Of Cows and Gods: Secret Names in the Rigveda

This paper examines the classificatory system developed in Yāska’s Nirukta, which correlates a deity or group of deities with a Rigvedic hymn or portion thereof. It explores its rationale, principles of classification, and the ways in which they relate to other Vedic notions. In A. Grafton and G. Most, eds. Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [In press] THIS IS A DRAFT VERSION

J Indian Philos (2018) 46:983–1007

Etymologies are often encountered in Vedic prose, in Brahmanas and early Upanisads. Though they have received a fair amount of scholarly attention, Vedic etymologies still present a challenge to interpreters. To respond to it, I critically review previous interpretations, and focus on three case studies, Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 1.1.2, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3, and Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8. In my interpretation, I emphasize the need for a contextual reading, foreground Vedic etymologies’ complexity and sophistication, and call attention to the variety of purposes they serve to achieve as well as to Vedic etymologists’ agency. Supplementing conventional interpretations concentrating mostly on their religious-magical aspects, I describe Vedic etymologies as discursive devices used by Vedic authors to further their thoughts and agendas.

The Enigma of Rigveda Rigveda, the earliest surviving text in an Indo-European language, remains largely undeciphered and the meaning and context of many of the 1028 hymns or songs remain incomprehensible. It is unclear if we comprehend what the composers intended to convey in respect of any of these.

Journal of Indian and Tibetan Studies (Indogaku Chibettogaku Kenkyu, インド学チベット学研究), 2024

This paper investigates the concept of “name” (nāman) within the early Yogācāra tradition from the perspective of Tibetan thinkers. Utilizing the pañcavastu theory, which categorizes all phenomena into five categories—nimitta (sign or cause), nāman (name), vikalpa (conceptual thought), samyagjñāna (correct cognition), and tathatā (suchness)—this study delves into various interpretations found in early Mahayana texts. Specifically, it examines the Laṅkavatārasūtra (LAS), the Viniścayasaṃgrahanī (VSg), and the Madhyāntavibhāga (MV) along with its commentaries by Vasubandhu (Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya, MVBh) and Sthiramati (Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīka, MVṬ). The analysis reveals significant differences in the ordering and definitions of the five [categories of] things across these texts and addresses the problem of attributing nāman to either the imagined or the dependent nature. Although the previous studies on the subject of pañcavastu theory (Suganuma 1967; Funahashi 1972; Kramer 2005; Takahashi 2005) provide extensive information regarding the pañcavastu theory, there is no attempt to elucidate the reason for the difference in attributing of nāman to either one of the two natures. This paper further explores this issue through the lens of Tibetan Dge lugs pa treatises authored by Tsong kha pa and ’Jigs med dam chos rgya mtsho, whose insights contribute to a nuanced understanding of the pañcavastu theory and offer a possible perspective to resolve the seeming contradictions, demonstrating doctrinal consistency within the texts. Tsong kha pa indicates that the term nāman has two meanings: (1) the content or referent object of an expression and (2) the linguistic term applied to the referent object; hence, the attribution of nāman to either of the two natures depends on how nāman is understood in that particular text. Therefore, this paper demonstrates the feasibility of this explanation by means of analyzing the meaning of nāman and its correspondence to either the imagined or the dependent nature in the aforementioned texts.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, 2019

The Rigveda is one of the most influential religious texts in the history of the world, but is it world literature? This chapter examines what is really at stake when we translate the Rigveda, and how much we miss when we force the text to conform to our aesthetic world rather than its own. This chapter examines how the poets of the Rigveda conceive of literature, of the world, and of the relationship between the two, in an attempt to better understand what the creators of the Rigveda would consider a graceful translation.

he Rigveda is the oldest Sanskrit text, consisting of over one thousand hymns dedicated to various divinities of the Vedic tradition. Orally composed and orally transmitted for several millennia, the hymns display remarkable poetic complexity and religious sophistication. As the culmination of the long tradition of Indo-Iranian oral-formulaic praise poetry and the first monument of specifically Indian religiousity and literature, the Rigveda is crucial to the understanding both of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian intellectual and aesthetic prehistory and of the rich flowering of Indic religious expression and Indic high literature that were to follow. This new translation represents the first complete scholarly translation into English in over a century and utilizes the results of the intense research of the last century on the language and the ritual system of the text. The focus of this translation is on the poetic techniques and structures utilized by the bards and on the ways that the poetry intersects with and dynamically expresses the ritual underpinnings of the text.

