If you might possibly be interested in virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, or to engage in English-language discussions of the Great Books of Western, Eastern, Indic, and/or Islamic Civilizations, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
Pertaining to Sanskrit and the Rigveda, what is your assessment on which text(s) to pursue and strength/weaknesses of the following translations? Now, there are no published English translations of Sāyaṇa's Veda-bhāṣyas. Only two of his prefaces or bhūmikās to his Veda-bhāṣyas have been published in English translation: Peter Peterson translated Sāyaṇa's preface to the Ṛgveda-bhāṣya, published in 1890 in volume XLI of the Bombay Sanskrit Series, Handbook to the Study of the Rigveda, Part I, and reprinted in 1974 by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute as Sāyaṇa's Preface to the Ṛgvedabhāṣya. Dr. Saraswati Bali translated Sāyaṇa's Upodghāta to the Taittirīya Saṃhitā and the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā, published in 1999 by Pratibha Prakashan, Delhi. But In attempting to learn more about the Rigveda / Rg-veda,, which alternate English translation would you deem the best from the seven complete English translations that are out there? There is: 1. H. H. Wilson, Ṛig-veda Sanhitá, 6 volumes, London: Trübner and Co., 1850-1888. 2. Ralph T. H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigveda, 4 volumes, Benares: E. J. Lazarus and Co., 1889-1892. 3. Svami Satya Prakash Sarasvati and Satyakam Vidyalankar, Ṛgveda Samhitā, 13 volumes in 12 bindings, New Delhi: Veda Pratishthana, 1977-1987. 4. R. L. Kashyap, Rig Veda Samhita, 10 volumes in 12 bindings, Bangalore: Sri Aurobindo Kapāli Sāstry Institute of Vedic Culture, 2004-2009. 5. Prasanna Chandra Gautam, Modern English Translation of The Rig Veda Samhitaa, 4 volumes, Kathmandu: Kulachandra Gautam Smriti Sansthaan, 2012. 6. Tulsi Ram, Ṛg Veda, 4 volumes, Delhi: Arsh Sahitya Prachar Trust, 2013 (not seen by me). 7. Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, The Rigveda, 3 volumes, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. I would like to know your approach/assessment, but here is mine (if interested): My assessment: Wilson believed that Sāyaṇa understood the Vedas far better than any outsider could. He therefore took Sāyaṇa as his authority for the meaning of the Vedic words and verses, and closely followed Sāyaṇa’s commentary throughout his translation. Griffith tried to strike a balance between Sāyaṇa’s interpretations and the interpretations of the German scholars who rejected Sāyaṇa, such as Rudolph Roth. His translation is in English verse, which means that he had to adapt the meaning he understood to fit the required number of English syllables. Satya Prakash and Vidyalankar followed the Arya Samaj line of thought, which rejected Sāyaṇa altogether. However, as comparison will show, they adopted much of Wilson’s translation, and thereby brought in quite a bit of Sāyaṇa’s interpretation, perhaps unwittingly to themselves. Kashyap followed the Sri Aurobindo line of thought, which also rejected Sāyaṇa. His translation includes some of Sri Aurobindo’s psychological interpretations of the Vedas, meanings which were also elaborated by Kapali Sastry in his unfinished Sanskrit commentary. Gautam and his team of co-translators tried to jointly ascertain the meaning of the Vedic verses, and when they reached unanimity on this they attempted to put this meaning into modern English. This translation differs quite a bit from the other English translations. Tulsi Ram’s translation is described in the online listings as following the Arya Samaj line of thought. The one verse I saw from it seemed to be an expanded paraphrase rather than a translation as such. Jamison and Brereton’s translation is subtitled “The Earliest Religious Poetry of India,” which shows their approach. It draws upon the advances in scholarship over the last century, and will replace Karl Geldner’s German translation as the standard of reference for most Western scholars. Thank you.
The Great Ideas Syntopicon sounds positively wonderful! As a person who can easily get lost in or overwhelmed by a big book, having even a simple but thorough index like that sounds marvellous! And it would be great for doing research, to help figure out what sorts of arguments people used to make about certain issues. For me that would easily be the most important book of the bunch, even if it's useless on its own.
Thanks for the comment, Yan. As I mention in the video, the Syntopicon is what makes this collection so much more than a bunch of books assembled from a list, so it is indeed a "great" book in and of itself.
Beautiful video! Thank you, sir! I'm fond of classics. My favourite editions, in English, are those of Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics. I'm aware of other scholarly classics such as the Columbia University Press series of Asian Classics and the Library of Arabic Literature by New York University Press. Regarding the Arabic vowels or diacritics (I'm a native speaker), they are not always printed, especially in Modern Standard Arabic, because they don't pose a problem for educated speakers of Arabic. The context usually determines which word is meant. Otherwise, they are normally printed in scholarly editions, for important quotations or when words are unfamiliar or might be mistaken for other words since many Arabic words could be homographs, having the same written form but different diacritics and meanings. For example, كفر without diacritics could mean, among several meanings, "to disbelieve", "to cover" and "a small village".
Thank you for the appreciation, and for confirming that scholarly editions of important works are always provided with vowels by Arabic publishers for Arabic audiences. If they are needed there, then how much more do we non-native scholars need them in our editions!
It's so saddening to know that life is too short to tackle all these great works. Some of the works of epic poetry and that one encyclopedia you described sound so fascinating, but I know I will probably never get to those in translation (if that even exists), not to mention in the original language,
They say life expectancy is going up and leisure hours are increasing, but not even double a normal life span would enable one to even really scratch all that is worth reading, alas...
One of my favourite videos yet! Although I constantly have to fight with myself to stay on track as far my language goals go, I must say that 5-volume set by James Legge is _awfully_ tempting. There's even a first-edition set available on AbeBooks for the generous price of $24,500. I can feel an interest in Chinese being rekindled. Somebody please stop me before I lose control...I feel a polyitis flare-up coming on...ahhhhhh!
Lol. You'd probably be better off paying someone to print and bind all 5 volumes using the pdfs on archive org than to buy any of the editions I've seen Abebooks or Ebay.
