International thesis award for Leiden student Linguistics
Umberto Selva, a Leiden graduate of the Research MA program of Linguistics, has received for his thesis the international award for best MA thesis in the field of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics of the year 2015.
Umberto Selva, a Leiden graduate of the Research MA program of Linguistics, has received for his thesis the international award for best MA thesis in the field of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics of the year 2015.
Selva’s thesis, called The Paippalādasaṃhitā of the Atharvaveda Kāṇḍa 17, First Anuvāka (PS 17.1-6) “To the Earth”, forms a critical edition and linguistic analysis of a Vedic hymn that praises the Earth, on the basis of ancient manuscripts recently found in India. The hymn, written in Sanskrit, has possibly been composed around the year 1000 BC, and is thus one of the oldest texts of Vedism, the religion that is seen as the predecessor of Hinduism. According to Selva, the hymn “offers a unique insight into how Vedic people viewed and related to the world around them”.
The thesis award has been granted by the Indogermanische Gesellschaft, the international organisation of scholars of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. The jury praises Selva for the originality of his research and the excellent elaboration of the topic.
After having obtained his Research MA degree in Leiden, Selva has been admitted to a joint PhD-program in Turin and Leiden, and is at the moment working on a PhD thesis that deals with Vedic texts, too.
Website of the Research MA Linguistics: http://hum.leiden.edu/linguistics/linguistics-research/programme-linguistics-research.html
Website of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft: http://www.indogermanistik.org