Gonda, J. Some Notes on the Study of Ancient Indian Religious Texts

8/13/2019 Gonda, J. Some Notes on the Study of Ancient Indian Religious Texts

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Some Notes on the Study of Ancient-Indian Religious TerminologyAuthor(s): J. GondaReviewed work(s):Source: History of Religions, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 243-273Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062054.

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SOME NOTES ONTHE STUDY OFANCIENT-INDIANRELIGIOUSTERMINOLOGY

Those students of comparative history of religions who are acquaintedwith the history of research in the special field of ancient IndianWeltanschauung and who take cognizance of the moot points andquestions under discussion among Vedists and historians of Indianthought will have noticed that our knowledge of, and insight into,Vedic religion largely depend on a correct understanding of a con-siderable number of Indian words and phrases, many of which havenow been debated for nearly a century. They will have observed thatnot rarely opinions on the exact sense of important religious termscontinue to diverge widely, and in other cases solutions offered withmuch self-confidence and suggestiveness appear to be, sooner or later,open to justifiable criticism. It is not my intention in this article todwell at length on some of the factors which have contributed to thisstate of affairs, which, after all, is unavoidable in any comparablefield of scientific research: the distance in time, space, and culturalenvironment between Vedic mankind and most modern specialists;the incompleteness of our sources; the reinterpretations suggestedby the traditional views of the Indians; the prejudices and limitations

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyof modern scholarship itself, which has often been guided by the tenetsof contemporaneous philosophy, by the religious conviction of theresearch workers, or by the political systems of their own countries.'What I would like to emphasize here is that the difficulties withwhich we are confronted are-not integrally of course, but afterall not rarely-due to some imperfections in the very method appliedin studying the "meaning" of ancient Indian religious terminology.Although I have often made incidental remarks on this point and alsoventured some attempts to avoid the rocks on which others seem tohave split, it may, now that some ancient controversies seem to haverevived, be expedient to discuss this issue somewhat more systemati-cally and to make at least an attempt to elucidate more elaboratelythe relevant statements which I made elsewhere2 and which havenot always been correctly understood by my colleagues.The study of Indian religious terminology is in the first instancea philologist's concern, requiring, particularly, a training in semantics.Now semantics has often and in all probability rightly been calledthe most difficult province of linguistics.3 In the nineteenth centuryafter having slowly evolved from the time-honored lore of the rhetori-cal tropes founded by Aristotle and amplified in Hellenistic andRoman Antiquity,4 this branch of linguistics has made more or lesssuccessful attempts to disengage itself from the logical and rhetoricalclassifications and explications inherited from its parent by seekingrefuge with psychology;5 by replacing logical classifications and some-times also psychological explanations of semantic change by theinfluence of historical, social, or purely linguistic factors;6 by deter-mining the role played by connotations7 and predominant semanticnuclei;8by emotion on the part of the speaker9and misunderstanding

A. Weber, for instance, was biased in his view of ancient Indian kingshipby the ideals and conditions of the Wilhelminic Germany (see J. C. Heesterman,The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration [thesis, Utrecht, 1957], p. 5); the viewson the relations between brahmans and the other classes of society were sometimesinfluenced by the point of view taken by an author and his surroundings withregard to clergy and religion.2 For instance, in J. Gonda, Notes on Brahman (Utrecht, 1950).3 For a short history of semantics see, e.g., S. Ohman, Wortinhalt und Weltbild(Stockholm, 1951), esp. chaps. i and ii; S. Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics(Glasgow, 1951), passim; P. Guiraud, La Sgmantique (Paris, 1955); K. Baldinger,"Die Semasiologie," Forschungen und Fortschritte, XXX (Berlin, 1956), 148, 173.4 H. Lausberg, Elemente der lateinischen Rhetorik (Miinchen, 1949).

6 Cf. H. Paul, Prinzipien derSprachgeschichte (2d ed.; Halle a.S., 1886), chap. iv.6 See, e.g., A. Meillet, "Comment les mots changent de sens," Annie sociologique(1905-6); re-edited in Linguistique historiqueet linguistique generale, I (Paris, 1921),230 ff.7 See, e.g., K. O. Erdmann, Die Bedeutung des Wortes (Leipzig, 1922).8 H. Kronasser, Handbuch der Semasiologie (Heidelberg, 1952), pp. 48 ff.9H. Sperber, Einfuhrung in die Bedeutungslehre (Bonn-Leipzig, 1923).

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on the part of the hearer;'1by studying the importance of the contextsand situations in which a word or word group is with a certain regulari-ty used." Whereas, moreover, the study of semantics has for manyyears been mainly concerned with semantic change, that is, withhistorical problems of the semantic development of individual words,interest began, in the twenties and thirties of this century, to befocused also on a study of coherent, coexistent word groups formingso-called semantic fields and their relations to similar "fields" com-posed of the same or similar names as they existed at a later date.12Eyes were opened to the possibility of distinguishing semantic "struc-tures" and "structurations"-the latter term denoting the dynamicaspect, "le processus d'organisation structurelle."13It has been foundthat the "meanings" of the elements of a vocabulary group them-selves so as to constitute wholes which are to a certain extent organ-ized, the constituents maintaining mutual relations to each otheras well as to the whole. There are "microstructures": "meanings"which are complex, consisting of semantic aspects, grouped rounda "kernel"; there are also macrostructures or "fields" composedof groups of words which are in some way or other-morphologically,notionally, etc.-more closely associated. The very idea of "meaning"has, moreover, been subjected to criticism. We now know that"words" do not mean "things." "Meaning" is, in brief, a reciprocalrelation between name (= Wortformor Wortkorper)and sense (Sinnor Begriff), between symbol and "thought" or "reference," whichenables them to call up one another,14 the "idea" or "reference"relating to the "thing itself." This insight, however, implies that, instudying the meanings of, for instance, religious terminology of

10See, e.g., M. Leumann, "Zum Mechanismus des Bedeutungswandels,"In-dogermanischeorschungen,XLV (1927), 105 ff. (=Kleine Schriften[Zurich,1959],p. 286).n J. Stocklein, Untersuchungenzur lateinischenBedeutungslehre Dillingen,1895).12See, e.g., L. Weisgerber,"Vorschlagezur Methode und TerminologiederWortforschung," ndogerm.Forsch.,XLVI (1928),305 ff.;andby the sameauthor,Mutterspracheund GeistesbildungGottingen, 1929); J. Trier, "Das sprachlicheFeld," Neue Jahrbucherur Wissenschaftund Jugendbildung,X (1934), 428 ff.We cannot enter into details, e.g., into the question as to how far semanticdistinctions were, in particularcases, assumedunder the influence of those who,afterward, began to reflect upon definitions, border-line cases, "synonyms,"etc.; problemsconnected with the "adaptation"of terms when receivedinto an-

other community, etc. As is well known, these cases are far from imaginary inthe history of Indian religionand philosophy.13 Tatiana Cazacu, "La 'structurationdynamique'des significations," n Md-langeslinguistiques(Bucharest:Acad6mieRoumaine, 1957), pp. 113 ff.14See, e.g., C. K. Ogdenand I. A. Richards,TheMeaningof Meaning(London,1923), 3d ed., 1930, esp. chap. i; Ullmann, op. cit., pp. 65 ff.; K. Ammer, Ein-fihrung in die Sprachwissenschaft, (Halle a.S., 1958), 55 ff.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyforeign peoples, it is no use trying to establish direct relations betweentheir names and objective reality as known to us, or believed to beknown by us. Nor is it a legitimate procedureto substitute our "ideas"("references")-associated with the names by which the foreignnames are usually translated-for the ideas which are really symbol-ized by the foreign terms.Now it is a deplorable fact that scholars, namely, lexicographersin arranging various "meanings" of the same "word" in a dictionary;philologists in discussing the connections between different connota-tions of the same terms; historians in attempting to discover the"original" sense of a term of literary, religious, or economic import,as well as the authors of hand- and classbooks have often practicallyignored the development of semantics during the last two or threegenerations. This development, though far from having establishedgenerally adopted "rules"or tendencies with regardto the mechanismof changes of meaning and techniques to be employed in determiningthe relation between any given set of senses expressed by a wordor group of words, has nevertheless led us to consider semanticchange a highly complicated process. Study of meaning and changeof meaning of names, terms, or phrases requires in cases such asare under consideration not only a thorough philological and historicalunderstanding of the contexts and situations in which the terms occurand a knowledge of the fundamentals of the "phenomenology"of religion-or comparative study of religions-but also an insightinto semantic possibilities and intricacies and a readinesssystematical-ly to investigate the "semantic fields" to which the term belongsand the cultural system to which it is related. In fact the often verysuperficial discussion of semantic problems, is-probably as a ruleunconsciously-founded on preconceived opinions or suppositionsanachronistically derived from, or suggested by, modern conditionsof life, our own Western traditions and age-long habits of thought."Die indoeuropaiischeSemantik beruht nicht selten auf Auslegungenkulturgeschichtlicher Natur, die man erhalten hat vermittelst abs-trakter logischer Konstruktionen, die dem primitivenl5 Menschenunzuganglich und geradewegs fremd sind."'6

The so-called logical conditions of change enumerated under the16 In order to avoid misunderstanding I repeat what I have often observedin other publications: I admit the term "primitive" only in the scientific andtechnical sense given to it, for instance, by G. van der Leeuw (see esp. L'Hommeprimitif et la religion [Paris, 1940]), who did not tire of arguing that "primitive-ness" refers to an "anthropological structure," from which the "civilized" and"educated" are, also in Western countries, by no means completely free.16 H. Arens, Sprachwissenschaft (Munich, 1955), p. 422, following N. Marr.

