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A Vedic Concordance c4: Preface

A Vedic Concordance c4

Language
English

Contents

Preface

General Plan of the Concordance

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The Concordance is part of a larger scheme.—The plan of this work dates back to the year 1892, when two separate announcements of it were published—the one in the *Proceedings of the American Oriental Society* (for April, 1892, *Journal*, volume xv, page clxxiii), and the other in the *Johns Hopkins University Circulars* (for June, 1892, volume xi, number 99). At that time, as the reader of either of these announcements will see, I sketched the plan of a three-fold apparatus designed to facilitate and deepen the study of the Vedas: one part of it was a universal word-index to the Vedas; another was an index of subjects and ideas; and the third, which I promised to undertake myself, was a Vedic Concordance. As commonly happens in such cases, the fulfilment of the last-named part of the plan cost much more time and labor than was expected. With correspondingly greater satisfaction I now present the result to those of the Hindu people who look upon the Vedas as their sacred books, and to all scholars in this field of Indian antiquities. That result is, an alphabetic index to every line (or *pāda*) of every stanza (or *ṛc*) of the published Vedic literature and to every liturgical formula thereof (*yajus*, *prāiṣa*, and so on), that is, an Index to the Vedic Mantras.

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Conditions of the problem which the Concordance involves.—The Vedic mantras represent parts of a mass of traditional material which was more extensive even than that which has come down to us,—material current in the various schools of Vedic learning, preserved from generation to generation by memory, and handed down from teacher to pupil by word of mouth. I have, for my part, little doubt that this oral tradition was supported at a comparatively early time—when we cannot say—by written tradition (see AV. xix. 72). As a natural consequence of the fallibility of both oral and written tradition, what was originally and essentially one and the same stanza or formula was handed down in the texts of the various schools in more or less varying forms. The variants are often of the same general character as those which appear in the various forms of ballads, or in recensions of church hymns: there are simple differences in the order of the words; differences due to the substitution of a more familiar, handy, or modern word or grammatical form for an archaic, inconvenient, or obsolescent one of equivalent meaning or function. To this must be added the very important point that there are also many cases in which a given mantra passage, composed under certain definite circumstances, was later on adapted and changed to serve a new purpose.

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Furthermore, Vedic literary production is often in a high degree imitative and mechanical. The poets or priests, more or less consciously, fell into habits of expression such that entire lines of different stanzas or hymns, and considerable sequences of words of different prose passages, show much similarity. This ranges from complete identity to a likeness which is sometimes so vague or fleeting as hardly to be recognizable, save to the practised eye of the expert Vedic student.

Primary Uses of the Concordance

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1. It is a comprehensive index of all mantras.—Thanks to the editors of a considerable number of Vedic texts, we have, for each of the various Saṃhitās, and for some Brāhmaṇas, Sūtras, etc., an index of first lines of each stanza. These indexes are of course scattered over divers volumes; and they do not take cognizance of lines other than the first. Moreover, these indexes do not as a rule register such prose-formulas as the texts may happen to contain: they simply register the *pratikas* of the metrical stanzas. The advantage of having, as in the present work, one comprehensive index, which shall include every line of every stanza, as well as every prose formula, in one single alphabetic arrangement and in one single volume, will, I am certain, be prized by every student of the Veda.

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2. It registers the variants of mantras not wholly identical.—Mantras which occur only a single time, or appear in a wholly identical form in two or more texts, require no comment after they have been properly arranged in an alphabetical index. Again, mantras which are not wholly identical, but are alike in their beginnings, will also fall into the same or nearly the same place in a direct alphabetic arrangement. It is obvious that the places of occurrence of a given mantra of this kind may be advantageously grouped together, with a statement of the various readings of the different texts. The method used for this purpose is explained below, at page xiv. Once more, if the forms of the mantra in question differ at the beginning, then—obviously again—they will occupy places in the alphabetic arrangement more or less widely apart, and it will be necessary to connect them by some system of cross-references. This also is explained below, at page xv. To sum up, the Concordance affords, primarily, an easy and ready means of ascertaining the following things: First, where a given mantra occurs, if it occur but once; second, whether it occurs elsewhere, either with or without variants, and in what places; and third, if it occur with variants, what those variants are.

