incompatible with earnestness,-far from it!-and where these elements are wanting, not only is the joy embittered which is the inherent reward of all bona fide work, but selfishness, malignity, aye, even untruthfulness, gain the upper hand, and the healthy growth of science is stunted. While in my translation of the Veda and in the remarks that I have to make in the course of my commentary, I shall frequently differ from other scholars, I hope I shall never say an unkind word of men who have done their best, and who have done what they have done in a truly scholarlike, that is, in a humble spirit. It would be unpleasant, even were it possible within the limits assigned, to criticise every opinion that has been put forward on the meaning of certain words or on the construction of certain verses of the Veda. I prefer, as much as possible, to vindicate my own translation, instead of examining the translations of other scholars, whether Indian or European. Sâyana's translation, as rendered into English by Professor Wilson, is before the world. Let those who take an interest in these matters compare it with the translation here proposed. In order to give readers who do not possess that translation, an opportunity of comparing it with my own, I have for a few hymns printed that as well as the translations of Langlois and Benfey on the same page with my own. Everybody will thus be enabled to judge of the peculiar character of each of these transla

tions. That of Sâyana represents the tradition of India; that of Langlois is the ingenious, but thoroughly uncritical, guess-work of a man of taste; that of Benfey is the rendering of a scholar, who has carefully worked out the history of some words, but who assigns to other words either the traditional meaning recorded by Sâyana, or a conjectural meaning which, however, would not always stand the test of an intercomparison of all passages in which these words occur. I may say, in general, that Sâyana's translation was of great use to me in the beginning, though it seldom afforded help for the really difficult passages. Langlois' translation has hardly ever yielded real assistance, while I sincerely regret that Benfey's rendering does not extend beyond the first Mandala.

It may sound self-contradictory, if, after confessing the help which I derived from these translations, I venture to call my own the first translation of the Rig-veda. The word translation, however, has many meanings. I mean by translation, not a mere rendering of the hymns of the Rig-veda into English, French, or German, but a full account of the reasons which justify the translator in assigning such a power to such a word, and such a meaning to such a sentence. I mean by translation a real deciphering, a work like that which Burnouf performed in his first attempts at a translation of the Avesta,-a traduction raisonnée, if such an expression may be used. Without such a process,

without a running commentary, a mere translation of the ancient hymns of the Brahmans will never lead to any solid results. Even if the translator

of a whole sentence, his mere translation does not help us much, unless he shows us the process by which he has arrived at it, unless he places before us the pièces justificatives of his final judgment. The Veda teems with words that require a justification; not so much the words which occur but once or twice, though many of these are difficult enough, but rather the common words and particles, which occur again and again, which we understand to a certain point, and can render in a vague way, but which must be defined before they can be translated, and before they can convey to us any real and tangible meaning. It was out of the question in a translation of this character to attempt either an imitation of the original rhythm or metre, or to introduce the totally foreign element of rhyming. Such translations may follow by and by: at present a metrical translation would only be an excuse for an inaccurate translation.

While engaged in collecting the evidence on which the meaning of every word and every sentence must be founded, I have derived the most important assistance from the Sanskrit Dictionary of Professors Boehtlingk and Roth, which has been in course of publication during the last sixteen years. The Vedic portion of that Dictionary may,

I believe, be taken as the almost exclusive work of Professor Roth, and as such, for the sake of brevity, I shall treat it in my notes. It would be ungrateful were I not to acknowledge most fully the real benefit which this publication has conferred on every student of Sanskrit, and my only regret is that its publication has not proceeded more rapidly, so that even now years will elapse before we can hope to see it finished. But my sincere admiration for the work performed by the compilers of that Dictionary does not prevent me from differing, in many cases, from the explanations of Vedic words given by Professor Roth. If I do not always criticise Professor Roth's explanations when I differ from him, the reason is obvious. A dictionary without a full translation of each passage, or without a justification of the meanings assigned to each word, is only a preliminary step to a translation. It represents a first classification of the meanings of the same word in different passages, but it gives us no means of judging how, according to the opinion of the compiler, the meaning of each single word should be made to fit the general sense of a whole sentence. I do not say this in disparagement, for, in a dictionary, it can hardly be otherwise I only refer to it in order to explain the difficulty I felt whenever I differed from Professor Roth, and was yet unable to tell how the meaning assigned by him to certain words would be justified by the author of the Dictionary himself. On this ground

I have throughout preferred to explain every step by which I arrived at my own renderings, rather than to write a running criticism of Professor Roth's Dictionary. My obligations to him I like to express thus once for all, by stating that whenever I found that I agreed with him, I felt greatly assured as to the soundness of my own rendering, while whenever I differed from him, I never did so without careful consideration.

The works, however, which I have hitherto mentioned, though the most important, are by no means the only ones that have been of use to me in preparing my translation of the Rig-veda. The numerous articles on certain hymns, verses, or single words occurring in the Rig-veda, published by Vedic scholars in Europe and India during the last thirty years, were read by me at the time of their publication, and have helped me to overcome difficulties, the very existence of which is now forgotten. If I go back still further, I feel that in grappling with the first and the greatest of difficulties in the study of the Veda, I and many others are more deeply indebted than it is possible to say, to one whose early loss has been one of the greatest misfortunes to Sanskrit scholarship. It was in Burnouf's lectures that we first learnt what the Veda was, and how it should form the foundation of all our studies. Not only did he most liberally communicate to his pupils his valuable MSS., and teach us how to use these tools, but the results of his own