Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1. Friedrich Max Müller

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СКАЧАТЬ into their language at the same time that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject—let him say what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik language—let him study the commentaries, the Sûtras, the Brâhmanas, and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional interpretations of Yâska or Sâyana, they can all be traced back to an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the Brâhmanas, the Sûtras, Yâska, and Sâyana should be left unexplored before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. Sâyana, though the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of his etymological absurdities must be placed to Yâska's account, and the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological, or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the Brâhmanas. The Brâhmanas, though nearest in time to the hymns of the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by our songs?'—the author of the Brahmana sees in the interrogative pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called 'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns and the Brâhmanas. As the authors of the Brâhmanas were blinded by theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Sâyana. Where Sâyana has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old errors, the old Man altogether—old now, but then young and fresh, and simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.

      The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H. T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the doubts and sorrows of their heart.

      Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky

      Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.

      What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?

      Was it the water's fathomless abyss?

      There was not death—yet was there nought immortal,

      There was no confine betwixt day and night;

      The only One breathed breathless by itself,

      Other than It there nothing since has been.

      Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled

      In gloom profound—an ocean without light—

      The germ that still lay covered in the husk

      Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

      Then first came love upon it, the new spring

      Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned,

      Pondering, this bond between created things

      And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth

      Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?

      Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose—

      Nature below, and power and will above—

      Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,

      Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?

      The Gods themselves came later into being—

      Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

      He from whom all this great creation came,

      Whether his will created or was mute,

      The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,

      He knows it—or perchance even He knows not.

      The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin. Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is nisâ, which is a form peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox nor with νὑξ. The Vaidik nas or nak, night, is as near to Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mûshas or mûshikâ, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris. The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the plural mûsh-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeús. Ushas, dawn, again in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even the secondary Vaidik form Ushâsâ is proved to be of high antiquity by the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.

      October, 1853.

      THE ZEND-AVESTA

      By СКАЧАТЬ