The Rigveda - Brief

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rig_veda

The Rigveda (Sanskrit ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a compound of ṛc "praise, verse"[1] and veda "knowledge") is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the gods (devas). It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts (śruti) of Hinduism known as the Vedas.[2] Some of its verses are still recited as Hindu prayers, at religious functions and other occasions, putting it among the world's oldest religious texts in continued use. [3]

It is one of the oldest texts of any Indo-European language. Philological and linguistic evidence indicate that the Rigveda was composed in the Sapta Sindhu (a land of seven great rivers), corresponding to the North-Western region of the Indian subcontinent, roughly between 1500–1000 BCE (the early Vedic period). There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the early Andronovo culture of ca. 2000 BCE (Sintastha, Arkhaim, etc.).

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The surviving form of the Rigveda is based on an early Iron Age (c. 10th c. BCE) collection that established the core 'books' (mandalas 2-7, strictly ordered according to author, deity and meter [4]) and a later redaction, co-eval with the redaction of the other Vedas, dating several centuries after the hymns were composed. This redaction also included some additions (contradicting the strict ordering scheme) and orthoepic changes to the Vedic Sanskrit such as the regularization of sandhi (termed orthoepische Diaskeuase by Oldenberg, 1888).

As with the other Vedas, the redacted text has been handed down in several versions, most importantly the Padapatha that has each word isolated in 'pausa' form and is used for just one way of memorization; and the Samhitapatha that combines words according to the rules of sandhi (the process being described in the Pratisakhya) and is the memorized text used for recitation.

The Padapatha and the Pratisakhya anchor the text's fidelity and meaning[5] and the fixed text was preserved with unparalleled fidelity for more than a millennium by oral tradition alone. In order to achieve this the oral tradition prescribed very structured enunciation, involving breaking down the Sanskrit compounds into stems and inflections, as well as certain permutations. This interplay with sounds gave rise to many contributions to morphology and phonetics, eventually leading to the very systematic Brahmi script. The Rigveda was probably not written down until the Gupta period(4th to 6th century CE), by which time these forms of writing were widespread. However, the oral tradition continued till recent times. The oldest surviving manuscripts date to the 11th century.

The original text ("original" in the sense that it aims to recover the hymns as composed by the Rishis) is close to Samhitapatha, but metrical and other observations allow to reconstruct an earlier form, as printed in the Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 50 (1994) [6].


Organization
The text is organized in 10 books, known as Mandalas, of varying age and length. The "family books": mandalas 2-7, are the oldest part of the Rigveda and the shortest books; they are arranged by length and account for 38% of the text. The eight and ninth mandalas, comprising hymns of mixed age, account for 15% and 9%, respectively. The first part of first (RV 1.1-50) and the tenth are the latest. Books 1 and 10 are the longest books, of 191 suktas each, and form 37% of the text.

Each mandala consists of hymns called sūkta (su-ukta, literally, "well recited, eulogy") intended for various sacrificial rituals. The sūktas in turn consist of individual stanzas called ṛc ("praise", pl. ṛcas), which are further analysed into units of verse called pada ("foot"). The meters most used in the ṛcas are the jagati(a pada consists of 12 syllables), trishtubh(11), viraj(10) and gayatri or anushtubh(8).

For pedagogical convenience, each mandala is synthetically divided into roughly equal sections of several sūktas, called anuvāka ("recitation"), which modern publishers often omit. Another scheme divides the entire text over the 10 mandalas into aṣṭaka ("eighth"), adhyāya ("chapter") and varga ("class"). Some publishers give both classifications in a single edition.

The most common numbering scheme is by book, hymn and stanza (and pada a, b, c ..., if required). E.g., the first pada is

1.1.1a agním īḷe puróhitaṃ "Agni I invoke, the housepriest"
and the final pada is

10.191.4d yáthā vaḥ súsahā́sati

Recensions
The major Rigvedic shakha ("branch", i. e. recension) that has survived is Śākala. Another shakha reportedly surviving is Bāṣkala, although this is uncertain[clarify]; if genuine, it is practically identical to the Śākala text.

The Śākala recension has 1,017 regular hymns, and an appendix of 11 vālakhilya hymns[7] which are now customarily included in the 8th mandala (as 8.49–8.59), for a total of 1028 hymns.[8] The Bāṣkala recension includes 8 of these vālakhilya hymns among its regular hymns, making a total of 1025 regular hymns for this śākhā.[9] In addition, the Bāṣkala recension has its own appendix of 98 hymns, the Khilani.[10]

In the 1877 edition of Aufrecht, the 1028 hymns of the Rigveda contain a total of 10,552 ṛcs, or 39,831 padas. The Shatapatha Brahmana gives the number of syllables to be 432,000,[11] while the metrical text of van Nooten and Holland (1994) has a total of 395,563 syllables (or an average of 9.93 syllables per pada); counting the number of syllables is not straightforward because of issues with sandhi and the post-Rigvedic pronunciation of syllables like súvar as svàr.


Rishis
Tradition associates a rishi (the composer) with each ṛc of the Rigveda.[12] Most sūktas are attributed to single composers. The "family books" (2-7) are so-called because they have hymns by members of the same clan in each book; but other clans are also represented in the Rigveda. In all, 10 families of rishis account for more than 95% of the ṛcs; for them the Rigveda includes a lineage-specific āprī hymn (a special sūkta of rigidly formulaic structure, used for animal sacrifice in the soma ritual).


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