This is why I always favored a brick-and-mortar academy - I am not using that set at the moment, so you would be more than welcome to do so if we were in the same location.
@@ProfASAr a bit of a misunderstanding. The joke was ment for Christopher Stead. A great video nonetheless. Now I know with what I'll be partially busy for the next decade or so :) I've managed the 900 pages of Shahnameh not so long ago, which was one of the most difficult, craziest and wildest things I have ever read, so I'll probably manage the rest too. Somehow.
In addition to the Loeb series, Collection Budé produces bilingual French-Latin/Greek editions. The Oxford Classical Texts series is a set of Greek and Latin *monolingual* editions with annotations in the respective languages only. I believe this is true of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series as well. I'd love to obtain some monolingual classical texts, but I suspect they would collect more dust than fingerprints for the foreseeable future...
I'm having trouble learning Persian, despite easy grammatically, its vocabulary is very different and I feel like I can't memorise, how can I deal with it?
You should never try to memorize vocabulary! Not for Persian, not for any language! Learn vocabulary by learning dialogues, sentences, reading. Time spent memorizing vocabulary is time ill spent, time wasted!
It is interesting to know that the great German poet Goethe had been influenced by Persian literature so much so that he composed his West-östlicher Divan inspired by his admiration for Persian literature.
Thank you for reminding us of this. It is for reasons like this, and the Alexander epics, that I think in the future there may be more canons of world literature rather than of individual civilizations.
I'm really enjoying the videos on the great books. I'm currently trying to get as good of a deal as I can on a second edition so I get the updated 60 volume set. Do the Gateway to the Great Books series contain pieces of content from the full Great Books collection or are they unique content? I've signed up for your notification list.
It's unfortunate that the Southeast Asian civilizations have no Great Books list. Maybe the Philippines and Indonesia, but nothing is actually canonized, and almost none are read dutifully in the secondary level schools. I can totally see the difference between cultural and language habits because of this. Someone can insert Chinese proverbs with ease and comfort since it's common, while it's harder to do that in Tagalog without sounding pretentious or elitist. Southeast Asia is also more prone to historical amnesia, while China and India are generally more resistant. Thanks for this tour of your collection. I'll try to give myself 20 years to get through all of the books you've shown. I have lots of time other than things I have to be reading.
Hey back with more questions. Many years ago, you made a post on a particular web forum that if you had to pick a favorite language, you would pick Persian. Do you still feel this way? Your enthusiasm for the language and culture is front and center in this video, just wondering to what extent and perhaps even why.
I grew up in New York City and so when was a boy went frequently to both the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Persian tapestry / Arabic fountain / general blue and white tile art and architecture of this civilization on display in those museums always fascinated me and filled me with great tranquility. Even more so for the miniatures or illuminations artwork in books, of which I also have childhood volumes. That said, I have never had the opportunity to "activate" my Persian, and for a language that I love so much, I have never developed it to the degree that I feel I should, or read as much in it as I would like.
Hello! I also feel the Great Books Collection does not reflect enough the Christian tradition but none list is perfect. I was wandering where you would add Jews books, such as the work of Maimonides (please excuse me if you already mentioned it). I feel that kind of work is also in between western and Middle East tradition.
Moses Maimonides certainly belongs somewhere on some list / collection. Medieval Spain was such a mélange of cultures that it is hard to decide where. This is the kind of region that fits equally well into two different civilizations and is therefore an argument for a combined list /collection.
Clay sanskrit library is a wonderful project. However, a large number of sanskrit texts are still untranslated especially books concerning buddhist philosophy and maths sutras. Gérard Huet said that there are 30 million manuscripts in sanskrit, 100 times those in greek and latin combined. While the authenticity of that statements remain uncertain as manuscripts are being discovered, it's safe to say that more sanskrit works should be collected and translated. Myself being an indian, I knew more about Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologicae but didn't know about Nyayakusumanjali by Udyanacharya which defends existence of god on philosophical grounds, that too in 10th century CE.
@@ProfASAr I think its absurd. Either they should have written in devanagari or should have only written the translated english without any transliterated sanskrit. Devanagari is not hard to grasp(unlike chinese) and it's strictly designed for preserving sanskrit chants. Many characters have sounds which don't exist in any indian language. It also condenses words into shorter space unlike IAST which makes words look very long and complicated. Also devanagari looks more beautiful than IAST. It's also not surprising to me because few politicians wanted all indian languages to adopt latin script. Thankfully, they're a minority.
@@Aman-qr6wi Thank you for the insider perspective, which mirrors my own and that of all other outsiders I have ever spoken with. I have never known anyone who thought the Romanized script was a good idea, or who did not want Devanagari instead. It really is absurd. I wonder what on earth they were thinking?
For Chinese I'm rather fond of the Library of Chinese Humanities which are open access online and are at a price I can afford to own physical copy. Thanks for the recommendation for the Clay Sanskrit Library that transliteration decision is weird but I think I will buy one to try it out.
I'm always curious to know why publishers insist on transliterations, either in lieu of the native script, or directly beneath it, for anything more than simple phrase books. They did it with the old Assimil Korean course. Surely anyone serious enough to work through such a manual would be willing to learn such a simple alphabet?
As the Clay Library is a serious scholarly endeavor supported by many with more qualifications and experience that I have in the area, I tried not to let my dismay show too much in the video, but the simple fact is that the use of transliteration rather than Devanagari means that I personally am not particularly eager to acquire more of these volumes for my own collection.
