[INDOLOGY] meters and songs: the Vedas /// Re: Does anyone know of Sanskrit works that use 2nd-syllable rhyming

Mon Aug 3 17:36:57 UTC 2015

Dear George,
Good to have your message, please keep us informed of your broodings. Here
some reflections on the interrelation of RV and SV:
see for instance Jan Gonda 1975: 313-314 and references to Oldenberg.
"Most of these stanzas are composed in gaayatrii metre or pragaatha stanzas
and doubtless from the beginning intended for singing."
Frits Staal apparently imagined a more or less "purely" Indo-european
SV-less RV which is not attested: Staal 2008, Discovering the
Vedas p. 116-117 and references, and p. 250-251:
"The case of the Saamavedins is special ... the words of the original,
indigenous Saamaveda chants are lost. ... their names
are non-Indo-European: some have a recognizably BMAC structure and a few
are Dravidian. The words of the RV often
do not fit and the melodies seem to reflect another language."
The last statement goes counter to an observation elsewhere advocated in
Discovering the Vedas: the universality of music vis à vis language.
By way of comparison: Greek, Latin and Hebrew words fit equally well or bad
in any melody of Gregorian chant (which also contains a few meaningless
"stobhas").
If the seating arrangement in the sadas reflects an encounter between
different populations or at least different ritual traditions (Frits
Staal's important and original
contribution to the issue), this encounter should have taken place long
before the current version of the RV was finalized both according to the
linguistic observations
of FBJ Kuiper and according to the "saamavedic" observations of Oldenberg
and Gonda of the RV being the oldest "samhitaa" of the SV. The currently
available
recension of the SV, however, is definitely "post-RV".
I am sure Asko will have a more detailed and well-informed opinion on the
matter and perhaps deals with it in his recent book.
Jan

*Jan E.M. HOUBEN*

Directeur d’Études

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

*École Pratique des Hautes Études*

*Sciences historiques et philologiques *

54, rue Saint-Jacques

CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

On 30 July 2015 at 00:59, George Thompson <gthomgt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Jan,
>
> Could you please elaborate on your parenthetical remark that '(Frits
> Staal's theory on the Saamaveda therefore needs modification)'?  Frits
> certainly was aware of the importance of saamans in the RV.  I am
> constantly brooding about the riddles and enigmas of RV 1.164, which, as I
> am sure you know, not only mentions saamans but also exhibits saaman-like
> phonic patterns.  Frits and I frequently talked about these things over the
> last decade  of his life.
>
> I would be interested to hear a more elaborate comment.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> George
>
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 6:24 AM, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Prof Paturi,
>> Re: the statement which you forwarded, apparently with approval. This is
>> purely hypothetical and beyond verification as the oldest text sufficiently
>> attested that uses and reflects on verse-meters,
>> the Rgveda, is also permeated by the knowledge and employment of
>> "song-forms": saamans (Frits Staal's theory on the Saamaveda therefore
>> needs modification). It was observed long ago by Oldenberg that the oldest
>> textbook of the Saamaveda is the Rgveda itself: large parts are apparently
>> from the beginning composed for the sake of "Saamavedic" employment.
>> The absence of even a trace of Saamans and Saamaveda in the Avestan
>> tradition vs. its pervasive presence in the Vedic tradition is remarkable
>> and not compensated by the presence in both traditions of the genre of the
>> Gaatha.
>> Jan Houben
>>
>>
>>
>> *Jan E.M. HOUBEN*
>>
>> Directeur d’Études
>>
>> Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite
>>
>> *École Pratique des Hautes Études*
>>
>> *Sciences historiques et philologiques *
>>
>> 54, rue Saint-Jacques
>>
>> CS 20525 – 75005 Paris
>>
>> johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr
>>
>> https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
>>
>> www.ephe.fr
>>
>>
>> On 29 July 2015 at 09:15, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sri Naresh Keerthi wrote :
>>>
>>> >This feature of poetry seems to have eventually percolated into
>>> recitative/performative forms that were half-way between poems and songs,
>>> as well as into genres that were entirely song like.
>>>
>>> ----- Both first syllable and second syllable intraline rhymings are
>>> features found in proverbs, riddles and other verbal folklore
>>> forms functioning as auditory aesthetic forms serving as memorising tools
>>> for the tradition-bearers of these oral traditions.
>>>
>>> It is more reasonable to expect a sharing of this feature by the native
>>> verse-meters and lyrical forms with the folklore forms or diffusion of
>>> these features from the verbal folklore forms and folk songs into
>>> verse-meters rather than from verse-meters into song-forms.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
>>> Hyderabad-500044
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>

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