{"id":888,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=888"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:02","slug":"07-the-philological-method-of-the-veda-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10\/07-the-philological-method-of-the-veda-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","title":{"rendered":"-07_The Philological Method of the Veda.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER
\n<\/span> V<\/font> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Philological Method of the Veda <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n            N<\/font>O<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

interpretation of the Veda can be
\nsound which does not rest on a sound and secure philological
\nbasis; and yet this Scripture with its obscure and antique tongue
\nof which it is the sole remaining document offers unique philological difficulties. To rely entirely on the traditional and often
\nimaginative renderings of the Indian scholars is impossible for
\nany critical mind. Modern philology strives after a more secure
\nand scientific basis, but has not yet found it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn the psychological interpretation of the Veda there are,
\nespecially, two difficulties which can only be met by a satisfactory
\nphilological justification. This interpretation necessitates the acceptance of
\nseveral new senses for a fair number of fixed technical terms of the Veda, \u2014 terms, for example like
\nūti, avas,
\nvayas.<\/i> These new renderings satisfy one test we may fairly demand; they fit in to every context, clarify the sense and free
\nus from the necessity of attributing quite different significances
\nto the same term in a work of so fixed a form as the Veda. But
\nthis test is not sufficient. We must have, besides, a philological
\nbasis which will not only account for the new sense, but also explain how a single word came to be capable of so many different
\nmeanings, the sense attached to it by the psychological interpretation, those given to it by the old grammarians and those, if any,
\nwhich are attached to it in later Sanskrit. But this is not easily
\npossible unless we find a more scientific basis for our philological
\ndeductions than our present knowledge affords.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nSecondly, the theory of the psychological interpretation
\ndepends very often on the use of a double meaning for important
\nwords, \u2014 the key-words of the secret teaching. The figure is
\none that is traditional in Sanskrit literature and sometimes
\nemployed with an excess of artifice in the later classical works;<\/font><\/p>\n

it is the śleṣa<\/i> or rhetorical figure of double entendre.<\/i> But its very<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

\nartificiality predisposes us to believe that this poetical device
\nmust belong necessarily to a later and more sophisticated culture.
\nHow are we to account for its constant presence in a work of the
\nremotest antiquity ? Moreover, there is a peculiar extension of it
\nin the Vedic use, a deliberate employment of the "multi-significance" of Sanskrit roots in order to pack as much meaning as
\npossible into a single word, which at first sight enhances the difficulty of the
\nproblem to an extraordinary degree. For instance, the word, aśva,<\/i> usually signifying a horse, is used as a figure
\nof the Prana, the nervous energy, the vital breath, the half-mental, half-material dynamism which links mind and matter.
\nIts root is capable, among other senses, of the ideas of impulsion,
\nforce, possession, enjoyment, and we find all these meanings
\nunited in this figure of the Steed of Life to indicate the essential
\ntendencies of the Pranic energy. Such a use of language would
\nnot be possible if the tongue of the Aryan forefathers obeyed the
\nsame conventions as our modern speech or were in the same stage
\nof development. But if we can suppose that there was some peculiarity in the old Aryan tongue as it was used by the Vedic Rishis
\nby which words were felt to be more alive, less merely conventional symbols of ideas, more free in their transitions of meaning
\nthan in our later use of speech, then we shall find that these
\ndevices were not at all artificial or far-fetched to their employers,
\nbut were rather the first natural means which would suggest them-
\nselves to men anxious at once to find new, brief and adequate
\nformulae of speech for psychological conceptions not understood
\nby the vulgar and to conceal the ideas contained in their formulae
\nfrom a profane intelligence. I believe that this is the true explanation; it can
\nbe established, I think, by a study of the development of Aryan speech that language did pass through a stage
\npeculiarly favourable to this cryptic and psychological use of
\nwords which in their popular handling have a plain, precise and
\nphysical significance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nI have already indicated that my first study of Tamil words
\nhad brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and
\nstructure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue; and so far did this clue
\nlead that I lost sight entirely of my original subject of interest,
\nthe connections between Aryan and Dravidian speech, and<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 46<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nplunged into the far more interesting research of the origins and
\nlaws of development of human language itself. It seems to me that
\nthis great inquiry and not the ordinary preoccupation of linguistic
\nscholars should be the first and central aim of any true science
\nof Philology.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOwing to the failure of the first hopes which attended the
\nbirth of modern Philology, its meagre results, its crystallisation
\ninto the character of a "petty conjectural science", the idea of
\na Science of Language is now discredited and its very possibility,
\non quite insufficient reasoning, entirely denied. It seems to me
\nimpossible to acquiesce in such a final negation. If there is one
\nthing that Modern Science has triumphantly established, it is the
\nreign of law and process of evolution in the history of all earthly
\nthings. Whatever may be the deeper nature of Speech, in its
\noutward manifestation as human language it is an organism,
\na growth, a terrestrial evolution. It contains indeed a constant psychological
\nelement and is therefore more free, flexible, consciously self-adaptive than purely physical organisms; its secret
\nis more difficult to seize, its constituents yield themselves only to
\nmore subtle and less trenchant methods of analysis. But law and
\nprocess exist in mental no less than in material phenomena in
\nspite of their more volatile and variable appearances. Law and
\nprocess must have governed the origins and developments of
\nlanguage. Given the necessary clue and sufficient data, they must
\nbe discoverable. It seems to me that in the Sanskrit language the
\nclue can be found, the data lie ready for investigation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe error of Philology which prevented it from arriving at a
\nmore satisfactory result in this direction, was its preoccupation
\nin the physical parts of speech with the exterior morphology of
\nlanguage and in its psychological parts with the equally external
\nconnections of formed vocables and of grammatical inflexions in
\nkindred languages. But the true method of Science is to go back
\nto the origins, the embryology, the elements and more obscure
\nprocesses of things. From the obvious only the obvious and superficial results. The profundities of things, their real truth, can
\nbest be discovered by penetration into the hidden things that the
\nsurface of phenomena conceals, into that past development of
\nwhich the finished forms present only secret and dispersed indications <\/font> <\/p>\n