Professor, If you don’t mind me asking, I have a particular question I have really wanted to ask you concerning Persian and Arabic, both of which would greatly help inform my decision about which of these two to study in the future. If a person wanted to learn only one classical language from each of the four great classical literary civilizations of the world in order to get the most “bang for their buck”in terms of the depth and breadth of literature produced in the language, as well as the language’s influence on other languages in the same civilization, would it be fair to say that in Islamic civilization, the importance of Arabic and Persian are closer than any other two languages from any other civilization? It seems pretty clear to me for two of these civilizations what the answer is - Sanskrit for Indic and Classical Chinese for the Far East (all apologies to Tamil and Classical Japanese). One could access over it the overwhelming majority of classical literature in either civilization from learning one of those languages. For the West, while I do prefer Greek more than Latin, and while the two are much closer and importance than any two languages from either India or the Far East, it still seems reasonable for me to give the nod to Latin, based on the overwhelming number of modern European words borrowed from it. For Islamic civilization, it seems to me that after say the turn of 1000 AD, and especially after the fall of the Abbasid caliphate, the center of gravity in literature moves from Arabic to Persian. Furthermore, from all I’ve read it seems like Persian, and not Arabic, had more lexical influence on Turkish and Indic languages. Setting aside the Quran, I ask once more, would it be fair to say that if I just wanted to learn one of these two languages, could one make a decent argument for either Persian or Arabic being the key language to Islamic civilization? By the way, as I marked in the form, please do note that more in depth responses to these types of questions are something I would very much be willing to pay for. I realize the time is precious and writing a long , in-depth response to questions such as these is a task in its own right. Chase
Hello Chase, the situation is very similar to that of Latin and Greek in Western Civilization, to the degree that, in either case, if you choose one over the other on the basis of it being the more important of the two, you are bound to ruffle the feathers of those who favor the other. The fact is that there are two major languages of importance in both traditions, such that it would be logical to learn both. However, life is short and if we also want to learn Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, and other languages, we just can't do it all. So, we might have to just one from each. A factor that you might consider (but at least here have not mentioned) is whether the texts of one language are more widely available in the other. In Europe, for instance, I believe many if not most Greek texts were available in "official" Latin versions during the Middle Ages. Was the reverse true? I don't know, but I think not. Are more Arabic texts available in Persian, or more Persian texts available in Arabic (texts that you can't find in English, French, German, etc.). I don't know. Two other things to consider in this context: 1) Arabic has influenced Persian to a high degree, but the reverse is not true. 2) Persian is considerably easier to learn than Arabic. Hope that helps for now, but you are right, this is too complex for a comment section.
Is buying to many books a 'good habit' or a 'bad habit'? Great introduction to the topics Professor Alexander, I'm straight onto Amazon for reviews. I've started my look at Japan, Russia and the Islamic world with several history, autobiagraphy and culture books.
I don't see how it can be bad to have too many books. You never know which one you might need, and you never know when you might be cut off from the source of getting more, so best stock up now!
@@ProfASAr Makes sense. From an expert too. I found some super interesting books from 20th century Japan. There was one which looked at the Japanese feelings /thoughts about the seasons-art, design, wrighting, rituals...
If you want to read a lot of books . Get the from a library. You have 30days to read it. Every month pick up more books . So your forced to read. I've read hundreds of books this way in only a few years. At the same time stock up on books while you can to at least save for your kids..
@@el.don1975 You are right about this, of course, but for me at least, the fact that library books have to be returned and that I thus need to read them NOW means that I don't read as many of my own books as I would like. If there were no libraries, my own volumes would show more loving wear and tear than they do.
Seems impossible that you wouldn't have read the 11th century Hugh of St Victor who said, "Learn everything; later you will see that nothing is superfluous." He advanced pedagogy around the trivium, languages, also the "mechanical arts".
I was hoping this was a book collection, or at least a list of books in either English or German. Even though I'm curious about other cultures, I don't see myself learning a new language for that. But I guess one or two of the books listed may be of interest to me. I will download this video for a time when I have motivation to actually dive into them. First I have to read the western book collection. If you ever make a book collection of the Great Books of Eastern Civilizations then I could very well be a buyer, as long as it is in English. I like that ending speech of this video. I claim my effort of getting into those books will be slightly lower. I grew up being a Christian and going to a secular school. I like to jokingly say I grew up bilingual when it comes to world views. Thanks to my Christian upbringing I also had some insight into some missionary works, which obviously includes fundamentally different world views. And ever since I had access to the internet I started exploring some stuff. I discovered the east Asian literature. Of course the mangas and animes have some level of their cultural background in there. But in my opinion the wuxia novels, which are of considerable length at times, carry more of the cultural knowledge and thinking patterns with them. I have finished three of them and I'm halfway through a forth. Even though it is fantasy, concepts like reincarnation, taoism or even tales like the journey to the west or pangu and the creation of the world are common themes. And in the last few years I started watching the conversation between Christians and Muslims of who has the right view of the world. One of my favorite channels is Reasoned Answers, where one of the regular guests does approximately one 4h stream per week on the origins of Islam. She get's really deep into the scholarship of the Islamic and Pre-Islamic history. I also am roughly aware of the content of the Quran, the hadiths and the sharia law. Of course all of this does not come close to reading their great books and being capable of reading their language. But it at least makes me aware that people of different cultures have some disagreements on some core values which we often take so much for granted that we are not even aware of them. To me getting to know different cultures is a good method to learn more about reality. I also follow the philosophy and apologetics scene a bit, because I think that it is worth finding the truth and sharing it with other people. As a Christian who grew up in the west, I am obviously biased in what I think that reality looks like. But I think I have justified reasons to have that bias. You come across to me like you read this stuff for the sole purpose of curiosity of what is out there. Would you say there is an objective moral and and some cultures have come closer to finding the truth than others?
I wish I could actually do this, but my severe ADHD will be a huge hurdle. I wish I could download all of this into my head and just let it interconnect and let me see the world more clearly.
Thanks for the great video. Just a note that the Korean/English teachings of Buddha book may be produced for hotel rooms. In Japan they often have exactly the same in Japanese and English. In the same was we have Gideon bibles in hotel rooms in the UK.
As an Arab I would like to suggest a classic book that is said to be one of the greatest texts ever written in Arabic due to the richness of the language it has been written with. Its name is مقامات الحريري
Thank you for this excellent recommendation. I aim to repost my lists of Great Books on my new website in the near future. I will try to remember to add this if it is not already on my Middle Eastern list. If you should notice that I forget, please do not hesitate to remind me!
