Someone quoted two interpretations of a Vedic verse one commentary in English and one in Hindi and pointed out very patent contradictions and asked which is the right one.
My answer..
One interpretaion is symbolic.. one is based on a legend.. Both may be right apporximately.. Even the language of Vedas is not exactly like the medeival Sanskrit.. We adopt the bhashyams of Sanskrit Scholars.. like Sayana.. and for our ritualistic purposes that is right..
The Western scholars have interpreted with the database they possess and perception that they derive.
There is nothing right or wrong in any interpretation..
Of course, if the interpretation by an alien person causes damage to our culture and traditional beliefs, we need not accept it..
interpretation, we should have an open mind. There are only varying ideas.. no rights and wrongs.
No one can really translate vedas.. No one really knows what the stand-alone stanzas of Veda that evolved five millenniums ago really means. Maybe after a long time, nighantu of yaska etc appeared, the rules of grammar like that of Panini evolved.. and commentators tried to interpret the words and verses in the way they could understand through etymology, phonetics and other linguistic tools..
In sanskrit one and the same word can have too many different meanings in varying circumstances.. A single word, the same word would even convey opposite meanings in different contexts.. So there cannot be any translation worth its name in such matters. It is just two interpretations, the one you may prefer or like and another which you may not like. It is absolutely unscholarly to have a fight holding the view that one interpretation is right and another is wrong..
Forming opinions merely by reading some text in the web is just risky.. And declaring that such interpretation is gospel truth is another fallacy
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