Owing to the sheer volume of the hymns in the Rig Veda, an attempt to analyze the entire anthology would prove to be a project of epic proportions. This is why Wendy Doniger's compilation of 108 select hymns from the Rig Veda is the primary text for this paper. This paper will firstly elaborate on why this anthology was chosen as the primary text for this paper. Following this will be a section that offers a context in place and time to the composition of the Rig Veda. This will be followed by an analysis of the nature and tone of the hymns. Secondly, this paper shall analyze the ancient formless deity that is sacred speech and her worthiness of being a sacrifice. What follows then is an exploration of the Vedic custom of sacrifice. Finally, this paper will draw a parallel between death and sacrifice. The Rig Veda is an anthology of 1028 of the oldest hymns recorded in the history of the Indian subcontinent, and perhaps in the world. Each of these hymns contains on average about 10 verses. In the Introduction to her translation of the Rig Veda, Wendy Doniger writes that the true meaning of the Rig Veda is " hidden [as it is] behind the thorny wall of an ancient cryptic language ". The language of composition of the Rig Veda is an ancient form of the Sanskrit that is known today. The Rig Veda is composed in an ancient Indo-Aryan language that is generally obsolete in this current day. The hymns in this anthology are often obscure and hard to understand even though the language is simple and direct. The obscurity lies not in the words themselves, but rather in the ideas that they represent. Often, the hymns present ideas of formless entities, by using metaphors and parallelisms that are hard to visualize and comprehend as they are presented. Then later hymns will present the same entity or deity with the use of a whole other set of metaphors thereby obfuscating the already amorphous idea of that entity or deity. For instance, hymn 7.103 about the Frogs has a multitude of different, sometimes contrasting, levels of meaning. The juxtaposition of the Brahmins and the frogs, the comparisons drawn between the frogs and cows, the unusual nature of the metaphors and similes used, and the complicated imagery of the hymn require multiple readings to even gather some kind of meaning from it. Moreover, a lot of the voice of a language is lost when it is translated into another. Thus, phrases and ideas that were commonplace in the time and place of the composition of the Rig Veda in that archaic Sanskrit tongue, lose the nuances that are indigenous to the tongue in which they were composed.

2010

This article investigates coordinative nominal constructions in the Rgveda, focusing on grammatical patterns of the so-called dual deities—pairs of gods whose names are joined in dvandva compounds or in other coordinative constructions (i.e. asyndeta, elliptic duals, and syntagms constructed with copulative conjunctions). It overviews the role of dual deities in the Rgveda and emphasizes the significance of the Rgvedic poetic style in the research of dual deities. The main focus of the article is the divine pair dyāvā-pthivī “Heaven and Earth”—the only prominent male-female pair in the Rgveda. It identifies the variety of coordinative constructions comprised of the names of Heaven and Earth, and the stylistic paradigms in which this pair occurs. The article argues that all types of dvandva compounds and other syntagms signifying dual theonyms are a reflection of the style of Rgvedic language and, as shown in the case of Heaven and Earth, the specific stylistic features and the ambig...

Journal of Vaishnava Studies 2.2 (Spring 1994): 47-58., 1994

IHROLD COWARD be mainty at the uaihharf or outer word level. But as spiritual i is made the chantwill be more and more internalized on the mad.h.yamd' inner word level. Eventually all sequenced chanting activity will subm, into the stilt steady ma.ntra samddhi of Pai)anti, zrrd the final goal of d,apitlayoga wrll have been realized.

The poems ascribed to Dirghatámas belong to the most difficult hymns of the gvedic corpus and their interpretation has been a challenging task for every researcher. This also holds for RV 1.160, a short hymn dedicated to Heaven and Earth. It turns out that apart from these two divinities at least one more entity is involved whose exact nature is not directly expressed but only indicated. In this paper it is argued that Dirghatamas uses this uncertainty about number and identity of these entities as a means to bring the enigma of creation and poetry to the fore.