Prolegomena on Metre and Textual History of the Rgveda

Vedic textual criticism has not kept equal pace with grammar and exegesis. The two latter disciplines have made ample contributions also towards the restoration of the original text of the Veda with the traditional text as the starting point. But the problem was approached always merely in a casual manner and never figures in the foreground as an object of independent research. The present work is an attempt to remedy this deficiency so far as the Rgveda is concerned. Oldenberg made a distinction between the ‘original text’ of the Rgveda – the form in which the rsis composed and recited their hymns and the ‘traditional text’ which, in a fixed form, has been handed down to us by the oral tradition. Oldenberg made a thorough and critical study of all aspects of the traditional text in order to present to the world of scholars the original text in the form and arrangement discovered by him. The materials that are now being published in this volume were intended by Oldenberg to serve as a Preface to his proposed edition of the Rgveda. They represent the results of his extensive studies on Vedic metre, principles underlying the arrangement of the hymns in the Rgveda Samhita, variations found in the text of the mantras as found in the Rgveda and the later Samhitas and the Brahmanas, ortheopic diaskeuasis, and the two Sakhas of the Rgveda Sakala and Baskala.