12. Whitney's Translation and the Interpretative Elements of the Commentary
The Translation: general principles governing the method thereof.—The statements concerning the principles involved in the translating of the Upanishads, as propounded by Whitney in his review of a translation of those texts, apply—mutatis mutandis—so well to the translation of this Veda, that I have reprinted them (above, p. xix: cf . p. xxxvii); and to them I refer the reader.
The translation not primarily an interpretation, but a literal version.—Whitney expressly states (above, p. xix) that the design of this work is "to put together as much as possible of the material that is to help toward the study and final comprehension of this Veda"; accordingly, we can hardly deny the legitimacy of his procedure, on the one hand, in making his version a rigorously literal one, and, on the other, in restricting the interpretative constituents of the work to narrow limits. He recognized how large a part the subjective element plays in the business of interpretation; and if, as he intimates, his main purpose was to clear the ground for the interpreters yet to come, his restriction was well motived. It is, moreover, quite in accord with his scientific skepticism that he should prefer to err on the side of telling less than he knew, and not on the side of telling more than he knew: a fact which is well illustrated by his remark at viii. 9. 18, where he says, "The version is as literal as possible; to modify it would imply an understanding of it."
A literal version as against a literary one.—Let no one think that Whitney was not well aware of the differences between such a version as he has given here, and a version which (like that of Griffith) makes concessions to the demands of literary style and popular interest. Whitney's version of xviii. 1. 50, as given below, reads: 'Yama first found for us a track; that is not a pasture to be borne away; where our former Fathers went forth, there [go] those born [of them], along their own roads.' With this compare his version of 1859 (O. and L.S., i., p. 58):
Yama hath found for us the first a passage;
that's no possession to be taken from us;
Whither our fathers, of old time, departed,
thither their offspring, each his proper pathway.
Each version has its own quality; each method has its justification: to make a complete translation after the second method, one must inevitably waive the consideration of philological difficulties, a thing by no means licit for Whitney in such a work as this. The admirable version of Griffith
