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A review by jewelianne
The Rig Veda by Wendy Doniger
5.0
I did it! I finished the Rig Veda! Well, okay, no I didn't. This is no where near the entire Rig Veda. But I finished THIS selection of verses from the Rig Veda!
Reading this was pretty difficult. Much of the true meaning remains obscure, especially to someone like me who is NOT a scholar or a religious guru. But even for the educated, much of it is esoteric. However, what I did manage to grasp was really rewarding. I obviously have no idea how this translations compares to the actual Sanskrit, but I feel like the Doniger did a great job. Her introductions to each passage and her foot notes were instrumental to my understanding. And I take back what I said. I definitely feel like reading her translation of Hindu mythology was useful in reading this book. By the end of the second book I was starting to recognize and understand some tropes and themes and symbols, which was pretty exciting for me.
There is little I can say about the actual Rig Veda, as I'm not sure I even fully understand just what it is yet. It is not really a sacred book the way that we tend to think of it. Or at least, it was not originally. It is an oral tradition handed down from father to son for many generations before being recorded into a "book." But it does give a really interesting look into the lives of an ancient people group. I think it was most interesting to me when their concerns weren't so different from our own. For example, I'm not sure if it was the translation or not, but I felt that the poems about death were among the most poignant and comprehensible. Perhaps because, as part of the universal human experience, our feelings about death aren't so different than they were thousands of years ago.
Another interesting idea that was put forth by the translator is that the materialism of the Vedic religion doesn't suggest a shallow belief system, so much as it shows an integration of the divine with the worldly, human experience.
I was really interested in some of the rhetorical questions asked by the poet/sages, particularly in the creation myths. For example:
"Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not. "
Of course, these are only little things that I am picking out, and don't even begin to encompass the verses that I read. And THOSE, at only about a tenth of the verses in the Rig Veda, don't begin to scratch the surface of these writings. (Not to mention the other Vedas!) Perhaps at some point I will try to read deeper, but I'm pretty sure that the Vedas could be a lifetime reading plan in themselves! And even then, I think I would only begin to understand them.
Reading this was pretty difficult. Much of the true meaning remains obscure, especially to someone like me who is NOT a scholar or a religious guru. But even for the educated, much of it is esoteric. However, what I did manage to grasp was really rewarding. I obviously have no idea how this translations compares to the actual Sanskrit, but I feel like the Doniger did a great job. Her introductions to each passage and her foot notes were instrumental to my understanding. And I take back what I said. I definitely feel like reading her translation of Hindu mythology was useful in reading this book. By the end of the second book I was starting to recognize and understand some tropes and themes and symbols, which was pretty exciting for me.
There is little I can say about the actual Rig Veda, as I'm not sure I even fully understand just what it is yet. It is not really a sacred book the way that we tend to think of it. Or at least, it was not originally. It is an oral tradition handed down from father to son for many generations before being recorded into a "book." But it does give a really interesting look into the lives of an ancient people group. I think it was most interesting to me when their concerns weren't so different from our own. For example, I'm not sure if it was the translation or not, but I felt that the poems about death were among the most poignant and comprehensible. Perhaps because, as part of the universal human experience, our feelings about death aren't so different than they were thousands of years ago.
Another interesting idea that was put forth by the translator is that the materialism of the Vedic religion doesn't suggest a shallow belief system, so much as it shows an integration of the divine with the worldly, human experience.
I was really interested in some of the rhetorical questions asked by the poet/sages, particularly in the creation myths. For example:
"Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not. "
Of course, these are only little things that I am picking out, and don't even begin to encompass the verses that I read. And THOSE, at only about a tenth of the verses in the Rig Veda, don't begin to scratch the surface of these writings. (Not to mention the other Vedas!) Perhaps at some point I will try to read deeper, but I'm pretty sure that the Vedas could be a lifetime reading plan in themselves! And even then, I think I would only begin to understand them.