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headings of the time-honored "figures of speech" and their modernreductions to the three logical categories of narrowing, widening, andtransfer of sense17are largely dominated by a priori conceptions andare little more than highly simplified schematic formulations of verycomplicated and often prolonged processes.'8Backgrounds, determin-ing factors of a historical, social, and psychological order are leftout of consideration; complex phenomena of different character areclassified under one and the same denominator, because it is onlythe results of semantic shifts-if there are any-that are in a verysuperficial way taken into account.Little indeed, with a view to a deeper understanding of ancientIndian thought and Weltanschauung, and of Vedic man's endeavorto penetrate into the hidden world beyond the phenomena, is gainedby calling a definite contextual connotation of a word a metaphoror a "transferred meaning," or in observing that, for example, theVedic amSu, meaning "the filament of the soma," may, by way ofmetonomy, be used for the soma-juice. What matters is to knowwhy "these two meanings combined," what made the Vedic poetsuse this word in what would appear to us to be "two senses." Whatwe would really like to know is by way of which association definitewords were used in a "figurative" way-for example, the verbtan- "to stretch," to denote the idea of "performingthe sacrifice''9-orword groups were formed which impress us as metaphorical-whatwas, for instance, the exact meaning of the words Rgveda 8, 48, 6translated by Geldner: "wie das ausgeriebene Feuer sollst du (0Soma) mich in Feuer setzen"?20We would like to know whether thereexists a preference for using words belonging to definite semanticgroups in so-called transferred senses; how far the use of identicalwords reflects ideological identifications, etc. We may go further:When Geldner,21n a note to the Soma-hymn Rgveda 9, 29, 3 vardhdsamudram "fill the ocean," observes that "ocean" here means "diemit dem Meere verglichene Menge des gepreszten Somas in der Kufe,"the term "metaphor" would conceal the important fact that the an-cient priests considered the celestial ocean (not an ordinary sea)and the soma-vessel to be identical, however much modern men wouldbe inclined to take the existence of a mere sensual association between

17 See Ullmann, op. cit., p. 204.18 Cf. also J. R. Firth, Papersin Linguistics (London,1957), p. 10.19A. A. Macdonellputs it as "figuratively n the sense of to extend the web ofthe sacrifice"(A Vedic Reader or Students[Oxford,1928], p. 198).20 K. F. Geldner,Der Rigveda n Auswahl,I (Stuttgart, 1907), 83.21K. F. Geldner,Der Rig-vedaubersetzt,II (Cambridge,Mass., 1951), 28.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologythe soma contained in the large vessel and a real sea for granted.Thus freier Raum and Ausweg (aus der Not) are not completely ade-quate "equivalents" of "an original" and a "transferred" meaning ofvarivas (RIV. 4, 24, 2), or rather: Whereas the German expressionsmay be related to each other as propersense and metaphor, the Indianword appears to express two context-bound nuances of one and thesame "vague concept," which is subject to semantic association andamplification. And here the question also arises as to how far theseexpressions which impress us as "metaphores," transferred meanings,or figurative speech were "motivated" (i.e., felt as vivid, active, andexpressive) and how far they were cum or sine fundamento in re,that is to say, either transferred or "figurative" uses based on theintuition of some real likeness of relations and belonging to thewell-known and highly frequent type that has become ingrained intoour common habits of expression, or indicative of a propensity to"identifications" and belonging to those products of speculativethought and imagination which play such an important role in theWeltanschauung of prescientific communities.22

What deserves special notice is the inclination of lexicographersand commentators to distribute the aspects of the total meaning ofa term over a number of "senses" arranged in an order which thoughimpressing the reader as reflecting a historical development is onlya product of the ancient procedure of "logical" classification. Thusdamsas, which means something like "marvelous skill or power,"is believed to "mean": "1, feat, Meisterwerk;2, iibernatiirlichesVer-mogen" 23maya is said to have, in the Rgveda, two distinct meanings:"1, Verwandlung,Zauberkraft;2, Illusion, Tduschung,"24whereas thisterm as far as I am able to see25has, in fact, denoted "an incompre-hensible wisdom and power ascribed to mighty beings and enablingits possessors to create or to do something which is beyond theability of ordinary men"; druh is considered to be, on the one hand,Falsch, Falschheit,and on the other, Tduschung;26harman,accordingto the dictionaries, "established order of things," "steadfast decree"as well as "practice and custom."Sometimes the occurrence of a "specialized" meaning is assumed-e.g., ild "invigoration, sp6cialis6 en breuvage invigorant (offert a

22 See, e.g., E. Leisi, Der Wortinhalt, seine Struktur im Deutschen und Englischen(Heidelberg, 1953).23 Geldner, Der Rigveda in Auswahl, I, 78.24 Ibid., p. 135.26 See my "Sense and Etymology of Sanskrit Maya," in Four Studies in theLanguage of the Veda (The Hague, 1959), pp. 119 ff.26 Geldner, Der Rigveda in Auswahl, I, 88.

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un dieu au sacrifice.. .)"27-or an abstract term is said to expressa concrete sense where a closer investigation into the use of the termand the idea for which it stands may have us question the correctnessof the statement. We should not forget that all men, especially thosewho have not undergone a special intellectual training, are ofteninclined to refer to manifestations, results, materializations, etc.,of power rather than abstractions and generalizations.28The sprach-lichen Vorstellungen normally result from experience acquired innumberless concrete situations in which the results and consequencesare, as a rule, more evident than causes and determining factors,individual cases more significant than generalizations; representations,localizations, and manifestations more perceptible than the "power-concepts" themselves. Hence the well-known feature of many vocabu-laries to refer to "power-concepts" and their manifestations, to actionsand effects, to ideas and their materializations by the same word.29The Greek vifpts, for instance, is "outrage" as well as "insolence,"and lexicographers remark that "it is often difficult to separate theconcrete sense from the abstract"; aper' is "excellence" and "gloriousdeed" or "active merit; reward of excellence." In Sanskrit, sravasdoes not only denote "glory" but also "glorious deed(s)"; yasasnot rarely refers to those objects or circumstances from which manderives honor, and a horse may be called a vdja (which roughly speak-ing seems to be the generative power by which new food and new lifeis obtained).30 Often powers and divinities are essentially identicalwith their manifestations and vice versa.31 Daseinsmdchte, whichwe would like to interpret as "abstract ideas,' mainly were the totalityof all objects, persons, and phenomena, in which and by which theymanifested themselves. At a certain stage of development "un Mo-

27L. Renou, "Hymnes a Varuna," in Etudes vediques et pdnineennes, VII(Paris, 1960), 10.28 See, e.g., W. Havers, Handbuch der erkldrenden Syntax (Heidelberg, 1931),p. 115; Kronasser, op. cit., pp. 114 ff.29 This is, of course, not to deny that an "abstract" term can assume a "con-crete" sense.30 These facts may, of course, also be illustrated by "ethnological parallels,"but they do not stand or fall with their reliability, as is suggested by P. Thieme("Brahman," Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, CII, 97),who, pursuing his own lines of thought, has completely misunderstood my argu-ment. It is not clear to me how my words: "all that is connected with such pow-

er-concepts or represents them can, in principle, bear the same name (i.e., allthat is connected with vaja may be called vdja, all that is of the nature of ildmay bear the name ild, etc.)" (Notes on Brahman [Utrecht, 1950], p. 39), shouldbe interpreted as: "Brahman kann alles, was nur irgend mit einer Kraftvorstellungverbunden ist, bezeichnen."31See also P. Radin, Die religiose Erfahrung der Naturvolker (Zurich, 1951),pp. 58, 75.249


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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyabite n'est pas un individu appartenant A a tribu de Moab, mais uner6v6lation du total qui s'appelle Moab."32In accordance with a view already expressed by W. von Humboldtand developed, in the last four decades, more theoretically in specialconnection with semantic problems concerning culturally importantterms in their mother tongue by German scholars (L. Weisgerber,J. Trier33) and ethnolinguistically in connection with non-Indo-European languages chiefly by Americans (E. Sapir, B. L. Whorf,H. Hoijer34), languages are not only means of reflection or devicesfor reporting experience; they are also ways of defining, analyzing,and categorizing experience; of directing the perceptual and otherfaculties of their speakers with regard to it into definite channels;of providing them with habitual modes of analyzing what they observe,perceive, or feel into significant categories; of organizing throughtheir structural semantic systems the world of experience in whichtheir speakers live and of creating, so to say, an intermediate worldbetween objective reality and the speakers.Vocabulary being a way in which a community classifies the sumtotal of its experiences, the "meanings" (or rather "senses") of the"words" ("names") are far from being the same in all languages.The "meanings" into which all that has been and is observed, per-ceived, thought, or felt is classified are to a large extent culturallyand traditionally determined or modified, varying considerably fromculture to culture. Even when an Englishman and an Iroquois usetheir term for "father," "they are not giving linguistic recognitionto precisely the same set of distinctive features."35In speaking ourown language, we respond not to all features of a situation but tosome selected ones to which we have, in our own cultural tradition,learned to respond. Our linguistic labeling selects different featuresof a situation for the purpose of a classification. "Jede Sprache istdem Sein gegeniiber ein Auswahlsystem, und zwar ein solches, das

32 G. van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 35.33See, e.g., L. Weisgerber,Vom Weltbildder deutschenSprache (Diisseldorf,1950).34E. Sapir, Selected Writings (Los Angeles, 1949), pp. 160 ff. and 389 ff.;B. L. Whorf, Four Articleson Metalinguistics (Washington, D.C., 1949); J. H.Greenberg,"ConcerningInferences from Linguistic to Nonlinguistic Data," inLanguage in Culture, ed. H. Hoijer ("American Anthropological AssociationMem.," No. 79 [Chicago, 1954]), pp. 8 ff.; S. Newman, "SemanticProblemsinGrammaticalSystems and Lexemes, in Languagein Culture,p. 89; H. Hoijer,"The Relation of Languageto Culture," n AnthropologyToday,ed. A. L. Kroeber(Chicago, 1953), pp. 554 ff.; R. Lado, Linguistics acrossCultures(Ann Arbor,1957), pp. 77-78.36F. G. Lounsbury, n Language n Culture, d. H. Hoijer ("AmericanAnthro-pologicalAssociationMem.," No. 79 [Chicago,1954]),p. 137.

