From: G&P
Message: 64829
Date: 2009-08-19
I hesitate to debate the Rg-Veda with someone much more competent and versed in it than I, but I believe Shivraj’s post needs a response. My basic point is that there is more than one way of interpreting those passages (as there generally is with religious texts!) For example, the Penguin translation of 10:14:8 instructs the dead soul to “merge with a glorious body”, which is closer to a union with the divine, than to reincarnation. Likewise in RV 1:164, where the penguin translator suggests the cowherd is the sun, not the soul. He who sees the sun does not see the night, and vice versa. In any case, 1:164 is a riddle, and particularly obscure and difficult to interpret.
My point is not that Shivraj must be wrong. Rather I am saying that the texts are obscure and difficult, and can bear more than one interpretation, so they cannot be used to prove definitively the existence of an idea which is not clearly present elsewhere.
Peter