There is Only One Original Version of the Rigveda

 

There is Only One Original Version of the Rigveda

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

In most descriptions of the Rigveda, it is frequently mentioned that the "surviving" text of the Rigveda is just one of "many versions" (or recensions) of the Rigveda: the Śākala recension. In one sense, this could be true, since we do find mentions of other recensions like the Bāṣkala and Śāṅkhāyana.  But the idea of "many recensions", if not understood properly, and if taken to mean "many original recensions", can be a source of confusion in the analysis of the text of the Rigveda and can serve to obfuscate the historical evidence in the text.

 

Studies of the Rigveda in general concentrate only on the Śākala recension. The other recensions are usually brought into the discussion only when someone finds it necessary to do so as part of some agenda: there being two opposing agendas: the Hindu agenda and the AIT agenda.

The Hindu agenda part of it is the belief that the surviving texts are just the tip of the iceberg, and that the actual iceberg itself is even more vast and massive than what we have at present. This is absolutely true about Sanskrit texts in general: it is a fact that probably lakhs of ancient Sanskrit manuscripts containing extremely valuable data, and even scientific and other knowledge, have been destroyed or have decayed or got lost or stolen over a period of time, or are rotting or languishing in obscure or unknown places, and we are not even in a position to estimate the magnitude of the loss. But that does not apply to the Rigveda, which has been uniquely preserved, as even Michael Witzel notes, by extremely strict and unique oral techniques from the day of composition of each hymn, and especially after the final completed text (around 1500 BCE or so) was frozen without any further changes ─ as Witzel points out, "these words have not changed since the composition of these hymns c.1500 BCE" (WITZEL 2000a:§8) and the hymns represent "‘tape recordings’ of this archaic period. Not one word, not a syllable, not even a tonal accent were allowed to be changed"  (WITZEL 2006:64-65). So there cannot have been "other" differing versions of the Rigveda.

[Witzel is not talking about some lost version of the Rigveda, but about the "present-day Ṛgveda recitation as a tape recording of what was composed and recited some 3000 years ago" (WITZEL 1995a:91): "The modern oral recitation of the RV is a tape recording of c.1700-1200 BCE.” (WITZEL 2000a: §8)].

The AIT agenda part of it arises when the AIT scholars find to their chagrin and amazement that the data in this tape-recording-like text goes completely against the AIT and in support of the OIT. That is when they suddenly discover the "other" recensions of the Rigveda and unspecified and unspecifiable later "changes" in the text. Thus Witzel ─ the same Witzel whose multiple quotes on the tape-recording nature of the Rigveda are regularly cited by me in my books and articles ─ in his review (WITZEL 2001b) of my second book "The Rigveda - A Historical Analysis", suddenly finds that the present text of the Rigveda "comes from the late Brāhmaṇa period, from North Bihar, where Śākalya's codification of the RV took place" and where "the politics of later priests and competing Vedic schools (Śākhās) and redactors at the Sanskritizing court of Videha often skewed the historical evidence found in the original RV", and that "T.’s book is based on what is essentially the wrong Rgveda text – the late Vedic compilation by zAkalya, which had already been subjected to several earlier redactions, and which mixed up materials from several eras in each of the books". Many parts of "this" RV are, therefore, according to Witzel, dateable as late as "the late Brahmana period – in other words, shortly before the time of the Buddha (c. 500/400 BCE)"!!! This is the low level to which AIT scholarship can degrade itself.

 

The fact that the hymns represent practically unchanged versions of the original, in the forms in which they were individually composed, is proved by many things:

1. As Witzel points out, "They were not allowed to be changed: not one word, not a syllable, not even a tonal accent. If this sounds unbelievable, it may be pointed out that they even preserve special cases of main clause and secondary clause intonation, items that have even escaped the sharp ears of early Indian grammarians. These texts are therefore better than any manuscript, and as good―if not better―than any contemporary inscription" (WITZEL 1999a:3). The hymns continued to be preserved without a change even when the reciters who kept the unchanged hymns alive in an oral form, over a period of many centuries and millennia, did not understand the meaning of many of the words they were chanting.

2. As I have shown in my article "Final Version of The Chronological Gulf Between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda", the hymns of the Old Rigveda continued almost unchanged even during the later period of composition of the hymns of the New Rigveda. To the extent that while new words and new meters which came into existence during this later period are completely missing in the 280 hymns and 2368 verses of the Old Rigveda, they are found heavily distributed within the New Rigveda: the new words are found 6828 times in 684 of the 686 hymns and in  4256 of the 7311 verses in the New Rigveda, and the new meters are found in 96 hymns in the New Rigveda.

