Sure you can. The parts of Veda I’ve learned were in the traditional with rigour in recitation but no attempt at understanding the meaning. But because I went on to study vyakarana and Kayvas etc. where meaning is emphasized I can understand most of the mantras without the commentaries.

But a good commentary does help and more importantly it is the accepted academic style just as footnotes, APA formatting etc. are Western academic conventions.

You always have to know context because language can always be stretched. People write poetry in Perl for goodness sake!