[INDOLOGY] Two additional recensions of the Ṛgveda available

[David and Nancy Reigle]

As most of you know, two recensions of the Ṛgveda in addition to the long
standard Śākala/Śākalya recension have become available in the last several
years. They are:

Āśvalāyana-Saṃhitā of the Ṛgveda, ed. B. B. Chaubey, 2 vols., New Delhi:
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2009.

The Ṛgveda Saṃhitā of Śāṃkhāyana-Śākhā, ed. Amal Dhari Singh Gautam, 4
vols., Ujjain: Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan,
2012-2013.

I would be very interested in comments from the Vedic scholars here about
the significance of having two additional recensions of the Ṛgveda. In
particular, I was earlier informed that an 1897 book in Danish by Hans
Vodskov, Rig-veda og Edda, has a chapter attempting to demonstrate that the
Ṛgveda we have shows a very late style. My informant noted that Vodskov's
views about the late style of the Śākala recension have not been adopted by
Vedic scholars. Now that we have two additional recensions, almost
identical to the Śākala recension, I assume that this would be significant
evidence for an early, unchanged style.

As for linguistic peculiarities, as opposed to stylistic ones, Madhav
Deshpande had noted in his 1993 book, Sanskrit & Prakrit: Sociolinguistic
Issues, p. 134: "In most recent discussions, a historical fact of utmost
importance is often overlooked, namely that the text of the Ṛgveda that we
have today is not necessarily the original Ṛgveda. What we have is only one
recension (saṃhitā) of the Ṛgveda compiled several centuries after the
hymns were composed by the Ṛgvedic sages."

Now we have three recensions, together presumably bringing us closer to the
original Ṛgveda.

Best regards,

David Reigle
Colorado, U.S.A.


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