Many Foolish leftists level accusations regarding Nirukti, claiming that in modern times certain groups misuse Vedangas like Nirukta to please their ‘Vaishya’ donors or patrons by deriving wrong meanings of Vedic words and attempting to alter the history of “Hindus eating beef.”
Portraying Nirukta as an imaginary or fabricated tool is nothing but a major misunderstanding of ancient Indian linguistics and the erroneous notions built upon it.
Nirukta is one of the six Vedangas, and traditionally Lord Shiva is regarded as the original propounder or first teacher of this Nirukta-vidya. In the ancient Vedic period, many grammarians and etymologists such as Shakatayana, Gargya, Shakapuni and Audumbarayana enriched it. Maharshi Yaska systematically gave this tradition the form of a treatise. His work ‘Nirukta’ is considered the oldest and principal available text of this shastra. Nirukta-shastra plays a special role in understanding the meanings, etymology and definitions of the difficult and ancient words used in the Vedas.
The fundamental purpose of ‘Nirukta’ is to determine the etymological or origin-based meaning of Vedic words. There exists a vast difference between classical Sanskrit and Vedic Sanskrit. The Sanskrit words we use in daily life are mostly ‘rudhi’ words, meaning a word has one fixed and limited meaning. But every word of the Vedic language is ‘yaugika’ or derived from a root. That is, a single Vedic word can yield many meanings according to its action or quality. This is not some modern fabricated idea; rather, it is the sole shastric method of understanding the Veda.
For example, the word ‘go’ may be taken. In ordinary Sanskrit, ‘go’ means only cow. But according to Nirukta, the word ‘go’ is derived from the root ‘gam’, which means to move or to acquire knowledge. Therefore, in the Veda the meaning of ‘go’ is not merely cow but also the earth, the rays of the sun, speech, the organs of knowledge and water. When words like ‘go’ or ‘ashva’ are used in Vedic mantras, their meaning changes according to context. From the spiritual viewpoint, the meaning of ‘gomedha’ is not the sacrifice of any animal but the control of one’s own senses or the enrichment of the earth’s grain and wealth. Similarly, the meaning of ‘ashvamedha’ is the increase of the power and prosperity of the nation, because the meaning of ‘ashva’ is dynamic power or the state and the meaning of ‘medha’ is organisation or growth. These meanings were not invented today to protect the interests of any patron; rather, these rules have remained recorded for centuries in Yaska’s Nirukta. Therefore, calling the use of Nirukta imaginary is completely baseless.
It is also necessary to understand how wrong the accusation of erasing or editing history to destroy it is. Leftists say that Brahmins deliberately erase references to meat-eating. This argument is itself self-contradictory. If from ancient times the Brahmin or priestly class had the power to erase history according to their wish, then how could the examples that leftists quote from outside the Veda still survive in the texts today?
The very shlokas of the Shatapatha Brahmana, Manusmriti, Mahabharata or Ramayana that we read today to conduct this debate were preserved generation after generation by those traditional scholars through memorisation and writing on palm leaves. If they had wished to destroy history or prove themselves exclusively vegetarian, they could easily have eliminated all inconvenient shlokas long ago. But they did not do so. This clearly proves that in the Indian tradition there was an incomparable integrity in preserving texts in their original form, not in distorting history.
Further, looking at the history of Vedic commentaries, it is known that in ancient times words were interpreted at three levels: adhibhautika, adhidaivika and adhyatmika. In the medieval period, when the ritualistic aspect of yajna gained greater prominence, famous commentators like Sayana and Mahidhara interpreted the Veda only from the yajniya or adhibhautika viewpoint, and the meanings of those commentaries came to be seen as connected with the theme of animal sacrifice. People derived different meanings from what the commentators had said. In the medieval period Indian society was influenced by the polluted rule and traditions of foreign invaders, and the extent of animal sacrifice and meat-eating in society also increased. Since society was then in a transitional phase and people’s intellect had become corrupted, they interpreted those Vedic mantras on the basis of their own bestial mentality.
Later, in modern times, when scholars like Swami Dayananda Saraswati wrote commentaries on the Veda, they did not invent anything new; rather, by reviving Maharshi Yaska’s ‘Nirukta’ they once again brought the true spiritual and adhidaivika aspects of the Veda to the fore. This cannot be called erasing history; rather, it is the rightful restoration of an ancient knowledge-system that had fallen victim to misunderstanding.
The evolution of food habits in Indian society is a natural and long historical process. In ancient times, before the full development of agriculture and in societies living under harsh geographical conditions, meat-eating may have been a part of livelihood during forest-dwelling or wartime. But over time ahimsa became the principal foundation of Indian philosophy. Due to the spirituality of the Upanishads, the influence of Jain and Buddhist religions, attraction towards sattvic living, and the extensive development of animal husbandry and agricultural economy, restrictions on beef and other meat-eating arose spontaneously in society. In the Veda the cow is clearly called ‘aghnya’, meaning not to be killed, because of its immense usefulness.
