Some Paippalaada publications by Paippalaadins

[Arlo Griffiths]

With apologies for the delay, I wish to report on a few publications I obtained during my fieldwork in Orissa last winter.


In December 2007, the Avadhoota Datta Peetham (Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Ashrama, Datta Nagara, Ooty Road, Mysore, 570025) brought out a publication in Devanaagarii script entitled Atharva.na.h Veda.h Paippalaada ;Saakhaa Sa.mhitaa as volume 16 in the Vedavij;naana Granthaavalii. The work was prepared for the Peetham by two Paippalaada Brahmins hailing from the village Guhiaapaa.la in East Singbhum Dt., Jharkhand, namely Kunjabihari Upadhyaya (who lives in Puri) and his student Ashok Kumar Misra. The volume covers only kaa.n.das 1-15 of the Paippalaadasa.mhitaa, and even though there is no information about the sources on which the publication is based, it has certainly been copied from Prof. Dipak Bhattacharya’s edition of kaa.n.das 1-15 published in 1997, which I myself bought for the Paa.tha;saalaa in Guhiaapaa.laa in 2000. For kaa.n.das 6-7, a preliminary draft in Oriya script of my new edition, which I handed to these friends in 2004, seems to have been followed to make some modifications to Prof. Bhattacharya’s edition. I don’t expect there will be anything of philological interest in this publication.


Different is the case of the first complete edition of the Paippalaadasa.mhitaa based on Oriya manuscripts, i.e. an edition including all twenty kaa.n.das in one volume, that was brought out in 2010 by Kunja Bihari Upadhyaya himself, almost entirely in Devanaagarii script. There is an interesting introduction entitled Aatharva.navedapaippalaadasa.mhitaa mudra.nasya prastaava.h, which however does not throw light on the sources for this printing. I expect that Mr. Upadhyaya that he has used more or less the same basis for kaa.n.das 1-15 as that used for the 2007 printing. He has not had access to Prof. Dipak Bhattacharya’s 2008 edition of kaa.n.das 16. This means that he has printed all of kaa.n.das 16-20 on the basis of one or more manuscripts collected by him, at least one of them in collaboration with myself. Mr. Upadhyaya has not consulted any other scholars in preparing his edition, and does not have training in (Vedic) philology, but does have a reasonable mastery of Sanskrit and is very familiar with Oriya manuscripts and the idiosyncracies of the script we find in them. So I expect that the text of the thus far unpublished kaa.n.das 17-20 in this printing will have the value of a reasonably reliable transcript of one or two codices. For those who have no access to manuscripts or who cannot read Oriya script, this certainly is of some use as we await the complete publication of Prof. Dipak Bhattacharya’s edition. Being based on philological principles, the latter will of course supersede Mr. Upadhyaya’s printing.
	I have deposited one copy of this volume in the library of Leiden University. Mr. Upadhyaya has DTP-ed his volume as “Nijiiya Prakaa;sanam”. He has asked me to make known that copies of the volume can be requested through the following addresses:
	KUNJA BIHARI UPADHYAYA
	GOUDABADA SAHI
	At/Po/Dist.: PURI
	ODISHA, 752011, INDIA
	
	email: kunja.paippalada at gmail.com


Of much more restricted interested will be the two small paddhati volumes Durvalak.rtyavidhi and ;Sraaddhapaddhati compiled in Oriya script (and in a mixture of Oriya with Sanskrit language) by Benudhara Panda, again of Guhiaapaa.la village. I can supply scans to those who are interested, and intend to deposit some of the extra copies I bought in public libraries in Europe and the US.
 
Best wishes,


Arlo Griffiths
EFEO/Jakarta