Week 1 - Geo 0 - What is Tourism?

BTHM 1101 - Introduction to tourism Week 1 - Vide

The commentary of the Puruṣasūkta ascribed to Śaunaka

Uv(v)aṭa (11th c.), commenting on the Puruṣasūkta as included in the Vājasaneyisaṃhitā (ch. 31), reproduces an earlier commentary upon the hymn which he ascribes to Śaunaka. By examining the data about this Vedic ācārya (whose portrait was already sketched by Patton 2011) as provided by the (12th c.? Kerala) commentator Ṣaḍguruśiṣya in the introduction of his Vedārthadīpikā, one can infer that Śaunaka was at first a Ṛgvedin scholar, alleged re-arranger of the ṚV 2nd maṇḍala, author of a Ṛk-prātiśākhya and several metrical Anukramaṇī (the devatā one, expanded later on, becoming the present Bṛhad-devatā; Tokunaga), ‘nearly’ founder of his own Ṛgvedic ritual school by composing a (too) long Sūtra (said to have been replaced with a better one by his disciple Āśvalāyana, except the fragmentarily preserved Gṛhya-; cf. the 5th book, = the 4th one in Ṣaḍguruśiṣya’s version, of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka, in sūtra style, attributed either to Āśvalāyana, as by the latter, or to Śaunaka by Sāyaṇa; Khare), and showing ‘magical’ (pre-‘Tantric’; Bhat) interests with the authorship of the Ṛgvidhāna (see also the edited metrical Śaunakīya, similarly concerned with the ritual efficiency of ṚV recitations). This last work could be the link with the (second, viz. another, different, or the same ‘transformed’?) Atharvavedin Śaunaka, arranger of an Atharva recension bearing his name, author of the Atharva-prātiśākhya entitled Śaunakīyā caturādhyāyikā, and to whom are also attributed the Caraṇa-vyūha (AV-Pariśiṣṭa no. 49, for which a Paippalāda distinct recension exists) and various teachings in the AV-Pariśiṣṭas (no. 19b, 25, 30, 52, 58b, 62, 68 etc.). Śaunaka’s Puruṣasūkta-bhāṣya as transmitted by Uvaṭa could constitute the earliest preserved traditional commentary of a whole sūkta, after Yāska’s bhāṣya on individual mantras in the Nirukta. We will here assess the possibility of a tentative dating around the 4th-3th c. BC, corresponding to the relative dating suggested for (the ‘historical’) Śaunaka by Macdonell and Keith, that is between Yāska and Kātyāyana. Two problems remain: the source of this Puruṣasūkta-bhāṣya (is it an autonomous work, such as are commonly found in manuscripts for this most popular sūkta, or was it part of a larger VS commentary), and the fact that the version of the hymn commented upon is specific to the VS (with six additional verses and a few textual variants), whereas one would have expected Śaunaka to use the ṚV, if not the even more different AV, version of the hymn. Finally, as for its contents, Śaunaka’s commentary testifies to an early form of Vedāntic ascetism, stressing the inner form of the sacrifice, the ātma-yajña, proper to the yogin and leading to mokṣa

Paul-Émile Dumont (1879-1968) in memoriam: his contribution to the study of Vedic ritual texts

A Vedic workshop held in karmabhūmi (Kerala as the “land of ritual [activity]” par excellence) and remembering Frits Staal, offers a good opportunity to evoke another late great Vedic scholar, viz. Paul-Émile Dumont (1879-1968). Despite his major contribution to the correct understanding of the indigenous descriptions of the Vedic sacrifice, especially the horse sacrifice and the daily fire worship that he respectively presented in full in his two main books (1927, 1939), P.-É. Dumont did not receive any real tribute from his contemporaries (only one short obituary in the VIJ). In course of writing a bio-bibliography of P.-É. Dumont, I would in this paper share the results of my historiographical researches, partly based on unpublished archives. Born in Brussels, Belgium, Dumont specialized in Indology at the University of Kiel in Germany, with Paul Deussen and Hermann Oldenberg as masters, before the First World War (during which he was for a while with Arthur A. Macdonell in Oxford). Thereafter, supported by Louis de La Vallée Poussin in his first essays on Vedic ritual, he went for six months in Utrecht with Willem Caland, and a few years later, after the death of Maurice Bloomfield, with the additional support of Sylvain Lévi he became professor of Sanskrit and Indology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he remained active until his death. His Indological work was mainly (but not only) devoted to Vedic studies, and, within this peculiar field, especially to ritual literature. Beside his annotated translation in French of the passages from the brāhmaṇas and śrauta-sūtras related to the aśvamedha and the agnihotra, he also translated in English and commented extensive portions from the Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa (1948-1969). He focused on the agnicayana-rite several times: in the course of his description of the aśvamedha; according to the Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa (on special methods of building the fire-altar, 1951); on the meaning of the immured tortoise (1957); and already in 1923 on the mathematical problems of the successive enlargments of the agnikṣetra and the mahāvedi, a rather technical essay listed by Louis Renou in his Vedic Bibliography but neglected by Staal in his study of the agnicayana

A STUDY ON NEUROPSYCHIATRIC IMPACTS OF SARS- COV-2 PANDEMIC

The Corona Virus disease, better distinguished as Covid-19, led to a global pandemic that has affected our lives in ways more than one. The fear of getting infected, unexpected lockdowns, implementation of the work from home policy and online classes is affecting the psychological well-being of every one of us. Following this context, this study aims to evaluate the mental well-being of the adult population dwelling in Mumbai: the area which is worst hit by the pandemic in India. This study was conducted with the help of a survey. As a consequence of this pandemic, exponential growth in cases of anxiety, depression and several other neurological symptoms among individuals have been observed. The authors also discuss the other Neurological manifestations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These findings scrupulously emphasize the importance of monitoring the mental well-being of individuals and providing necessary psychological intervention and other coping methods during these pandemic led times

A Study on Neuropsychiatric Impacts of Sars- Cov-2 Pandemic

The Corona Virus disease, better distinguished as Covid-19, led to a global pandemic that has affected our lives in ways more than one. The fear of getting infected, unexpected lockdowns, implementation of the work from home policy and online classes is affecting the psychological well-being of every one of us. Following this context, this study aims to evaluate the mental well-being of the adult population dwelling in Mumbai: the area which is worst hit by the pandemic in India. This study was conducted with the help of a survey. As a consequence of this pandemic, exponential growth in cases of anxiety, depression and several other neurological symptoms among individuals have been observed. The authors also discuss the other Neurological manifestations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These findings scrupulously emphasize the importance of monitoring the mental well-being of individuals and providing necessary psychological intervention and other coping methods during these pandemic led times