{"id":664,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=664"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:34","slug":"09-on-translating-the-upanishads-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/12-the-upanishad-volume-12\/09-on-translating-the-upanishads-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","title":{"rendered":"-09_On Translating the Upanishads.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nOn Translating the
\nUpanishads<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    THIS <\/span><\/b>
\ntranslation of a few of the simpler and more exoteric
\nUpanishads to be followed by other sacred and philosophical writings of the
\nHindus not included in the Revealed Scriptures, all under the one title of the
\nBook of God, has been effected on one definite and unvarying principle, to
\npresent to England and through England to Europe the religious message of India
\nonly in those parts of her written thought which the West is fit to hear and to
\npresent these in such a form as should be attractive and suggestive to the
\nOccidental intellect. The first branch of this principle necessitated a rigid
\nselection on definite lines, the second dictated the choice of a style and
\nmethod of rendering which should be literary rather than literal.<\/span><\/p>\n

The series of translations called
\nthe Sacred Books of the East,<\/i> edited by the late Professor Max Muller,
\nwas executed in a scholastic and peculiar spirit. Professor Max Muller, a
\nscholar of wide attainments, great versatility and a refreshingly active,
\ningenious and irresponsible fancy, has won considerable respect in India by his
\nattachment to Vedic studies, but it must fairly be recognised that he was more
\nof a grammarian and philologist, than a sound Sanskrit scholar. He could
\nconstrue Sanskrit well enough, but he could not feel the language or realise the
\nspirit behind the letter. Accordingly he committed two serious errors of
\njudgment; he imagined that by sitting in Oxford and evolving new meanings out of
\nhis own brilliant fancy he could understand the Upanishads better than
\nShankaracharya or any other Hindu of parts and learning; and he also imagined
\nthat what was important for Europe to know about the Upanishads was what he and
\nother European scholars considered they ought to mean. This, however, is a
\nmatter of no importance to anybody but the scholars themselves. What it is
\nreally important for Europe to know is in the first place what the Upanishads
\nreally do mean, so far as their exoteric teaching extends, and in a less degree
\nwhat philosophic Hinduism took them to mean. The latter knowledge<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 53<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

may be gathered from the commentaries of Shankaracharya
\nand other philosophers which may be studied in the original or in their
\ntranslations which the Dravidian Presidency, ignorantly called benighted by the
\nmaterialists, has been issuing with a truly noble learning and high-minded
\nenterprise. The former this book makes some attempt to convey.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it may be asked, why these
\nparticular Upanishads alone, when there are so many others far larger in plan
\nand of a not inferior importance? In answer I may quote a sentence from
\nProfessor Max M\u00fcller’s Preface to the Sacred Books of the East. <\/i>"I
\nconfess," he says, "it has been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a
\ngreat extent is so still, how the Sacred Books of the East<\/i> should, by the
\nside of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so
\nmuch that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and
\nrepellent." Now, I myself being only a poor coarse-minded Oriental and therefore
\nnot disposed to deny the gross physical facts of life and nature or able to see
\nwhy we should scuttle them out of sight and put on a smug, respectable
\nexpression which suggests while it affects to hide their existence, this perhaps
\nis the reason why I am somewhat at a loss to imagine what the Professor found in
\nthe Upanishads that is hideous and repellent. Still I was brought up almost from
\nmy infancy in England and received an English education, so that I have
\nglimmerings. But as to what he intends by the unmeaning, artificial and silly
\nelements, there can be no doubt. Everything is unmeaning in the Upanishads which
\nthe Europeans cannot understand, everything is artificial which does not come
\nwithin the circle of their mental experience and everything is silly which is
\nnot explicable by European science and wisdom. Now this attitude is almost
\ninevitable on the part of an European, for we all judge according to our lights
\nand those who keep their minds really open, who can realise that there may be
\nlights which are not theirs and yet as illuminating or more illuminating than
\ntheirs, are in any nation a very small handful. For the most part men are the
\nslaves of their associations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us suppose that the
\nceremonies and services of the Roman Catholic Church were not mere ceremonies
\nand formularies,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 54<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