Therefore, taking every Vedic metaphor or figure of speech only in the sense of meat or violence and calling a universally accepted shastric authority like ‘Nirukta’, which provides its deep spiritual meaning, a conspiracy of today’s capitalists or funders is not true scholarship; it is merely an attempt to impose one’s own limited understanding upon others.
The translation of Vedic literature is not the translation of any ordinary story-book. For this, deep knowledge of the six Vedangas—Shiksha, Kalpa, Vyakarana, Nirukta, Chhanda and Jyotisha—is essential. Those who do not understand the depth of this Vedic grammar or who rely completely on the literal translations of Western translators become confused by looking only at the external meaning of words. Brahmins or Sanatanis are not hiding anything from history by taking the help of Nirukta; rather, they are trying to place before society the true message of the Veda on the basis of ancient India’s finest linguistics. The accusation of distorting history collapses of its own accord when we see that these shastras, containing descriptions of different views, levels and practices, are still freely available throughout the country without any hindrance.
It is also proper to know here the deeper reason behind the leftists’ attack on Nirukta in this manner. In leftist ideology there is a policy of opposing all elements related to religion, ritual and culture. In the beginning, money used to come from Europe, America and Russia to make society atheistic. At that time foreign Christian missionaries wanted that once Indian society became atheistic and abandoned Hinduism, it would become easy to convert them into Christians. Therefore money came from abroad and some leading leftists were made atheists, and later those atheist leftists opposed all forms of worship, texts and Puranic narratives.
But what do the leftists gain by attacking ‘Nirukta’?
Ancient Indian linguistic thought and the ‘Nirukta’-shastra have exercised a profound and significant influence on the development of modern linguistics, especially historical-comparative linguistics, morphology and semantics. The fundamental principle of Nirukta-shastra that “all nouns or substantives are derived from some verbal root or roots” became the foundation of modern Indo-European linguistics. Later, European linguists drew inspiration from this method to search for the original forms or ‘Proto-Roots’ of words in various languages. Further, in Nirukta-shastra words have been divided into four main categories—nama (Noun), akhyata (Verb), upasarga (Preposition/Prefix) and nipata (Particle). This clear and scientific classification has deeply influenced the classification of modern grammar and structuralist linguistics.
Similarly, the discussion of how the true meaning of a word changes over time, according to context or through metaphor, was first carried out in Nirukti. This has become a path-finder for the study of semantic shift in modern semantics. The arrival, disappearance, distortion and sandhi-related changes of sounds at the time of word-formation have been analysed with extreme subtlety in Nirukta-shastra. Influenced by this analysis, the foundation of modern historical phonetics and the comparative study of morphology was laid. In the nineteenth century, when so-called European scholars such as Franz Bopp and Max Muller came into contact with the Sanskrit language and the Indian tradition of grammar-nirukti, they were inspired to study language not merely as a medium of speaking but as a rule-governed and evolving scientific system. That is, ancient Indian Nirukta-shastra and Indian shastric grammar themselves provided a scientific viewpoint for understanding the origin, meaning and evolution of language in a logical manner, and that became a strong foundation for the development of modern linguistics.
Before becoming acquainted with India’s Nirukta-shastra and shastric grammar, foreigners merely spoke languages and wrote some books in the name of literature. It was India that inspired them towards modern linguistics. Think how much the faith of Indians in their own shastras, culture and ancient ancestors would increase after knowing this fact. Therefore leftists find fault with Nirukta-shastra for this reason.
The attack being made on Nirukta-shastra is not merely an attack on a text or a shastric method; rather, it is a calculated opportunity to weaken India’s self-confidence, culture and Arsha knowledge-tradition. At a time when other civilisations of the world were learning the primary use of language, Indian sages had already prepared the science of word-formation, verbal roots (Verbal Roots) and subtle semantics (Semantics). Nirukta-shastra is a witness to Indian intellectual genius. Therefore, by rejecting it merely as ‘an excuse to hide violence’, the true capability of ancient Indian linguistics cannot be covered up. Texts like ‘Nirukta-shastra’ and Panini’s ‘Ashtadhyayi’ remain even today a supreme wonder for all linguists of the world.
Therefore it is clear that the message of the Veda is not confined within any limited history or material interest. When with the help of the Vedanga ‘Nirukta’ we try to understand its spiritual and logical meaning, any fabricated propaganda or political web of illusion disappears of its own accord. The foundation of Indian culture is so true and knowledge-based that all attempts to distort it are bound to fail with the passage of time.
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