Talk:Shakha

Problems with the meaning of the word shakha

I have been reading "Indian Philosophy : A Counter-Perspective" by Daya Krishna, a noted modern-day philosopher, and he raises some very uncomfortable questions regarding the "shakha" business. In his own words, "If one asks, for example, which is the Yajurveda and what are its sdkhds, there is no satisfactory answer. First, there is no such thing as the Yajurveda. We have either the Krsna Yajurveda or the Sukla Yajurveda. These are not treated as shakhas of the Yajurveda, but if one were to do so one would have to point to some Mula Yajurveda of which they were the sdkhds. And there is no such Yajurveda extant at present. But do we, then, have a Krsna Yajurveda or a Sukla Yajurveda? As far as I know, there is no such thing either. What we have is the Taittiriya Samhita and the Kathaka Samhita, the Kapisthala Samhitd, and the Maitrayani Samhita.These are all supposed to be sakhas of the Krsna Yajurveda, but then where is the Krsna Yajurveda of which these are the sakhas?"

Moreover he alleges,

"It is not only that the structure of these texts is different, but also the sequence of the Mantras or even the Anuvdkas is different in different Samhitds. Even a cursory look at the comparative chart given by Keith reveals this..." He also says,

"The problem of the sakhas, even in their extant versions, deserves more serious attention than has been given till now. Ultimately, it is the differences or the additions, deletions and modifications in the various sakhas that are distinctive of them, and these have to be emphasized and brought out in a distinctive manner."

All quotes are from the chapter - Vedic Corpus: Some questions

Should we reconsider what goes up on the Wikipedia page? Or atleast record these problems?

Structural problem with the table is now fixed

There was an error in the coding of the table that was causing page editing to be thrown off. I went through the table and simplified the formatting, which made the structural problem go away. I did not do anything with the contents of the cells of the table. In working on this I notice that there is really no citation for any of the facts, perhaps it is all drawn from the one book that was listed (which I have not read). I have a feeling that this presentation of the data could be simplified by either adding some additional material from some of the references I have at hand, or perhaps replacing it. I hesitate to remove anything until it can be looked at more closely. Buddhipriya 23:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Call for book references

In looking at what to do next with this article I notice that in general there is a lack of citations for the details, but on the old original page there was the general reference to Michael Witzel, Tracing the Vedic dialects in Dialectes dans les litteratures Indo-Aryennes ed. Caillat, Paris, 1989, 97–265. Unfortunately I do not have that publication at hand, and my French is painfully poor. Does anyone know how that reference got there in the first place? The article title does not seem specific to the question of tracing the Shakhas, perhaps being more general as a linguistic history. If this source for the article on Shakhas cannot be confirmed as supporting the current contents of the page, I would suggest that it be removed, on the basis that it may not be of general use to the English reader. Can any of you please post here book references that you know will be of value specifically in working on the Shakha article? I will dredge up what I can find, but any solid academic citations to books that are actually obtainable by the average researcher would be of great value. The first step is simply to identify generally-accepted reliable sources. Buddhipriya 04:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Introduction has been re-written

I re-wrote the Introduction and began to split up the large table into four sub-tables so I can work on each Veda as a separate problem. I added references for the Introduction and tried to give a flavor of the fact that the shakhas are an important aspect of social identity and class difference among those who care about such things. Please read it over and correct whatever errors I have introduced. Buddhipriya 05:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

the tables as they are are completely unreferenced. Especially the "oral" claims need attribution: it is too easy to just claim that there are living oral traditions for each of these texts, any such claim must be referenced to credible publications. dab (𒁳) 11:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

also, please be aware of Help:Table: Your html tables are rather difficult to edit. dab (𒁳) 12:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Mahabhashya?

Why is there no mention of enumeration of veda shakhas by patanjali in mahabhashya? 124.123.244.65 (talk) 12:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)