borrowed for the most part from Eastern occultisms
\nwithout understanding them, \u2014 that they had been arranged so as to be perfect
\nsymbols of certain deep metaphysical truths and to produce certain effects
\nspiritual and material according to a scientific knowledge of the power of sound
\nover both mind and matter; let us suppose that deep philosophical works had been
\nwritten in the terminology of these symbols and often in a veiled allusive
\nlanguage; and let us suppose finally that these were translated into Bengali or
\nHindustani and presented to an educated Pundit who had studied both at Calcutta
\nand at Nuddia or Benares, what would he make of them ? It will be as well to
\ntake a concrete instance. Jesus Christ was a great thinker, a man who had
\ncaught, apparently by his unaided power, though this is not certain, something
\nof the divine knowledge, but the writers who recorded his sayings were for the
\nmost part ordinary men of a very narrow culture and scope of thought and they
\nseem grossly to have misunderstood his deepest sayings. For instance, when he
\nsaid "I and my Father are one", expressing the deep truth that the human self
\nand the divine self are identical, they imagined that he was setting up an
\nindividual claim to be God; hence the extraordinary legend of the Virgin Mary
\nand all that followed from it. Well, we all know the story of the Last Supper
\nand Jesus’ marvellously pregnant utterance as he broke the bread and gave of the
\nwine to his disciples "This is my body and this is my blood", and the remarkable
\nrite of the Eucharist and the doctrine of Transubstantiation which the Roman
\nCatholic Church have founded upon it. "Corruption! superstition! blasphemous
\nnonsense!" cries the Protestant, "Only a vivid Oriental metaphor and nothing
\nmore." If so, it was certainly an "unmeaning, artificial and silly" metaphor,
\nnay, "even a hideous and repellent" one. But I prefer to believe that Jesus’
\nwords had always a meaning, generally a true and beautiful one. On the other
\nhand, the Transubstantiation doctrine is one which the Catholics themselves do
\nnot understand, it is to them a "mystery". And yet how plain the meaning is to
\nthe Oriental intelligence ! The plasm of matter, the food-sheath of the universe
\nto which bread and wine belong, is rendered the blood and body of God and
\ntypifies the great primal sacrifice by which God crucified <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 55<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

himself so that the world might exist. The Infinite had
\nto become finite, the Unconditioned to condition himself. Spirit to evolve
\nMatter. In the bread and the wine which the communicant eats, God actually is,
\nbut he is not present to our consciousness, and he only becomes so present (here
\nto our consciousness) by an act of faith; this is the whole doctrine of
\nTransubstantiation. For, as the Upanishad says, we must believe in God before we
\ncan know him; we must realise him as the "He is" before we realise him in his
\nessential. And indeed if the child had not believed in what his teacher or his
\nbook told him, how could the grown man know anything? But if a deep
\nphilosophical work were written on the Eucharist hinting at great truths but
\nalways using the symbol of the bread and wine and making its terminology from
\nthe symbol and from the doctrine of Transubstantiation based upon the symbol,
\nwhat would our Hindu Pundit make of it? Being a scholar and philosopher, he
\nwould find there undoubtedly much that was "fresh, natural, simple, beautiful
\nand true" but also a great deal that was "unmeaning, artificial and silly" and
\nto his<\/i> vegetarian imagination "even hideous and repellent". As for the
\nsymbol itself, its probable effect on the poor vegetarian would be to make him
\nvomit. "What hideous non\u00adsense," says the Protestant, "we are to believe that we
\nare eating God!" How shall such a one know of Him where He abideth?<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the Upanishads similarly
\nare written round symbols and in a phraseology and figures which have or had
\nonce a deep meaning and a sacred association to the Hindus but must be
\nunintelligible and repellent to the European. What possible use can be served by
\npresenting to Europe such works as the Chhandogya or Aitareya Upanishad in which
\neven the majority of Hindus find it difficult or impossible to penetrate every
\nsymbol to its underlying truth? Only the few Upanishads have been selected which
\ncontain the kernel of the matter in the least technical and most poetical form;
\nthe one exception is the Upanishad of the Questions which will be necessarily
\nstrange and not quite penetrable to the European mind. It was, however,
\nnecessary to include it for the sake of a due presentation of Upanishad
\nphilosophy in some of its details as well as in its main ideas, and its
\ntechnical element has a more universal appeal than <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 56<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

