She was described by Wendy Doniger as "the greatest living scholar of the RigVeda, and certainly, the greatest linguist of the RigVeda".[1] In 1972 she published a translation of selected Rigvedic hymns into Russian, which eventually evolved into a complete translation of Rigveda in the following decades, published by Nauka 1989-1999 (3 volumes). Her complete Russian translation of Atharvaveda was published in 2005-2010 (3 volumes).
In 1976, together with her husband Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov, she published in English a linguistic analysis of Pali: The Pali Language. She was also an expert on Hindi, and published numerous works on its grammar.