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The Rigveda (Sanskrit: ', from ' "praise, shine"〔derived from the root ' "to praise", cf. Dhātupātha 28.19. Monier-Williams translates "a Veda of Praise or Hymn-Veda"〕 and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is one of the four canonical sacred texts (''śruti'') of Hinduism known as the Vedas.〔〔Antonio de Nicholas (2003), Meditations Through the Rig Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, ISBN 978-0595269259, page 273〕 The text is a collection of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses, organized into ten books (''Mandalas''). The hymns are dedicated to Rigvedic deities. The Rigveda begins with a small book addressed to deity Agni, Indra and other gods, all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection; for each deity series the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones; yet, the number of hymns per book increases; finally, the meter is systematically arranged from jagati and tristubh to anustubh and gayatri as the text progresses.〔Michael Witzel (1997), (The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu ), Harvard University, in 〕 In terms of substance, the hymns predominantly discuss cosmology and praise deities in the earliest composed eight books,〔Werner, Karel (1994). ''A Popular Dictionary of Hinduism''. Curzon Press. ISBN 0-7007-1049-3.〕〔 shifting in books 1 and 10, that were added last, to philosophical or speculative〔 questions about the origin of the universe and the nature of god,〔 the virtue of Dāna (charity) in society,〔C Chatterjee (1995), (Values in the Indian Ethos: An Overview ), Journal of Human Values, Vol 1, No 1, pages 3-12; Original text translated in English: The Rig Veda, Mandala 10, Hymn 117, Ralph T. H. Griffith (Translator);〕 and other metaphysical issues in its hymns.〔See: (a) Antonio de Nicholas (2003), Meditations Through the Rig Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, ISBN 978-0595269259, pages 64-69; Jan Gonda, A History of Indian Literature: Veda and Upanishads, Volume 1, Part 1, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3447016032, pages 134-135; Extracted examples from these sources: Hymn 1.164.34, "What is the ultimate limit of the earth?", "What is the center of the universe?", "What is the semen of the cosmic horse?", "What is the ultimate source of human speech?" Hymn 1.164.34, "Who gave blood, soul, spirit to the earth?", "How could the unstructured universe give origin to this structured world?" Hymn 1.164.5, "Where does the sun hide in the night?", "Where do gods live?" Hymn 1.164.6, "What, where is the unborn support for the born universe?"; Hymn 1.164.20 (a hymn that is widely cited in the Upanishads as the parable of the Body and the Soul): "Two birds with fair wings, inseparable companions; Have found refuge in the same sheltering tree. One incessantly eats from the fig tree; the other, not eating, just looks on."; Rigveda Book 1, Hymn 164 Wikisource〕 Rigveda is one of the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language.〔p. 126, ''History of British Folklore'', Richard Mercer Dorson, 1999, ISBN 9780415204774〕 Philological and linguistic evidence indicate that the Rigveda was composed in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, most likely between c. 1500–1200 BC, though a wider approximation of c. 1700–1100 BC has also been given.〔Oberlies 1998 p. 158〕 Some of its verses continue to be recited during Hindu rites of passage celebrations such as weddings and religious prayers, making it probably the world's oldest religious text in continued use.〔Lester Kurtz (2015), Gods in the Global Village, SAGE Publications, ISBN 978-1483374123, page 64, Quote: "The 1,028 hymns of the Rigveda are recited at initiations, weddings and funerals..."〕 ==Text== The surviving form of the Rigveda is based on an early Iron Age (see dating below) collection that established the core 'family books' (mandalas 2–7, ordered by author, deity and meter 〔H. Oldenberg, Prolegomena,1888, Engl. transl. New Delhi: Motilal 2004〕) and a later redaction, co-eval with the redaction of the other Vedas, dating several centuries after the hymns were composed. This redaction also included some additions (contradicting the strict ordering scheme) and orthoepic changes to the Vedic Sanskrit such as the regularization of sandhi (termed ''orthoepische Diaskeuase'' by Oldenberg, 1888). As with the other Vedas, the redacted text has been handed down in several versions, most importantly the ''Padapatha'' that has each word isolated in pausa form and is used for just one way of memorization; and the ''Samhitapatha'' that combines words according to the rules of sandhi (the process being described in the ''Pratisakhya'') and is the memorized text used for recitation. The ''Padapatha'' and the ''Pratisakhya'' anchor the text's fidelity and meaning and the fixed text was preserved with unparalleled fidelity for more than a millennium by oral tradition alone. In order to achieve this the oral tradition prescribed very structured enunciation, involving breaking down the Sanskrit compounds into stems and inflections, as well as certain permutations. This interplay with sounds gave rise to a scholarly tradition of morphology and phonetics. The Rigveda was probably not written down until the Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries CE), by which time the Brahmi script had become widespread (the oldest surviving manuscripts are from ~1040 CE, discovered in Nepal).〔〔The oldest manuscript in the Pune collection dates to the 15th century. The Benares Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript of the 14th century. Earlier manuscripts are extremely rare; the oldest known manuscript preserving a Vedic text was written in the 11th century in Nepal (catalogued by the (Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project ), Hamburg.〕 The oral tradition still continued into recent times. The original text (as authored by the Rishis) is close to but not identical to the extant ''Samhitapatha'', but metrical and other observations allow to reconstruct (in part at least) the original text from the extant one, as printed in the Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 50 (1994).〔B. van Nooten and G. Holland, Rig Veda. A metrically restored text. Cambridge: Harvard Oriental Series 1994〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rigveda」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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