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Re: Rig Veda Samhita

From the Bhakti List Archives

V Sundar • September 8, 1998 


Bhaktas interested in the Rg Veda may also benefit from this Harvard
Oriental Series publication. It is an authoritative and scholarly work,
deriving its accuracy from the restoration of chhandas (metre). The disk
version is a little clunky, though.

   Rig Veda, a metrically restored text with an introduction and notes 

by BAREND A. VAN NOOTEN and GARY B. HOLLAND 

1994. Pages, xviii, 667. Royal 8. Price, $50.00. 
[ISBN 0-674-76971-6] 

[Introduction pp. i-xiii; edition, pp. 1-547, with mandala, sukta, rc
numbers as well as
Grassmann's numbers; and including deity, author, and meter.] 

Also including computer diskettes of the metrical AND the traditional
Samhita texts with a
quick program for word searches, as well as a simple conversion program
allowing users
to choose their own style of Romanization. 
NB: the texts are unformatted. The discette is formatted in DOS style
which is easily
readable by Macintosh computers these days. On request, we may supply a
Mac version
in the future. 

   FROM THE AUTHORS' INTRODUCTION 

The Rig Veda has come down to us in two versions, the Samhita and the
Padapatha,
neither of which corresponds in all respects to the actual metrical form
of the hymns... we
have chosen to present the hymns in a format closely approximating the
canonic forms of
the various meters. ... The discrepancies between the metrical canon and
the transmitted
form of the hymn have been discussed beginning with the Pratisakhyas,
and continuing
through the works of Hermann Grassmann, Hermann Oldenberg, and E. Vernon
Arnold,
but no systematic method for restoring the text in conformance with the
metrical canon
has been devised. ... Our approach has been to treat the text in the
first place as if it were
a synchronic document and to use the meter as the principal criterion
for analysis. We
view this straightforward metrical restoration of the text as a
necessary preliminary to any
further investigation of the relative chronology of the Rig Veda. ...