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jeweils ein in sich vollkommen geschlossenes Seinsbild schafft."36Striking examples may be given with respect to terms relating to thephysical environment. Whereas the speakers of the modern Westernlanguages, which have about seven or eight principal color terms-white, yellow, red, blue, green, brown, black-are, in a way whichis for themselves a matter of course, accustomed to divide the con-tinuum of the natural color spectrum in the first instance into these"principal colors"; the ancient Greeks, whose language has anotherclassification, had, for instance, to resort to one and the same wordwhere we would say either "yellow," "green," or "grayish-brown."Whereas the American language, Navaho, has two terms roughlycorresponding to our "black," it denotes "blue" and "green" by a sin-gle term. This has nothing to do with color-blindness on the part ofthe ancient Greeks and other peoples, as was believed by some classicalphilologists some sixty years ago. Nor does it prevent the speakersof these languages from using terms comparable to "cornflowerblue," "blood red" to indicate color nuances. Although the conclusionthat those speaking a language can be aware only of those distinctionswhich are provided by semantic differencesin words and idioms would,indeed, be an exaggeration, the "world"in which they live is to a largeextent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the communi-ty to which they belong.That the difficulties encountered in translating are for the greaterpart due to the differences in what was called by Von Humboldtthe "inner speech-form" has over and over again been argued,by Schopenhauer37-who, while drawing attention to the differencesbetween German Geist, French esprit, English wit; Greek opjni,Latin impetus, German Andrang; French malice, German Bosheit,English wickedness, observed that all translations necessarily areimperfect and defective: "fast nie kann man irgendeine charakteri-stische, pragnante, bedeutsame Periode aus einerSprache in die andereso iibertragen, dasz sie genau und vollkommen dieselbe Wirkunghat"38-and by modern linguists and anthropologists who haveattempted to penetrate into the different "worlds of reality" in whichpeoples speaking different languages live: the understanding of atext "involves not merely an understanding of the single words intheir average significance, but a full comprehension of the wholelife of the community as it is mirrored in the words, or as it is suggested

36 Weisgerber, Weltbild, p. 159.37 Schopenhauer, Parerga und Parallipomena, Vol. II, chap. xxv.38 Cf. also, e.g., H. Giintert and A. Scherer, Grundfragender Sprachwissenschaft(Heidelberg, 1956), pp. 54-55.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyby their overtones."39 Examples are indeed numberless: the GreekaperT and awcppoavvr1do not correspond to the English "goodness"or "excellence" and "prudence, temperance" by which they aretranslated; nor does the English virtuecoincide with the Latin virtusfrom which it derives. How difficult it is to penetrate into the exactmeaning of those terms that in foreign languages express some ideacomparable to our "holy" (Gr. iylos, lep6o, ao-Los,at. sacer) or"worship" (Gr. oa-3oJaL,Lat. adorare) is too well known to need illus-trating. It is, notwithstanding the prolonged practice adopted bymany authors of translating Indian religious terms by words coloredby the Christian view of life, impossible to give an exact idea of theirsense by means of our religiousand philosophical vocabularies howeverrich they may be. Brahmanya is not "pious," a vedi is not an "altar,"a yajna no "sacrifice." "Gottesliebe" or "fromme Ergebenheit"40do not do justice to the wealth of implications of the Sanskrit termbhakti, which was recently defined as follows:41It is man'sparticipatingof God, at once "intellectual" nddevotional;42it is the constantrememorization f the atman's total subservienceo God,inspiredand animatedby a perfectlove of worship n which the knowledgeof God as the possessorof all perfections,as the mercifulsaviourandas thesole causeof the universecompletely erminates.It culminates n a mysticecstasyof love so ardent hat the aspirantcannot ive fora momentseparatedfrom God: all his happinessdependson his contact with God; his mosthumbleact is an expression f his all-pervadingove for God.

When, therefore, in some recent publications in the field of Vedicreligion attempts were made to translate important Sanskrit termsby one single modern European word, there is a strong a prioriprobability that the conclusions at which the authors arrive are tosome extent erroneous. In his remarkable posthumous book onVaruna H. Liiders43 endeavors to show that the much discussedrta, of which the god is said to be a "guardian," is completely identicalwith German die Wahrheit.Although this sense is somewhat specified:"Rta bezeichnet ausschlieszlich die Wahrheit des gesprochenen Wor-tes oder des Gedankens,"44no definition is given. But here we are

39H. Hoijer, in Language in Culture, p. 92.40See, e.g., H. v. Glasenapp, Die Philosophie der Inder (Stuttgart, 1949),pp. 60, 488.41By J. A. B. van Buitenen, Rdmdnuja on the Bhagavadgltd (thesis, Utrecht,1953), p. 22.42These terms too should not lead us astray43 H. Liiders, Varuna (Gottingen, 1951-59). For an ample discussion of thespecial problem under consideration see my review which is to appear in theperiodical Oriens (Istanbul-Leiden, in press).44Liiders, op. cit., p. 635.

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confronted with another difficulty which would appear to be likewiseminimized by many authors, namely, the extreme vagueness of manywords and idioms in any language.45 Being largely based on unana-lyzed mental wholes, "names" as used by the ordinary speaker oftenstand for vague and unanalyzed "ideas," which are often surroundedby an aura of emotions and impressions. What is Wahrheit?"Quidest ergo tempus?" St. Augustine46exclaimed, "si nemo ex me quaerat,scio, si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio." Implicit vagueness is in-deed, though highly variable, the most striking characteristic of wordsense. It is a consequence of the process of abstraction by whichour "concepts" are evolved. There is a wide gap between the virtualsense of a word in the language system and the actualized sense ofspeech contexts. Scholars are too often inclined tacitly to assume theexistence, in the usage of the average speaker, of the clear-cut demar-cation lines delimiting their own scientific concepts. In reality, thesense of a word is essentially "open," inviting supplementation. Thisopenness and lack of firm contours is, Ullmann rightly observes,47reflected in the "zonal" structure of the sense, the belts of varyingdeterminateness clustering around its inner core. The mental contentcorresponding to abstract notions is admittedly still less distinct,the lack of sharp demarcation being not rarely a property of the refer-ent itself. Often one can hardly imagine how an abstraction couldexist at all without the help of language.48What then is, according to Liiders, Wahrheit?Is it some "idea"vaguely opposite to "lie" or "falsehood," or is it something like"sincerity" or some other indefinite notion applied by those who speakGerman without unanimousness to a variety of concrete facts orsituations? Or should we believe Wahrheitto express the substantivalidea corresponding to what is, in explanation, added to the adjective"wahr" in some authoritative German dictionary? Or should we lookfor a definition in the works of a distinguished German philosopher?To these questions Liiders does not answer. Nor does he inform us ofhis view as to whether rta may, or must, be translated, into French

46 On the lack of precisionof many words see, e.g., K. O. Erdmann, op. cit.(4th ed., Leipzig,1925);S. Ullmann,op. cit., pp. 92 ff., 107-8 (witha Bibliography)and by the same author, Pr6cis de s6mantique rancaise (Paris-Berne, 1952),pp. 132ff.; F. Paulhan, "Qu'est-ceque le sens des mots," Journalde psychologie,XXV (1928), 289 ff.46Augustine, Confessionsxi. 26.47Ullmann, Principles, p. 93.48 Whenanythingis describedby a singleword,the idea is apt to be representedas an actualizationwithout accidents of a thing in itself, endowed with an inde-pendentexistence.See also ToshihikoIzutsu, Languageand Magic (Tokyo, 1956),chaps. v and vi.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyby verite, into English by truth. (As is well known German Wahrheit,English truth,Latin veritas"true or real nature, reality; truthfulness,truth, integrity, etc.," are not synonyms.) To put it briefly, didLiders really mean that the inherent vagueness, the connotations,and the range of applicability of German Wahrheit-whatever itsvalue as a practical expedient in a rough translation-coincidewith the Vedic rta, which forms part of the vocabulary of a communitywhose views of reality, the nature, power, and function of humanspeech, words, and statements, and the mutual relations betweenthe spoken word and reality were different from those of both theaverage German and the modern German scholars and philosophers?49How easily we may be liable to misunderstandings with regardto the content and range of application of words belonging to archaicand foreign cultures may appear from Lilders' argument50that theterm satya by which rta was in the course of time replaced, and whichis, in German, likewise translated by wahr, was a synonym ("rtaund satya ... (sind) zwei ganz gleiche Dinge"). It would rather appearto me that both words symbolize complementary ideas-compare,for example, Taitt. Samh. 5, 1, 5, 8 rtam satyam ity aheyam vd rtamasau satyam " 'Ttam atyam,' he says, this (earth) is rta, yonder (sky)is satyam." A thorough investigation into the sense expressed and thesyntactic combinations formed by these words-which cannot, ofcourse, be instituted here-will no doubt reveal a considerable numberof more or less similar marginal meanings as well as a differencein semantic kernel and range of application between these twoterms.51The etymological sense of satya "belonging to, related to thesat, that is, the existent, being, real" is not rarely undeniable; it isoften used to qualify an "object" as really being what it is said orthought to be, as being in harmony or agreement with real factsor reality. That however "reality" (sat) and its oppositum denoted byasat were to the mind of Vedic man not identical with our conceptof reality-in whatever sense we would prefer to take it-may

49 No more than passing mention can be made here of the critical remarks madeby other scholars. Renou (op. cit., VII, 16), while justly observing that "aucunetraduction ne saurait rendre rta, terme h6rit6, qui 6tait sans doute per9u commeune entit6 inanalysable par les ri" is, in contradistinction to P. Thieme, who re-gards the problem as settled (op. cit., CI, 418), and M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasztesetymologisches Worterbuchdes Altindischen, I (Heidelberg, 1953), 122, who from thepoint of view of meaning leaves his readers in the dark: "rta 'Wahrheit' zu *ar-'fiigen"'-of the opinion that a meaning "order" "couvre commodement l'ensemblede cette pensee 'corr6lative' qu'on salt depuis Bergaigne gtre la trame meme du1lgveda; 'verit6' n'est qu'aspect, a notre avis, de 'ordre' et un aspect secondairequ'il n'y a pas profit a promouvoir au rang d'acception l16mentaire."

