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Re: Animal slaughter in the RigVeda
Narahari Achar, B. N. (acharb@msuvx2.memphis.edu) wrote:
: Dear friends:
: I am very much saddenned by this post of Dhruba, which is misleading
: especially to people who are not well versed in sanskrit and who have
: no access to the originals but must rely on translations.
: The misrepresentation is by Dhruba, he gives the wrong reference,(it
: should be R.V. 4.1.6) and misspells a crucial word. Dhruba has "dh"
: instead of "gh" in the fourth word of the second line of the verse quoted
: by him, which makes a world of difference in the meaning. I give him the
: benefit of doubt,however, that it is just typos. It is easy to type
: 4.1.16 instead of 4.1.6 and "dh" and "gh" look rather similar in the
: nagari script.
Dear Narhariji:
Thank you for your response. You are correct about the spelling mistake
and the typo of verse number. In my copy of the "Hymns to the Mystic
fire" it is aghnya, but the bangla RigVeda (haraf prakAshani) it is
adhnya. I should have trusted the Pondicherry Press. However, you have
misread the intent of my post. I understand your sensitivity, but I have
no interest either in promoting or criticising cow slaughter in India.
Tonight, I got a book called "A review of beef in Ancient India" by the
Gita Press, (I can't find the author's name). From gleaning through the
pages of the book, I understood the meaning of "interpolation" that you
accuse me of. It is a serious charge of mischief.
I will put the intent of my post in the bluntest possible terms now,
which should explain why I used the word "political" in this context.
With all due respect to Sayanacharya, I have no interest in reading his
commentary, since he is a karmakAndi, who mostly rid the RigVeda
of its spirituality. Sri Aurobindo's translation is spiritual. When he
set out to translate the RigVeda, he found that the references to cow,
horses etc. in the RigVeda do not refer to cows or horses. He wrote:
"The fruits of the offering were in appearence purely material-cows,
horses, gold, offspring, men, physical strength, victory in battle. Here
the difficulty thickened. But I had already found that the Vedic cow is
an exceedingly enigmatic animal and CAME FROM NO EARTHLY HERD. The word
'go' means both cow and light and in a number of passages evidently meant
light even while putting forward the image of the cow. This is clear
when we have to do with the cows of the sun - the Homeric kine of Helios
- and the cows of the dawn. Psychologically, the physical light might
well be used as a symbol of knowledge and especially the Divine
knowledge. But how could this mere possibility be tested and
established? I found that passages occured in which all the surrounding
text was psychological and only the image of the cow interfered with its
obstrusive material suggestion. Indra is invoked as the maker of perfect
forms to drink the wine of Soma; drinking he becomes full of ecstasy and
a "giver of cows"; then we can attain to his most intimate right
thinkings, then we question him and his clear discernment brings us our
highest good. It is obvious that in such a passage these cows can not be
material herds nor would the giving of physical light carry any sense in
the context. In one instance at least the physiological symbolism of the
Vedic cow was established with certainty in my mind. I then applied it
to other passages in which the word occured and always I saw that it
resulted in the best sense and the greatest possible coherency in the
context." (On the Veda).
These verses are the 1.4.1-3.
My point was, if the Vedic cow is not a cow, there is no question of
slaughtering her. In the verse I referred, the word used for cow is
'dhenu', not 'go'. Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo interpreted it as "ray-cow".
The politics I referred to is of course, the politics of ahimsA, which
in India, roughly translates as ban on cow slaughter. Personally, I do
not have any opinion on the justifiabilty or non-justifiability of that.
With best regards,
Dhruba.
