Reading vedas

Source: TW

We can only hope that people take the advice in a friendly spirit.
The veda is not your typical “spiritual book”. The sam̐hita portions are NOT to be read like:

  1. bhakti-stutis/stotras
  2. Instructive texts such as smṛtis including gītā or upadeśas in purāṇas & itihāsas.

The veda is not to be treated as a text that speaks to “Hindus” generically.
The mantras in the veda are not directions on what to do or avoid.
Nor are they a straightforward discussion of “spiritual truths”.
The mantras have a deep meaning that isn’t easy to discern.
The mantra portion of the veda
is inseparable from the ritual portion of the veda.
One cannot ignore that when trying to understand the mantras.

The mantras have to be grasped
with the aid of the brāhmaṇas, mīmām̐sā, kalpa, nirukta, vyākaraṇa &
the reflections on the deeper import of vedamantras by pūrvācāryas.

This is a laborious & painful process
that would require guidance for most.
The veda was never intended to be a direct, immediate resort for all.(5)
It is most certainly not intended for any casual, “family reading”. There are so many other texts given by our sages. Why not pick up one of them instead?

A rather famous example of the nonsense that results from a casual reading of the veda
& the meaning as grasped by tradition: shishv-AngIrasa
One fine example of such pedestrian take here. A very deep verse about a very subtly placed insight about mind & speech in the context of ritual has been transformed into an utterly insipid, plebeian take on “everyone gets to choose their jobs”.

Grammatical translations

The issue is; reading translations with zero idea of how the veda “works” is going to be productive of exactly Zero wisdom. I’m talking about reading. The great ācārya of kāñci himself has mentioned that to acquire the meaning of veda is available for all. But what happens these days?

People with zero insider knowledge of the veda come with certain expectations as to how the veda will act like a text. Their notion of the veda as a text is inspired by the majority of the world’s religious texts, including other Hindu texts. Terribly misplaced expectations.

Their expectations are with respect to the ordinary, grammatical meaning of the text. They then read grammatical translations of the veda & find that their expectations have utterly failed.

Someone in the original thread commented that the translation on a website doesn’t make sense. I’m willing to bet that in most cases, the translation is, as a grammatical translation, a rather acceptable one. Two things usually happen after this point.

  1. Someone reads the grammatical translation & gets utterly disillusioned with the text as it doesn’t make sense to him.
  2. Or, in the alternative, that someone resorts to “deep” interpretations of the veda, which often turn out to be nonsensical.

Many people are deeply desperate for the veda to read like “normal” religious texts,
which “address” them or “discuss” issues of interest to them
or hold the same old values they cherish today.
So, you see many pedestrian takes on the veda.