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\n

\nor into the possibilities from which the actualities we see
\nare only a narrow selection. A similar method applied to the
\nearlier forms of human speech can alone give us a real Science of
\nLanguage.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is not in a short chapter of a treatise itself brief and de-
\nvoted to another subject that it is at all possible to present the
\nresults of the work that I have attempted on these lines.<\/font>\u00b9<\/font> I can
\nonly briefly indicate the one or two features which bear directly
\non the subject of Vedic interpretation. And I mention them here
\nsolely to avoid any supposition in the minds of my readers that in
\ndeparting from the received senses of certain Vedic words I have
\nsimply taken advantage of that freedom of ingenious conjecture
\nwhich is at once one of the great attractions and one of the most
\nserious weaknesses of modern Philology.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMy researches first convinced me that words, like plants,
\nlike animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths, \u2014
\nliving growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive
\nroot-words with an immense progeny which have their successive
\ngenerations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families,
\nselective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history.
\nFor the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind
\nof primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of
\ncertain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds.
\nThe process of this association was also in no sense artificial but
\nnatural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn their beginnings language-sounds were not
\nused to express what we should call ideas; they were rather the vocal equivalents of certain general sensations and emotion-values. It was
\nthe nerves and not the intellect which created speech. To use
\nVedic symbols, Agni and Vayu, not Indra, were the original
\nartificers of human language. Mind has emerged out of vital and
\nsensational activities; intellect in man has built itself upon a basis
\nof sense-associations and sense-reactions. <\/b> By a similar process
\nthe intellectual use of language has developed by a natural law<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>I propose to deal with them in a separate work on "The Origins of Aryan Speech".
\n[Vide<\/i> Appendix.]<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 48<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nout of the sensational and emotional. Words, which were originally vital ejections full of a vague sense-potentiality, have
\nevolved into fixed symbols of precise intellectual significances.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn consequence, the word originally was not fixed to any
\nprecise idea. It had a general character or quality (guṇa),<\/i> which
\nwas capable of a great number of applications and therefore of a
\ngreat number of possible significances. And this guṇa<\/i> and its
\nresults it shared with many kindred sounds. At first, therefore,
\nword-clans, word-families started life on the communal system
\nwith a common stock of possible and realised significances and
\na common right to all of them; their individuality lay rather in
\nshades of expression of the same ideas than in any exclusive
\nright to the expression of a single idea. The early history of
\nlanguage was a development from this communal life of words to
\na system of individual property in one or more intellectual significances. The principle of partition was at first fluid, then in-
\ncreased in rigidity, until word-families and finally single words
\nwere able to start life on their own account. The last stage of the
\nentirely natural growth of language comes when the life of the
\nword is entirely subjected to the life of the idea which it represents.
\nFor in the first state of language the word is as living or even a
\nmore living force than its idea; sound determines sense. In its
\nlast state the positions have been reversed; the idea becomes all-important, the sound secondary.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnother feature of the early history of language is that it
\nexpresses at first a remarkably small stock of ideas and these are the most
\ngeneral notions possible and generally the most concrete, such as light, motion, touch, substance, extension, force,
\nspeed, etc. Afterwards there is a gradual increase in variety of
\nidea and precision of idea. The progression is from the general
\nto the particular, from the vague to the precise, from the physical
\nto the mental, from the concrete to the abstract, from the expression of an abundant variety of sensations about similar things to
\nthe expression of precise difference between similar things, feelings and actions. This progression is worked out by processes of
\nassociation in ideas which are always the same, always recurrent and, although
\nno doubt due to the environments and actual experiences of the men who spoke the language, wear the appearance <\/font> <\/p>\n

