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October 15, 2005

Vedic hermenuetics

Heinrich Luders' posthumously published work Varuna fired my imagination and prompted me to come to close grips with the text of the Rigveda with eyes unclouded by the valuable but in many ways disputable work of earlier Vedists (p.273). The philological work on which his conclusions are based is impeccable and even brilliant, as Paul Thieme acknowledges (281). The work of interpreters like Bergaigne, Oldenberg, Bloomfield, Luders, Renou, Thiem and Gonda (are) of great interest(112). I suppose, one can, with some ingenuity interpret all the Vedic deities thus, following Meillet's principle, already adumbrated half a century ago by Usener, that they are all deifications and personifications of abstract concepts (291). [J.L.Mehta: 1990]

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