Rig Veda, a metrically restored text
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HOS vol. 50 has been released at the end of 1994:
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. …
FROM THE PREFACE: This volume completes the fifty volume mark of works published so far, during the more than one hundred years of the existence of this series. Appropriatety, this issue is devoted to the oldest Sanskrit text, the Rgveda. In addition, it presents the text, for the first time, in the form in which we have desired to see it for more than one hundred and twenty years; namely, as a metrical text, and in a phonetic shape that is very close to the form in which it was composed more than 3000 years ago — which form is different from that of the later redaction of Sakalya cum suis. …
The publication of this volume also marks the start of a new Vedic program of publication in the HOS. Apart from the Rgveda, the following volumes are in various stages of preparation: Paippalada Atharvaveda, Samaveda Samhita with commentaries, Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, Atharva Pratisakhya. At the same time, we also envisage a significant widening of the series to include other, non-Sanskritic texts….
… I would like to draw the readers’ attention to our new sub-series “HOS – Opera Minora”, which will be available directly from the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard, 53 Church Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA and from South Asia Books,. Columbia, MO.; this will be announced separately.
In the new sub-series, we plan to publish, in fairly inexpensive form, conference volumes, such as that of the Harvard symposium of May 1994 on translating from Indian texts, or, finally, those of the the 1989 International Vedic Workshop. Further, we plan to print reports…., a preliminary edition (such as that of the Paippalada Samhita of the Atharvaveda); and we may also publish some reprints of the more expensive HOS volumes for the use of students, such as the long out of print translation of the Rgveda by K.F. Geldner.
Finally, I hope to initiate in the new series reprints of the “Opera Minora” of American Indologists. … Like its German counterpart, the Glasenapp Series of Kleine Schriften, we hope that the new series will not just facilitate our own work, but that it will also stimulate reading and discussion of the often stupendous volume and depth of work that our predecessors have carried out, which work, however, tends to become increasingly overlooked in an academic climate that is increasingly geared to quick, fashionable, and trendy production. M. W.