 

As per the Wikipedia article on the Shakala Shakha: "The Mahābhāṣya of Patanjali refers to 21 śākhās of the rigveda; however, according to Śaunaka's Caraṇa-vyuha there are five śākhās for the Rigveda, the Śākala, Bāṣkala, Aśvalayana, Śaṅkhāyana, and Māṇḍukāyana of which only the Śākala and Bāṣkala and very few of the Aśvalayana are now extant. The only complete recension of this text known today is of the Śākala School.^[1] As far as the Rigveda is concerned only Śākala Śākhā is preserved out of 21 which existed at one time. There is a claim that Śaṅkhāyana Śākhā is still known to a few Vedapathis in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat but this is not certain."

The fact that only one version has "survived" to this day in its final frozen form from around 1500 BCE to the present day, and that this version, the Śākala version, is the only one kept alive from Kashmir in the north to Tamilnadu in the south, and from Orissa in the east to Gujarat in the west, raises the question of what happened to those other recensions. Why did they die out, or why did the traditional Vedic priests fail to preserve them with as much precision, and in totality, as they did the Śākala version, if the Śākala version was really just "one among many" versions?

 

The fact that there were other hymns and verses is acknowledged by the Śākala text of the Rigveda, since many of these hymns and verses are included in the supplement (to the main Rigveda) called the khilas or khila-sūktas, as extra hymns and verses, many of which are attributed to the "lost" Bāṣkala recension. The Vālakhilya sūktas (VIII. 49-69) are 11 hymns which have been inserted into the main body of the Śākala text of the Rigveda itself in Book 8, and are acknowledged to be later than the rest of Book 8. They were probably the oldest or the most important among the khila-sūktas, and the other khila-sūktas are therefore later and/or less important and are therefore not included within the main text but counted among the pariśiṣṭa or  supplementary parts of the Rigveda.

It is clear that the other "recensions" of the Rigveda are basically the same as the Śākala text, with a few extra hymns, all of which were composed in the latest part of the period of composition of the New Rigveda, and which therefore represent a linguistically later form of the Rigvedic language. Apart from the khila-sūktas appended as a pariśiṣṭa to the Śākala text which indicate their lateness both in language and in their supplementary-appendage position, very little is known about these recensions.

 

The only other available full recension of the Rigveda is the recently published Āśvalāyana recension. It is exactly the same as the Śākala text, with the addition of 212 additional mantras or verses. It has been published by the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Kala Kendra, New Delhi, in 2009.

The very foreword to this published volume tells us: "A glance at the additional mantras of the Āśvalāyana will convince any Vedic scholar that they are of later origin. Barring a few, the majority of them have been composed in a language and in meters which developed in the later phase of Vedic period. Many of them have precative nature or are magical charms, prayers (e.g. Śrīsūkta) or benedictions. They seem to have been added to the corpus of the Samhitā when Vedic religion was slowly turning into Hinduism". About the "provenance and place of origin of the Āśvalāyana Samhitā", the foreword tells us it is "somewhere in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The mention of the confluence of the Gaṅgā and Yamunā (sitā-asitā, cf. sūkta X.75, p.911) at Prayāga, and that of the river Narmadā, besides many other internal evidences found in the additional verses, point towards this fact" (Foreword, p.viii).

So it is clear from all the extant data about these other recensions, that they are all distinctly later to the Śākala recension, which is why they were not preserved all over the country with the same absolute precision as the Śākala recension.

Does all this mean that these recensions, or what parts of those recensions are still extant, are not important, or not as sacred as the other Vedic texts? Very obviously not: however much later they may be than the Śākala recension, they are all ancient Vedic texts very much older than the period of the Buddha, and probably much older than most of the other post-Samhita Vedic texts, and perhaps at least as old as the other three Veda Samhitas. So their extremely great importance, and their sacred nature as "Vedic texts", is beyond question.

What has to be questioned is the attempt to place them on par with the Śākala recension of the Rigveda which is clearly the oldest text of its size and nature not only within Vedic literature, and not only in Indo-European literature, but in the whole of world literature. This not only brings in an element of obfuscation and confusion in the study of the Rigveda, but also serves to throw a troublesome stone into the clear waters of the analysis of the historical data in the Rigveda.

For all purposes of historical analysis, the Śākala recension of the Rigveda, with its 1028 hymns and 10552 verses, is the Only Original Version of the Rigveda. There is no other text (or recension) which can provide us with a different picture of the oldest recorded Indian, Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian and Indo-European history from that provided by this Only Original Version of the Rigveda.