The Two Oldest Veda Manuscripts
Facsimile Edition of Vajasaneyi Sa?hita 1-20 (Sa?hita- and Padapa?ha) from Nepal and Western Tibet (c. 1150 CE)
Michael Witzel(Editor)
Harvard University Press
Published on 1. March 2019
Book
Hardback
184 pages
978-0-674-98826-2 (ISBN)
Description
This volume offers unexpected insights into the history of the Veda, the earliest texts of South Asia, and their underlying oral transmission. In side-by-side facsimiles, Michael Witzel and Qinyuan Wu present the two oldest known Veda manuscripts, the Vajasaneyi Sa?hita of the White Yajurveda and its contemporaneous sister text, a Vajasaneyi Padapa?ha, recently found in western Tibet. These two manuscripts have retained an unusual style of representing the pitched accents, and their juxtaposition in this edition invites comparison between the oral Veda transmission of a thousand years ago and the recitation still maintained today. Both manuscripts are important testimonies for the history of the Vedas, their medieval transmission, and their first codification in writing. As such, they are of great interest to historians, Indologists, and scholars studying the interface of oral and written traditions.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
247 color photos
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-98826-2 (9780674988262)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Michael Witzel is Wales Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard University. Qinyuan Wu is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.