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English Translation
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**Foreword**
The dictionary, which I hereby hand over to the public, is the result of
my own needs. I saw that I couldn’t reach an understanding of the Vedas
by writing down a translation without compiling a complete as possible
glossary of the Rig-Veda, the main part and basis of the Vedas. The use
of the compiled material added so much value to my linguistic – and in
particular comparative – work, that I decided to process the material
and make the material, that became such a help for me, generally
accessible. I was well over halfway through the process of compiling and
editing the dictionary, when I learned that Aufrecht also intended to
publish such a dictionary. Aufrecht is an excellent linguist who, like
very few others, has access to the entire literature commenting and
explicating the Rig-Veda. Since I deem no one more qualified to
undertake such an opus than Aufrecht, I decided to continue compiling
and editing for my own benefit, but to make the publication dependent on
whether Aufrecht’s plan would be realized or not. When the work was
ready for printing, I learned through well-known scholars, to whom the
newer literature in this area is most accurately known and who through
their personal relationships with linguists working in England are
better than others equipped to judge, whether the publication of such a
dictionary will be realized in the near future, that there was nothing
of the kind in preparation. I was asked by them to go forward with the
publication of my dictionary. On these grounds I was convinced that I
could not postpone the publication of the dictionary any longer.
Naturally, the Petersburger Wörterbuch constitutes the basis of my work.
The Petersburger Wörterbuch initiated a new epoch of Sanksrit
phililogy and in particular the appreciation of the Vedas. I consulted
the information published therin and especially Roth’s groundbreaking
work on the Vedas. Any deviation from the view expressed by Böhtlingk
and Roth was only admitted after careful examination and after
comparison of all concerned text passages allowed, as such an excellent
work deserves. Specifically, I went back to the previous practice and
avoided positing stems (roots) of inflecting words that do not occur in
the language itself. Thus I posited that form of a declinable word as
its stem form which it actually takes as the first part of a compound
(apart from phonetic transformations); i.e. pitṙ, not pitar, bṙhat and
not bṙhant, etc; furthermore, for verb forms which they posit as
deverbal nouns (verbalia), I take verbal noun (verbale) as that
declinable form of a verb, which either does not receive a suffix or
only a “t” after a short vowel, that is vṙdh, not vardh because of the
verbal noun vṙdh [cf. ṙtāvṙdh etc.], bhṙ, not bhar because of the verbal
noune bhṙt, gir, not gar or gṝ because of the verbal gir, hu, not hvā or
hve because of the verbal noun hû [deva-hû etc.]. Where two different
verbal nouns (verbalia) are present, such as hvŕ-t and hrú-t, two root
forms hvṙ and hru have to be posited. For every word, all forms
occurring in the RV and for all forms, all text locations, where they
occur, are given. Only for some very common forms and uninflectible
words text locations are only given up to a certain song, unless later
locations are of particular interest. The decision has been made
explicit in the respective parts of the dictionary. The Sāmaveda (SV.),
Atharva-veda (AV.), and Vājasaneyi-Samhita (VS.) were only referenced
where they were deemed necessary to determine form or meaning. Form of
declinable words are given in the same order as in Panini: V. (Voc.), N.
(Nom.), A. (Acc.), I. (Instr.), D. (Dat.), Ab. (Abl.), G. (Gen.),
L. (Loc.), first the singular [s.], then the dual [d., du.] and the
plural [p., pl.]. In respect to gender forms, N. and A. of the neutr.
[n.] is always placed under the A. of masc. [m.] and the fem. [f.],
where it has a separate form is placed after all forms of the other two
genders. Each of these forms is given starting with the last vowel of
the stem, and all preceding material is replaced by a preposed hyphen,
e.g. for the stem aṅçumát, the form aṅçumátīm is given as -átīm. Only if
two different stems (e.g. ábibhīvas, weak ábibhyus) are given, forms are
given from the point where the two stems differ (e.g. -yuṣā for
ábibhyuṣā). In entries of verbal forms, all finite forms precede the
non-finite forms, and in particular the forms of the base verb precede
those of the passives, causatives, intensives, and desideratives. Among
these, the forms derived from the present tense stem (simply called
stem) are placed at the beginning. The bare present tense stem or its
Verstärkung [FR: meaning not clear to me, guna and vriddhi forms are
sometimes called Verstärkung, literally: “its
strengthening / intensification / enhancement / reinforcement”] is placed in
front of these as a heading. After this the individual word forms in
abbreviated form follow, similar to entries of nouns. Among these forms,
all active voice forms precede the middle voice forms, the modal
categories are given in the order ind., conj., opt., imperative; where
there are multiple conjunctive forms [FR: subjunctive?], the present
tense form will precede the imperfective form. In all moods, the finite
forms are given in the familiar order. Following the present tense stems
and under a new heading, the imperfect forms derived from the same stem
are given, as long as the augment is preserved. Imperfect forms without
the augment coincide with the second conjunctive [FR: subjunctive?] and
are given under conjunctives. The perfect forms follow in the same
manner, then the (rare) plusquamperfect and future forms (ending in
-iṣyāmi), followed by the aorist. The non-finite forms start with the
participles belonging to the different tenses, followed by the
participles that do not belong to a particular tense and are not derived
from tense forms. Then in no particular order, follow the participles
ending in -ta or -na, which I call for reasons of brevity Part. II.,
then the participles ending in -tṙ as Part. III., and following that the
participles -tva, -ya (-enya etc.) as Part. IV. The participles have
been given under these names, because the usual names for them are
completely useless. These are followed by the absolutives (-ya, -tvā
etc.) and the infinitives, finally the verbale (verbal noun) is given
(see above). In the citations, the corresponding noun is given for every
adjective, for every genitive the noun or verb on which it depends is
also given, for every verb its inflection is reported and for the nouns
the particularly characteristic adjectives are added. What precedes the
numerical reference refers to all immediately following passages.