60Liiders, op. cit., pp. 406 ff., 642.51Some details may be found in my above review of Liiders' book.254


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appear from the important article by Norman Brown52on which itwould have been interesting to learn Liiders' opinion. After havingcollected the references to the structure of the universe, ProfessorBrown arrives at the conclusion thattheuniverse,as.Rgvedicmansawit, wasintwoparts.Onebeingthat in whichthe gods and men live..., this he called Sat "the Existent." Below theearth... was a place of horror, nhabitedonly by demons,the Asat (theNon-Existent).... To make the Sat operate perfectly,every creature hadhis duty, his personal unction (vrata),and when he lived by it he was anobserverof the Rta,the inhabitantsof the Asatlooking oreveryopportunityto injurethe R.ta-observingeingsof the earth andsky.Norman Brown therefore translates rta by "universal cosmic law,"which, of course, is also an attempt at elucidating what the Vedicauthors may have meant rather than an equivalent.Here we encounter another weak point of many arguments in thefield of the history of religious thought: the ease with which two ormore indigenous terms are declared to be synonymous, whereas com-petent linguists are agreed that total synonymity is an extremelyrare occurrence.53The senses of two "names," though superficiallyregarded as identical, are indeed rarely coextensive, partly becauseof their inherent vagueness and partly because of their differentemotive "overtones." Terms such as "liberty" and "freedom" or"aid" and "assistance" are only pseudo-synonyms, because theycannot, without suggesting any difference in either cognitive ofemotive import, replace each other in any given context. If, therefore,Liders' opinion54that "rta in (Rgveda) 1, 46, 41 ein Synonym vongir, stoma, hava, brahman, pratistuti und mantra ist"-these namesarerenderedby "(Kult)lied"-should be understood literally, it wouldbe hard to substantiate.55All those terms have their own connotations,their own range of meaning, referring to definite aspects of ideasfor which we, perhaps, have terms of our own; or rather, they denote,in definite contexts, special aspects or applications of "ideas"-theirsemantic kernels-for which we often have no simple names, andof which we cannot always easily determine the dominant semantic

52 W. Norman Brown, "The ligvedic Equivalent for Hell," in JournalAmeri-can OrientalSociety, LXI (1941), 76; "The Creation Myth of the Rig-Veda,"op. cit., LXII (1942), 85.63 See, e.g., L. Bloomfield,Language(London, 1935), p. 145; Ullmann, Prin-ciples, pp. 108ff. and passim;Ch. Bally, Trait6de stylistique rancaise, I2 (Heidel-berg-Paris), 96-97, 140ff.54 Liiders,op. cit., p. 438.66The differences between some terms belonging to this "semantic field"were discussed by Renou, "Les pouvoirs de la parole dans le R.gveda,"Etudesvediques t pdnin6ennes, (Paris, 1955), 1 ff.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyelements. Those many words which in a variety of contexts mayincidentally be translated by Kultlied do in point of fact sometimesadmit of that translation, because the idea they stand for maymaterialize as such a hymn considered in a special aspect or froma definite point of view. And there are good grounds for believingthat rta when translatable by Kultlied is not merely a materializationof "Wahrheit des gesprochenen Wortes," as Liiders takes it. For inR.gveda (R.V.) 1, 153, 3 and elsewhere the cow doubtless yields hermilk with a view to the cult itself, for the sacrifice, which mayalso be called a rta, not for the hymns.56 In short, the sense Wahr-heitis only admissible, if we deprive the German term of a considerablepart of its semantic contents, extending it by Procrustean methodsand defining it artificially as if it were an ancient Indian concept.But what is gained by doing so?Without entering into details and abandoning any intent to demon-strate that some concept similar to the German Wahrheitwas, if thepresent author is not mistaken, only one of the aspects of what wasreally understood by rta, attention may now be drawn to anotherpoint. According to Liiders,57 passages, such as R.V. 5, 1, 7 whereAgni is stated to have spread or extended sky and earth by (the)rta, are of a secondary character, representing a later stage of develop-ment. As there are, as far as I am able to see, no philological groundsto regard these texts integrally as younger, Liiders' inference musthave been based on a semantic argumentation: "das Rta (wird)schlieszlich zu einem Urgrund aller Dinge; .. es (ist) im Veda nichtein bloszer Begriff geblieben." How are we to know for certain thatoriginally it was a mere Begriff that "assumed" in course of timesinnliche Formen?Too often these apparently historical developmentsassumed by authors of books and articles on ancient Indian religionreally are pseudo-solutions of pseudo-problems which owe their ex-istence mainly to the supposition that these vague, complex, indefinite,prescientific termini are really analyzable in different "meanings"which have developed from each other in such a way as would be intune with some more or less preconceived scheme of our devising. Toooften it has been forgotten that the apparent polysemy58 of many

56Otherwise, Liders, op. cit., pp. 424-25.67Ibid., pp. 568 ff., 584.58One instance may be quoted in illustration: According to R. Roth in thePetrograd dictionary (O. B6htlingk-R. Roth, Sanskrit Worterbuch,VI [St. Peters-burg, 1852-75]), 1495 ff., vrata means, as far as the Rgveda is concerned, "Wille,Gebot, Gesetz, vorgeschriebene Ordnung; Botmassigkeit; Gebiet; geordnete Reihe,Reich; Beruf, gewohnte Tatigkeit; (religiose) Pflicht." In 1954 this explication wasendorsed by P. V. Kane, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,XXIX, 1 ff., who derived the other "meanings" from the first mentioned, "will."256


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ancient Indian terms-like the often hopelessly divergent explicationsand translations of one and the same word59-is only a consequenceof the impossibility of translating them into our languages. I for oneam not convinced that those texts,60which exhibit rta in the sense ofweltschaffendeund welterhaltendeMacht are from a "logical" and"historical" point of view secondary in character. Rather, it wouldappear to me, that rta, in the Rgveda, is a cosmic, metaphysicalDaseinsmacht6--that is, "power-substance" which, within some formof experience, is supposed to be present in persons, things, nature,and phenomena and by virtue of which these are, each in their ownway, powerful, influential, effective, and endowed with somethingwhich is beyond the bounds of normal human understanding-whichmakes its existence felt in the regular course of the natural phe-nomena, in the harmony and regularity of the normal (and thereforeright) and natural (and therefore real) condition and character of theprocesses in nature and cosmos, in the world of men as well as inthat of the gods; that it is a constructive and fundamental principleaccepted to express the belief in a harmonic structure of the universeand a regular course of the phenomena occurring in it. This principlewhich gives manifold evidence of its existence may also materializein human speech, in the word of the poet by which it is stated anddescribed and which, if it is believed to be in harmony with therta, assumes the character of "truth."A point on which professorsThieme62and Renou63disagree concernsthe application of a principle adopted by the latter to establish,wherever possible, the sens initial of a name. As, however, the greatdifficulty is that the initial sense is in so many instances not known,Thieme advocates the view that we must hazard a conjecture as towhat might be a likely "initial meaning" (or acception authentique,linguistiquement valable); the correctness of that conjecture mustbe established experimentally: if the "central idea" hypotheticallyadopted is recognizable in all the passages of the Rgveda-why should

69 Thus dharmawas, in the last decade, renderedby "the divinely ordainednormof good conduct" (Basham);"moral and religiousduties" (R. C. Majumdarand others); "law, nature, rule, ideal, norm, quality, entity, truth, element,category" (P. T. Raju); "moral law, merit, virtue," or "ethical living" (Radha-krishnan); "a religionwhich sets up laws and rules" or "Tugendiibung;das ge-heiligteGesetz" (Eidlitz); "divine moralorder"or "life-task and duty" (Zimmer).60 Quoted by Luders, op. cit., pp. 568-80.61For Daseinsmachte see H. von Glasenapp,Entwicklungsstufen es indischenDenkens(Halle a.S., 1940), pp. 9 ff.62 See Thieme, Review of Renou's Etudes vediqueset panin6ennes,I, JournalAmericanOrientalSociety,LXXVII (New Haven, 1957), 51 ff.63Renou, "Les pouvoirsde la paroledans le Itgveda," op. cit., I, 1 ff.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologywe, by the way, limit ourselves to this corpus?-where the wordnamingthis notion occurs, our conjecture will be right. The risk of erringis, however, especially in the cases of vocables of infrequent occur-rence, far from negligible. It is not always difficult to finda vague termfitting in with our views of the contents of the ancient and foreigntexts, or to adopt a primary "profane sense"-"eine Vorstellung, diesich aus der Erfahrung, der Beobachtung der Umwelt mit Leichtigkeitund Selbstverstandlichkeit abstrahieren laszt"64-if we overlook thenowadays established fact that "each pattern of the environment istied up with a particular community and is in large part identifiableonly through the labels attached to it in that community,""65hattherefore our way of categorizing experience by means of our vocabu-lary need not correspondto that of the pre- and protohistoric Indians;if we take for granted that the relation between "Vorstellungen,die auf spekulativen Annahmen beruhen und sinnlicher Erfahrungnicht zuganglich gemacht werden k6nnen," on the one hand, and"concrete" and "profane" senses, on the other, is, in all times and inany community, a constant.

