Mandala 2

The second Mandala of the Rigveda has 43 hymns, mainly to Agni and Indra chiefly attributed to the Rishi gṛtsamada śaunohotra. It is one of the "family books", the oldest core of the Rigveda, which were composed in early vedic period. Witzel on the basis of internal evidence suggested that the second Mandala contains the oldest hymns of the Rigveda.

Quotes

• May we not anger you, O God, in our worship By praise that is unworthy or by scanty tribute.
  • Rig Veda, II.33.4

• While some flow together, others flow towards; the rivers fill the common receptacle’.
  • Rigveda II 35, 3: quoted in Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Aditya Prakashan. ch. 5 Samudra in the Rgveda

• In II 41,16, Grtsamada calls Sarasvatí, naditamá, ambitamá and devitamá "best river, best mother, best goddess".
  • in Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda: Indo-Aryan migration debate. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.

• Elsewhere, Dabhiti, probably a hero, found himself surrounded by Dasyus; Indra smashed them, rescued Dabhiti and “brought him together with cows, horses, and chariots” (2.15.4 J&B).
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2019). Demilitarizing the Rigveda: a scrutiny of Vedic horses, chariots and warfare., STUDIES IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Journal of the Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences VOL. XXVI, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2019

Quotes about Mandala 2

• Witzel claims to arrive at his conclusions on the basis of a combination of a geographical grid and a chronological grid, but, as we have seen, he does not prepare a chronological grid at all: else, he would never place MaNDala II before MaNDala VI (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala II is a descendant of a composer, Sunahotra BhAradvAja, in MaNDala VI) or MaNDala VIII before MaNDala III (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala VIII is a descendant of a composer, Ghora ANgiras, in MaNDala III).
  • S. Talageri, The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000) Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

• Witzel‘s location of the Sarasvatī in Book 2 in Afghanistan is not an honest one: he does it only because he wants a Rigvedic Book which refers only to western rivers, in order to show the Vedic Aryans ―fighting their way through the NW mountain passes in their alleged movement from west to east, and Book 2 is his only option, since the name of only this one river is mentioned in the whole of this Book, and it is a name which can be manipulated from east to west by creating a dual entity (thanks to the existence of a Sarasvatī, the Avestan Harahvaiti, in Afghanistan).
  • S. Talageri, The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

• Theoretically, since Gartsamada Saunaka [the eponymous Rsi of Mandala II of the Rigveda] is made a Bhargava, he could be later than Book 6.
  • M Witzel, Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities, 1995

• I have also since changed my opinion, based on new evidence, about the relative date of the bulk of RV2 which I would now include in the mid-level texts.
  • WITZEL, Michael .2001. “WESTWARD HO! The Incredible Wanderlust of the Rgvedic Tribes Exposed by S. Talageri” in EJVS 7.2. Quoted in TALAGERI, Shrikant G. 2001. Michael Witzel – An Examination of his Review of my Book.