Jaiminiya Brahmana

The Samaveda (, from ' "song" and ' "knowledge"), is the Veda of melodies and chants. It is an ancient Vedic Sanskrit text, and part of the scriptures of Hinduism. One of the four Vedas, it is a liturgical text which consists of 1,875 verses. All but 75 verses have been taken from the Rigveda. Three recensions of the Samaveda have survived, and variant manuscripts of the Veda have been found in various parts of India.

While its earliest parts are believed to date from as early as the Rigvedic period, the existing compilation dates from the post-Rigvedic Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit, between c. 1200 and 1000 BCE or "slightly rather later," roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda.

Embedded inside the Samaveda is the widely studied Chandogya Upanishad and Kena Upanishad, considered as primary Upanishads and as influential on the six schools of Hindu philosophy, particularly the Vedanta school. The Samaveda set important foundations for the subsequent Indian music.

It is also referred to as Sama Veda.

Dating and historical context

Michael Witzel states that there is dating for Samaveda and other Vedic texts. He estimates the composition of the samhita and the Yajurveda.Michael Witzel (2003), "Vedas and Upaniṣads", in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Editor: Gavin Flood), Blackwell, , pages 68-70

There were about a dozen styles of Samavedic chanting. Of the three surviving versions, the Jaiminiya preserves the oldest surviving tradition of Samavedic chanting.Bruno Nettl, Ruth M. Stone, James Porter and Timothy Rice (1999), The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Routledge, , pages 242-245

Text

The ''Samaveda'' is the Veda of Chants, or "storehouse of knowledge of chants". According to Frits Staal, it is "the Rigveda set to music".Frits Staal (2009), Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights, Penguin, , pages 4-5 It is a fusion of older melodies (''sāman'') and the Rig verses. It has far fewer verses than Rigveda,James Hastings, , Vol. 7, Harvard Divinity School, TT Clark, pages 51-56 but Samaveda is textually larger because it lists all the chant- and rituals-related score modifications of the verses.

The Samaveda text contains notated melodies, and these are probably the world's oldest surviving ones. The musical notation is written usually immediately above, sometimes within, the line of Samaveda text, either in syllabic or a numerical form depending on the Samavedic ''Sakha'' (school).

Recensions

R. T. H. Griffith says that there are three recensions of the text of the Samaveda Samhita:Griffith, R. T. H. ''The '', , page vi
* the Kauthuma recension is current in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and since a few decades in Darbhanga, Bihar,
* the in the Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gokarna, few parts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
* and the Jaiminiya in the Carnatic, Tamil Nadu and Kerala

Organization

The Samaveda comprises two major parts. The first part include four melody collections (gāna, गान) and the second part three verse "books" (ārcika, आर्चिक). A melody in the song books corresponds to a verse in the ''arcika'' books. The ''Gana'' collection is subdivided into ''Gramageya'' and ''Aranyageya'', while the ''Arcika'' portion is subdivided into ''Purvarcika'' and ''Uttararcika'' portions. The Purvarcika portion of the text has 585 single stanza verses and is organized in order of deities, while Uttararcika text is ordered by rituals. The Gramageya melodies are those for public recitations, while Aranyageya melodies are for personal meditative use such as in the solitude of a forest. Typically, the Purvarcika collection were sung to melodies described in the Gramageya-Gānas index, and the rules of how the verses mapped to verses is described in the Sanskrit texts such as the ''Puspasutra''.Guy Beck (1993), Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound, University of South Carolina Press, , page 230 note 85

Just like Rigveda, the early sections of Samaveda typically begin with Agni and Indra hymns but shift to abstract speculations and philosophy, and their meters too shifts in a descending order. The later sections of the Samaveda, states Witzel, have least deviation from substance of hymns they derive from Rigveda into songs. The purpose of Samaveda was liturgical, and they were the repertoire of the ' or "singer" priests.

The Samaveda, like other Vedas, contains several layers of text, with Samhita the youngest layer.

Analytics

The Samaveda consists of 1,549 unique verses, taken almost entirely from Rigveda, except for 75 verses.Michael Witzel (1997),
The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu
in ''Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts: New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas'', Harvard University Press, pages = 269-270 The largest number of verse come from Books 9 and 8 of the Rig Veda.Michael Witzel (2003), "Vedas and Upaniṣads", in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Editor: Gavin Flood), Blackwell, , page 76 Some of the Rigvedic verses are repeated more than once. Including these repetitions, there are a total of 1,875 verses numbered in the Samaveda recension translated by Griffith.

Contents

Samaveda samhita

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