Besides, the terminology adopted ("initial meaning" used asopposed to "values which are just underlying and figurative"66)may lead to a confusion of ideas: the etymologically "initial sense"(or the most ancient sense) is not necessarily identical with the mainor central sense occurring at a given period or in a definite body ofliterature; it may even be retained as a special sense which impressesus as "transferred." The search for an "initial sense," moreover,is apt to make us overestimate the import of an "etymological sense,"the hypothetical character of which is not always adequately realized.Although it be far from me to deny the value, in this connection,of etymological research, it would appear to me that it may leadits adepts to one-sided analytical and anatomizing procedures, causingthem to forget that religious terminology also is, in a given culture,organized or structured into a systematic whole, and, because it hashistorically arisen, is subject to change. The fact that languagesbelong to the same family does not prove that they have the samefashions of speaking or express the same "worlds of ideas." Nor doesit imply that etymologically cognate words can always offer reliablestarting points for establishing "initial senses."

64 Thieme, Review of D. J. Hoens' Santi (thesis, Utrecht, 1951), Oriens, VI(Leiden, 1953), 397.65 M. B. Emeneau, "Language and Non-linguistic Patterns," Language, XXIX(1953), 199 ff.66 Thieme, Journal American Oriental Society, LXXVII (1957), 54.

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Not infrequently, however, authors make, on the tacit assumptionthat a Vedic weltanschauliche erm may be translated by one modernword, an attempt at testing a hypothesis with regard to the "mean-ing" of that term by investigating whether it fits in all the passagesin which it occurs. In following this procedure, they have, however,sometimes overestimated the validity of its results and the cogencyof their argumentation. In many cases the Procrustean method, ofwhich we have already disapproved, allows them to regard any text,in which the substitution of a modern term for the original Vedicdoes not lead to a manifest absurdity, as a confirmation of theirhypothesis.67Another source of errors lies in the supposition that a,or the, meaning which belongs to a definite word in post-Vedic timesmust have been its "semantic nucleus" from the earliest texts. Bothpitfalls proved detractive to the merits of the book on vrata-oneof the key words of the Rgveda, a correct understanding of which isvital for gaining an insight into the religious attitude of its poets-byH. P. Schmidt,68 in which "die konstante Ubersetzung 'Geliibde'sowohl zu merkwiirdigen inhaltlichen Konsequenzen fiihrt ['das ganzeNaturgeschehen beruht nach diesen beiden Strophen auf Geliibden,'S. 26], als auch von vornherein die Moglichkeit sprachlicher Entwick-lung ausschlieszt."69 The translation Geliibde("vow, solemn and in-violable promise") is, however, manifestly incorrect, because in theR1gvedaa vrata-the term occurs over 200 times-is never, like avow, made or taken, and practically limited to the sphere of the gods;it is, moreover, impossible to describe the fact that a god has extendedsky and earth (I.V. 3, 6, 5), marked off the expanse of the earth(8, 42, 1), or simply came (2, 24, 12) as his Gelibden.70The same term vrata-which sometimes seems to verge on theideas of rule of conduct, fixed and regular behavior, function, observ-ance-may serve to illustrate another methodical imperfection: adefinite "meaning"-which, as already stated, often exists only ina translation-is considered to be from the historical point of viewprimary or original on account of etymological71 arguments. Accord-

67For similar criticism see W. P. Schmid, in Kratylos, V (Wiesbaden, 1960), 44.68 H. P. Schmidt, Vedisch "vrata" und awestisch "urvata" (Hamburg, 1958).69 W. P. Schmid, op. cit., p. 45.70 See also Renou, op. cit., VII (Paris, 1960), 9; "Gelubde: traduction plausibleA condition qu'on y integre conventionnellement les valeurs que definit Schmidtmais que le mot "vceu" est incapable de porter sans commentaire."71 The technical term "etymology" is used here in the traditional sense: "thetracing of a word back to its original form and meaning by the methods ofcomparative linguistics," because that is what it means to the authors quotedand what is meant in the text. For a more modern view of the task of the etymolo-gist see W. von Wartburg, Einfuhrung in Problematik und Methodik der Sprach-wissenschaft (Halle a.S., 1943), pp. 105-6.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologying to A. Bezzenberger,72all "meanings" of vrata derive from Gebotand Verpflichtungor Verabredung,because the word, in his opinion,belongs to the root ver-,"to speak." H. Oldenberg73modified this viewas follows: "Fiir vrata ... scheint die Etymologie eine urspriinglicheBedeutung etwa von 'Wort' d.h. 'Befehl' zu ergeben" (as if thesetwo senses were identical or the latter were an explanation of theformer). He added the far from conclusive remark: "Damit im Ein-klang laszt der Sprachgebrauch des Rigveda bei vrata besonders gernso zu sagen zwei Parteien hervortreten." In Bergaigne's74 eyes theterm, however, derived from another ver- n the sense of "protecting,"so that it originally was something like etaiement, protection.Whit-ney,75who considered vrt-"to turn (round), move" to be the root of theword, argued that its primary sense was "course" and hence, onthe one hand, "habitual, established, usual, or approved courseof action or line of conduct," and, on the other "a special act or seriesof acts or ceremonies of an obligatory character, imposed by moralityor religion."Now, although all etymologies in the field of comparative Indo-European linguistics are hypothetical in nature, part of them are,as such, at first sight completely convincing and beyond dispute. Yetin the special province of religious terminology these evident andunchallenged equations are comparatively rare, and even they giverise to semantic problems. There is, for instance, no doubt whateverthat within the solid frameworkof our Indo-European theory Sanskritdyaus, Greek Zevsand Latin lup-piter Iovis and dies are each in theirown language the successors of one and the same "original" word*dyeus. But Latin dies means "day" and "daylight," Zevs and lup-piter are names of gods, and dyaus stands for "sky" and also for"day"; dyaus occurs, it is true, as a god, but it is far from occupyingthe position assigned to Zeus by the Greeks.76Max Muller's77enthu-siastic inference, intelligible though it was, that this simple equationproves that the ancestors of Homer and Cicero worshiped for a timethe same supreme deity, was not devoid of simplification. It is easy

72 A. Bezzenberger, "Vermischtes," Beitrdge zur Kunde der indogermanischenSprachen, I (Gottingen, 1877), 253-54.73 H. Oldenberg, Die Weltanschauung der Brahmana-Texte (Gbttingen, 1919),p. 188.74A. Bergaigne, La Religion vedique, III (Paris, 1883), 210 ff.76 W. D. Whitney, Journal American Oriental Society, XI (1885), 229 ff.76 See, e.g., A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strasbourg, 1897), pp. 21-22.77Max Miiller, Anthropological Religion (London, 1892), p. 82.

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to construct an I.-E. dyeus "heaven, sky, day, also as a deity";78it is but difficult to decide whether the lack of prominence of the deity(the "personal meaning" of the word) is inherited from the originalIndo-Europeans-what was, in harmony with the evolutionist trendsof thought of his days affirmed by Macdonell79-or has arisen froma special prehistoric development in Indo-Iranian, or was due to apreference, in the cultural milieu reflected by our Vedic texts, to othergods, for instance, to Indra.80It is, moreover, beyond doubt that theSanskrit deva"god," like the Latin deus, derives from the same stem*dyeu-,which underlies the above *dyeus;but it would be imprudentto follow Hertelsl and Apte82in regarding the Vedic devas integrallyas "gods of light," Lichtmdchte r even as "luminaries"83-' das arischeWort daiva, vedisch deva ist... abgeleitet von *diu 'Himmelslicht'...,demgemasz sind alle arischen daiva Licht- oder Feuerwesen ..."because the texts, though sometimes associating the devas with thecelestial light (see, e.g., R.V. 1, 19, 6) and connecting the latter withthe names of definite devas,84 ttribute the name to various kinds ofsuperhuman and powerful beings fulfilling a variety of functions andconcerned with different provinces of thought and nature. "It isabsurd to suggest that when gods are opposed to demons the sky godsalone are meant, still more absurd to find them alone designated whengods, fathers, and men are discriminated."85How the "semantic shift"-which from the point of view of traditional semantics is only a"widening of meaning"-took place, how daeva, in the Avesta, came

