State of affairs in Paippalāda research

The Paippalāda-Saṃhitā (PS) of the Atharvaveda occupies a special place within the corpus of Vedic texts, because it has become known to scientific research at a relatively recent time only. This due to a forgotten branch of transmission, which came to light after Durgamohan Bhattacharyya discovered palm leaf manuscripts with the text of this Saṃhitā in rural Orissa in 1959.

Prior to this landmark event the Paippalāda was only available in a single manuscript – the famous Kashmirian birch bark manuscript (K), that became known in the West in 1873. The text of this codex unicus, however, is almost entirely in such a pitiful state that it is virtually incomprehensible – at least for passages that aren’t supported by parallels from other Saṃhitās.

The discovery of the Orissa tradition results in a significant enlargement of the text corpus that is of utmost importance for the knowledge of the Vedic language and culture. This is of great significance for a whole range of scientific disciplines, especially Indology, but also Indo-European studies among others.

Meanwhile a text of the complete PS has been edited by Dipak Bhattacharya (Bhattacharya 1997, 2008, 2011, 2016). On this basis, the tremendous enterprise of understanding and evaluating the text can now be tackled. Indeed, important progress has already been made in this respect. In particular, the work of Arlo Griffiths (2009) represents a milestone here. The following table gives a overview of the size of the twenty books (‘kāṇḍas’) and the most important contributions published so far.