Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda, von Hermann Grassmann

Grassmann's "Wörterbuch zum Rig Veda" has, even after more than 120 years of its publication in Leipzig in 1873, remained one of the most important tools for anyone who wishes to study the oldest Indian text in the original. It is complete, gives all the references even in the case of very common words-although M. Kozianka, in the 6th revised and supplemented edition prepared by her (Wiesbaden, 1996), was able to add some references overlooked by G-takes the context into account, and contains even a reverse index. The slightly-idiosyncratic method of ignoring the traditional division of the text into mandalas and substituting for it a consecutive numbering of the suktas from 1 to 1017-may be a bit irritating, especially for the Indian reader, but this is a minor problem which can easily be over- come, e. g. by entering Grassmann's numbers into one's own copy of the text or by using Geldner's translation as a concordance. A major problem, however, is many of the meanings given by G. In this regard in particular the reader is strongly recommended to take into account the enormous progress achieved by Vedic scholars, even if these scholars do not fully agree with each other. But semantics is anyway one of the central problems of Sanskrit in general, not only of Vedic Sanskrit.