Rigvedic Syntax, Discourse Structure, and Stylistics offers a focused study of the linguistic and poetic architecture of the Rigveda, bringing together Jared S. Klein’s long-standing work on Vedic syntax, discourse organization, and style. Rather than providing a general introduction to Rigvedic language, the book examines in detail some of the structures through which the hymns create meaning, coherence, emphasis, and poetic effect, while placing Rigvedic usage within its wider Indo-Iranian and Indo-European linguistic background.The book explores the semantic organization of Rigvedic discourse; patterns of repetition within and across stanzas; the interaction of syntax, rhetorical structure, and metre; and the linguistic mechanisms that connect one part of a discourse to another. Particular attention is given to conjunction, anaphora, deixis, and the particles through which relations between speakers, objects, propositions, and successive units of thought are articulated. These features reveal that Rigvedic expression is shaped not simply at the level of individual words or grammatical constructions, but through larger systems of textual and rhetorical organization.Bringing linguistic analysis into close contact with poetic form, the study shows how syntax and discourse structure contribute directly to the distinctive stylistic character of Rigvedic poetry. It draws together established strands of Klein’s scholarship with new investigations in order to present a coherent account of how the language of the Rigveda works as both discourse and poetry. In making this body of research available in an integrated form, the book also brings an important tradition of modern Rigvedic linguistic scholarship into more direct conversation with readers and scholars in India.
Jared S. Klein
Jared S. Klein is Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Classics, and Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Georgia, where he also served for many years as Director of the Linguistics Program. He received his PhD in Linguistics from Yale University in 1974. His research focuses on Indo-European linguistics, Vedic Sanskrit, historical grammar, comparative philology, and discourse structure, with particular emphasis on the language and poetics of the Rigveda. He is the author of The Particle u in the Rigveda: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study; Toward a Discourse Grammar of the Rigveda; and On Verbal Accentuation in the Rigveda; and the editor or co-editor of numerous volumes on Vedic Sanskrit and Indo-European linguistics.
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