Secondary Uses of the Concordance

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1. It is a key to the liturgical employment of the mantras.—The above-mentioned uses are plainly the direct or primary ones for which a work like this is expected to serve. The nature of the subsidiary Vedic literature (Brāhmaṇas, Sūtras, etc.), however, and its intimate relation to the fundamental texts, are such that the Concordance may also be readily put to certain indirect or secondary uses, which are scarcely less important for the systematic progress of Vedic study. First, since the Concordance gives not only the places of actual occurrence of a given mantra in the Saṃhitās, but also the places where it is cited in the subsidiary works on ritual and household custom and the like, it furnishes the key to the liturgical or ritual employment of every mantra as prescribed by the ceremonial books. I hope that the Concordance will prove to be a most effective means of advancing our knowledge of the hymns and the ceremonies in their relations to one another. The hymn or prayer, and the ceremony that accompanied it, often serve mutually each as a commentary on the other. The subtle blend of song and rite makes a full knowledge of both necessary for the understanding of either.

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2. It is virtually a finding-index of rites and practices.—As a corollary to the use just mentioned, I may add that, since a given prayer is liable to be rubricated in similar or identical rites and practices described in the large mass of Hindu ritual texts, the Concordance will incidentally serve, to no inconsiderable extent, as a helpful finding-index of similar or identical rites and practices.

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3. It is a tool for future editors of Vedic texts.—

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The future editor of a Vedic text will find in a complete assemblage of all the mantras an auxiliary of the very first importance. In the work of constituting a Vedic text, the mantras are the most intractable part of the material concerned, because they are written in a dialect which—differing, as it does, considerably from the later forms of Sanskrit—was imperfectly understood by the scribes. Since much of the material of this kind with which the future editor will have to deal is quite certain, as experience shows, to be contained in the literature previously published, it is obvious that the Concordance will greatly facilitate the establishment of the new texts and the revision of some that have already been edited. Moreover, since, as has been already said, parallel prayers are to a large extent imbedded in parallel ceremonies, the Concordance will not be without value in establishing the text of the liturgical books themselves.

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4. It is a repertory of the most archaic Hindu prose.—The Concordance presents, for the first time and in a form ready and convenient for systematic study, the prose mantras as distinguished from the metrical mantras of the Vedic hymns on the one hand, and from the rest of the early prose on the other. It seems to me that these prose formulas are in a dialect or in a style that differs not a little from the narrative or descriptive prose of the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras. The formulas abound, at any rate, in poetic or other archaisms that deserve to be collected and treated by themselves. There is also good reason to believe that the prose of the formulas is the oldest Hindu prose and so the oldest Indo-European prose. The study here suggested seems to me likely to prove to be a not unfruitful one.

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5. Miscellaneous uses.—It can hardly be doubted that the Concordance will be of service in the work of determining the relations of the different Vedic schools or çākhās to one another. I am not sure but that the present time is just as opportune for this interesting and fundamental research as any that is likely to present itself within the next fifty years or so. And there are various other interesting questions that will suggest themselves to different scholars, according to their bent of mind and habits of investigation, for the solution of which the Concordance can not fail to be a useful tool. For example, it may be noted that this Concordance assembles an enormous number of passages beginning with the prohibitive adverb mā, and that even a cursory examination of them reveals the interesting fact that only a very few contain verb-forms other than injunctives or augmentless preterits. Or, again, the extreme frequency of mantras beginning with the name of a divinity has as its consequence that mantras concerning a certain deity are here, to a very large extent, grouped together. For instance, the mantras beginning with the name of Agni fill twenty-eight pages, and those beginning with the name of Indra fill twenty-three. Consequently, in this book will very often be found, most conveniently assembled, much of the material for the study of questions relating to Vedic mythology. Nor must I omit to say that the initial words of the mantras form by themselves a very considerable part of a word-index to the mantras.

