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THE RGVEDA-SAMHITĀKARA AND FATHER ESTELLER*
M. A. MEHENDALE
It is customary in such addresses to take stock of the work done during the period between the past and the present session and it is a good practice. But I feel, this year, for the Vedic Section this is not necessary because the third Volume of Dr. R. N Dandekar's Vedic Bibliography has just appeared. This Volume takes care of all that has been done in the Vedic field until about the middle of 1972. The excellence of this Vedic Bibliography speaks for itself and is there for any one who turns to its pages.
For this address I have chosen to confine myself to a limited task, viz, to examine the thesis propounded by Fr. Esteller (E) regarding the nature of the present Samhitā text of the Rgveda - a thesis which, I am sure, is known to many of you.
I shall state my conclusion first: I find myself in total disagreement with the learned Father. But if I have to criticize his views it does not mean any disrespect for his scholarship. In fact I owe a debt of gratitude to him. He was one of my teachers in Bombay while I was studying for M.A. and it was he who first initiated me into the subject of comparative philology. I am algo aware of the fact that Fr. E has spent more time than I have in the study of both the Veda and the texts which can be called the modern Vedāngas -- I mean the texts like Grassmann's Wörterbuch, Oldenberg's Prolegomena and Noten, Arnold's Vedic Metre, Bloomfield's Vedic concordance and Rgveda Repetitions, and Bloomfield-Edgerton-Emeneau's Vedic Variants. But in the light of what little experience I have of working in this field I fail to see the correctness of Fr. E's thesis. But let me repeat. I mean no discourtesy to my teacher, to a Vedic scholar, and to a past president of this very section.
Gathering my information from Dr. Dandekar's second and third Volumes of the Vedic Bibliography I find that Fr. E has been publishing his views on this subject since 1953. His principal forums have been the platforms of the Vedic Section of the AIOC and his publications have almost
* This is a slightly revised version of the Sectional President's Address delivered in the Vedic Section of the 27th Session AIOC, Kurukshetra, 26th-28th December 1974. 1 A few works have since appeared, for instance Peder Kwella's Flussüberschreitung
im Rigveda (RV III 33 und Verwandtes), 1973, but these are still only titles for us.
Madhu Vidyā/117
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