that of the Chhandogya and Aitareya.<\/span><\/p>\n

An objection may be urged to the
\nmethod of translation that has been adopted. Professor Max Muller in his
\ntranslation did not make any attempt to render into English the precise shades
\nof Aryan philosophical terms like Atman and Prana which do not correspond to any
\nphilosophical conception familiar to the West; he believed that the very
\nunfamiliarity of the terms he used, to translate them, would be like a bracing
\nsplash of cold water to the mind forcing it to rouse itself and think. In this I
\nthink the Professor was in error; his proposition may be true of undaunted
\nphilosophical intellects such as Schopenhauer’s or of those who are already
\nsomewhat familiar with the Sanskrit language, but to the ordinary reader the
\nunfamiliar and unexplained terminology forms a high and thick hedge of brambles
\nshutting him off from the noble palace and beautiful gardens of the Upanishads.
\nMoreover, the result of a scholastic faithfulness to the letter has been to make
\nthe style of the translation intolerably uncouth and unworthy of these great
\nreligious poems. I do not say that this translation is worthy of them, for in no
\nother human tongue than Sanskrit is such grandeur and beauty possible. But there
\nare ways and their degrees. For instance, etad vai tat,<\/i> the refrain of
\nthe Katha Upanishad has a deep and solemn ring in Sanskrit because etad<\/i>
\nand tat<\/i> so used have in Sanskrit a profound and grandiose philosophical
\nsignification which everybody at once feels; but in English "This truly is that"
\ncan be nothing but a juggling with demonstrative pronouns; it renders more
\nnearly both rhythm and meaning to translate "This is the God of your seeking",
\nhowever inadequate such a translation may be.<\/span><\/p>\n

It may, however, fairly be said
\nthat a version managed on these lines cannot give a precise and accurate idea of
\nthe meaning. It is misleading to translate Prana sometimes by life, sometimes by
\nbreath, sometimes by life-breath or breath of life, because breath and life are
\nmerely subordinate aspects of the Prana. Atman again rendered indifferently by
\nsoul, spirit and self, must mislead, because what the West calls the soul is
\nreally the Atman yoked with mind and intelligence, and spirit is a word of
\nvariable connotation often synonymous with soul; even self<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 57<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

cannot be used precisely in that way in English. Again
\nthe Hindu idea of "immortality" is different from the European; it implies not
\nlife after death, but freedom from both life and death; for what we call life is
\nafter all impossible without death. Similarly Being does not render puruṣa,<\/i>
\nnor "matter" rayi,<\/i> nor askesis the whole idea of tapas.<\/i> To a
\ncertain extent all this may be admitted, but at the same time I do not think
\nthat any reader who can think and feel will be seriously misled, and at any rate
\nhe will catch more of the meaning from imperfect English substitutes than from
\nSanskrit terms which will be a blank to his intelligence. The mind of man
\ndemands, and the demand is legitimate, that new ideas shall be presented to him
\nin words which convey to him some associations with which he will not feel like
\na foreigner in a strange country where no one knows his language, nor he theirs.
\nThe new must be presented to him in the terms of the old; new wine must be put
\nto some extent in old bottles. What is the use of avoiding the word "God" and
\nspeaking always of the Supreme as "It" simply because the Sanskrit usually, \u2014
\nbut not, be it observed, invariably,\u2014employs the neuter gender? The neuter in
\nSanskrit applies not only to what is inanimate, not only to what is below gender
\nbut to what is above gender. In English this is not the case. The use of "It"
\nmay therefore lead to far more serious misconceptions than to use the term "God"
\nand the pronoun "He". When Matthew Arnold said that God was a stream of tendency
\nmaking towards righteousness, men naturally scoffed because it seemed to turn
\nGod into an inanimate force; yet surely such was not Arnold’s meaning. On the
\nother side, if the new ideas are presented with force and power, a reader of
\nintelligence will soon come to understand that something different is meant by
\n"God" from what ideas he attaches to that word. And in the meanwhile we gain
\nthis distinct advantage that he has not been repelled at the outset by what
\nwould naturally seem to him bizarre, repulsive or irreverent.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is true, however, that this
\ntranslation will not convey a precise, full and categorical knowledge of the
\ntruths which underlie the Upanishads. To convey such knowledge is not the object
\nof this translation, neither was it the object of the Upa\u00adnishads themselves. It
\nmust always be remembered that these <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 58<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