Scope of the Concordance

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1. Certain published texts not included.—Although the title claims that the entire published Vedic literature is incorporated in this Concordance, yet the claim is made with certain reservations. The Paippalāda-Çākhā or Kashmirian text of the Atharva-Veda, to begin with, is in some sense published, being accessible to scholars in the chromophotographic reproduction edited by Professor GARBE and myself; but it is too corrupt to be incorporated here and compared with the rest of the material, and the birch-bark original still remains unfortunately the only one known to us for this text. We may hope that the Concordance will prove of great service in restoring this text so far as is feasible under these singularly distressing circumstances. Again, the edition of the Drāhyāyaṇa-Çrāuta-Sūtra, promised, and in part, I believe, issued, by Dr. J. N. REUTER of Helsingfors, I have not as yet received. So, too, the Çānti-Kalpa, edited by Professor G. M. BOLLING, in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, volume xxxv, appeared too late. I believe I have read all the later Upaniṣads and Smṛti or Dharma texts which seemed likely to be of interest in this connection; but I have not thought it necessary to continue, among all kinds of late paralipomena or pāriçiṣṭas, a pedantic search which might be indefinitely prolonged without commensurate results. Anything that may come to light within the next twenty years or so may well await the day when the accumulation of new texts or of new editions of old ones shall render a supplement to the Concordance a profitable undertaking.

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Once more, the claim of the title-page calls for a word of explanation as to certain doubtful elements of late or less important published texts. What I have endeavoured to embody in the Concordance with absolute completeness is the following: all the stanzas and all the prose passages of formulaic character contained in the Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, older Upaniṣads, Çrāuta-Sūtras, and Gṛhya-Sūtras. On the other hand, in the case of the later Upaniṣads or of the metrical Dharma-Çāstras and Smṛtis, or of such a text as the Rig-Vidhāna, I have adopted a selective method. It would clearly be inadvisable to include in this Concordance all the stanzas that occur in the works last mentioned. From them, accordingly, I have culled whatever appeared to have Vedic form or Vedic flavor. Unerring judgment in such choice no one will expect: I do not believe that I have erred on the side of including too little. It is perhaps more likely that I have included some things that might just as well or better have been left out.

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2. Unpublished texts included.—The Concordance, on the other hand, gives more than is promised by the title-page, in that it includes a very considerable amount of material not yet published. Of the four books of the Kāṭhaka-Saṃhitā only the first has so far been actually issued by the editor, Professor LEOPOLD VON SCHROEDER of the University of Vienna: it is to me a source of peculiar satisfaction that I am able to give in this Concordance the mantra material from this highly important text entire. I made a special journey to Vienna, in 1902, for the express purpose of copying the material from the three unpublished books, and the editor generously met my wishes by the loan of his manuscripts. From them, by the close and arduous labour of a month, I excerpted the needed parts, and embodied them later in the Concordance. To Professor VON SCHROEDER I owe an especial debt of gratitude. Again, by the kind coöperation of Professor FRIEDRICH KNAUER of the University of Kiew, I have been enabled to present the mantras of the entire Mānava-Çrāuta-Sūtra, an important text in eleven books of which only five as yet are published. Professor HANNS OERTEL, of Yale University, has enriched the Concordance by the not too numerous, and unfortunately very corrupt, mantras contained in the Jāiminīya- or Talavakāra-Brāhmaṇa. Finally I should note that I have incorporated all the material from the so-called ‘dedications’ of the ritual of the horse-sacrifice or açvamedha, and human sacrifice or puruṣamedha. Not all of these are mantras in the stricter sense of the word; but they have been included because they figure in the Saṃhitās and because they sometimes interchange with real mantras of the same or similar import.

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General statement of the number and kind of works included.—It appears that one hundred and nineteen texts in all have been drawn upon for contributions to the Concordance. A list of these, with an account of the text-editions used and with all needed bibliographical and other relevant notes, is given in the proper place below, at page xvᵇ. The works so drawn upon are listed under the following ten classes: 1. Saṃhitās; 2. Brāhmaṇas; 3. Āraṇyakas; 4. Upaniṣads; 5. Çrāuta-Sūtras; 6. Gṛhya-Sūtras, Mantra-Pāṭhas, and related texts; 7.

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Dharma-Sūtras, Dharma-Çāstras, and Smṛtis; · 8. Vidhāna-texts; · 9. Ancillary texts of the Veda; 10. Four miscellaneous texts.—I have not thought it worth while to catalogue other texts which I have read, for the most part late Upaniṣads and Law Texts, but which yielded nothing that appertains to this work.