Would you be kind enough to provide the entire reading list for the eastern civilization? It would be really helpful for someone like me who get lost in the vast vast ocean of eastern literature and find it hard to filter out quality content.
Interesting collection and great points. I am not as familiar with Southeast Asia as much as I would like, but I know literature from Southeast Asian civilizations is sure to provide some interesting links between East Asia, Indic, and Islamic civlizations.
Thank you for the input, Paul. As I am gearing up to start my academy, I am thinking of ways that it can evolve into the kind of training in polyliteracy that I have always envisioned, and if that comes to pass, then developing lists of Great Books from other civilizations, such as Southeast Asia, could be a great thesis project.
@@ProfASAr I think both are great ideas. In my opinion, a fantastic polyliteracy thesis project would be for a student to develop the language skills to find precisely those kind of connections between such civlizations!
Hello professor, personal question for you this time. Do you typically work through one book at a time or are you a multi-book person? I have done both and found each has their merits and was curious as to your opinion and experience. Thanks for another wonderful video!
Like you, I have done both at different times and found both to have their advantages. Of course, trying to balance many languages pushes you to do a book in each at the same time, but there is also pleasure to be derived from focusing on one thing at a time.
@@ProfASAr I’ve found that to be true in my life. Quick follow up question: do you afford yourself time to read much English language works or do you prefer to focus more on your foreign language acquisition/maintenance? Something I struggle with is I often won’t let myself read something in my native English because I’m putting so much effort into mastering Spanish. Didn’t know if you shared similar sentiments or not. And thanks for the response!
@@evanfont913 I've never found good balance for this. For years I eschewed English altogether, then I wanted to write my own novels in it, realized I needed to some patterning, and read quite a bit. These days again not much at all...
@@ProfASAr since you are talking about your writing I have to ask: woh is it going? I remember how you talked about your novel years ago, where some of your characters were polyglots, I recall something about people trying to preserve humanity´s knowledge (sounded to me like Miller´s A Canticle for Leibowitz at the time - I love that book) - how´s that going?
@@The_Lord_Of_Confusion Every November I write enough to "win" NANWRIMO several times over, then stall out after the event ends, so I have four or five manuscripts in various states of incompletion.
Do you mean historical works that should be considered Great Books? Or do you mean books that will help you place and understand Great Books in their historical context?
@@haicautrang5304 You could start with Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/A-E/D/draper/drap1.htm or archive.org/details/historyofintelle01drapuoft/mode/2up
OMG, I'm out of breath for you. It's very distracting. You might think about talking slower or take some small pauses more often. The content is very interesting, thankfully.
Dr. Arguelles , I find myself curious about the "great books of the east asian civilization" By a linguistic definition, if they are written in that neat classical chinese language, shouldn`t we have some Viet Nam texts? I am not an east asian scholar by any stretch of imagination and I do not understand most of the ideas in those important texts, but I know that the Sinosphere- area that is influenced linguistically and historically by classical chinese- is known by the acronym CJKV, meaning China, Korea, Japan and Viet Nam. I know that the vietnamese scholars even created their own characters based on the chinese characters, and used them to write vietnamese. Would this not put some classic vietnamese works also in the east asian canon? Why was Viet Nam not mentioned?
I wish I had a good answer for you, William, but I don't. As I mention in the video, defining civilizations and cultural circles is always contentious.
The reason it wasn’t mentioned most likely has to do with bias - Vietnam is largely overshadowed by its Northern neighbours and there’s far fewer people that know enough about Vietnam and its cultural legacy to pick out great books. On top of that I believe Vietnam was sort of late to the party and didn’t produce much of note in the Middle Ages. But you’d have to consult a history book.
The reason it wasn’t mentioned most likely has to do with bias - Vietnam is largely overshadowed by its Northern neighbours and there’s far fewer people that know enough about Vietnam and its cultural legacy to pick out great books. On top of that I believe Vietnam was sort of late to the party and didn’t produce much of note in the Middle Ages. But you’d have to consult a history book.
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If you might possibly be interested in virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, or to engage in English-language discussions of the Great Books of Western, Eastern, Indic, and/or Islamic Civilizations, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
Pertaining to Sanskrit and the Rigveda, what is your assessment on which text(s) to pursue and strength/weaknesses of the following translations?
Now, there are no published English translations of Sāyaṇa's Veda-bhāṣyas. Only two of his prefaces or bhūmikās to his Veda-bhāṣyas have been published in English translation: Peter Peterson translated Sāyaṇa's preface to the Ṛgveda-bhāṣya, published in 1890 in volume XLI of the Bombay Sanskrit Series, Handbook to the Study of the Rigveda, Part I, and reprinted in 1974 by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute as Sāyaṇa's Preface to the Ṛgvedabhāṣya. Dr. Saraswati Bali translated Sāyaṇa's Upodghāta to the Taittirīya Saṃhitā and the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā, published in 1999 by Pratibha Prakashan, Delhi.
But In attempting to learn more about the Rigveda / Rg-veda,, which alternate English translation would you deem the best from the seven complete English translations that are out there?
There is:
1. H. H. Wilson, Ṛig-veda Sanhitá, 6 volumes, London: Trübner and Co., 1850-1888.
2. Ralph T. H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigveda, 4 volumes, Benares: E. J. Lazarus and Co., 1889-1892.
3. Svami Satya Prakash Sarasvati and Satyakam Vidyalankar, Ṛgveda Samhitā, 13 volumes in 12 bindings, New Delhi: Veda Pratishthana, 1977-1987.
4. R. L. Kashyap, Rig Veda Samhita, 10 volumes in 12 bindings, Bangalore: Sri Aurobindo Kapāli Sāstry Institute of Vedic Culture, 2004-2009.
5. Prasanna Chandra Gautam, Modern English Translation of The Rig Veda Samhitaa, 4 volumes, Kathmandu: Kulachandra Gautam Smriti Sansthaan, 2012.
