Beezone Reference Note:
“The learner dieth. Learning never die“
“The Goddess of Learning cares not to ask even so much as the names of her votaries”
The first of these lines close a poem Lanman composed in the Introduction for the 1904 edition of the Atharva-Veda Samhita, a translation of William Dwight Whitney’s monumental work. The second one is in the Editors Preface. The poem is at once elegy and declaration. It honors a lineage of scholarship—Whitney, his teacher Rudolph Roth of Tübingen, and Lanman himself as “teacher’s teacher’s pupil”—while situating their efforts within a stream that cannot be stopped by death.
Lanman’s imagery is striking:
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Learning as a river fed by “brook, river, rill,” indifferent to whether it springs from plodding labor or sudden genius.
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Duty over reward, echoing the Bhagavad Gītā, which Whitney himself had studied: “To do for duty, not for duty’s meed.”
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Scholarship as continuity, where the work is never “finished” but carried forward, each generation bringing it “nearer to an ideal and so unattainable completeness.”
Lanman’s own prose preface underscores the point:
“Science is concerned only with results, not with personalities, or (in Hindu phrase) that the Goddess of Learning, Sarasvatī or Vāc, cares not to ask even so much as the names of her votaries; and the unending progress of Science is indeed like the endless flow of a river.”
Thus the refrain—“The learner dieth. Learning never dies.”—stands not as mere consolation, but as a recognition of what binds generations together: the thirst to know, the river of inquiry, and the imperishable life of learning itself.
Here stands his book, a mighty instrument.
Which those to come may use for large emprise.
Use it, O scholar, ere thy day be spent.
The learner dieth. Learning never dies.
Editors Preface, ATHARVA-VEDA SAMHITA
Charles Rockwell Lanman, Harvard University, 1904
Teacher and teacher’s teacher long had wrought
Upon these tomes of ancient Hindu lore,
Till Death did give to one whom both had taught
The task to finish, when they were no more.
‘T is finished,—yet unfinished, like the flow
Of water-streams between their banks that glide;
For Learning’s streams, that down the ages go,
Flow on for ever with a swelling tide.
Here plodding labor brings its affluent brook;
There genius, like a river, pours amain:
While Learning—ageless, deathless—scarce will look
To note which ones have toiled her love to gain.
Alike to her are river, brook, and rill,
That in her stately waters so combine,
If only all who choose may drink their fill,
And slake the thirst to know, the thirst divine.
The Gītā’s lesson had our Whitney learned—
To do for duty, not for duty’s meed.
And, paid or unpaid be the thanks he earned,
The thanks he recked not, recked alone the deed.
Here stands his book, a mighty instrument,
Which those to come may use for large emprise.
Use it, O scholar, ere thy day be spent.
The learner dieth. Learning never dies.
Lanman translated the work of William Dwight Whitney of Atharva-Veda. In the Editor’s Preface he writes;
“Had he lived to see this work in print and to write the preface, his chief tribute of grateful acknowledgment would doubtless have been to his illustrious preceptor and colleague and friend whose toil had so largely increased its value, to Rudolph Roth of Tubingen. Whitney, who was my teacher, and Roth, who was my teacher’s teacher and my own teacher, both are passed away, and Death has given the work to me to finish, or rather to bring nearer to an ideal and so unattainable completeness. They are beyond the reach of human thanks, of praise or blame : but I cannot help feeling that even in their life-time they understood that Science is concerned only with results, not with personalities, or (in Hindu phrase) that the Goddess of Learning, Sarasvati or Vac, cares not to ask even so much as the names of her votaries ; and that the unending progress of Science is indeed like the endless flow of a river.”
“The Goddess of Learning cares not to ask even so much as the names of her votaries” comes from the Editors Preface. He writes:
Human personality and the progress of science. — Had Whitney lived to see this work in print and to write the preface, his chief tribute of grateful acknowledgment would doubtless have been to his illustrious preceptor and colleague and friend whose toil had so largely increased its value, to Rudolph Roth of Tubingen. Whitney, who was my teacher, and Roth, who was my teacher’s teacher and my own teacher, both are passed away, and Death has given the work to me to finish, or rather to bring nearer to an ideal and so unattainable completeness. They are beyond the reach of human thanks, of praise or blame : but I cannot help feeling that even in their life-time they understood that Science is concerned only with results, not with personalities, or (in Hindu phrase) that the Goddess of Learning, Sarasvati or Vac, cares not to ask even so much as the names of her votaries ; and that the unending progress of Science is indeed like the endless flow of a river. (p. xi)