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The Concordance rarely reports variants registered in the critical apparatus of a given edited text.—The critical apparatus of Vedic texts contains in the main worthless readings, due to all kinds of defects of tradition.¹ To have incorporated these readings into the Concordance would have swelled its bulk inordinately, and have been a task upon the whole no less futile than difficult.

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¹ We may perhaps except parts of the AV. as edited by ROTH and WHITNEY, especially book xix. and the Kuntāpa-hymns of book xx. Here the editors have practically rewritten the text at many points, and it might have been well to report the readings of the manuscripts rather than those of the edition; but those manuscript readings are easily accessible.

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On the other hand, it has in some rare cases seemed advisable to report from the critical apparatus of a given text a manuscript reading not adopted by the editor of that text, which manuscript reading is then distinguished as such by the added note ‘var. lect.’; but this has not often been done. Hence the user of this Concordance may at times profit by looking into the critical apparatus of those texts which are cited by the Concordance as containing the various forms of the same pāda or formula, especially when there is question as to the original form of such pāda or formula, or as to the interrelation of the Vedic schools or çākhās.

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Orthographic details reported or neglected.—Certain peculiarities in the orthography of the Māitrāyaṇī-Saṃhitā have been reported for the most part, if not with absolute completeness. They are duly explained by Professor VON SCHROEDER in the Introduction to his edition, and they are included here because they involve differences of alphabetic arrangement. On the other hand, although the KS. and ApMB. write final s before the three initial sibilants, respectively, as ç and ṣ and s, I have not thought it advisable to burden the Concordance with the details of this variation which has no bearing upon the alphabetic arrangement, and is not carried out with strict consistency even by the manuscripts of those texts. I beg the reader to understand the general statement just now made as sufficing, for the sequel, to cover all such details.

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Occasional suggestions of emendation.—The Vedic texts often invite to independent emendation. In this matter I have been very abstemious, but I have not refrained entirely from making an occasional conjecture as to what seems to me to have been the correct form of some now unintelligible word or phrase. If any of my colleagues are disposed to look askant at such a thing in such a place, I trust that they will take my long and intimate acquaintance with the materials involved in such questions as in some measure justifying my procedure.

Future Work Complementary to the Concordance

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The working-up of material of texts yet unedited.—The heading of this section implies faith in the future of Vedic studies: I am confident that the Vedas will continue to be studied as long as there is interest in the history of human thought and human institutions. Because of the half-mythical nature of Vedic tradition, we do not know certainly how many different books were originally elaborated by the ancient Hindu poets and theologians of different schools and localities; but India is a very large country, and the seemingly fabulous statistics of the Caraṇa-Vyūhas have proved to contain an estimable measure of truth. Still less certain may we be as to how many of those works are still extant, and as to how many of those which are extant may ultimately come to our hands in manuscript. Nevertheless a considerable number of Vedic texts—their names need not encumber these pages—are even now known to exist in manuscript; and although their publication may be deferred, it is in the end sure to come. It is plain that, all in due time, a supplement to the Concordance will become a necessity. For that supplement it will perhaps be worth while to wait until all, or nearly all, the remaining texts shall have seen the light of day. Meantime I take the liberty of calling the attention of future editors of these texts to the importance of giving with each text-edition an index of metrical lines and of prose formulas, after the manner of this Concordance, and with constant references to it. When I reflect upon the large number of texts elaborated in the present work, or consider, for example, that the forty thousand pādas of the Rig-Veda will not have to be indexed again, I am glad to think that the final supplement, considerable though it may be, cannot possibly involve anything like the labor of the foundation-work.

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The elaboration of a reverse concordance.—With the present work serving as a basis, a reverse concordance, that is, one which arranges alphabetically the verse-lines and formulas by their endings rather than by their beginnings, should not prove too difficult an undertaking. I am sure that it will prove a valuable one. A very considerable number of Vedic verse-lines are nearly or wholly alike in their endings, such as ... parame vyoman (or vyomani), or ... sukṛtām u lokam. This matter is discussed once more in another connection below, at page xivᵃ. A reverse concordance would reveal these relations, and would again in its own way present many new uses. It may yet be my own fate to continue the work in this direction; but I claim no special right to the task, and any competent scholar is welcome to undertake it. In that case, however, I hope that he will first communicate with me, in order that we may not uselessly duplicate the same labor.

