Hindu Scriptures.

• Author: Sullivan, Bruce M.
• Position: Review

Edited with new translations by DOMINIC GOODALL, based on an anthology by R. C. ZAEHNER. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS; London: J. M. DENT, 1996. Pp. lii + 410. $45 (cloth); $16.95 (paper).

This book is a revised version of R. C. Zaehner's anthology published thirty years earlier.(1) Most of that collection remains unchanged in this volume, but some portions of Zaehner's selections have been omitted to allow inclusion of material not in the earlier anthology - parts of the Yajnvalkya Smrti, the Kirana Tantra, and the Bhagavata Purana. Selections from these texts have been added to Zaehner's anthology with "the principal aim [being] to broaden the book's scope" (p. ix). Zaehner's translations are retained except as noted below.

The anthology's selection of Vedic poems includes twelve whole or partial poems from the Rg Veda (15 pages) and four from the Atharva Veda (17 pages). The Rg poems are, entitled and in the order presented, as follows: 3.62.10: The Gayatri Mantra; 1.24: To Varun. a and Others; 1.154: To Vis. n.u; 2.1: To Agni; 2.12: To Indra (these two translated by Franklin Edgerton); 2.33: To Rudra (Siva); 9.74: Soma Pressed in the Bowls (tr. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty); 10.81: To Visvakarman (The 'All-Maker'); 10.82: To Visvakarman; 10.90: The Sacrifice of Primal Man (purusa); 10.121: Prajapati (The 'Golden Embryo'); 10.129: 'In the Beginning . . .'. The Rg poems are a group that many specialists would regard as unrepresentative of the text as a whole; that two poems to Visvakarman are included and only one to Indra highlights the point. The different styles of the three translators provides some jarring moments for the reader, as shifts from "thou" to "you" or "thine" to "your" in adjacent poems go unremarked.

The Atharva Veda selections are as follows: 10.2: Primal Man; 10.7: Skambha (The Support); 10.8: Skambha again; 11.4: To the Breath of Life ('Prana'). These selections also may be regarded as less than typical of the text as a whole. As noted by Dominic Goodall (p. ix): "From among the Vedic hymns, [Zaehner] has included only ones which point forward to later developments, and this weakness has been remedied by supplementing his selection with three more hymns from the Rg-Veda." Many readers might have hoped for additional poems, so that the "weakness" be remedied further.

The largest single section of the volume is devoted to the upanisads (161 pp.), and includes most of the Brhadaranyaka and...