6. Tulsi Ram, Ṛg Veda, 4 volumes, Delhi: Arsh Sahitya Prachar Trust, 2013 (not seen by me).
7. Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, The Rigveda, 3 volumes, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
I would like to know your approach/assessment, but here is mine (if interested):
My assessment:
Wilson believed that Sāyaṇa understood the Vedas far better than any outsider could. He therefore took Sāyaṇa as his authority for the meaning of the Vedic words and verses, and closely followed Sāyaṇa’s commentary throughout his translation.
Griffith tried to strike a balance between Sāyaṇa’s interpretations and the interpretations of the German scholars who rejected Sāyaṇa, such as Rudolph Roth. His translation is in English verse, which means that he had to adapt the meaning he understood to fit the required number of English syllables.
Satya Prakash and Vidyalankar followed the Arya Samaj line of thought, which rejected Sāyaṇa altogether. However, as comparison will show, they adopted much of Wilson’s translation, and thereby brought in quite a bit of Sāyaṇa’s interpretation, perhaps unwittingly to themselves.
Kashyap followed the Sri Aurobindo line of thought, which also rejected Sāyaṇa. His translation includes some of Sri Aurobindo’s psychological interpretations of the Vedas, meanings which were also elaborated by Kapali Sastry in his unfinished Sanskrit commentary.
Gautam and his team of co-translators tried to jointly ascertain the meaning of the Vedic verses, and when they reached unanimity on this they attempted to put this meaning into modern English. This translation differs quite a bit from the other English translations.
Tulsi Ram’s translation is described in the online listings as following the Arya Samaj line of thought. The one verse I saw from it seemed to be an expanded paraphrase rather than a translation as such.
Jamison and Brereton’s translation is subtitled “The Earliest Religious Poetry of India,” which shows their approach. It draws upon the advances in scholarship over the last century, and will replace Karl Geldner’s German translation as the standard of reference for most Western scholars.
Thank you.
Thanks for the substance, but this is lost here in the comment section - please submit to Q&A if you have not already done so.
The Great Ideas Syntopicon sounds positively wonderful! As a person who can easily get lost in or overwhelmed by a big book, having even a simple but thorough index like that sounds marvellous! And it would be great for doing research, to help figure out what sorts of arguments people used to make about certain issues.
For me that would easily be the most important book of the bunch, even if it's useless on its own.
Thanks for the comment, Yan. As I mention in the video, the Syntopicon is what makes this collection so much more than a bunch of books assembled from a list, so it is indeed a "great" book in and of itself.
That's one chill cat.
Thank you! Watch him in his own video: th-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/w-d-xo.html
Beautiful video! Thank you, sir! I'm fond of classics. My favourite editions, in English, are those of Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics. I'm aware of other scholarly classics such as the Columbia University Press series of Asian Classics and the Library of Arabic Literature by New York University Press. Regarding the Arabic vowels or diacritics (I'm a native speaker), they are not always printed, especially in Modern Standard Arabic, because they don't pose a problem for educated speakers of Arabic. The context usually determines which word is meant. Otherwise, they are normally printed in scholarly editions, for important quotations or when words are unfamiliar or might be mistaken for other words since many Arabic words could be homographs, having the same written form but different diacritics and meanings. For example, كفر without diacritics could mean, among several meanings, "to disbelieve", "to cover" and "a small village".
Thank you for the appreciation, and for confirming that scholarly editions of important works are always provided with vowels by Arabic publishers for Arabic audiences. If they are needed there, then how much more do we non-native scholars need them in our editions!
What a pair of distinguished gentlemen
Thank you kindly.
24:01 Am I the only one who'd paused the video _before_ the Professor told us to do so?
no
@@The_Lord_Of_Confusion So in the future I do not need to state the obvious? Good to know!
It's so saddening to know that life is too short to tackle all these great works. Some of the works of epic poetry and that one encyclopedia you described sound so fascinating, but I know I will probably never get to those in translation (if that even exists), not to mention in the original language,
They say life expectancy is going up and leisure hours are increasing, but not even double a normal life span would enable one to even really scratch all that is worth reading, alas...
One of my favourite videos yet! Although I constantly have to fight with myself to stay on track as far my language goals go, I must say that 5-volume set by James Legge is _awfully_ tempting. There's even a first-edition set available on AbeBooks for the generous price of $24,500. I can feel an interest in Chinese being rekindled. Somebody please stop me before I lose control...I feel a polyitis flare-up coming on...ahhhhhh!
Lol. You'd probably be better off paying someone to print and bind all 5 volumes using the pdfs on archive org than to buy any of the editions I've seen Abebooks or Ebay.
This is why I always favored a brick-and-mortar academy - I am not using that set at the moment, so you would be more than welcome to do so if we were in the same location.
You just had to tempt the rest of us with this series, didn't you? Damn, now I want to buy and read it myself ... :)
@@titnesovic4522 So sorry...!
@@ProfASAr a bit of a misunderstanding. The joke was ment for Christopher Stead. A great video nonetheless. Now I know with what I'll be partially busy for the next decade or so :) I've managed the 900 pages of Shahnameh not so long ago, which was one of the most difficult, craziest and wildest things I have ever read, so I'll probably manage the rest too. Somehow.
Professor, you’re the man!!!
Thank you!
All I can say Dr. Arguelles, you have given me a renewed and revigoured sense of life. Thank you immensely.
Hearing this makes me very happy!
In addition to the Loeb series, Collection Budé produces bilingual French-Latin/Greek editions. The Oxford Classical Texts series is a set of Greek and Latin *monolingual* editions with annotations in the respective languages only. I believe this is true of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series as well. I'd love to obtain some monolingual classical texts, but I suspect they would collect more dust than fingerprints for the foreseeable future...
Thanks, Christopher, for providing these resources.
Great video, collection, and cat 😊
could you point me to the list of Indic books (Sanskrit translated to English) books you have on this video? I couldn’t quite catch the titles.
Who is the editor/translator of your 5 volume edition of the Chinese Classics?
James Legge.
@@ProfASAr Thanks! That's what I suspected. I've always wanted a set of those! And that decision to transliterate the Sanskrit is SO odd.
