num_pages: 330
description: Dating to the first half of the first millennium BCE, the Katha Aranyaka is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new, never-before-published critical edition, Michael Witzel, using available manuscripts and, primarily, a color facsimile of a restored five-hundred-year-old Kashmiri birch bark manuscript preserved at Tübingen since 1895, presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads. The text is preceded by an extensive introduction in English dealing with Vedic ritualism and followed by a German translation as well as detailed variant readings and a verse index.
language: English
title: Katha Aranyaka: Critical Edition with a Translation into German and an Introduction
titlecomplete: Katha Aranyaka: Critical Edition with a Translation into German and an Introduction (Harvard Oriental Series, Volume 65)
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard