Index Verborum der Śaunakasaṃhitā und der Paippalādasaṃhitā des Atharvaveda

Jeong-Soo Kim — 2024-12-11

The present indices verborum of Atharvaveda began in 2015 with the inclusion of words from Kāṇḍas 8 and 9 (Kim 2014) and in subsequent years from Kāṇḍas 1 (Zehnder 1993), 2 (Zehnder 1999), 3 (Spiers 2020 unpubl.), 5 (Lubotsky 2002), 6-7 (Griffiths 2009), 13-14 (Lopez 2010), 15 (Lelli 2020), 17.1-6 (Selva 2014 unpubl.), 17.12-15 and 17.21-43 (Selva 2019 unpubl.) and 20.1-30 (Kubisch 2012). The AVP and AVŚ words that the author encountered in private readings (Kāṇḍa 16) and in lessons (Kāṇḍas 1) were also included. During the DFG project “Eine neue Edition des zweitältesten indischen Textes, der Śaunakasaṃhitā des Atharvaveda nebst der Erstellung eines Index verborum der Paippalādasaṃhitā und Śaunakasaṃhitā” (2018-2021), all words from the AVŚ (see: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-277038) and also the words from the AVP parallel passages were included. In the second phase of the project (01.2022-05.2023, funded by the DFG), the words from Kāṇḍa 11, 12, 19 and 20 of the Paippalādasaṃhitā were entered into the index. Bhattacharya's editions from 1997 to 2016 (as well as Bhattacharyya 1964 and 1970) were always taken into account when adding the lemmas. Most recently, the edits of Kāṇḍa 1 (revised by Zehnder 1993), Kāṇḍa 4 and Kāṇḍa 12 of the “Paippalāda Recension of the Atharvaveda. Online Edition (beta). https://www.atharvavedapaippalada.uzh.ch/” [visited, January 2024] was included in the present index, although it had already been completed.

In order to achieve as reliable an emendation as possible in the numerous difficult or corrupt passages, reference was made to my data collection of pronunciation and spelling errors in the Orissa Mss. (94 pages, unpubl.) and in the Kashmiri manuscript (109 pages, unpubl.), which enabled a statistical evaluation of the erroneous syllables according to their frequency. Unfortunately, not all cases are represented in the database, so that numerous passages are still open to discussion.

Announcement
Two word indexes of the Atharvaveda are being published here. They are based on the Paippalāda edition (in press, at Würzburg) by Jeong Soo Kim and the standard Atharvaveda edition (Roth-Whitney-Lindenau).
The first word index lists the words of the Śaunaka Saṃhitā (AVŚ, AV) with their locations in AVŚ; the second index lists the words of the Paippalāda Saṃhitā (AVP, PS) with their locations in AVP.

This publication had been planned and agreed on for publication in the Harvard Oriental Series (Vol.101 sqq.) years ago. However, due to my retirement from Harvard in September 2022, the current chair of the Department of South Asian Studies, Parimal Patil, and his tenured colleagues have abruptedly taken away my editorship (HOS 50-100) and have stopped all publications for the foreseeable future. In this situation, S.J. Kim and I have opted for publishing his important work in EJVS. Pacta sunt servanda.
We hope that this publication will further Atharvaveda Studies and Vedic studies in general, and beyond this (comparative) linguistic studies.

Michael Witzel
Wales Research Professor of Sanskrit,
Department of South Asian Studies,
Harvard University

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies

Index Verborum der Śaunakasaṃhitā und der Paippalādasaṃhitā des Atharvaveda