 has only summary translations of all the mantrās of RV. His book has no text of the mantra. Griffith makes several rude comments on Rig Veda and its seers. He assumed that the poets of Rig Veda were nomads or engaged in primitive agriculture. For a detailed comparison of the translation of Griffith and that done by (SA), see the SAKSI book Semantics of Rig Veda. However it is good to remember that this was the only book easily available for Hindus for knowing the meaning of Rig Veda in English for over a hundred years, till the appearance of the edition of Nag publishers.
Note that for almost all Indologists, the battles in the Rig Veda are actual physical events between different tribes or clans, the so called devas and the dasyus. For a detailed rebuttal of the claims of these authors, see The problem of Aryan invasion, by K.D. Sethna. This book includes a chapter entitled, Sri Aurobindos symbolic interpretation of Veda.
