Tatyana Elizarenkova

Tatyana Yakovlevna Elizarenkova (September 17, 1929, Saint Petersburg - September 5, 2007, Moscow) was a distinguished Russian Indologist and linguist, known for her study of the Vedas.

She was described by Wendy Doniger as "the greatest living scholar of the RigVeda , and certainly, the greatest linguist of the RigVeda". ^[1] In 1972, she published a translation of selected Rigvedic hymns into Russian, which eventually evolved into a complete translation of Rigveda in the following decades, published by Nauka between 1989 and 1999 in three volumes. Her complete Russian translation of Atharvaveda was published between 2005 and 2010, also in three volumes.

In 1976, together with her husband Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov, she published in English a linguistic analysis of Pali: The Pali Language. She was also an expert on Hindi, and published numerous works on its grammar.

Elizarenkova and Toporov were also the chief driving forces of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School.

India had honored her with the Padma Shri in 2004 for her contributions in the study of Vedas. ^[2]

Publications

• Aorist v "Rigvede", 1950
• I︠A︡zyk pali, 1965
• Issledovanii︠a︡ po diakhronicheskoĭ fonologii indoariĭskikh i︠a︡zykov, 1974
• The Pāli language, 1976
• Grammatika vediĭskogo i︠a︡zyka, 1982
• Vediĭskiĭ i︠a︡zyk, 1987
• Language and style of the Vedic R̥ṣis, 1993
• Words and things in the R̥gveda, 1995

Notes

1. Wendy Doniger's preface in Elizarenkova (1995 , p. VII)
2. "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.

References

• Elizarenkova, Tatyana J. (1995), Language And Style Of The Vedic Rsis, Albany: State University of New York Press