Rg veda
A Phonetic Transliteration
maNDala 1
maNDala 2
maNDala 3
maNDala 4
maNDala 5
maNDala 6
maNDala 7
maNDala 8
maNDala 9
maNDala 10
This text was deposited some time ago in the RLIN by Robert Khan. There
is no date for its completion. Rutgers thereafter forwarded the text to
the Oxford Text Archive (OTA), where it was "found." They can be
reached at archive@vax.ox.ac.uk The edition used was that of Aufrecht,
1877. Apparently, according to the RLIN, the edition was compiled by H.
S. Ananthanarayana and W. P. Lehman. It is a "research-only" text.
Reputedly, it was verified against Grassmann, 1876-77. The text is part
of resources of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities
(CETH), c/o Susan Hockey, Director.
Ananthanarayana and Lehman's achievement is, as with any encoding of a
text--especially a non-roman script language, quite momentous.
Nonetheless, whether from their edition, their text-entry/storage
protocol, or other factors, the text was significantly corrupt. Major
sections were missing, others completely chaotic in their order, and the
whole scheme of representing Devanagari in ASCII characters had to be
deciphered.
Credit should go next to Kim Poulsen, who found the text, Nandu
Abhyankar for initiating its conversion, and Avinash Chopde for
performing the conversion to ITRANS. ITRANS is the wetnurse of proper
multi-lingual computing in non- roman scripts. Saving the scholar or
enthusiast the trouble of learning a new keyboard map and keystrokes
designed for torture, ITRANS uses regular ASCII alphabet characters to
represent, phonetically, the various phonetics of the Sanskrit (and many
others) alphabet (s). Nonetheless, some of these characters are less
intuitive than others- R^I for the "r" svara, so I've made this "R," and
several other conventions which, while familiar on the net, are not
effective for the ITRANS coding. ITRANS proper allows machine
conversion from simple ASCII to full Devanagari per Velthuis' fonts.
For more on this, see
ftp://jaguar.cs.utah.edu/private/sanskrit/sanskrit.html
The beauty of ITRANS--aside from its function making text entry simple
while allowing for conversion to Postscript Devanagari files--is that it
is intuitively phonetic for the most part (for this reason I only
include here an ftp site for learning the key (valuable if you wish to
encode a text and very easy to learn). Avinash Sothaye is especially to
be thanked for assisting me in cross-checking and polishing the current
edited version. He has also kindly added many or most of the RV khila's
to the text of his own accord. In my reconstruction work, I owe much
credit to Max Mueller, Aufrecht, and Barend Van Nooten's Metrically
Restored RV (Harvard University Press, #50).
The current text is intended for any platform to enable word searches
and other research functions. IT IS NOT-by any stretch- a research
resource, more a research tool. It is a card-catalogue, if you will, of
Rig Vedic vocabulary in context.
NOTE ON VERSE NUMBERING: You may find it a bit obscure, so here's a key
which I quote in full from Avinash Sathaye who finished deciphering it:
"The first digit is mandala, the next three are the suukta numbers, the
second and the third from the last count the R^ichaa's and the last
digit gives the paada number. This leaves the middle two digits. The
other system is ashTaka, adhyaaya and varga. Each R^ichaa is subdivided
into vargaas and the middle two digits note the varga number. The varga
numbers get reset at the end of an adhyaaya."
E.G.: {601350201} is RV 6.1.2a
I would add that the current numbering only supports either "a" or "c"
paada distinctions. Hymns longer than 2-3 lines were conflated. This
became necessary due to the state of the text (about which, in general,
the OTA makes no promises) and was enormously improved, nonetheless, in
the various UNIX conversions from the original code (for which a second
word of thanks to Abhyankar, Chopde, and Sathaye would not be
unwarranted).
Interested parties are welcome to contact me at the following e-mail:
"jgardner@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu" for proofing/editing an accented version.
Ananthanarayana and Lehman included accent codes. Nandu, et al., have
been developing the new fonts by Charles Wikner to accommodate accent via
ITRANS conversions to Devanagari- currently svarita, anudaatta, and
anunaasika are worked out. Additional symbols for the SV will have to
be developed when those texts are prepared in e-form. Khan's text needs
to be converted in some uniform way to preserve his accent marks then
proofed for rendering in Devanagari.
At this stage, there is a reasonable likelihood that a transliterated
edition, preserving accent via for udaatta could be ready in the next
two months. Accenting a Devanagari edition would require the work of
several, most of whom are working on such advanced editions already. We
offer this text as an interim tool until the RV is widely available,
affordable, and easily accessible for both MAC and IBM. This edition is
a step toward filling small portions of the gap until this other work is
completed. Therefore, more aggressive text criticism of the edition is
best reserved for the accented transliterated version, as it will be
based on files more original than the present edition. This edition
aims to preserve basic order and vocabulary for searching and
quick-e-reference uses.
A proper electronic or hard-copy edition is assumed as a companion. I
strongly recommend Van Nooten's which, with fine hard copy, is only
US$60.00, and includes both Aufrecht and the metric restoration on an
archived disk. If decoding these files is a problem (the Mac process
can be quite tedious as it is a DOS disk), please feel free to contact
me as I have conversion code files available. In addition, several
other e-RV's are in the works by various scholars, some as part of very
large Vedic e-text collections which will greatly enhance Vedic
research.
Though it is unlikely that anyone could or would publish this ITRANS
version, in deference to the OTA, be certain that this is for research
purposes ONLY, no other publication, for profit or otherwise, is
allowable.
Enjoy the text, and comments are most welcome and will be incorporated
in the later versions.
John Robert Gardner, University of Iowa