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One evening, about 20 years ago, when I had just joined the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, to do my doctoral work, we - students and professors - had gathered at The Phoenix, the campus pub, to toast a fellow student on his successful completion of doctoral work. I found myself sitting next to Niels Ryum, a visiting professor from the University of Tröndheim, Norway. Ryum had asked me how I was finding living in Canada. It was a time of deep racial problems in Canada. We, students from the Indian subcontinent, were subjected to continuous harassment. On those occasions when I had to go to Toronto, I used to crouch in a corner in the subway hoping that I would not be noticed by anybody. For the first time in my life I was confronted, directly,with racial attacks. It was a bewildering experience, coming from a sheltered life in India. I realized that till then I had not really understood how much the colour of one's skin matters in this world. Sipping coke, I had stammered out an answer to Ryum's question: "I feel, as if in Canada I have to be ... ashamed ... of being an Indian..." My answer had amazed the Norwegian professor. He had said, "You! You feel that you have to be ashamed of being an Indian! You, whose country has given the world, the Vedas, and the Upanishads!" The conversation had soon drifted off. But Niels Ryum's comments had stayed with me. Next morning I had rushed to the University Bookstore, and had bought two books: 'The Upanishads' by Juan Mascaro published in 1965 in the Penguin Classics series, and "The Philosophy of India" by S. Radhakrishnan. Mascaro's book was a summary of some of the important passages from the Upanishads, and soon I remembered that all those hymns and verses, we, the students of the National College in Bangalore, used to sing in such reverberating voices, everyday in the college quadrangle before the classes began, were all taken from the Upanishads. My enchantment with the literature of Upanishads began in earnest that day. As is widely known, the Upanishads form the last of the four sections of the Vedas. The other three sections are the Samhitas (often by themselves referred to as the Vedas) consisting of the prayers and hymns used in sacrificial rituals, Brahmanas which are meant for the priests, and are actually guides to the Samhitas, and Aranyakas that explain the symbolic meaning of the rituals. Often more than one Upanishad is attached to a given Samhita. To understand the basic tenets of Hinduism, to identify the sources of many of the concepts that make up our philosophical outlook of life even today, we have to go back to the Upanishads. Though the main theme of these scriptures is concerned with understanding the cosmic significance of human beings, for the meaning of Atman and its relation to Brahman, it is here that we find mentioned for the first time in Hinduism, ideas about what is beyond death, about the concepts of rebirth, karma, the trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara, etc. Nearly 35 years after publishing Mascaro's book on the Upanishads, Penguin Classics has brought out another book on the Upanishads. The author, Valerie J. Roebuck, a freelance scholar, lecturer, and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester in England has previously published the book, 'The Circle of Stars: An Introduction to Indian Astrology'. In 'The Upanishads', she offers the complete translation of thirteen principal Upanishads - the Isa, Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kausitaki, Kena, Katha, Svetasvatara, Mundaka, Prasna, Mandukya and Maitri Upanishads. Apart from the introduction, Roebuck has also provided additional explanations for difficult terms and concepts as well as alternative translations of many terms as given by other important translators (among them Olivelle. P., Hume, R. E., van Buitenen, J.A.B.). Her intention has been to provide students and the general reader with a complete, accurate and readable version of these important texts. A very commendable effort indeed. Roebuck has succeeded in her efforts in at least two of the Upanishads - the Kena and the Maitri Upanishads. Ideas contained in these Upanishads can be understood without detailed explanations. The difficulty with the Upanishads lies in the fact that the concepts therein are often expressed in the form of riddles, images and suggestions. This is perhaps no where so apparent as in the very first verse of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest of the Upanisads, which starts as, "OM. Dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse. The sun is the eye of the sacrificial horse, the wind his breath, the fire that is in all men his open mouth, the year his body...." The meaning of this verse, I suspect, would escape most of the general readers. Here Roebuck has given a much needed explanation, and shows that the verse offers a philosophical meaning to the ashamedha yaga, the horse sacrifice, practised during the vedic times. Although as said earlier, offering the translations of the Upanishads has been the sole purpose of the author, such explanations are very essential for the general reader in order to relate to the concepts expressed in these scriptures. In this respect I sorely missed comments on the Nachiketa fire in the Katha Upanishad, which relates the conversation between the boy Nachiketa and Yama, the god of death. Often the real meaning of the words and ideas used in the Upanishads can only be understood if it is remembered that the ideas were taught, and transmitted, orally for many a century. When one reads the words 'this' and 'that' one often has to imagine the seer sweeping his arms to indicate this world and the entire universe respectively. Often questions and parts of the answers are mixed in one single phrase. Frequently short phrases are appended, in the form of separate sentences, to the main sentence. If this tradition is not completely understood, it could lead to serious discrepancies in the translation. For instance, let us consider the translation of the verse 2.1 from the Kena Upanisad. With respect to the sentence, "I think you should investigate that unknown" Roebuck comments: "Reading 'veditam, unknown, for veditam, known, following Olivelle". Well, the Sanskrit version which I looked up at this point, says, "atha nu mimamsyam eva te, manye viditam." (Note it is not veditam but viditam.) Many other translators follow the great philosopher Shankara and translate this being a compound sentence, a comment by the teacher who says, "So then it is to be investigated by you", and a reply by the student, "Manye viditam ( I think, I know it.)" Roebuck offers quite a few awkward translations in this book. For instance, the word, Chakravartin in the Maitri Upanishad (1.4) is translated as a wheel-turning monarch! The line 'sahaviryam karavavahai' from the hymn " saha nav avatu, saha nau bhunaktu…" is translated as 'Together may we do a hero's work' which I think is not a proper translation of the word, 'viryam'. I feel that here 'viryam' means vigour or power, and not hero. The question naturally arises which kind of reader such a translation targets? As said earlier, a general reader, meaning one who does not have any knowledge of Sanskrit let alone of the scriptures, needs detailed explanations to understand most of the images and riddles used to explain many of the concepts presented in the Upanisads. Let us look at the translation of the very often recited hymn, 'Purnamadah, purnamidam...'. Roebuck translates it as: "OM. That is full; this is full; / Fullness comes forth from fullness: / When fullness is taken from fullness, / Fullness remains. OM. Peace, peace, peace." I wonder, whether anybody can really appreciate the beauty of this hymn, with the help of this translation, without some extra explanations. To appreciate the beauty of this hymn, to understand the true concept behind this hymn, one has to imagine the seer gesticulating to indicate 'atman' when he said simply, 'idam (this)', and 'brahman' when he said, 'adah (that)'. Students and readers like me who have some knowledge of Sanskrit would like to know the original verses that are being translated. This is particularly so here as Roebuck almost always refers to the Sanskrit word in her comments. Such references to the original Sanskrit words only lead to dissatisfaction while reading the book because one is not shown the entire text. These drawbacks (even if we forget the serious editorial mistakes that one comes across in this edition, like the misprint of the year as 1922 instead of 1992 while introducing the author on the very first page of the book, like the missing part of the translation on page 142) are all the more glaring as this translation has been published just two years after Oxford University Press brought out Patrick Olivelle's 'The Early Upanishads' as an annotated text and translation containing the Sanskrit version and detailed cross references. Chandra's Bookpage _________________ |