great treatises are simply the gate of the Higher
\nKnowledge; there is much that lies behind the gate. Sri Krishna has indeed said
\nthat the knowledge in the Vedas is sufficient for a holy mind that is capable of
\nknowing God, just as the water in a well is sufficient for a man’s purpose
\nthough there may be whole floods of water all around. But this does not apply to
\nordinary men. The ordinary man who wishes to reach God through knowledge, must
\nundergo an elaborate training. He must begin by becoming absolutely pure, he
\nmust cleanse thoroughly his body, his heart and his intellect, he must get
\nhimself a new heart and be born again; for only the twice-born can understand or
\nteach the Vedas. When he has done this he needs yet four things before he can
\nsucceed, the Sruti or recorded revelation, the Sacred Teacher, the practice of
\nYoga and the Grace of God. The business of the Sruti and especially of the
\nUpanishads is to seize the mind and draw it into a magic circle, to accustom it
\nto the thoughts and aspirations of God (after the Supreme), to bathe it in
\ncertain ideas, surround it with a certain spiritual atmosphere; for this purpose
\nit plunges and rolls the mind over and over in an ocean of marvellous sound
\nthrough which a certain train of associations goes ever rolling. In other words
\nit appeals through the intellect, the ear and the imagination to the soul. The
\npurpose of the Upanishad cannot therefore be served by a translation; a
\ntranslation at best prepares him for and attracts him to the original. But even
\nwhen he has steeped himself in the original, he may have understood what the
\nUpanishad suggested, but he has not understood all that it implies, the great
\nmass of religious truth that lies behind, of which the Upanishad is but a hint
\nor an echo. For this he must go to the Teacher. "Awake ye, arise and learn of
\nGod, seeking out the Best who have the knowledge." Hard is it in these days to
\nfind the Best, for the Best do not come to us, we have to show our sincerity,
\npatience and perseverance by seeking them. And when we have heard the whole of
\nthe Brahmavidya from the Teacher, we still know of God by theory only; we must
\nfurther learn from a preceptor the practical knowledge of God, the vision of Him
\nand attainment of Him which is Yoga and the goal of Yoga. And even in that we
\ncannot succeed unless we have the Grace of God; for Yoga is beset with<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 59<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

temptations not the least of which are the powers it
\ngives us, powers which the ignorant call supernatural. "Then must a man be very
\nvigilant for Yoga, as it hath a beginning, so hath it an ending." Only the Grace
\nof God can keep us firm and help us over the temptations. "The spirit is not to
\nbe won" etc… \u2014 the blessing of triumphant self-mastery that comes from long
\nand patient accumulation of soul experience. Truly does the Upanishad say,
\n"Sharp as a razor’s edge is the path, difficult and hard to traverse, say the
\nseers." Fortunately it is not necessary and indeed it is not possible for all to
\nmeasure the whole journey in a single life, nor can we or should we abandon our
\ndaily duties like the Buddha and flee into the mountain or the forest. It is
\nenough for us to make a beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 60<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Translating the Upanishads       THIS translation of a few of the simpler and more exoteric Upanishads to be followed by other sacred and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}