《梨俱吠陀》中的“罪与罚”——论吠陀梵语énas的含义

“Crime and Punishment” in the Rigveda——On the Meaning of Vedic énas

本文是对吠陀梵语énas一词详细的语文学和语言学研究,研究语料为énas在《梨俱吠陀》中的全部出处。基于欧美吠陀研究的学术成果,本文给出所有包含énas及其派生词诗句的中文翻译,并附上简短的注释,用以解释分析疑难词汇。不同于现有权威西文《梨俱吠陀》翻译中所采用的含有多重语义的词语,例如德语'Sünde'、法语'péché'和英语'sin',本文给出各个出处中更加具体的词义,其中最常见的两种含义为:(1)一种违反规则的行为,恶劣的行为;(2)由于恶行导致的不幸和悲惨境地。另外,其第三种可能性是'对于不幸和恶事应当承担的责任'。

The present article is a detailed philological and linguistic investigation of the Vedic word énas, focusing on its occurrence in the Rigveda. Based on the advanced western Vedic scholarship all the verses containing énas and its derivatives are translated into Chinese, accompanied by short commentaries elucidating the lexical and semantic difficulties involved. Instead of the ambivalent or even polyvalent renderings, e.g. German'Sünde', French'péché' and English'sin', found in the authoritative translations the Vedic word énas is given here a more concrete and neutral translation, and two most frequent precise renderings are: firstly, a terrible and bad act/behavior against rules and secondly, the unlucky and tragical situation caused by the terrible acts/behaviors. A third possibility is the'responsibility for the unluckiness and the terrible acts'.