The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Foreword 367
But how are we to bring home this profound, natural and
inner sense to the minds of others in a translation? It cannot be
done unless we translate interpretatively, “O Will, O Priest of
our sacrifice, loose from us the cords of our bondage” and “this
Flame shines out with the vast Light of the Truth and makes
all things manifest by its greatness.” The reader will then at
least be able to seize the spiritual nature of the cord, the light,
the flame; he will feel something of the sense and spirit of this
ancient chant.
The method I have employed will be clear from these instances.
I have sometimes thrown aside the image, but not so
as to demolish the whole structure of the outer symbol or to
substitute a commentary for a translation. It would have been
an undesirable violence to strip from the richly jewelled garb
of the Vedic thought its splendid ornaments or to replace it by
a coarse garment of common speech. But I have endeavoured
to make it everywhere as transparent as possible. I have rendered
the significant names of the Gods, Kings, Rishis by their
half-concealed significances, — otherwise the mask would have
remained impenetrable; where the image was unessential, I have
sometimes sacrificed it for its psychological equivalent; where it
influenced the colour of the surrounding words, I have sought
for some phrase which would keep the figure and yet bring out
its whole complexity of sense. Sometimes I have even used a
double translation. Thus for the Vedic word which means at
once light or ray and cow, I have given according to the circumstances
“Light”, “the radiances”, “the shining herds”, “the
radiant kine”, “Light, mother of the herds”. Soma, the ambrosial
wine of the Veda, has been rendered “wine of delight” or “wine
of immortality”.
The Vedic language as a whole is a powerful and remarkable
instrument, terse, knotted, virile, packed, and in its turns careful
rather to follow the natural flight of the thought in the mind
than to achieve the smooth and careful constructions and the
clear transitions of a logical and rhetorical syntax. But translated
without modification into English such a language would
become harsh, abrupt and obscure, a dead and heavy movement