However, a word is placed in parentheses, if it does not occur in the
cited form in the next instance. The material following the quotation
relates only to these passages. In case an instance is given with its
context, the character — replaces the reference word form. The text
edition by Aufrecht forms the base of the dictionary. However, the
corrections by M. Müller have been consistently incorporated. I do
diverge from Aufrecht’s transcription where he represents a single sound
by two letters, as these relations can be highly confusing in a
dictionary. For this end, I write ṙ instead of ṛi, r̄ instead of ṙî, ṣ
instead of sh, ē instead of ai, and ō instead of au. These last two
spellings cannot give rise to confusion. For comparative works, these
two as well as the characters e and o have to be avoided and e=ai, o=au,
ē=āi, ō=āu should be used. The composite spelling has been preserved for
aspirated stops. This is admissible because they are placed in the same
position in the lexicographic order, regardless of whether they are
treated as a single or two letters. I also preserved the compound sign
ḷi, as it only occurs in the root kalp. In the representation of the
accents, I deviate (from Aufrecht), in that I indicate the accent-less
long vowel by a macron and the accented long vowel by a roof (^) – so ā
instead of â, â instead of ấ – and in that I represent svarita by an
accent on the preceding semi-vowel (y, v), e.g. asmadrýac instead of
asmadryàc. Where semi-vowels are pronounced as vowels, I write them as
such: there is no word mártya, ámartya in the RV, but only mártia,
ámartia, and I could not bring myself to include those non-forms into
the dictionary. However, for practical reasons, I added them in
parentheses and posited them for the lexicographic order. Likewise, I
have removed the phonological alterations between words (sandhi), which
is particularly helpful for lexical transparency. Where the original
text has sandhi beween vowels, I placed a ˘ between the vowels. How far
the written representation deviates from the sandhis as required by the
meter is particulary well illustrated by the interaction of a or ā with
an ṙ of a following word. In the traditional text these two vowels are
always separated. On the metrical side, they are only separated when -a,
-ā correspond to -as, -e, -ās, -ē, or -ār, -ān (in the obsolete
nominative form mātâr, hótār, víbhvān, which have to be posited in
399,6; 127,10; 329,3; 332,6; 564,3 and which correspond to Greek μήτηρ
etc.) and where the complete orthographic form has to be restored or
when ṙ is followed by a double consonant (ṙtvíya 275,2; ṙṣṭí 167,3;
169,3; 648,5) so that here an accumulation of three consonants is
avoided or when the adjoining vowels belong to two metrically distinct
lines (where sandhi metrically never occurs, yet where it always occurs
in prose, as soon as the hyphen [FR: literally “sign of separation”] is
missing) or finally when the joining vowels are separated by an incision
of the verse. The latter occurs rarely (five times): 319,7; 357,9;
202,12; 906,7; 956,6. In all other cases a, ā with following ṙ result in
ar. (The case of 925,2, where the sandhi does not occur, the two
instances 688,4 und 913,15, where it does occur against the rules, are
based on erroneous reading.) From these phenomena, we have to draw the
conclusion that the suffixes -as, -e (= a+i), -ās, -ē (= ā+i) had not yet
lost their final consonant (s, i or y) before ṙ and probably also not
before any other vowel. This justifies the spelling I employed even
further. This spelling can never give rise to any confusion as a
comparison with the traditional texts, which justifiably form the base
for the editions, remains always directly possible.
The etymology could not be missing, as it is often central to
determining the meaning of a lemma. However, I kept the etymology as
short as possible by referencing Curtius, Grundzüge der griechischen
Etymologie (Cu.), Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen
Sprachen 1870 (Fi.) , Kuhn, Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Sprachforschung (Ku.), Böhtlingk und Roth, Sanskrit-Wörterbuch (BR.),
Benfey, Glossar zum Sāma-Veda (Be. SV. gl.), as well as occassionally
referencing other works. Compounds are indicated by a hyphen seperating
the parts of the compound.
I have derived the meaning, where it seemed necessary, in its context
from reconstructable basic meaning, but then simply by consecutive
numbers for meaning and usage in a manner that seemed the most useful
for the understanding of the cited passages, put in sequence and related
to the referenced passeages, so that it becomes apparent which meaning
or usage I attribute to the word in each referenced passage. Here,
subjective understanding plays a crucial role and later work will find
many reasons for corrections. In particular, since I distinguished
meanings or usages that are only separated by soft shades of meaning. This
was done to make my work as usable as possible.
The publishing house in Leipzig has acquired the services of two capable
young correctors, for the extremely time-consuming work of proofreading.
Accorinding to the nature of the matter, the main part of the work
remains with me. I can assert with certainty that at least up to now all
passages are referrenced correctly and that this stands to be the case
in the future, as far as it is in my power. Thus, the remaining printing
errors (which, with all due care, are unavoidable) will be easily
controlled.
Since I reference the songs by consecutive numbers (as done by
Aufrecht), so I may indicate a concordance between these consecutive
numbers and the reference system that numbers the ten books of the RV
separately:
| 1-191 = 1.1-1.191,
| 192-244 = 2,1-2,43
| 235-296 = 3.1- 3.62,
| 297--354 = 4.1-4.58,
| 355--441 = 5.1--5.87,
| 442--516 = 6.1-6.75,
|
| 517--620 = 7.1-7.104,
| 621--712 = 8,1--8,92,
| 713--826 = 9.1-9.114,
| 827--1017 = 10.1 to 10.191,
| 1018--1028 = Vālakhilya 1-11.
Stettin/Szczecin 10th August 1872.
The author.
English translation courtesy of Dr. Felix Rau, University of Cologne, 2018.