Getting the Vedas if You Can't Read Sanskrit

[Worshipper]

What do you recommend?

I recently read this post in another thread:

Yes, I am often frustrated with the translations I read. As a general rule of thumb if you want reliable translations get modern translations by Indian translators, preferably Pundits. This is especially true for the Vedas, they are so badly translated usually, that they are virtually impossible to read and the meaning is completely changed. I have noticed a common translation error is to translate certain words as animals, when actually the word does not mean that animal!

I consider the worst translation to be the ones by Max Muller and Griffith, the ones available online.

I've just started reading Müller's translation of the Vedas in the past couple of weeks, so reading this was rather disconcerting.

Suraj or others, are there any specific English-language translations of the Vedas that you might suggest? I hope eventually to learn Sanskrit, but until then, I'd like to still have access to the Vedas.

Also, I recently saw a video recording of some priests chanting some Vedic verses in Sanskrit. It amazed me! It felt very holy to me as I heard it, even though I didn't understand it all. Does anyone know of any way to get audio recordings of all the Vedas chanted?

 

[want to be hindu]

What do you recommend?

Suraj or others, are there any specific English-language translations of the Vedas that you might suggest? I hope eventually to learn Sanskrit, but until then, I'd like to still have access to the Vedas.

The Principal Upanishads, by Swami Nikhilananda. is a good place to start to learn about the Vedas. The Upanishads is the part of the Vedas that is the most used.

Most people start reading about the Hindu texts with the Bhagavad Gita. It is the most popular hindu scripture.

This is a good web site to find books on Hinduism.You can find some books very cheap.

Vedanta Press and Catalog Website at Vedanta Press and Catalog

 

[Surya Deva]

I endorse Want to be Hindu, begin with a good translation(such as the ones Want to be Hindu mentioned) of the 108 Upanishads. They are the very essence of the Vedas. All you need to know about the Vedas can be known through them. Also the Gita is an excellent introduction to Vedic religion as well. Translations of these are more abundant than the Vedas.

I have to tell you I have found it incredibly frustrating trying to read the Vedas without formally knowing Sanskrit. I know can pick up Sanskrit words because of my reading of them over the years and contexual knowledge of Vedic religion, but I still need to sit down with each English translation with a dictionary.

The english translations I have found come in two categoties.

Gross mistranslation and misinterpretation: In this category virtually all of the old English translations fit: Max Muller, Griffith, Keith, Wilson and recently Wendy Doniger and a couple of Indian scholars from the same tradition. These translations are on the whole very poor and very misleading. If you compare these to translations written by experts in Sanskrit, it would seem as if you are reading a completely different book. Where the word should be translated as "The rays of light emanate" you will get "The cows graze the fields"

This is due to three mains reasons

1) The Vedas are full of symbolism and the dialect of Sanskrit is very archaic, they are even difficult to read by regular Sanskrit speaking people.
2) Poor understanding and knowledge of Sanskrit
3) Political: The early Western translators belonged to a colonial school with intent to disparage the native religion. They were trying to prove that the Vedic religion and its founders were just a nomadic and fair-skinned and barbaric race which invaded the dark-skinned Indus people in 1500BCE. Of course we know today that this is nonsense. Based on those assumptions they rendered translations of the Vedas that would be consistent with a primitive people i.e., nature worship(paganism), animal and human sacrifice, war and shaman practices. Even words that which obviously had spiritual meanings, were translated in a purely primitive sense e.g., "dhimahi, meaning intellect and wisdom" The interpretations were even worse all kinds of perverse views like incest, homosexuality were imposed on the Vedas. Where the Vedas said, "Oh supreme, lead us from darkness into light" it was taken to obviously mean the invading Aryan hordes pushing the dark-skinned indigenious people down South.

Vedic Pundit translations: These translations are by far the most reliable, coherent and accurate. They are rendered by following the traditional method of translating the Vedas through the tradition of applying the Vedagnas to the Vedas. The Vedangas are texts on Sanskrit Grammar, Sanskrit etymology and Sanskrit dictionaries as old as the Vedas themselves. They were created as supplementary texts on the Vedas in order to teach students how to read them. The tradition was to spend years studying Sanskrit grammar and etymology before one could even begin reading the Vedas.

The Vedas, being written in Sanskrit, follow a very precise, rigorous system of word construction. Each word has a root verb, which has a particular meaning and to that verb other words are added according to the rules of Sandhi and this forms a conjugate which retains both meanings to create a combined meaning(similar to suffix and prefix) it can be so precise that even a word as short as Guru can have a very extensive expanded meaning. The particle 'Gu' means darkness and 'Ru' means removal, hence the the Guru is one who removes darkness.