I'm having trouble learning Persian, despite easy grammatically, its vocabulary is very different and I feel like I can't memorise, how can I deal with it?
You should never try to memorize vocabulary! Not for Persian, not for any language! Learn vocabulary by learning dialogues, sentences, reading. Time spent memorizing vocabulary is time ill spent, time wasted!
Thanks for sharing all these beautiful books.
It is interesting to know that the great German poet Goethe had been influenced by Persian literature so much so that he composed his West-östlicher Divan inspired by his admiration for Persian literature.
Thank you for reminding us of this. It is for reasons like this, and the Alexander epics, that I think in the future there may be more canons of world literature rather than of individual civilizations.
I'm really enjoying the videos on the great books. I'm currently trying to get as good of a deal as I can on a second edition so I get the updated 60 volume set. Do the Gateway to the Great Books series contain pieces of content from the full Great Books collection or are they unique content? I've signed up for your notification list.
Thank you for the appreciation. I don't have both sets in hand so I am afraid I cannot answer your question.
It's unfortunate that the Southeast Asian civilizations have no Great Books list. Maybe the Philippines and Indonesia, but nothing is actually canonized, and almost none are read dutifully in the secondary level schools. I can totally see the difference between cultural and language habits because of this. Someone can insert Chinese proverbs with ease and comfort since it's common, while it's harder to do that in Tagalog without sounding pretentious or elitist. Southeast Asia is also more prone to historical amnesia, while China and India are generally more resistant. Thanks for this tour of your collection. I'll try to give myself 20 years to get through all of the books you've shown. I have lots of time other than things I have to be reading.
Thank you for the input. Perhaps this discussion will stimulate someone to start to compile such a list...
Hey back with more questions. Many years ago, you made a post on a particular web forum that if you had to pick a favorite language, you would pick Persian. Do you still feel this way? Your enthusiasm for the language and culture is front and center in this video, just wondering to what extent and perhaps even why.
I grew up in New York City and so when was a boy went frequently to both the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Persian tapestry / Arabic fountain / general blue and white tile art and architecture of this civilization on display in those museums always fascinated me and filled me with great tranquility. Even more so for the miniatures or illuminations artwork in books, of which I also have childhood volumes. That said, I have never had the opportunity to "activate" my Persian, and for a language that I love so much, I have never developed it to the degree that I feel I should, or read as much in it as I would like.
Thank you so much for such a phenomenal video. LOVE it so much and I hope to dig into it one day.
You are very welcome. I am pleased I could open doors for you.
Hello! I also feel the Great Books Collection does not reflect enough the Christian tradition but none list is perfect. I was wandering where you would add Jews books, such as the work of Maimonides (please excuse me if you already mentioned it). I feel that kind of work is also in between western and Middle East tradition.
Moses Maimonides certainly belongs somewhere on some list / collection. Medieval Spain was such a mélange of cultures that it is hard to decide where. This is the kind of region that fits equally well into two different civilizations and is therefore an argument for a combined list /collection.
Platonic and Biblical have to be included in Western tradition only because they are so influential and referenced frequently through the centuries.
Right you are.
Clay sanskrit library is a wonderful project. However, a large number of sanskrit texts are still untranslated especially books concerning buddhist philosophy and maths sutras.
Gérard Huet said that there are 30 million manuscripts in sanskrit, 100 times those in greek and latin combined. While the authenticity of that statements remain uncertain as manuscripts are being discovered, it's safe to say that more sanskrit works should be collected and translated.
Myself being an indian, I knew more about Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologicae but didn't know about Nyayakusumanjali by Udyanacharya which defends existence of god on philosophical grounds, that too in 10th century CE.
Thank you kindly for your substantive comment. As an Indian, what are your feelings about the Romanized script in the Clay library?
@@ProfASAr I think its absurd. Either they should have written in devanagari or should have only written the translated english without any transliterated sanskrit. Devanagari is not hard to grasp(unlike chinese) and it's strictly designed for preserving sanskrit chants. Many characters have sounds which don't exist in any indian language.
It also condenses words into shorter space unlike IAST which makes words look very long and complicated. Also devanagari looks more beautiful than IAST.
It's also not surprising to me because few politicians wanted all indian languages to adopt latin script. Thankfully, they're a minority.
@@Aman-qr6wi Thank you for the insider perspective, which mirrors my own and that of all other outsiders I have ever spoken with. I have never known anyone who thought the Romanized script was a good idea, or who did not want Devanagari instead. It really is absurd. I wonder what on earth they were thinking?
Maybe we should have a Christian History month.
!!!
For Chinese I'm rather fond of the Library of Chinese Humanities which are open access online and are at a price I can afford to own physical copy. Thanks for the recommendation for the Clay Sanskrit Library that transliteration decision is weird but I think I will buy one to try it out.
I'm always curious to know why publishers insist on transliterations, either in lieu of the native script, or directly beneath it, for anything more than simple phrase books. They did it with the old Assimil Korean course. Surely anyone serious enough to work through such a manual would be willing to learn such a simple alphabet?
As the Clay Library is a serious scholarly endeavor supported by many with more qualifications and experience that I have in the area, I tried not to let my dismay show too much in the video, but the simple fact is that the use of transliteration rather than Devanagari means that I personally am not particularly eager to acquire more of these volumes for my own collection.
Adler came to faith later in his life which might be why the collection is light on Christianity.
Thanks for providing that information.
Professor,
If you don’t mind me asking, I have a particular question I have really wanted to ask you concerning Persian and Arabic, both of which would greatly help inform my decision about which of these two to study in the future.
If a person wanted to learn only one classical language from each of the four great classical literary civilizations of the world in order to get the most “bang for their buck”in terms of the depth and breadth of literature produced in the language, as well as the language’s influence on other languages in the same civilization, would it be fair to say that in Islamic civilization, the importance of Arabic and Persian are closer than any other two languages from any other civilization?
It seems pretty clear to me for two of these civilizations what the answer is - Sanskrit for Indic and Classical Chinese for the Far East (all apologies to Tamil and Classical Japanese). One could access over it the overwhelming majority of classical literature in either civilization from learning one of those languages.
