Who Militarized the Rigveda?

Recently, I came across a paper titled "Demilitarizing the Rigveda: A Scrutiny of Vedic Horses, Chariots and Warfare" on Academia. My initial reaction to this was "Yeah, we should do that". The very next moment, though, it turned to "Wait! What?!"

Demilitarize the Rigveda? Who the heck militarized it in the first place? Oh right, yeah - Western "Sanskrit scholars" in all their intellectual glory read the Rigveda with a colloquial Samskritam dictionary and decided that it represented a military conquest. Of "Aryans" over "Dasyus" no less, and invented a random theory that gained popularity (essentially because they held the bully pulpit at the time, well technically they still do), and became this anchor around our legs called the Aryan Invasion Theory. Oh, they even saw the similarities between European languages and Samskritam, and decided, Samskritam was derived from a common Indo-European root language, and assigned a random date of 1500 BC to the Rigveda (of course, because the world itself sprang into existence in 4004 BC, after all). Other Vedas were obviously later than that - but suffice to say, the found yet another way to divide us - a cog in the long-running divide-and-rule policy.

The whole mess started all the way back in the 17th century, but a certain Max Muller (1823-1900) who laid the groundwork for all this nonsense with dubious scholarship, and was formally proposed as the gospel truth - er, I mean as a theory in the mid 20th century by Mortimer Wheeler... and the rest is history. To this day, influential people such as Witzel, Doniger, Farmer, Parpola et-al from those pinnacles (sarcasm) of learning institutions such as Harvard University, The Cultural Modeling Research Group, the University of Chicago, and the University of Helsinki, ably supported by Indian academics such as Thapar, Habib and associates and the JNU are still wedded (perhaps welded too) to this theory. In late years, faced with overwhelming evidence of essentially the lack of evidence for anything resembling Aryan Invasion, they have softened the invasion to a migration. Sigh! Plenty of words written about this, so I'll leave it alone for the moment. That's not what I intended to write here

My head spun for a few seconds and then I started reading the paper. Danino makes convincing arguments against the usual stereotype of militaristic reading of the Rigveda - of how allegory and personification are used in the Veda and how 'ashva' doesn't always mean a horse (no, really - it doesn't), or the supposed "lack" of chariots and spoked wheels in the Rigveda, or warfare - 'smiting of enemies' etc. Most of these are actually correct; Danino tries to make the point that all those "war" words are really about gaining knowledge, light or darkness rather than a fighting war but again that still isn't the point.

The first point to be made here is that the Veda wasn't composed in Samskritam. That's right; let me repeat: the Veda wasn't composed in the Samskritam language. No, I'm not being condescending. This is a fact! The Veda is its own language. Samskritam itself arose from this language of the Veda, not the other way around. This is a secret that the learned ones understand. One who doesn't realize this often trips in the interpretation or understanding of the Veda. So to pick up a random (or even a precise) Samskritam-English dictionary and to try to translate the Veda, or even cross-check the translation of the Veda is to essentially get it completely wrong. Ergo, Militarized Veda. There is a detailed discourse by a certain Sudhakara Sharma a traditional Vedic scholar, who, I would safely bet, has never seen a Ralph Griffith translation of the Rigveda that I had translated and transcribed from Kannada a long time ago, and can be seen here. I invite you to look into that (and this one too, since it is a continuation of the same) and won't repeat most of that material which is totally relevant here.

Culturally, India - or people who took up traditional studies in the Veda in India never thought of the Rigveda in warring terms. The Veda always stood for two primary things: Satya and Ahimsa. Again, Satya isn't a simple truth-vs-lie type of 'truth'. Satya is knowledge; knowledge of who we are as humans, what our place is in the universe, why we're here and where we're going. Satya and knowledge are two faces of the same coin.

"That which is applicable to everyone (sArvajanika), applicable at any time (saarvakAlika), applicable everywhere (saarvadESika), and independent (saarvabhauma) is satya. Ahimsa, is of course, the non-harming of any living beings."

Anyway, I digress again. The Veda was never thought of in warring terms. Vedas were mystical. In fact, even from ancient times  garden variety scholars did not attempt to demystify them. Most people relied on Brahmanas (the scripture variety, not the person variety), Aranyakas, Upanishads for insight into the Veda. Even that was not easily demystified by everyone, so there were sutras (formulae) and Bhashyas (commentaries) written by preeminent acharyas which took the message of the Veda to the masses. With this setup in place, if an upstart archaeologist - even one with fair knowledge of Samskritam, to be certain, picks up the Veda as is and tries to translate it to English, using a predefined laukika - colloquial dictionary, one can imagine the mess it would create. Right? No? Well here's one example.

यूयं तत् सत्यशवस आविश् कर्त महित्वना ।
विध्यता विद्युता रक्शः ॥ (Rigveda 1.086.09) 

Griffith's translation of the same verse reads thus:

O ye of true strength, make this thing manifest by your greatness – strike the demon with your thunderbolt.