78 See, e.g., M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasztes etymologisches Worterbuch des Altin-dischen, II (Heidelberg, 1957), 70.79Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 22, who is even inclined to defend the thesisthat "the personification" was in Rgvedic times of a more advanced type than inthe period of original Indo-European.80 See, e.g., Max Muller, Lectures on the Origin and Growthof Religion (Germantrans., 1880), II, 398-99.81 J. Hertel, Die Sonne und Mithra im Avesta (Leipzig, 1927), p. 2 and passim.82 V. M. Apte, "All about 'vrata' in the Rgveda," Bulletin of the DeccanCollege Research Institute, III (1942), 407 ff.83 C. D. Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-EuropeanLanguages (Chicago, 1949), p. 1464, is in contradistinction to Grace SturtevantHopkins ("Indo-European *deivos and Related Words" [Yale Univ. dissertation,1932]), who questions the underlying notion of "brightness," inclined to ascribeto Zeus, luppiter, dyaus as well as Lat. deus, Skt. deva, etc., the common idea of"bright, shining." Cf. also the observation made by M. Eliade, Traite d'histoire

des religions (Paris, 1949), p. 69: "Le simple fait que le nom du dieu aryen duciel met l'accent sur le caractere brillant et serein n'exclut pas les autres th6opha-nies ouraniennes de la personnalite de *Dieus."84 I refer to C. W. J. van der Linden, The Concept of Deva (thesis, Utrecht,1954), pp. 37-38.86A. B. Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and the Upanishads(Cambridge, Mass., 1925), pp. 75-76.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyto denote those gods which were rejected by part of the worshipers,86and how Zebs assumed his specific Greek character is not revealedby any etymological acuteness.There are, however, many etymological explications of words whichare only possibilities because these words may, formally and semanti-cally, be explained as deriving from two or more roots, that is to say,as belonging to two or even more word groups in the same languageor in cognate languages. For example, the name of the god Visnu87may be intrepreted88 as "lord of the spacious upland plains" (visnu, cf. sanu "surface, table-hand")89 or as "the active one" (vi-or vi- "to hasten, to be active"90 or viq- "to be active"'9). As long asthe probability of one of these opinions and the complete untenabilityof the others have not been conclusively established, we had betteravoid making these possibilities elements of our argumentation.However, as unsolved problems when suiting a definite line of thoughtoften fascinate the minds of imprudent scholars to such an extentas to pass for basic facts, these "etymological considerations" havenot rarely played an important role in the discussions of the meaningof Vedic terms, the character of gods, etc.: "auf diese Vorstellung vonSchreiten durch weite Riiume fiihrt immer wieder die stehende Phra-seologie der Visnuhymnen und auch die kaum zweifelhafte Etymolo-gie des Namens Vignuhin."92Founding himself on the same etymolog-ical possibility, another scholar,93however, argued that Vi.nu wasthe one who die Flache auseinanderbreitet;"the evidence appearsto justify the inference that he (Vi~nu)was originally conceived as thesun, not in his general character, but as the personified swiftlymoving luminary, which with vast strides traverses the whole universe.This explanation would be borne out by the derivation from the rootvis- which ... primarily means 'to be active'";94 "Vi~nu (war) ur-

86See also I. Gershevitch, The AvestanHymn to Mithra (Cambridge,1959),p. 51.87 We leave attempts at derivingit from the language of the non-Aryansub-stratum out of account.88 A survey of the etymologicalspeculationswith regardto this name may befound in my Aspectsof Early Vi.nouism Utrecht, 1954), p. 4.89 See, e.g., M. Bloomfield,"TheInterpretationof the Veda,"AmericanJournalof Philology,XVII, 427-28.90E. W. Hopkins, "Indra as a God of Fertility," Journal American OrientalSociety,XXXVI, 264.91Macdonell, VedicMythology,p. 39.92 H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (4th ed.; Stuttgart-Berlin, 1923),p. 230 (followingBloomfield).93 H. Giintert, Der arischeWeltkonigund Heiland (Halle, 1924), pp. 306-7.94 Macdonell,VedicMythology,p. 39.

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spriinglich als Vogel gedacht, und zwar war er eben der Vegetations-damon (sowohl als Embryo wie als Vegetationsvogel) ...: griech.olwvos ["a large bird"< *6FLao-wos]st fast identisch mit Vi?vu."95Moreover, many etymologies, and especially those which connecta Sanskrit (or Greek, or Latin) word with a mere root-as is the caseof the term vrata-must, from the semantic point of view, be hazyand indefinite, because the sense attributed to a root as a rule isa vague and abstract idea from which the senses of all derivativesare logically deducible.Similar remarks might be made with regard to other importantnames and terms. The "meanings" of the above term vratawere givenin the orderGebot,Pflicht, Ordnungby those who subscribe to the viewthat this word etymologically belongs to Greek pr/jrp, "public speak-er"; pTr pa, "verbal agreement," in the order Gewolltes,Gewdhltes,Geliibdeby those who derive it from var- "to choose."96Thus an "origi-nal" or "primary meaning" is not rarely adopted on account of ety-mological considerations.More generally speaking, many scholars are in some way or otherinclined to consider those occurrences which are, or may be, in har-mony with an etymological hypothesis as more "original": compare,e.g., Renou:97 a propos of RV. 3, 54, 5 "le sens (de vrata) est ici:'domaine ou s'exerce la volont6 divine': cette analyse serait en faveurde l'6tymologie par vrt-zone de 'circulation. " It is, however, in myopinion incompatible with sound principles to suppose on the strengthof etymological speculations, for instance, that, according to a pre-historic Indo-European view, the soul of the dead was a Schutzmacht,which made the crops grow or increase (the Vedic urvard "fieldyielding crop" explained as *urv-ald"growing by the souls": Avest.urvan,to be connected, then, with Vedic vr.oti in the sense of "wardingoff, keeping back").98I cannot agree with V. Machek,99who holds:uns stiitzendauf die Etymologie: ndraist einAdjektivumndoeuropaischer(ursprachlicher) erkunftundbedeutete"stark,kraftig,"100onnenwirohne

96K. F. Johansson,UberdiealtindischeGottinDhidnadundVerwandtesUppsala,1917), pp. 47-48.96For the etymology of this word now see also Thieme, Indo-IranianJournal,III (The Hague, 1959), 150.97L. Renou, "Les hymnes aux Visvedevah," Etudesvediqueset pdnindennes,IV (Paris, 1958), 46.98P. Thieme, "Studien zur indogermanischenWortkunde und Religionsge-schichte," Akad. d. Wiss. Leipzig,Phil.-hist. Kl., XCVIII, No. 5 (1952),55 ff.99V. Machek, "Name und Herkunft des Gottes Indra,"ArchivOrientdlni,XII(Prague, 1941), 143ff.00I for one am not convincedby the author'sargumentation.263


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Ancient-Indian Religious TerminologyBedenken die Gleichung ndra-Dyausaufstellen;Indra ist somit eine reinindischePersonifikation es indoeuropiaischenieus.It is, of course, a tempting procedure to make the etymological pos-sibilities a starting point for an investigation into the central ideaexpressed by the important name of Varuna, whose manifold aspectsinduced the historians of Vedic religion to suggest a considerablevariety of theories to account for his character and origin,'"'but, ifthey lead to the conclusion that Varuna represents the idea of "TrueSpeech,"102 he student of religion will observe that many aspectsof the god which he would consider essential are left unexplained.'03

It is, on the other hand, in my view a principle of sound methodto resort, in investigating the meaning of Vedic terms, to a plausibleetymology only as a means of penetrating through a hypothesis intothe prehistory of these terms and into their connections with theirrelatives, if there are any, in the cognate languages, not as an argu-ment, even less as a starting point, in discussing those text placesfrom a philological interpretation of which our information on themeaning must be drawn. If there is no evidence in favor of a definiteetymology, a philological examination of the texts may lead us toprefer, for semantical reasons, one of the possibilities to the others,on the understanding, of course, that from the morphological pointof view it is unobjectionable. Then it may be a great help in foundinga theory to explain how the "idea" expressed by a Vedic name hasdeveloped. This "historical" and prehistoric investigation of the godsand powers, ideas, and concepts of ancient India should, however,be the complement of a systematic inquiry directed upon the struc-ture of the religious and weltanschauliche deas as they synchronouslyexisted in a definite period or in a more or less homogeneous bodyof literature.'04What I would like to stress is that historical researchdirected toward this aim requires the help of structural semantics,that is to say: of a semantic method adapted to the purpose of pene-trating into the "structure of the religious system" as it existedin the minds of the ancient Indians. In applying this method, it willnot be surprising to find that the ideas expressed by the Vedic termsare, as a rule, not translatable by any modern word, that theyoften are at best explainable by paraphrases or definable by more

101 ee my Die ReligionenIndiens, I (Stuttgart, 1960), 73 ff.102Thieme, Mitra and Aryaman (New Haven, 1957), pp. 59 ff.103 I also referto F. B. J. Kuiper, Review of P. Thieme, Mitra and Aryaman,Indo-IranianJournal, III, 209 ff.104See,e.g., H. Lommel,Die altenArier,vonArt undAdelihrerGotterFrankfurta.M., 1935).

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or less complicated descriptions. Nor should we expect to find well-defined concepts or minutely circumscribed fields of action andinfluence'05without partial overlaps or vagueness of contours. Neitherthe Vedic poets nor the Aryan community, the popular beliefs andideas of which they developed and tried to systematize,106had beensubmitted to philosophical training in a modern sense of the term.There is no good reason to take for granted that their ideas, concepts,and terminology were characterized by the precision and unambigu-ousness which are the goal of post-Socratic scientific argumentation.Like the weltanschauliche terms of other peoples-Greek 61K7, 8cLus,vo6uos,tc.-these concepts gradually developed, growing, enrichingtheir contents and expanding the range of their applicability. Theywere symbols for Bewusstseinsinhalte, which were-in accordancewith the experience,the views, convictions, and interpretations of thosewho attempted to penetrate into the ideas for which they stood andto speculate about their nature and relations-deepened and extendedby a continual process of assimilation, association, identification,differentiation, and amplification.107In principle this process musthave taken place like any process of semantic change, that is, eitherthe "name" glides over to the "sense" of a satellitic idea or the "sense"glides over to the "name" of a closely associated idea.'08The directionof the cumulative results of the endless series of minor changesand semantic expansions'09was no doubt largely influenced by theassociations which prevailed in the minds of those who used theseterms, by the sphere of their interests and their favorite trends ofthought,"0 which can neither be reconstructed by means of thecategories of traditional logico-rhetorical European semantics nor byreference to the phraseology and lines of thought of modern Europeanpoets.106 The reader may for the sake of brevity be referred to my Die ReligionenIndiens, I (Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 48 ff.