For the West, while I do prefer Greek more than Latin, and while the two are much closer and importance than any two languages from either India or the Far East, it still seems reasonable for me to give the nod to Latin, based on the overwhelming number of modern European words borrowed from it.
For Islamic civilization, it seems to me that after say the turn of 1000 AD, and especially after the fall of the Abbasid caliphate, the center of gravity in literature moves from Arabic to Persian. Furthermore, from all I’ve read it seems like Persian, and not Arabic, had more lexical influence on Turkish and Indic languages. Setting aside the Quran, I ask once more, would it be fair to say that if I just wanted to learn one of these two languages, could one make a decent argument for either Persian or Arabic being the key language to Islamic civilization?
By the way, as I marked in the form, please do note that more in depth responses to these types of questions are something I would very much be willing to pay for. I realize the time is precious and writing a long , in-depth response to questions such as these is a task in its own right.
Chase
Hello Chase, the situation is very similar to that of Latin and Greek in Western Civilization, to the degree that, in either case, if you choose one over the other on the basis of it being the more important of the two, you are bound to ruffle the feathers of those who favor the other. The fact is that there are two major languages of importance in both traditions, such that it would be logical to learn both. However, life is short and if we also want to learn Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, and other languages, we just can't do it all. So, we might have to just one from each. A factor that you might consider (but at least here have not mentioned) is whether the texts of one language are more widely available in the other. In Europe, for instance, I believe many if not most Greek texts were available in "official" Latin versions during the Middle Ages. Was the reverse true? I don't know, but I think not. Are more Arabic texts available in Persian, or more Persian texts available in Arabic (texts that you can't find in English, French, German, etc.). I don't know. Two other things to consider in this context: 1) Arabic has influenced Persian to a high degree, but the reverse is not true. 2) Persian is considerably easier to learn than Arabic. Hope that helps for now, but you are right, this is too complex for a comment section.
@@ProfASAr
Professor,
Insightful as always. Thank you for the response, and I hope I might beg you to elaborate on the topic next we meet.
Chase
@@博运孙 Chase - of course!
Is buying to many books a 'good habit' or a 'bad habit'? Great introduction to the topics Professor Alexander, I'm straight onto Amazon for reviews. I've started my look at Japan, Russia and the Islamic world with several history, autobiagraphy and culture books.
I don't see how it can be bad to have too many books. You never know which one you might need, and you never know when you might be cut off from the source of getting more, so best stock up now!
@@ProfASAr Makes sense. From an expert too. I found some super interesting books from 20th century Japan. There was one which looked at the Japanese feelings /thoughts about the seasons-art, design, wrighting, rituals...
If you want to read a lot of books . Get the from a library. You have 30days to read it. Every month pick up more books . So your forced to read. I've read hundreds of books this way in only a few years. At the same time stock up on books while you can to at least save for your kids..
@@el.don1975 You are right about this, of course, but for me at least, the fact that library books have to be returned and that I thus need to read them NOW means that I don't read as many of my own books as I would like. If there were no libraries, my own volumes would show more loving wear and tear than they do.
How to buy those books ?
The ones I show today? You have to spend a lifetime tracking them down, I am afraid.
Nunc Feles de Calila ac Dimna cogitat
Ille semper de litteratura cogitat!
Seems impossible that you wouldn't have read the 11th century Hugh of St Victor who said, "Learn everything; later you will see that nothing is superfluous." He advanced pedagogy around the trivium, languages, also the "mechanical arts".
Thank you for the great quote.
I was hoping this was a book collection, or at least a list of books in either English or German. Even though I'm curious about other cultures, I don't see myself learning a new language for that. But I guess one or two of the books listed may be of interest to me. I will download this video for a time when I have motivation to actually dive into them. First I have to read the western book collection. If you ever make a book collection of the Great Books of Eastern Civilizations then I could very well be a buyer, as long as it is in English.
I like that ending speech of this video. I claim my effort of getting into those books will be slightly lower. I grew up being a Christian and going to a secular school. I like to jokingly say I grew up bilingual when it comes to world views. Thanks to my Christian upbringing I also had some insight into some missionary works, which obviously includes fundamentally different world views. And ever since I had access to the internet I started exploring some stuff. I discovered the east Asian literature. Of course the mangas and animes have some level of their cultural background in there. But in my opinion the wuxia novels, which are of considerable length at times, carry more of the cultural knowledge and thinking patterns with them. I have finished three of them and I'm halfway through a forth. Even though it is fantasy, concepts like reincarnation, taoism or even tales like the journey to the west or pangu and the creation of the world are common themes.
And in the last few years I started watching the conversation between Christians and Muslims of who has the right view of the world. One of my favorite channels is Reasoned Answers, where one of the regular guests does approximately one 4h stream per week on the origins of Islam. She get's really deep into the scholarship of the Islamic and Pre-Islamic history. I also am roughly aware of the content of the Quran, the hadiths and the sharia law.
Of course all of this does not come close to reading their great books and being capable of reading their language. But it at least makes me aware that people of different cultures have some disagreements on some core values which we often take so much for granted that we are not even aware of them.
To me getting to know different cultures is a good method to learn more about reality. I also follow the philosophy and apologetics scene a bit, because I think that it is worth finding the truth and sharing it with other people. As a Christian who grew up in the west, I am obviously biased in what I think that reality looks like. But I think I have justified reasons to have that bias.
You come across to me like you read this stuff for the sole purpose of curiosity of what is out there. Would you say there is an objective moral and and some cultures have come closer to finding the truth than others?
Thank you for your detailed observations and comments. I read mainly out of broad curiosity, but I am not a relativist.
I would like to learn about books which recount stories from African civilizations.
I wish I knew more about those as well.
I wish I could actually do this, but my severe ADHD will be a huge hurdle. I wish I could download all of this into my head and just let it interconnect and let me see the world more clearly.
Sorry to hear about your learning challenge, but don't know if direct download would fix that.
Thanks for the great video.
