The Rigvedic Family-Mandalas -A Statistical Study (An Old and Rare Book)

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The Vedic literature of India in general and the Rigveda Samhita in particular is the " oldest literary document" of the world. As such it has, since the time it became known to the world outside India, thanks to the efforts of the western scholars in the field of philology-attracted the attention of all scholars in the fields of Linguistics, Comparative Philology, Ancient Civilisation and History, Indology and Mythology. They have tried to fathom this ocean of the vast ancient literary heritage of the world with the hope that it would throw light on the pre-historic civilisations of mankind. But with all these efforts, the Vedas have as yet yielded but very little information on the pre-historic civilisations of the world.

The main reason for this failure of exploring the ancient civilisations through the medium of the Vedas is that the Rigveda Samhita, which is the oldest of all, has not helped us in fixing the chronological order either of its compositions or its composers. Some attempts had been made in this direction by scholars like M. BLOOMFILLD, H. JACOBI, B.G. TILAK, M. WINTERNITZ, A.A. MACDONELL, M. MAX MÜLLER, V. G. RAHURKAR etc. But the approaches that each of these scholars adopted were basically different from one another's and, hence, no general consensus on the matter of the chronology, agreement/disagreement, similarity/dissimilarity, etc. of the different Vedic eşit has been possible. And when one does not know the chronology, etc. of the compositions and the composers, the results arrived at on points other than chronological, are incapable of giving us a clear picture of the history of the people; and such a blurred picture hampers our way at every step in the field of Vedic research.

The chief aim of the present study has, therefore, been to attempt to fix at least rough or general or even relative, chronology of the authors of the Rgvedic hymns. To start with, the five authors, viz Grisamada, Visvamitra, Vamdeva, Bharadvaja and Maitravarupi of the five family-mandalas and the sixth author viz. Dirghatamas Aucathya of the first mandala, which is not a family-mandala, have been selected for the purpose.

The problem of chronology has been attempted by different scholars from different points of view, viz linguistic, mythological, astronomical and ritual and sociological. The point of view, from which the problem of chronology of the Vedic seers is attempted here is totally different from all the above points of view. The method adopted here is purely statistical. We find many similarities and dissimilarities of forms, declensions, conjugations, epithets, etc.

It gives me great pleasure in placing this monograph of Dr. M. D Pandit in the hands of scholars of Veda. This forms no. 13 in Class B of the publications of the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, University of Poona We all know that the family Mapdalas of the Rgveda are the earlier portion of the Rgveda. The next problem is to decide the chronology of these six family-mandalas. Dr. Pandit has employed statistical method to draw some conclusions regarding the chronology of these mandalas. The basic assumption underlying this study seems to be the fact that the language of a particular author of a particular time exhibits distinct features and if a method succeeds in highlighting those peculiar features, the classification in a scale of time becomes evident. I think, this is a quite reasonable assumption. The Rgvedic language provides ample scope to test this assumption because it abounds in varieties of forms at all levels of phonology, morphology and syntax. Frequency counts of the various forms definitely give a direction for conclusion.

Dr. Pandit has been successful in employing the statistical method in identifying the peculiarities of a particular seer in terms of his preference of one form to the other. Never-the-less, Dr. Pandit is aware of the limitation of this method. At one or two cases the result of application of this method goes in an unexpected direction. But such cases are negligible and in majority of the cases the results are encouraging and they help in arriving at the internal chronology of the family mandalas.

This monograph has demonstrated the viability of the application of the statistical method for arriving at an objective conclusion. I am confident that scholars of Veda will appreciate this work. One may extend the application of this method to solve problems of chronology of other Vedic texts also. I wish, Dr. Pandit continues his work in the field of Veda where the number of serious scholars is decreasing very fast.