The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Chapter V
The Philological Method of the Veda
NO INTERPRETATION of the Veda can be sound which
does not rest on a sound and secure philological basis;
and yet this scripture with its obscure and antique
tongue of which it is the sole remaining document offers unique
philological difficulties. To rely entirely on the traditional and
often imaginative renderings of the Indian scholars is impossible
for any critical mind. Modern philology strives after a more
secure and scientific basis, but has not yet found it.
In the psychological interpretation of the Veda there are,
especially, two difficulties which can only be met by a satisfactory
philological justification. This interpretation necessitates
the acceptance of several new senses for a fair number of fixed
technical terms of the Veda, — terms, for example like ūti, avas,
vayas. These new renderings satisfy one test we may fairly demand;
they fit into every context, clarify the sense and free us
from the necessity of attributing quite different significances to
the same term in a work of so fixed a form as the Veda. But
this test is not sufficient. We must have, besides, a philological
basis which will not only account for the new sense, but also
explain how a single word came to be capable of so many different
meanings, the sense attached to it by the psychological
interpretation, those given to it by the old grammarians and
those, if any, which are attached to it in later Sanskrit. But this is
not easily possible unless we find a more scientific basis for our
philological deductions than our present knowledge affords.
Secondly, the theory of the psychological interpretation depends
very often on the use of a double meaning for important
words, — the key-words of the secret teaching. The figure is one
that is traditional in Sanskrit literature and sometimes employed
with an excess of artifice in the later classical works; it is the ´sles.a
or rhetorical figure of double entendre. But its very artificiality