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A Vedic Concordance c4.s4: Scope of the Concordance

A Vedic Concordance c4.s4

Language
English

Scope of the Concordance

c4.s4.1

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.

c4.s4.2

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.

c4.s4.3

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.

c4.s4.4

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.

c4.s4.5

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.

c4.s4.6

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.

c4.s4.7

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.

c4.s4.8

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.

c4.s4.9

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.

c4.s4.10

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.

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