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\n

\nof fixed natural laws of development. And after all what is
\na law but a process which has been worked out by the nature of
\nthings in response to the necessities of their environment and
\nhas become the fixed habit of their action?<\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom this past history of language certain consequences
\nderive which are of considerable importance in Vedic interpretation. In the first place by a knowledge of the laws under which
\nthe relations of sound and sense formed themselves in the
\nSanskrit tongue and by a careful and minute study of its word-families it is possible to a great extent to restore the past history
\nof individual words. It is possible to account for the meanings
\nactually possessed by them, to show how they were worked out
\nthrough the various stages of language-development, to establish
\nthe mutual relations of different significances and to explain how
\nthey came to be attached to the same word in spite of the wide
\ndifference and sometimes even the direct contrariety of their
\nsense-values. It is possible also to restore lost senses of words on
\na sure and scientific basis and to justify them by an appeal to the
\nobserved laws of association which governed the development of
\nthe old Aryan tongues, to the secret evidence of the word itself
\nand to the corroborative evidence of its immediate kindred. Thus
\ninstead of having a purely floating and conjectural basis for our
\ndealings with the vocables of the Vedic language, we can work
\nwith confidence upon a solid and reliable foundation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNaturally, it does not follow that because a Vedic word may
\nor must have had at one time a particular significance, that significance can be safely applied to the actual text of the Veda. But
\nwe do establish a sound sense and a clear possibility of its being
\nthe right sense for the Veda. The rest is a matter of comparative
\nstudy of the passages in which the word occurs and of constant
\nfitness in the context. I have continually found that a sense thus
\nrestored illumines always the context wherever it is applied and
\non the other hand that a sense demanded always by the context
\nis precisely that to which we are led by the history of the word.
\nThis is a sufficient basis for a moral, if not for an absolute
\ncertainty.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nSecondly, one remarkable feature of language
\nin its inception is the enormous number of different meanings of which a<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 50<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsingle word was capable and also the enormous number of words
\nwhich could be used to represent a single idea. Afterwards this tropical
\nluxuriance came to be cut down. The intellect intervened with its growing need of precision, its growing sense of
\neconomy. The bearing capacity of words progressively diminished; and it became less and less tolerable to be burdened with
\na superfluous number of words for the same idea, a redundant
\nvariety of ideas for the same word. A considerable, though not
\ntoo rigid economy in these respects, modified by a demand for a
\ntemperate richness of variation, became the final law of language.
\nBut the Sanskrit tongue never quite reached the final stages of this
\ndevelopment; it dissolved too early into the Prakrit dialects.
\nEven in its latest and most literary form it is lavish of varieties of
\nmeanings for the same word; it overflows with a redundant
\nwealth of synonyms. Hence its extraordinary capacity for rhetorical devices which in any other language would be difficult,
\nforced and hopelessly artificial, and especially for the figure of
\ndouble sense, of śleṣa.<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Vedic Sanskrit represents a still earlier stratum in the
\ndevelopment of language. Even in its outward features it is less
\nfixed than any classical tongue; it abounds in a variety of forms
\nand inflexions; it is fluid and vague, yet richly subtle in its use of
\ncases and tenses. And on its psychological side it has not yet
\ncrystallised, is not entirely hardened into the rigid forms of intellectual precision. The word for the Vedic Rishi is still a living
\nthing, a thing of power, creative, formative. It is not yet a conventional symbol for an idea, but itself the parent and former of
\nideas. It carries within it the memory of its roots, is still conscient of its own history.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Rishis’ use of language was governed by this ancient
\npsychology of the Word. When in English we use the word
\n"wolf" or "cow", we mean by it simply the animal designated; we
\nare not conscious of any reason why we should use that particular
\nsound for the idea except the immemorial custom of the language ; and we cannot use it for any other sense or purpose
\nexcept by an artificial device of style. But for the Vedic Rishi
\nvṛka<\/i> meant the tearer and therefore, among other applications of
\nthe sense, a wolf; dhenu<\/i> meant the fosterer, nourisher, and<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 51<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntherefore a cow. But the original and general sense predominates, the derived and particular is secondary. Therefore, it was
\npossible for the fashioner of the hymn to use these common
\nwords with a great pliability, sometimes putting forward the
\nimage of the wolf or the cow, sometimes using it to colour the
\nmore general sense, sometimes keeping it merely as a conventional figure for the psychological conception on which his mind
\nwas dwelling, sometimes losing sight of the image altogether.
\nIt is in the light of this psychology of the old language that we
\nhave to understand the peculiar figures of Vedic symbolism as
\nhandled by the Rishis, even to the most apparently common
\nand concrete. It is so that words like ghṛtam,<\/i> the clarified butter,
\nsoma,<\/i> the sacred wine, and a host of others are used.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMoreover, the partitions made by the thought between
\ndifferent senses of the same word were much less separative than
\nin modern speech. In English "fleet" meaning a number of
\nships and "fleet" meaning swift are two different words; when we
\nuse "fleet" in the first sense we do not think of the swiftness of the
\nship’s motion, nor when we use it in the second, do we recall the image of ships gliding rapidly over the ocean. But this
\nwas precisely what was apt to occur in the Vedic use of language. Bhaga,<\/i> enjoyment, and bhāga,<\/i> share, were for the Vedic
\nmind not different words, but one word which had developed
\ntwo different uses. Therefore it was easy for the Rishis to employ
\nit in one of the two senses with the other at the back of the mind
\ncolouring its overt connotation or even to use it equally in both
\nsenses at a time by a sort of figure of cumulative significance.
\nCanas<\/i> meant food but also it meant "enjoyment, pleasure";<\/font><\/p>\n

