Dear fellow Indologists,

This is my first message to the list, and so I take the opportunity to salute all of you.

Recently, I wanted to consult the following work by Bellikoth Ramachandra Sharma, published in the Harvard Oriental Series:

Sāmaveda samhitā of the Kauthuma school : with Padapāṭha and the commentaries of Mādhava, Bharatasvāmin and Sāyaṇa. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

I found it in my library in two volumes: vol. 1 containing the Pūrvārcika (published in 2000, n. 57 in the series) and vol. 2 = Uttarārcika (2001, n. 58). However, in the preface of both volumes, the author speaks of a total of three volumes to be published, the last one being planned in 2002 and containing, among others, an introduction (and a list of abbreviations). However, I have not been able to find this third volume anywhere, not even in the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog.

Does anyone know whether the third volume has actually come out? And if it has, where is it available?

The specific information I am looking for is the meaning of an abbreviation (in bold here) used by the editor, in the following passage from vol. 1 p. 3 or 4:

- aganma jyotir amr̥tā abhūma | antarikṣaṃ pr̥thivyā adhy āruhāma | divam antarikṣād adhy āruhāma | avidāma devān sam u devair aganmahi | dra. Mā. Saṃ. 8.52

- un nayāmi | Mā. Saṃ 31.5

These are mantras quoted by the commentator Mādhava in his introduction. That passage contains several mantras that I could not trace back (exactly) to extant texts, even outside the Sāmaveda-saṃhitā. In the first instance, the first pāda corresponds to VS 8.52 but the rest doesn’t; the Updated Concordance returned no results for the whole mantra. But the editor B R Sharma seems to have identified something similar in another text, abbreviated Mā. Saṃ., which he invites us to look at (dra. = draṣṭavyam?). The second passage, which the Concordance identifies as Kaṭha-saṃhitā 11.8, is apparently also found in that mysterious text.

I expect it to be the name of a Saṃhitā or at least a Vedic text, but which? The Maitrāyaṇī has only 4 chapters, and I can’t think of a name of a Saṃhitā that starts with Mā...

Any ideas or suggestions would be very helpful!

Thank you,

Ilya Comet

PhD Candidate, University of Louvain

FRS-FNRS Research Fellow