Acknowledgment of Obligations

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To the University Press of Oxford.—The external appearance of this work is such that any specific comment upon the technical skill, the good taste, and the patient fidelity of Mr. HORACE HART, M.A., Controller of the Press, is quite uncalled for. I am certain that I owe much also to the valuable help of the Oriental Reader at the Press, Mr. J. C. PEMBREY, Hon. M.A. of Oxford, especially for his watchful care of details concerning the alphabetic order of the index. The services of both these gentlemen I gratefully acknowledge.

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To Pupils and Colleagues.—A good many years have gone by since the first preliminaries of the work on the Concordance were begun. It is pleasant to think that in those early days I was aided by the members of a modest institution within the Johns Hopkins University, the so-called Vedic Seminary. The work of reading the several Vedic texts for the purpose of marking off properly the pādas and formulas I did of course myself; but, this important preliminary done, I would often turn to one or another of these my pupils a text or part of a text in order that they might transcribe the mantras upon slips. Portions of the first draft of a rough manuscript were also prepared by some of them from the slips after their partial arrangement. Not a little help was derived from their willing hands in these ways, and I desire here to recall the unselfish and enthusiastic spirit in which each gave what he could spare of time and labor. I hope that even those of them who aided least have not remained unremembered. The names of these scholars are as follows:

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Dr. F. R. BLAKE, Instructor in Oriental Languages in the Johns Hopkins University; Dr. G. M. BOLLING, Professor of Greek and Sanskrit in the Catholic University of America; M. BRANDOW, A.B., sometime Assistant Librarian in the Johns Hopkins University; Dr. H. L. EBELING, Professor of Greek in Hamilton College; Dr. C. J. GOODWIN, Professor of Greek in Lehigh University; Dr. J. E. HARRY, Professor of Greek in the University of Cincinnati; Dr. D. H. HOLMES, Instructor in the Classics, High School, Brooklyn; Dr. J. T. LEES, Professor of Greek in the University of Nebraska; Dr. H. W. MAGOUN, sometime Professor of Latin in Redfield College; Dr. J. L. MOORE, Professor of Latin in Vassar College; Dr. J. A. NESS, Instructor in Latin in Wittenberg College; Dr. R. B. STEELE, Professor of Latin in Vanderbilt University; and, finally, the late Dr. A. W. STRATTON, who was, at the time of his deeply lamented death, Registrar of the University of the Punjab and Principal of the Oriental College at Lahore, India, and Professor of Sanskrit.

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Professor ARTHUR A. MACDONELL, of the University of Oxford, kindly furnished me with a printer's proof of the index of Vedic pratīkas since then published on pages 105-114 of the first part of his edition of the Bṛhad-Devatā; and a similar kindness was done me by Professor MORITZ WINTERNITZ of the University of Prague, who made accessible to me the material of the Mantra-Pāṭha of the Āpastambins before it was published. The services of Professor HANNS OERTEL of Yale University, and of Professor FRIEDRICH KNAUER of the University of Kiew, and in particular of Professor LEOPOLD VON SCHROEDER of the University of Vienna I have already described above, at page ix.

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The editor of this Series, Professor CHARLES R. LANMAN of Harvard University, teacher, colleague, and friend, almost from the day when I began my Sanskrit studies in 1877, has brought to bear his great editorial talents upon this Concordance in every possible way. He has also found time to read one proof of a number of sheets (1-10 and 49-50). I can only regret that I have not had the benefit of his trusty eye and his sound scholarship for the bulk of the work, to the exclusion of many a blemish.

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It is a pleasure, finally, to remember my former pupil and friend, Mr. HENRY C. WARREN, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Warren gained the respect of students of India by his scholarly volume, entitled Buddhism, a series of illustrative translations from the Sacred Books of the Buddhists (volume iii. of the Harvard Oriental Series). To his love of Oriental learning it is due that this Concordance and the other volumes of this Series are issued in a suitable and dignified form. At the close of this long labor, I record the kindly and substantial aid which he gave, while alive, to this undertaking; and I am glad to say that the enlightened provisions of his last will now further the studies that he loved in life.

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MAURICE BLOOMFIELD.

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BALTIMORE, October, 1906.

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