Vedic Studies: Language, Texts, Culture, and Philosophy

The Vedas hold a position of prominence, both as the oldest documents of Sanskrit and as the most venerable texts of Hinduism. This volume contains scholarly papers from the Veda Sessions of the 15th World Sanskrit Conference, touching a broad spectrum of the Vedic tradition and focusing on three major aspects of that tradition: language and linguistics; textual criticism and text edition; and culture, philosophy, mythology. Language and linguistics papers range from syntax and semantics (Hock, Küummel) to morphology (Tucker), onomastics (Pinault) and rhetorical structure (Klein). Remarkably, three of the articles in the second part deal with the tradition of Atharvaveda (Bahulkar, Kulkarni, and Rotaru and Sumant); the remaining two focus on Rigveda (Khare and Köhler). Two papers in the last part deal with matters of Vedic philosophy (Benedetti and Vedi), one is devoted to mythology and ritual (Gadgil), and one addresses ritual and material culture (Nishimura).