106 It may be rememberedthat, for instance, the ideas voiced with regardto the gods, etc., by the Homeric characters were considerablymore vague andindefinite than those pronouncedby the poet himself (E. Ehnmark, The Ideaof God n Homer[Uppsala, 1935],p. 102).107 See, e.g., J. M. van Gelder, Der Atman in der Grossen-Wald-Geheimlehre(The Hague, 1957), p. 10; H. Vos, "OLAs" thesis Utrecht, 1956), p. 29; andmy Inleiding tot hetIndische denken(Antwerp, 1948), pp. 9 ff., 23 ff.108

Ullmann, Principles,pp. 216 ff.; L. Roudet, "Sur la classificationpsycholo-gique des changementss6mantiques,"Journaldepsychologie,XVIII (1921),676 ff.109Moreover: "Every word is a heritage from the past, and has derived itsmeaning from application to a countless number of particularsdiffering amongthemselves either much or little" (A. H. Gardiner,The Theory of Speech andLanguage Oxford,1932; 2d ed., 1951], p. 35).110Cazacu, loc. cit.

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Ancient-Indian Religious TerminologySimilar remarks may, of course, be made in connection with theweltanschaulicheterminology of other ancient peoples. At first sightthe Latin mfnus < moenus, that is, *moinos seems, to have a be-

wildering variety of senses: "I. A. service, office, post, employment,function, duty; B. burden, tribute; II. A. work; B. service; C. 1. pres-ent, gift; 2a. public show, entertainment, exhibition; 2b. public build-ing for the use of the people, erected at the expense of an individual."According to those lexicographers'1'who attempt to classify these"senses" according to (pseudo-)historical principles, the sense givenunder the heading "I. A." is the "meaning proper," the "basicsense"; "B" is a "special meaning"; "II" comprises "transferredmeanings"; "2a" and'"2b" are more particular cases. But how arewe to account for the double basic sense: "office" and "gift"? Is "gift"a younger use,"2 arisen from the obligation of the magistrates topresent spectacles and other gifts to the people? No,le mot enferme a double valeur de chargeconfereecomme une distinctionet de donationsmpos6es n retour.LAest le fondementde la "communaut6,"puisque com-munis ignifie litt6ralement"qui prend part aux munia oumunera". ... Chargeset privilegessont les deuxfaces de la meme chose,etcette alternance onstitue a communaut6.113

Some attempts made by myself to contribute to a solution of partof the vexed problems posed by the weltanschauliche erminology ofancient India seem, indeed, to lead to the result that for instancea Daseinsmachtlike ojas14--which is sometimes translated by "vigor"-does not, as far as I know, coincide with any modern or averageWestern idea: it may rather be vaguely described as a kind of creativeenergy, which being of divine origin or beyond human understandingand distinct from physical force-which, however, may depend onit-enables its possessor or manifestation to display extraordinaryvitality, courage, prestige, authority, to achieve great deeds, to be asuperior personality, "who gives the impression of tremendous innerreserves of power.""' Although the term mahas6llmay be roughly

1"See, e.g., Ch.T. Lewisand Ch. Short,A LatinDictionaryOxford, 955).112As is assumedby A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaireetymologiquee lalangueatine(Paris,1951),p. 749.113E. Benveniste,"Don et 6changedans le vocabulairendo-europ6en,"nL'anngeociologiqueParis,1951),pp. 7 ff., esp. p. 15. The readermay also bereferredo the observationsmadeby the same author n Word,X (NewYork,1954),251ff.114 "Ancient-Indianjas," Latin *augosand the Indo-European ouns in-es-/-os(Utrecht,1952).116(Jawaharlal) ehruon (Mahatma)Gandhi New York,1948),pp. 47-48,89-90,136,142.116"TheMeaning f Sanskritmahas nd Its Relative,"Journal f theOrientalInstitute,Baroda8 (1959),pp.234 f.

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described as "greatness" or "majesty," it also implies what we wouldcall "distinction, importance, eminence in power, genius, or ability,possession of high qualities, superiority to the common human condi-tions of life, etc.," and "honor, reverence, homage to superiors, wor-ship, adoration" occurring also to denote actions or occurrencesgenerating this "greatness," such as worship, festivals, and sacrificialacts. Vague impressions and ideas, largely determined by emotionsor aspirations, intuition, or speculation; views of events, phenomena,connections, backgrounds, causality; traditions and experience-alltake the shape of more or less definite ideas, expressed by terms whichare nowhere scientifically defined. Being symbols for the essentiallyincomprehensible aspects and factors of all important events in nature,society, and individual life, the investigations of their meaning were,however, for the ancients of the highest importance, because knowl-edge of the names meant control over the powers to which these re-ferred. Hence also were the identifications, associations, and otherterminological experiments of the poets and "philosophers" whoattempted to penetrate into the mysteries behind fact and realityand to define the undefinable. And here is another source of difficultiesfor those who try to establish the semantically dominant elements.

A study of the much discussed term brahmanll7 ed me to similarconclusions which, however, have been misunderstood by one of thereviewers of my publication.118Although I purposely refrained fromany attempt at "translating" this name, Thieme believed me toregard it as an equivalent of our "power," and Mayrhofer1 stillmore incorrectly informs the readers of his etymological handbookthat in my view brahman"urspriinglich'Lebenskraft, Mana' gewesensein soll." I would for the benefit of my superficial readers recallto memory that, while intending "to follow up the inquiry on problemswhich may be related to the riddle and to go on... bringing to thefore such aspects of the question as seem not to have attracted suffi-cient attention,"120 criticized the main views upheld by my predeces-sors, emphasizing the weakness of evolutionistic constructions and thedifficulty of arrangingthe senses of ancient Vedic terms of outstandingimportance, like brahman,in such a manner that a definite historical

117 Notes on Brahman (Utrecht, 1950).118 Thieme, "Brthman," Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen Gesellschaft,CII (Wiesbaden, 1952), 91 ff., esp. pp. 95 and 97.119Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasztes etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindischen, II,454. The same author-who rightly rejectsthe above interpretationof brdhman-had, in a review of my book (published in Anthropos,XLVII [1952],319 ff.),not only adopted this "original meaning"but also enthusiasticallysubscribedtothe etymologicalconnection of the term with "brh-kraftigen, starken."120 Notes on Brahman, p. 3.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologydevelopment may be read off from the very arrangement.l21 triedto show that this method runs the risk of putting too much stresson particular points of secondary importance and of regardingcoexist-ent aspects as succeeding phases of development. I warned againstarbitrariness in constructing semantic developments and affiliationsand against attempts to overestimate etymological possibilities,122especially when they start from the assumption that the sense of apossible etymological relative in another language-even if that wordis rare or if its sense is not too well known-is more original than thesenses expressed by the Indian word which, without conveying thatparticular sense,123 ccurs in text places without number.l24Moreover,I wished to draw attention to some ideas expressed and interpretationsproposed with a remarkable consistency in the course of many cen-turies by the Indians themselves-interpretations which do notseem to have been duly considered by modern scholars.125Thus Iintentionally emphasized the arguments in favor of the etymologybrdhman:brh-,brmhati,"to be or make firm, strong, solid; to expand,promote," which was always taken for granted by the Indian exegetes,without, however, expressing the conviction that this etymology iscorrect and the key to all difficulties. But if brdhmanbelongs to thisroot brh-, I argued,'26 t is one of those well-known Indo-Europeanwords in -men-, Sanskrit -man-, which not infrequently denote somepower or other (cf. Latin numen, carmen, omen; Sanskrit ojman,dhdman,dharman, karman,etc.), especially when this power manifestsitself either in actions or processes or in beings or objects, or at thesame time in actions, beings, and objects. "To my mind," I ob-served,127"brahmanis a more or less definite power [not Power, orMana ], the more specific connotations of which may be understoodin some context or other, which often, and especially in the mostancient texts, manifests itself as word, as ritual, etc." That "more or

121Ibid., p. 4.122 It is my intention to returnto some passagesin Mayrhofer's ong discussionof brahma (op. cit., pp. 452-56) in another paper. I wish to emphasize that Iam by no means an adversaryof a soundhistoricalmethod; we should, however,be aware of its limitations.123 "En pr6sencede morphemes dentiques pourvus de sens differents,on doitse demander s'il existe un emploi of ces deux sens recouvrent leur unit6," E.Benveniste,"Problemes 6mantiquesde lareconstruction,"n Word,X (New York,1954),251.124 For some critical remarks on the etymology proposedby W. B. Henning(in Transactionsof the Philological Society, 1944 [London, 1945], pp. 108ff.)and adopted by Mayrhofer (loc. cit.), and as far as the formal side is concernednot combatted by the present author, see Notes on Brahman,pp. 69-70 (notmentionedby Mayrhofer).126Notes on Brahman, pp. 16, 69.126Ibid., pp. 72-73. 127 Ibid., pp. 58, 70,

