Rig Veda Samhita

[Guest guest]

Dear BhAgawatas,

 

I wish to bring to your notice a significant recent publication that may

be of interest to many of you.

 

Under the banner of the SrI Aurobindo KapAli SAstry Institute of Vedic

Culture, Bangalore, (founded by Prof. R.L. Kashyap of Purdue University),

the complete text of the Rig Veda has recently been published. It was

released in July formally by Swami Rangapriya whom many of you know.

(I understand that a good version of the Samhita has not been readily

available.)

 

The work is edited by Prof. R.L. Kashyap and Dr. S. Sadagopan of the

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (who happens to be a student of

Prof. Kashyap). The hardbound book, which runs about 950 pages, consists

of the "complete text in DEvanAgari, commentary in English on 108

(selected) verses, and an introductory essay".

 

The special feature of this edition is that it has been typeset using

fonts and accent marks specially created for the purpose through the

efforts of Mr. Mohan Tambe, formerly of the Centre for the Development of

Advanced Computing, Pune. As such, three kinds of accent marks- UdAtta,

AnudAtta, and Svarita- are used in the printing of the text, to allow for

proper chanting of the verses. The text comprises all the ten Mandala's of

the Rig Veda.

 

(I can vouch for the very high quality of the composition and the printing

that has been achieved. It is a pleasure to read the script.)

 

The introduction to the edition says that there are plans to bring out a

CD-ROM (multimedia) version of the Samhita that would also include the

chanting of the entire text.

 

More information may be had from:

 

Prof. Rangaswamy L. Kashyap (kashyap)

 

Dr. S. Sadagopan (ss)

 

(The limited edition text costs Rs. 500 in India and US$ 50 abroad.)

 

I am posting this on the Bhakti list unofficially in the sense that the

Editors may do so separately.

 

Regards..............///shivashankar

___________________________

 

S.A. Shivashankar Tel: (91)-(80)-309-2782 (Office)

Materials Research Centre 331-3921 (Residence)

Indian Institute of Science Fax: 334-1683

Bangalore 560 012, INDIA Email: shivu

[Guest guest]

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. ...