It may be confidently hoped that the new scheme launched by the University will meet with ready response from the student world, and, in the fullness of time, will fructify in reawakening in India the interest in Vedic studies. Here is, an opportunity for young Indians to learn, under competent guidance, the correct method and the results of latest researches in the interpretation of the Rig Veda. It is anticipated that the arrangement will be a permanent one. It is a sign of the times that the Bombay University, recently reorganising its Department of Post-graduate Studies has inaugurated a course of lectures on the Rig Veda. The twentieth century is a century of specialists. And for that we must equip ourselves with all the paraphernalia of’ the technique of modern philological and historical research. Furthermore it is improper to impose on European scholars the burden of interpreting our literature, our past We must fit ourselves to shoulder our own burdens. We have the prior right to its exploitation. It is not an exaggeration to say that the imposing structures of Indo-germanic Philology and Mythology have been reared on-and would have been impossible to rear without- the solid and broad foundation of Rig Vedic tradition And this Rig Veda is our heritage. The value and importance of the Rig Veda Samhita for linguistic, mythological and historical research is commonly acknowledged, if not fully realised in India. and only from the commencement of the twelfth century do we find any manuscripts which contain sagas and theological literature. The literary record of Gaelic, the most important branch of the Celtic group begins in the eighth century A. Of the Balto-slavonic branch, Old Prussian died out in the seventeenth century only some few imperfectly recorded specimens of Old Prussian have been preserved to us and they date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gothic, the most archaic language of the Germanic group, is known to us chiefly through the translations of the Bible made by Bishop Ulfilas in the fourth century of the Christian era. C., that is nearly 1200 years later than the latest period to which Vedic hymns have been assigned by some Western scholars. Latin is known to us from about the third century B. The early history of Greek has to be pieced together laboriously from imperfectly preserved inscriptions the language of the Homeric poems, which are considerably later than our Rig Vedic hymns, is regarded by competent critics as an artificial dialect. down to us with numerous and multiform corruptions, written in a defective alphabet, which renders its decipherment an arduous and a problematic task. the Iranian group are the cuneiform inscriptions dating from about 500 B. Nevertheless, it cannot be gainsaid that the tradition of the Rig Veda is unique for its antiquity, purity and continuity in the history of world literature, and particularly in the history of the literatures of the Indo-germanic family. Handed down through untold vistas of centuries exclusively by oral tradition the Rig Veda Samhita has in the mouths of the devout reciters not entirely escaped that fate which is uniformly shared, in all- climes and all ages, by similar works which have originated in some early historical epoch and have continued to live on through succeeding epochs of linguistic and literary development.
The text of the Rig Veda, it is true, has come down to us in a form not wholly authentic. His researches have suffered underserved neglect at the hands of his countrymen, and, owing to their being written in Marathi, have after barely twenty years, passed into unmerited oblivion. The only Indian scholar who in recent years had seriously studied the Vedas and tried to arrive at an independent conclusion as to their meaning and value was my Guru, the late Professor Rajaram Ramakrishna Bhagvat. It is, therefore, not a little strange to find that Rig Vedic studies should evoke, even in the present restless century of research and investigation, of excavation and revaluation, so little genuine interest in India, the cradle of these songs, the country where these very hymns have in time by-gone been studied and taught with such meticulous care and deep-rooted attachment, and even reverence. Here is Professor Sukhthankar introducing the lectures of the Rig Veda by Ghate.Īs the earliest documents throwing light upon the history of the early Aryan settlers of India, the hymns of the Rig Veda should be, to Indians, a perennial source of interest and inspiration. Rig Veda in the context of Indo-European languages
0 kommentar(er)
