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

www.ephe.fr

On 30 July 2015 at 00:59, George Thompson <gthomgt@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@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@ephe.sorbonne.fr
https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

On 29 July 2015 at 09:15, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi@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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