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less definite power" was on p. 70 specified as the "idea of 'inherentfirmness,' supporting or fundamental principle."We should not, however, throw out the baby with the bath water.Even if brahman does not from the genetic point of view derive fromthe root brh-128he agelong association of both words-that is to sayalso of their "senses"-in the heads, speculations, and weltanschaulichetheories of the Indians129 s of special interest and more worthstudying than it is supposed to be by Thieme.130"It is quite possiblethat the features of a language... by means of which we link it toothers in a stock or family are among the least important when weseek to connect it to the rest of the culture.""13And, it may be added,very often a successful case of "popular etymology" may proveto be a source of welcome information of the important question asto how either traditionally or in a definite period, the Indians them-selves thought about the basic, central or "original" sense of a"key word." The so-called popular etymology is an a posteriorimotivation of a word revealing the associations into which it hasentered. Those cases of this phenomenon which repeatedly occur inmany texts may be regarded as reflecting more or less fixed opinionsand convictions of the authors and the communities of which theyform part and shed a peculiar light on their ways of interpretingnature, life, and spiritual world.132There can be no doubt whateverthat for the Indians brahman,which already in the R.gvedarepeatedlyappears as a vardhanam,133hat is, "something that causes to increase,strengthens, animates, and grants prosperity" was to be connectedwith brh-,notwithstanding the possibility that this association was an"a posteriori etymology" and that this "popular etymology" mayhave contributed to a change in the meaning of the word.134In the earliest texts in which it occurs, those of the R.gvedasamhita,which are the ancient products of Indian literature and Indian

128 Cases are, however,not wanting in which scholars while rejectinga "scien-tific" etymology which has been accepted for many decades return to the inter-pretation of the Ancients: see, e.g., P. Chantraine,in Festschrift-A. Debrunner(Bern, 1954), pp. 85 ff., on Gr. &-yos, any matter of religiousawe."129 For a succinct survey see my Notes on Brahman,p. 18.130 Thieme, "Brahman,"ZeitschrifterdeutschenorgenldndischenGesellschaft,CII, 95 f.131 Hoijer, in AnthropologyToday,p. 567.132See also my paper on the etymologies in the ancient Indian Brahmanas,in Lingua,V (Amsterdam,1955),61 ff.,n. 54,andp. 83 containingsomeremarksonthe brahmancontroversy.133Noteson Brahman,p. 40; see also J. Charpentier,Brahman(Uppsala, 1932),pp. 4 and 85, n. 4.134For"popular etymology" see, e.g., E. H. Sturtevant, Linguistic Change(New York, 1942), pp. 94 ff.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyreligious thought extant, the term brahman mpresses us as conveyingdifferent senses or different shades of meaning. We should, however,be aware that here also-and the same remark applies to tejas,vdja, maya and many other terms-this apparent "polysemy" islikely to be illusory, because our modern languages do not furnishus the means of rendering by one single word an "idea" or "concept"which is characteristic of the ancient Indian culture, or which, speak-ing more generally, is closely connected with lines of thought whichare for centuries no longer ours. The most ancient "sense"-and nowwe use this term with the above reserve-of brahmanis, as far as weare able to know, the power immanent in the words, verses, and for-mulas of the Veda. This is true, on the understanding that we areaware that this "meaning" can only be called the most ancient, be-cause it occurs in that collection of texts which as a corpus is in allprobability more ancient than the other corpora of the Vedic litera-ture. It has, however, not rarely been too rashly assumed that a con-textual "sense" which prevails in a corpus which is as a whole, chrono-logically speaking, the most ancient source of knowledge of a giventradition must have been the "most original sense" of the word, thatis to say, the chronologically first sense which the word, generallyspeaking, ever had and which should therefore be adopted as thestarting point of a chronological development. In individual partsof other Vedic texts semantic aspects of a term may have beenpreserved which are older or more "original" than those shownby the Rgveda. Scholars, perhaps unconsciously, often overlooked,to a greater or lesser extent, the fact that the I.gveda does not giveus a complete idea of the spiritual life of ancient India or a completevocabulary of the language of its population in general. The R.gvedais no doubt not representative of the Aryan community in its entirety.It primarily reflects the culture of the two upper classes, the brahmansand their patrons, the chiefs of the warlike stockbreeders. There hadof course always been Aryans who were not initiated in all the specula-tions of the brahmans, and there were many of them for whom thelatter did not celebrate any srauta rite. And, when in the courseof time the sacrificial lore of the priests became more and morecomplicated requiring greater training and experience, divergenciesbetween them and the other classes of society must have becomewider. From the other Vedic texts we learn the existence of manypopular rites and beliefs on which the R.gveda is silent-rites andbeliefs which cannot have arisen from nowhere, invented in the inter-val between the composition of the Itgveda and the other Vedic texts,or introduced, all of them, from those non-Aryans with whom part

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of the Aryans intermarried or who had found a place on the fringesof Aryan society. Between the Indo-European or Indo-Iranian words,the existence of which may be hypothetically assumed, and their laterforms which appear in the Vedic texts-the poetic diction of whichwas in prehistoric times evolved by authors whose work has been lostforever-is the usage of those who had in the Rgvedic period no accessto literature but who may have influenced thought and vocabularyof the other bodies of ancient literature. Great motifs and symbolsin religion and important thoughts in Weltanschauung are, even inone and the same period, different things to different men. It is there-fore highly improbable that there has ever been a moment at whichbrahman only and exactly meant "formula" or "verse" or "sacredword."I cannot subscribe to the view formulated by Thieme'35 that wemust attempt to find out the formal features of words and those traitsof usage which are common to all the contexts in which it appearsby linguistic procedures of analysis which are "quite independentof our views as to the religious and other ideas expressed by the text."It is in my opinion a mistaken belief that "the abstract content"of words such as rta, aramati, which stands for something like derrechteSinn, die gemdszeGesinnung, or puramdhi die Wunscherfiillung"is without relation to a possibly peculiar psychology of the Rigvedicpoet." In principle, M. Bloomfieldl36was no doubt right that "inthe interpretation of a term that figures prominently in the mystic-hieratic sphere of the Veda [that is, Thieme'37 rightly adds: one ofthe "termes essentiels du R.V."138]t is peculiarly necessary to searchfor its uses outside that sphere." The difficulty, however, oftenis that the plain "prose central meaning" is not likely to appearfrequently, or that we are not able to make out when a word is notenveloped in what Bloomfield'39 called "the Vedic haze," manywords being always steeped in Weltanschauung and any referenceto late Vedic or post-Vedic uses in "profane" texts being, of course,liable to introduce anachronisms. And even in those cases-whichmay be less in number than some Vedic scholars are nowadays inclined

135 P. Thieme, in a review of L. Renou, ttudes vediqueset pdnineennes,I,in Journal AmericanOrientalSociety, LXXVII (New Haven, 1957), 51 ff., esp.p. 56.136 M. Bloomfield, "The Vedic Word VidAtha,"Journal American OrientalSociety, XIX, 13 f.137Thieme, loc.cit., p. 54.138 See Renou, op. cit., I, 22.139 M. Bloomfield, Review of W. Neisser Zum Worterbuch des IRgveda,(Leipzig, 924) n JournalAmericanOrientalociety,XLV,159.

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Ancient-Indian Religious Terminologyto believe-in which we succeed in establishing a semantic differencebetween a "prose," non-religious, or "non-mystic-hieratic" use of aword and the sense given to it by the poets of the R1gveda-we shouldalways remember that the poets as well as the authors of the othertexts were not only exponents of the same culture but also partnersin the same sort of activities. On the other hand, there can be nodoubt that the metrical texts of the Veda are characterized, inter alia,by some peculiar features in their train of thought, by a preferencefor definite terms, by some hypertrophies in their phraseology. Neithertheir language nor their views and ideas were in all respects those ofthe common people. Their Weltanschauung-and here again I disagreewith Thieme-is, however, first and foremost in the words they haveat their disposal, however much eminent poets like all intellectualleaders may have emphasized definite connotations or preferredperipherical senses which may have influenced the use made of thecommon vocabulary. While contributing to the development ofreligious thought, they no doubt added neologisms and altered themeanings of other words.

Languages being a part of culture, words cannot be understoodcorrectly without taking into account the cultural (ecologic, material,social, religious, etc.) phenomena for which they are symbols. Intranslating-and especially in translating religious texts where theseproblems often are very intricate-we should be constantly awareof differences in the entire range of culture between the two milieusto which the languages belong. It is probably as difficult to translatea Vedic term like rta, brahman,vrata into a modern European tongueas to find an exact equivalent of our "sanctity" or "holiness" in anAfrican language.140The interpretation of Vedic texts is no concernof etymologists or other one-sided linguists, but the task of "philolo-gists"-in the European, non-Anglo-Saxon sense of the term-whomake it their object to reconstruct and to place before the mind'seye this special province of antiquity as exactly and clearly as possibleby a methodical examination of all relevant sources and withoutneglecting any discipline which may in some way or other be helpful.141Among these other disciplines is not only comparative Indo-Europeanor Indo-Iranian linguistics but also a comparative study of reli-gions, comparative "social anthropology," and other "comparative"

140 See E. Nida, Linguistics and Ethnology in Translation Problems (a Proposof Translations of the Bible in "Aboriginal Languages"), in Word, I (New York,1945), 194 ff.14'See, e.g., A. Gercke in A. Gercke und E. Norden, "Die Einheit der philolo-gisch-historischen Methode," Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft," I (Leipzig-Berlin, 1910), 33 ff.

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branches of learning.l42These disciplines are not to supply deficienciesof our texts, or to replace facts which, though badly needed for thesake of an air-tight argument, are lacking in our sources. Resortingto them does not imply that the religion of Vedic man was in allor some respects practically the same as that of the ancient Germansor Babylonians or of present-day Eskimos or Polynesians or that themental equipment of Vedic man was distinct from that of civilizedman; neither does it express the convictio

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Gonda, J. Some Notes on the Study of Ancient Indian Religious Texts

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