therefore it could be used by the Rishi to suggest to the profane
\nmind only the food given at the sacrifice to the gods, but for the
\ninitiated it meant the Ananda, the joy of the divine bliss entering
\ninto the physical consciousness and at the same time suggested
\nthe image of the Soma-wine, at once the food of the gods and the
\nVedic symbol of the Ananda.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe see everywhere this use of language dominating the
\nWord of the Vedic hymns. It was the great device by which the
\nancient Mystics overcame the difficulty of their task. Agni for
\nthe ordinary worshipper may have meant simply the god of the<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 52<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nVedic fire, or it may have meant the principle of Heat and Light
\nin physical Nature, or to the most ignorant it may have meant
\nsimply a superhuman personage, one of the many "givers of
\nwealth", satisfiers of human desire. How suggest to those capable
\nof a deeper conception the psychological functions of the God ?
\nThe word itself fulfilled that service. For Agni meant the Strong,
\nit meant the Bright, or even Force, Brilliance. So it could easily
\nrecall to the initiated, wherever it occurred, the idea of the illumined Energy which builds up the worlds and which exalts man
\nto the Highest, the doer of the great work, the Purohit of the
\nhuman sacrifice.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOr how keep it in the mind of the hearer that all these gods
\nare personalities of the one universal Deva? The names of the
\ngods in their very meaning recall that they are only epithets,
\nsignificant names, descriptions, not personal appellations. Mitra
\nis the Deva as the Lord of love and harmony, Bhaga as the
\nLord of enjoyment, Surya as the Lord of illumination, Varuna
\nas the all-pervading Vastness and purity of the Divine supporting
\nand perfecting the world. "The Existent is One," says the Rishi
\nDirghatamas, "but the sages express It variously; they say Indra,
\nVaruna, Mitra, Agni; they call It Agni, Yama, Matariswan."\u00b9
\nThe initiate in the earlier days of the Vedic knowledge had no
\nneed of this express statement. The names of the gods carried to
\nhim their own significance and recalled the great fundamental
\ntruth which remained with him always.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut in the later ages the very device used by the Rishis
\nturned against the preservation of the knowledge. For language
\nchanged its character, rejected its earlier pliability, shed off old
\nfamiliar senses; the word contracted and shrank into its outer
\nand concrete significance. The ambrosial wine of the Ananda
\nwas forgotten in the physical offering; the image of the clarified
\nbutter recalled only the gross libation to mythological deities,
\nlords of the fire and the cloud and the storm-blast, godheads
\nvoid of any but a material energy and an external lustre. The
\nletter lived on when the spirit was forgotten; the symbol, the
\nbody of the doctrine, remained, but the soul of knowledge had
\nfled from its coverings.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>Rv. 1.164.46. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
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