The Vedas also have a contexual system of forming words. When the same word is used in association with another word other meanigns are created. The word Guru for instance when used in association with the sun and the sun in the Vedas is considered the centre of the solar system which keeps all the planets in their orbits through its attraction begins to carry another meaning heaviness. Thus in this context the expanded meaning is: the remover of darkness and one that attracts all by virtue of its heaviness.. Hence why the word Guru means both teacher and heaviness in Sanskrit. If you add the word tatva, meaning substance, to Guru, you get the Sanskrit word for gravity Gurutva(from which the Latin word Gravitas came)

Here is another startling etymology the word for Sun is Surya and the root verb of Surya is Su which means highly compressed. It is explained in the Brahmanas(commentaries on Vedas) and the sun is just compressed space which generates constant heat and light due to this compression) and thus when Surya is in conjunction with Guru we get an even longer expanded meaning: The one that removes darkness and attracts all by virtue of its heaviness, due to its compressed nature.

Sanskrit itself means sam(perfectly) krit(formed from particles) so every word in the Vedas is a precise construction and how those words are arranged in the sentence is also governed by precise laws of grammar. It's not surprising that Sanskrit is compared to machine code. Now you can imagine just how difficult it would be to read the Vedas without having mastery over Vedic Sanskrit.

I have not come across a perfect English translation yet and I doubt there can be really because English lacks many of the grammar pecularities of Sanskrit. However, there are some translations that I consider fairly accurate. I will list them here for you with links to purchase them

ATHARVAVEDA, YAJUR VEDA and SAMA VEDA: Sanskrit Text with English Translation, by Devi Chand
Amazon.com: Devi Chand: Books

The Holy Vedas: Anthology by Pandit Satyakam Vidyalankar
Amazon.com: The Holy Vedas: Pandit Satyakam Vidyalankar: Books

 

[Worshipper]

Thank you! These are very helpful and informative responses. This will help a lot!

I even notice that the Vedanta Press website has some CDs of Vedic chanting.

Thank you both for your time and assistance!

 

[Aupmanyav]

What do you recommend?

Try this Veda - Audio download. Google, there are many sites. The pundits could give you a biased translation (like that of Swami Dayananda Saraswati or Aurobindo Ghosh). I put my faith in Rig Veda Index and Ralph Griffith. Max Muller was the first one to do it, naturally, there may be mistakes. Hindus preserved even the sound of Vedas. The roots of the chants go back to our hunting and gathering days.

 

[Worshipper]

Thank you, Aupmanyav! That's an interesting second opinion.

It's also good to have a link to these sound files. Thank you!

 

[Surya Deva]

Well, Aupmanyav also believes that the Vedic people lived in Antartica

 

[Aupmanyav]

Sub-Arctic region and not Antartica. I do and for good reasons, 1. There were eight suns of which the last was born unformed - seven months of sunshine, 2. Ati-Ratra (Longer night - we still have the ritual - it lasted for two or three months - max. 100 days), 3. Ushas - dawns, 30 sisters, 4. Navagwahas and Dashagwahas, priests who completed their sacrificial year in nine or ten months (the old Roman calender has 304 days - even Encyclopedia Brittanica does not give the reason why).

Suraj, to comment on theories without having studied them is prejudice and not scholarship.

 

[Surya Deva]

I do not accept such irresponsible interpretation as scholarship. I have read Tilak's book, he has taken poetic verses from the Vedas, myths from the Puranas and intepreted them in very far-fetched ways to declare that the Aryans are from Antartica.

 

[Aupmanyav]

It is quite possible that you are not qualified enough to understand what they denote. You need to know geography of the arctic regions well. I see that even after my mentioning 'arctic' twice, you still say 'antarctic'. Do you know the difference between 'arctic' and 'antarctic'? Do you know the difference between the 'tropic of cancer' and the 'tropic of capricorn'? Do you know about the 'northern hemisphere' and 'southern hemisphere'? Do you know that during the ice-ages, a large part of the 'arctic sea' shelf near Scandinavia and Eastern Siberia was dry land? Even Bering Strait could be crossed on foot. The land was well-covered with vegetation. Do you know that at one time mammoths roamed freely in sub-arctic regions? They are found frozen and well-preserved in Tundra. The likes of us cannot challenge the honesty and scholarship of a titan like Tilak.

 

[Surya Deva]

Aupmanyav, I've already told you I do not consider such irresponsible interpretation as scholarship. I've read this book, I put it down after reading it for a while, because it was nonsense. Nobody is going to take some guy who said the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in the arctic seriously, especially when they provide as evidence religious hymns interpreted in such a far-fetched manner. The idea that people lived in the arctic and hollow earths were early 20th century science fiction.