The Rgveda Samhita-Vasanti Bhasya-Translated into English with the Rks Transliterated and Annotated (Vol-3)

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Rgveda, the oldest literary document of the world, is the transcendental language of prayers and hymns to glorify the elemental deities.

Basanta Kumar Ganguly has translated and annotated the entire Reveda in the light of his own mature experience. He has evinced considerable originality by differing from the traditional commentary of Sayana. What makes the work unique is that it contains the huge Rgveda in Roman transliteration. This is particularly attractive to foreign scholars.

This is a work of author's Herculean effort to grasp the real sense of the rks and to take an integral view of the entire Rgveda where the rșis recorded their experiences of the pilgrimages from mortality to immortality.

Introductory part of this work printed in Volume One, is a real treasure. Here, he interprets Rgveda thematically in his expressive and lucid language and differs greatly from the annotations of the traditional commentators as well as the European scholars which opens a new threshold to the readers of philosophy and Indian antiquity.

Author's explanatory notes emerged from his unique philosophical concept on the mystical and abstruse words. The elucidation of Vedic symbolism will benefit a modern reader endowed with a rational bent of mind to be adequately equipped for understanding the hymns as well as to have a glimpse of the radiance of Vedic scripture.

The Rgveda Samhita is the collection of one thousand twenty- eight hymns, called suktas, perfect lauds. Each hymn is a collection of a number of rks, lauding the God of the hymn in verse. There are ten thousand five hundred fifty-two rks in the Rgeda. These hymns are arranged in ten books of unequal lengths. First book was published as volume I in August 2004. Books two, three and four were published as volume II in 2020. The next four books (book five, six, seven and eight) are being published now in volume III. The last volume, i.e., volume IV consisting of books nine and ten is in press and would be published shortly.

To bring the entire academic spectrum into relief retrieved through these volumes may, however, be summarised in the author's observations made in the first volume for convenience of the readers: "I wish to share my discovery with my readers to spare them the frustration, the time, the effort, the expense I had to undergo to satisfy my birth right to a reasonably correct interpretation of the nation's supreme scripture, the supreme heritage. ... I therefore felt that it would be easier for my readers and the books, if ever published, would have a larger circle of readers, if it were written in English and the rks were transliterated. Though the padapatha has been followed in the transliteration of the rks, certain basic rules of writing Sanskrit have been retained so that the rks could still be read as verse."

I am sure the present volume will be equally in demand of the scholars like its earlier volumes.