Katha Aranyaka: Critical Edition with a Translation into German and an Introduction.

• Author: Olivelle, Patrick
• Position: Book review

Katha Aranyaka: Critical Edition with a Translation into German and an Introduction. By MICHAEL WITZEL. Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 65. Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. 220.

This new edition in the Harvard Oriental Series makes more accessible to the scholarly public the text and translation into German of the Katha Aranyaka, Michael Witzel's "Inauguraldissertation" of 1972 first published in 1974. This publication has been available only in a limited number of libraries, and the current edition assures it the wider circulation it deserves.

As Witzel (p. vii) acknowledges, "no changes have been made in the text" of its original version, which was based on the single surviving manuscript of the text currently located in the University of Tubingen Library. Further, no new manuscript of the text has been discovered since the publication of the original edition. However, the current edition contains a much expanded introduction (sixty-nine pages) dealing with the literature of the Katha Sakha, the age and content of the Katha Aranyaka, peculiarities of the unique manuscript of this text written on birch bark in the Sarada script, the Pravargya rite that is at the center of the text, a disquisition on the Vedic world-view and ritual ideology, and an expanded bibliography. It also gives a facsimile reproduction in color of the restored Sarada manuscript.

The text and the translation are presented conveniently on facing pages, a feature that will be appreciated by anyone reading this somewhat difficult text. Given that Witzel had only one complete manuscript, there are numerous places where conjectural readings had to be given. Yet there are numerous and substantial lacunae in the text that Witzel could not reconstruct. The text is well presented and easy to follow, and the translation is not only...