The Sanskrit Studies Podcast
The Sanskrit Studies Podcast
3. Michael Witzel | Lost Languages, Hidden Manuscripts and Comparative Myth
Our third interview is with Professor Michael Witzel of Harvard University, one of the greatest Veda scholars of our time. You can find his Wikipedia page here, his Harvard page here, and many of his publications here.
Given Michael Witzel's long career and many incarnations, there are quite a few things to link to:
– Details on the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project
– Relating to Vedic Studies, there is the Viśvabandhu Vedic Word Concordance; digitized Vedic (and Sanskrit) dictionaries are available e.g. at the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries site. The publisher's sites for Witzel and Goto's introduction to the Rigveda are here and for Thomas Oberlies' 'Der Rigveda und seine Religion' here. Jamison & Brereton's recent English-language translation of the Rigveda is here, this is their 'The Rigveda: A Guide', and the website for their constantly growing online commentary can be found here.
You can download the article with the map detailing places in Mahārāṣṭra where manuscripts remain to be discovered.
This is Michael Witzel's ground-breaking book on Comparative Mythology. The translation of the Mayan Popol Vuh that we discuss does not seem to be available online, but WorldCat shows which libraries have it available.
This is the edition of the first books of the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā that we mention.