Just a note that the Korean/English teachings of Buddha book may be produced for hotel rooms. In Japan they often have exactly the same in Japanese and English. In the same was we have Gideon bibles in hotel rooms in the UK.
Thanks for raising that possibility, although I have stayed in many a hotel room in Korea over the years and never seen one left there like this.
The cat contributes an imposing presence.
He does indeed. And here is a feature of him going into meditative bliss: th-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/w-d-xo.html
As an Arab I would like to suggest a classic book that is said to be one of the greatest texts ever written in Arabic due to the richness of the language it has been written with. Its name is مقامات الحريري
Thank you for this excellent recommendation. I aim to repost my lists of Great Books on my new website in the near future. I will try to remember to add this if it is not already on my Middle Eastern list. If you should notice that I forget, please do not hesitate to remind me!
@@ProfASAr Thank you. I will :)
Would you be kind enough to provide the entire reading list for the eastern civilization? It would be really helpful for someone like me who get lost in the vast vast ocean of eastern literature and find it hard to filter out quality content.
Please look at the Great Books pages of my website.
@@ProfASAr thanks a lot. Really appriciated
Interesting collection and great points. I am not as familiar with Southeast Asia as much as I would like, but I know literature from Southeast Asian civilizations is sure to provide some interesting links between East Asia, Indic, and Islamic civlizations.
Thank you for the input, Paul. As I am gearing up to start my academy, I am thinking of ways that it can evolve into the kind of training in polyliteracy that I have always envisioned, and if that comes to pass, then developing lists of Great Books from other civilizations, such as Southeast Asia, could be a great thesis project.
@@ProfASAr I think both are great ideas. In my opinion, a fantastic polyliteracy thesis project would be for a student to develop the language skills to find precisely those kind of connections between such civlizations!
@@paulcal3500 Concurred!
Very nicely done.
Thank you very much.
I really need to get that Peter Scharf Ramopakhyana.
If only there were more books just like it, for many a language, too.
@@ProfASAr I proposed doing a Russian one with a classic Soviet text to a publisher who thought the idea was very stupid!
@@davexhayter That is a shame, but perhaps the tide will turn some day.
Hello professor, personal question for you this time. Do you typically work through one book at a time or are you a multi-book person? I have done both and found each has their merits and was curious as to your opinion and experience. Thanks for another wonderful video!
Like you, I have done both at different times and found both to have their advantages. Of course, trying to balance many languages pushes you to do a book in each at the same time, but there is also pleasure to be derived from focusing on one thing at a time.
@@ProfASAr I’ve found that to be true in my life. Quick follow up question: do you afford yourself time to read much English language works or do you prefer to focus more on your foreign language acquisition/maintenance? Something I struggle with is I often won’t let myself read something in my native English because I’m putting so much effort into mastering Spanish. Didn’t know if you shared similar sentiments or not. And thanks for the response!
@@evanfont913 I've never found good balance for this. For years I eschewed English altogether, then I wanted to write my own novels in it, realized I needed to some patterning, and read quite a bit. These days again not much at all...
@@ProfASAr since you are talking about your writing I have to ask: woh is it going? I remember how you talked about your novel years ago, where some of your characters were polyglots, I recall something about people trying to preserve humanity´s knowledge (sounded to me like Miller´s A Canticle for Leibowitz at the time - I love that book) - how´s that going?
@@The_Lord_Of_Confusion Every November I write enough to "win" NANWRIMO several times over, then stall out after the event ends, so I have four or five manuscripts in various states of incompletion.
Do you have any recommendations for history books? Thank you.
Do you mean historical works that should be considered Great Books? Or do you mean books that will help you place and understand Great Books in their historical context?
@@ProfASAr I meant books that will help me to understand the great books in their historical context.
@@haicautrang5304 Which context for which culture? 5th century B.C. China or 18th century A.D. Europe or...
@@ProfASAr hmm. 18th century a.d. and later for any area of the world, if you have any main recommendations that come to mind
@@haicautrang5304 You could start with Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/A-E/D/draper/drap1.htm or archive.org/details/historyofintelle01drapuoft/mode/2up
@30:33 broke my book
Yes, I broke my book showing to you, so I hope you learned something from the presentation that makes that worthwhile.
@@ProfASAr I definitely did and many thanks for the sharing of your knowledge and enthusiasm.
جَزاكُمُ الله و با تشکر و احترام فراوان
@@tourajtayebi2189 I am glad to have helped أنا سعيد لأنني يمكن أن تساعد
OMG, I'm out of breath for you. It's very distracting. You might think about talking slower or take some small pauses more often. The content is very interesting, thankfully.
Thanks for commenting.
Dr. Arguelles , I find myself curious about the "great books of the east asian civilization" By a linguistic definition, if they are written in that neat classical chinese language, shouldn`t we have some Viet Nam texts? I am not an east asian scholar by any stretch of imagination and I do not understand most of the ideas in those important texts, but I know that the Sinosphere- area that is influenced linguistically and historically by classical chinese- is known by the acronym CJKV, meaning China, Korea, Japan and Viet Nam. I know that the vietnamese scholars even created their own characters based on the chinese characters, and used them to write vietnamese. Would this not put some classic vietnamese works also in the east asian canon? Why was Viet Nam not mentioned?
I wish I had a good answer for you, William, but I don't. As I mention in the video, defining civilizations and cultural circles is always contentious.
The reason it wasn’t mentioned most likely has to do with bias - Vietnam is largely overshadowed by its Northern neighbours and there’s far fewer people that know enough about Vietnam and its cultural legacy to pick out great books. On top of that I believe Vietnam was sort of late to the party and didn’t produce much of note in the Middle Ages. But you’d have to consult a history book.
The reason it wasn’t mentioned most likely has to do with bias - Vietnam is largely overshadowed by its Northern neighbours and there’s far fewer people that know enough about Vietnam and its cultural legacy to pick out great books. On top of that I believe Vietnam was sort of late to the party and didn’t produce much of note in the Middle Ages. But you’d have to consult a history book.
Thank you so much
You're most welcome