New Delhi. There will be many of you who would have done research and got PhD by writing thesis. This work is as easy as speaking, it takes as much effort to do it. Hard work, but how many years, not more than three years, four years or five years. But you will be surprised to know that an elderly student of BHU took 60 years to complete his research, yes, who are these elderly students and what research they did in which they spent almost their entire life. In fact, Banaras Hindu University’s Prof. Under Umesh Singh, 84 years old student Dr. Amaldhari Singh has got the degree of D.Lit. He has got the book published by bringing together the mantras of two branches of the world’s oldest text Rigveda ‘Shankhayan’ and ‘Ashvalayana’. There are 21 thousand 388 mantras in it. These two anonymous branches of the Rigveda, the original text of Sanatan Hinduism, were being traced for hundreds of years.
Dr. Singh told in a conversation with the Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar that he started working in this direction from 1962. Earlier, Max Muller was given the credit of compiling the Rigveda for 180 years. Till now only two branches of Rigveda, composed millions of years ago, were in the text. Out of this, a treatise containing 10 thousand 472 mantras ‘Shakal’ was published by German scholar Max Müller in 1849. Due to this today Rigveda is taught all over the country. The second is ‘Vashkal’ written by secondary sources. Now you must be wondering what is the meaning of branch. Actually, the branches of Rigveda mean its copies or editions. Dr. Singh said that Rigveda was written for the first time in 21 different Gurukulas of India i.e. Rigveda is one, but it was written in 21 different ways which is why it has 21 branches. Due to being written in different places, the number of its mantras also changed. Max Muller had collected the ‘Shakal’ branch of Rigveda, which contained 10 thousand 772 mantras. There are 10 thousand 548 mantras in the second secondary source text, Vashkal, whereas in both the texts of Dr. Amaldhari, 289 and 155 mantras are more than him. Now the work of translation of these texts will soon be started under the supervision of Vedic Brahmins.
Dr. Amaldhari Singh has composed a book, one of the conch shells was written in 16th century in Kashi, then from here he reached Ahmed Nagar. When Maharaja Vinay Singh of Rajasthan got the news of this, he got the manuscripts of this thousands of mantras kept safe in the library of Alwar Palace in Rajasthan. Since then no one has read this heritage nor any information about it has ever come out. Around 1960, Bhagwat Dutt, a research scholar from Lahore, discussed in his book that he had seen some material in the library of the Maharaja of Alwar, but he could not read it. After getting this information, Dr. Amaldhari Singh came to this library in 1968, then he got 63 manuscripts of 12 thousand pages. On investigation it was found that these are original copies of Rigveda. Since then, Dr. Amaldhari has published several articles one after the other and in the year 2012-13 Maharishi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan of Ujjain published Shankhayan Samhita in four parts.
The most famous are the five branches of the Rigveda, including both those published by Dr. Amaldhari.. The Vedas were a thing of the Shruti tradition, that is, it was taught by speaking from the guru to the disciples. There was no script then. It was written after the second century. Maharishi Ved Vyas divided it into four parts to make it convenient to read. He then taught it to his four disciples, Pal, Sumantu, Jaimini and Vaishampayana. The oldest of these is the Rigveda. Maharishi Patanjali has given 21 branches of Rigveda.