A very different opinion of the value of the Indian commentators was held and expressed by Professor Goldstücker. “Without the vast information,” he says, “which those commentators have disclosed to us,—without their method of explaining the obscurest text,—in one word, without their scholarship, we should still stand at the outer doors of Hindu antiquity.” He ridicules the assertion that a European scholar can understand the Veda more correctly than Sâyaṇa, or arrive more nearly at the meaning which the Ṛishis gave to their own hymns, and yet even this stanch champion of the Indian commentators “cannot be altogether acquitted (as Dr. J. Muir says and shows) of a certain heretical tendency to deviate in practice from the interpretations of Sâyaṇa.”
The last quotation which I shall make in connexion with this question is from Professor E. B. Cowell's Preface to his edition of Vol. V. of Wilson’s Translation of the Ṛig-Veda Sanhitá: “This work does not pretend to give a complete translation of the Ṛig-Veda, but only a faithful image of that particular phase of its interpretation which the medieval Hindus, as represented by Sâyaṇa, have preserved. This view is in itself interesting and of an historical value; but far wider and deeper study is needed to pierce to the real meaning of these old hymns. Sâyaṇa's commentary will always retain a value of its own,—even its mistakes are often interesting,—but his explanations must not for a moment bar the progress of scholarship. We can be thankful to him for any real help; but let us not forget the debt which we owe to modern scholars, especially to those of Germany. The great St. Petersburg Dictionary is indeed a monument of triumphant erudition, and it has inaugurated a new era in the interpretation of the Ṛig-Veda."
My translation, then, is partly based on the commentary of Sâyaṇa, corrected and regulated by rational probability, context, and intercomparison of similar words and passages. For constant and most valuable assistance in my labour I am deeply indebted to the works of many illustrious scholars, some departed, and some,
