Dear Harry,
thank you for your kind of reply off-list! The contents of Ṛgveda Khilas
are not all the same age – Prof. Witzel himself remarks in his footnote
(118) to the quote you gave: “The hymns are of various age, and
many have various additions, e.g., the Śrīsūkta has Brāhmaṇa
time and even later, unaccented additions.”
I have not studied the Śrīsūkta in detail, but I'm confident that the
age of the modified Gāyatrī mantra it contains does not depend on its
source (i.e. it's probably a later addition). In this particular case,
it is important to bear in mind that the worship of Mahālakṣmī and Viṣṇu
only developed more than a millennium after the composition of the
Ṛgvedic hymns. Cf. Marion Rastelli, “Mahālakṣmī. Integrating a Goddess
into the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā.” /IIJ/ 58 (2015): 325–356, doi:
10.1163/15728536-05804002.
For a critical assessment of Scheftelowitz's arguments, see Theodore N.
Proferes, “The Relative Chronology of the /nivid/s and /praiṣa/s and the
Standardisation of Vedic Ritual.” /IIJ/ 57 (2014): 199–221, doi:
10.1163/15728536-05703013.
Best,
D. Haas
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Am 19.10.2021 um 13:15 schrieb Harry Spier:
Dear Dominik,
You wrote that the Śrīsūkta is post-Vedic . I asked my question
because both Michael Witzel and Scheftelowitz say the Rg Veda Khilas
(in which Śrīsūkta occurs) are old.
Michael Witzel wrote in his article: The Development of the Vedic
Canon and its Schools:
"This collection [the RV Khilas] contains quite diverse materials,
including such
famous hymns as the Śrīsūkta, RVKh 2.6, Suparnasūkta 1.3, etc. The
bulk of the material is of Rgvedic and Mantra period age".
Scheftelowitz says the Rgvedic Khilas are from the vedic period.
Thanks,
Harry Spier
On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 4:53 AM Dominik Haas <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Harry,
no, the fact that this mantra is part of the post-Vedic Śrīsūkta
does not indicate that it's older than the others.
The late age of these mantras in general has been noted by several
scholars, from Leopold von Schroeder in 1900 to Peter C. Bisschop
in 2018. It is impossible to infer the date of their composition
on the basis of their Vedic “source” texts. In a paper I gave at
the DICSEP last year, I argued that the modified or adapted
Gāyatrīs probably did not come into being before the 2nd century
CE at the very earliest. You can find an early draft of my talk
and further references here:
https://www.academia.edu/43771517/_G%C4%81yatr%C4%AB_as_a_Name_of_%E1%B9%9AV_III_62_10
<https://www.academia.edu/43771517/_G%C4%81yatr%C4%AB_as_a_Name_of_%E1%B9%9AV_III_62_10>
Best regards,
Dominik
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Am 19.10.2021 um 01:58 schrieb Harry Spier via INDOLOGY:
Dear list members,
Verse 26 (Sheftelowitz's edition) of the śrīsūktam (in the
rg-veda khilas) is the gayatri mantra
mahālakṣmī ca vidmahe viṣṇupatnī ca dhīmahi |
tan no lakṣmīḥ pracodayāt |
Would that make it older than the gayatri mantras at
Maitrāyaṇī-Saṃhitā 2-9-1. Does that make it the oldest gayatri
mantra in the form
... vidmahe
... dImahi
...pracodayAt |
Thanks,
Harry Spier
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