बृहद्-देवता: The Brhad-Devata - Attributed To Saunaka (A Summary of the Deities And Myths of the Rgveda)

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Vedas are the most authoritative texts of Hindus. Among the secondary works of Vedic literature, the Brhaddevata has always attracted considerable share of interest on the part of Vedic scholars. The text of Brhaddevata bears an intimate relation to that of the Naighantuka, the Nirukta, the Sarvanukramani, the Arsanukra- mani, the Anuvākānukramani, and the Rgvidhana, owing to the very nature of the work its connection with the text of the Reveda is necessarily very close; the Maitrayani Samhita, the Kausitaki and the Aitareya Brahmanas occasionally throw light on it: and several of its legends are historically linked with those of the Mahabharata.

Brihaddevata, a work by Katyayana, can be placed later than 400 B.C. The shlokas have undoubtedly been added here and there and some modifications of diction have probably crept in, the authenticity of the text as a whole is better guaranteed than that of perhaps any other ancillary Vedic work. It comprehensively deals with the deities of the Rgveda.

The present work is an important edition since it carries the text with translation with critical and illustrative notes. List of detailed appendices has certainly added to the worth of the work.

How I came to edit the Bṛhaddevată

Among the secondary works of Vedic literature, the Bṛhaddevata has always attracted a considerable share of interest on the part of Vedic scholars. When Roth, in 1846, published his treatise, Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Weda, he knew the work only from the quotations occurring in the commentaries of Sadgurusisya and Sāyaṇa, which were then, of course, accessible in manuscript only. He remarks, however (p. 49), that copies would in all probability yet be found in India. Not long after this a MS. (b) of the Bṛhaddevata was actually acquired, along with the Chambers collection of Sanskrit MSS., by the Royal Library at Berlin. Adalbert Kuhn made it the basis of his account of the Bṛhaddevata published in the first volume (pp. 101-120) of Indische Studien (1850). Kuhn transcribed this MS., subsequently adding collations from another MS. (h), which Haug procured at Poona in 1865, and which is now in the Royal Library at Munich. As he found these two MSS. insufficient for the purpose, Kuhn was unable to carry out his intention of publishing an edition of the Bṛhaddevatā.

Meanwhile Max Müller had obtained from India, in the sixties, three modern copies by the aid of Drs. Bühler and Bhau Daji. He, too, seems at one time to have contemplated editing the Brhaddevata; for among his papers I found a transcript, in his own hand, coming down to the tenth Varga of the second Adhyaya¹. But the inadequacy of his MS. material doubtless deterred him from proceeding any further.