Les Nasatya, vol. 1.

• Author: Jamison, Stephanie W.
• Position: Review

By ERIC PIRART. Bibiliotheque de philosophie et lettres de l'Universite de Liege, fasc. CCLXI. Liege: Bibliotheque de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Universite de Liege, 1995. Pp. 459.

It is something of a scandal that neither in English nor in French does there exist a complete, modern (twentieth-century) translation of the Rig Veda. French fares much better than English, however, since the late L. Renou, in the series of publications entitled Etudes vediques et panineennes (1955-69), translated most of the major hymnic cycles and provided notes for some others left untranslated. He also demonstrated the utility of his approach: rather than translating mandala by mandala, he grouped together the hymns dedicated to particular divinities, whatever the bard or mandala. By this method the similarity of diction and formulae associated with a particular god or goddess emerges clearly, and such matters as compositional technique and the structure of mythic complexes can be investigated across a defined corpus.

One of the divinity cycles he did not get around to translating is that dedicated to the Asvins, though he did publish notes to their hymns as the first half of EVP XVI (1967). These gods, also known as the Nasatyas, are somewhat enigmatic twins associated with the Dawn who provide various services to mortals. The poetry devoted to them is often elaborate and almost always tantalizingly allusive, with references to myths no longer known to us.

The author of the volume under review seeks to continue the work of Renou, by translating not only the whole hymns dedicated to these gods, but also every verse in which they are mentioned, thus providing an even fuller corpus (than that envisioned by Renou) in which to investigate their characteristics. This volume begins with a brief discussion of the names of the Asvins (pp. 15-25) and ends with five "marginales" (pp. 401-46), but the heart of the volume is the translation of and commentary on every verse mentioning and every hymn dedicated to the Asvins in the First Mandala of the Rig Veda.

Pirart is best known as a scholar of Old Avestan and author, with J. Kellens, of the multivolume translation and commentary on the Old Avestan corpus, Les Textes vieil-avestiques (3 vols., 1988-91). The approach of those volumes was bold and speculative on all levels, from grammatical minutiae to religious ideology. Indeed, boldness and speculation are often the only alternative in Old Avestan, where the brevity...