Oh... yes. Wait. What? War, strike, demon thunderbolt. Really?

Sudhakara Sharma translated this (in the lecture I heard) as:

Man derives his (spiritual) strength (mahItvana) from satya. Naturally gifted with the will (shavasa) to do so, he must search for and discover (aavishkarta) satya. Any obstacles that arise (in this search) must be  protected (rakshaH) by the power (or thunderbolt - vidyuta) of knowledge (vidya).

One can see how badly mangled the verse seems in Grifith's version. 'Satya/Knowledge is strength' became 'ye of true strength'. 'find or discover the truth' has become 'make this thing manifest'. An unknown 'demon' has crept into the translation while there is none in the original. 'vidyathA' goes unmentioned.

Sigh! I rest my case on the translations. There are umpteen such mistranslations, and it is quite safe to say the average reader of these translations gets the idea that the Veda was an exercise military history.

But going back to the scriptures, The Veda is the root of all scripture, but that didn't mean that an average person, priest - or even the average scholar picked up a verse of the original, did some prejudiced translations and assumed that was the absolute correct meaning of the verse. In fact, the Veda is surrounded by 6 layers of mysticism (alternately you could also call it 6 layers of error protection) called the Vedanga - literaly the limbs of the Veda: chhaMdas, shikSha, vyAkaraNa, nirukta, jyotiShya, and kalpa. Traditionally, one thought of even attempting to unravel a verse of the Veda when one is an expert in the 6 Vedangas. This might be a good reading on Hindu scripture

Now, I don't know the scholarship of Griffith or the others named in the 6 Vedangas, but it is, I would expect, a safe bet that a traditional acharya's scholarship is incomparable to that of a non-practitioner - especially the last two Vedangas of which they would have absolutely no clue. That said, to be fair, the problem of errant translations isn't a Western Scholar's alone to bear. Even traditional, respected, learned Indian acharyas have apparently faltered at this. Sudhakara Sharma makes a strong logical case rooted in the vEdAMgas for even the venerated sAyaNa mistranslating the ashvamEdha as what is today called a "Horse Sacrifice" while in reality it was necessarily an exercise in National Integration.

Danino also makes references to rituals and alludes to a ritualist using interpretation of the Veda for what I would call prayoga. That, however, again demonstrates the out-of-touch nature from a Western scholar's point of view. While Kalpa is the Vedanga related to prayoga (or 'ritual' as the Western scholars call it), prayoga is typically based on instructions provided in the Kalpasutras at least in a South Indian context. (I confess I am unaware of how things are interpreted in the North, but I suspect the Kalpasutras are treated the same North or South - essentially as manuals for prayoga). Kalpasutras themselves are of 4 different types: Srautasutra (pertaining to Shruti or the shlokas themselves), Sulbasutra (pertaining to the geometric construction of ritualistic altars/yajna kundas), Grihyasutras (pertaining to instructions of actions that are required to be taken during said rituals) and Dharmasutras (pertaining to moral duties and law). Again suffice to say that the Veda was not the basis for prayoga, but indeed the Vedangas - in this case the Kalpasutras were.

In conclusion, (with profound thanks to Michel for his work in attempting to bring satya to the influential, and who was actually kind enough to respond to my request to reference his paper by email) the militarizing, and demilitarizing of the Rigveda is necessarily a Western exercise; No traditional Indian interpretation of the Veda thought of it being militaristic. The learned referred to the Vedangas, Brahmanas, and Upanishads for insight into the Veda. People who cared knew exactly what the Veda was: allegory to knowledge and realization of the self. The vast majority didn't (doesn't) even care either way.

Postscript: I've been thinking about this and here's an (mis)interpretation of the "Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. The Poem: 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Misinterpretation: 

Assume (text in parantheses) are deductions of the interpreter. 

Robert Frost was a traveler, who usually did his travels in Autumn (because Summers were too hot and Winters were too cold), and in heavily forested areas (rather than in urban ones. During his time, people had the ability - or at least some people had the ability to travel down two different roads at the same time, but) Mr. Frost, unfortunately clearly says that he did not have that ability. Our friend Rob did have pretty good vision though (as was common for people during his time), and he could see quite far down both lanes. Roads were not always well maintained back then as well, so there was some undergrowth around roads (which Rob looked at distastefully and made up his mind to write to his elected representative). Robert Frost was an unhappy person, given to bouts of sighing and sadness now and then. (Either Mr. Frost wasn't too smart, or perhaps people in those days were given to travelling down unknown streets and getting lost - it is unclear which) - but Mr. Frost decided to head into danger (and perhaps wild animals), He compares and indicates the two roads were different, but does not clearly enumerate the differences between the two. 

Sincere apologies to Robert Frost. This is an intentional and bad misinterpretation such as those that could occur if the poem was taken completely out of context and - quite paradoxically - some poetic license were taken with the interpretation and or translation. For the correct "guide" to The Road Not Taken, please see here.