ix. 63, 5. others, that no doubt can remain on this subject. Vedic poets, being allowed to change a semivowel into a vowel, were free to say nasatya and nâsatyā, viii. 5, 32; prithivyas and prithivyâh; pitroh and pitroh, i. 31, 4. They could separate compound words, and pronounce ghritannah or ghrita-annah, vii. 3, I. They could insert a kind of shewa or svarabhakti in words like samne or sâmne, viii. 6, 47; dhamne or dhâmne, viii. 92, 25; arâvnah and arâvnah, They might vary between panti and pânti, i. 41, 2; yathana and yâthănă, i. 39, 3; nidhatoh and nidhâtoh, i. 41, 9; tredha and tredha, i. 34, 8; dēvẫh and devah (besides devâsah), i. 23, 24; rodasi and rodasî, i. 33, 9; 59, 4; 64, 9; and rodasyoh, i. 33, 5; 59, 2; 117, 10; vi. 24, 3; vii. 6, 2; x. 74, 1*. Need we wonder then if we find that, on the other hand, they allowed themselves to pronounce prithivi as prithivi, i. 191, 6; vii. 34, 7; 99, 3; dhrishnava as dhrishnava, v. 52, 14; suvâna as suvana? There is no reason why we should change the spelling of suvana into svâna. The metre itself tells us at once where suvâna is to be pronounced as two or as three syllables. Nor is it possible to believe that those who first handed down and afterwards wrote down the text of the Vedic hymns, should 135 * Professor Bollensen in some of these passages proposes to read rodasios. In i. 96, 4, no change is necessary if we read visẩm. Zeitschrift der D. M. G., vol. xxii. p. 587. have been ignorant of that freedom of pronunciation. Why, there is not one single passage in the whole of the ninth Mandala, where, as far as I know, suvâna should not be pronounced as dissyllabic, i.e. as suvẫnā; and to suppose that the scholars of India did not know how that superfluous syllable should be removed, is really taking too low an estimate of men like Vyâli or Saunaka. But if we once admit that in these cases two syllables separated by a single consonant were pronounced as one and were metrically counted as one, we can hardly resist the evidence in favour of a similar pronunciation in a large number of other words, and we shall find that by the admission of this rapid pronunciation, or of what in Plautus we should call irrational vowels, many verses assume at once their regular form without the necessity of admitting the suppression of final s, m, n, or the introduction of other prosodial licences. To my mind the most convincing passages are those where, as in the Atyashti and similar hymns, a poet repeats the same phrase twice, altering only one or two words, but without endeavouring to avoid an excess of syllables which, to our mind, unless we resort to synizesis, would completely destroy the uniformity of the metre. Thus we read: i. 133, 6. apurushaghno 'pratîta sûra satvabhih, trisaptaih sură satvabhih. Here no 'pra must be pronounced with one ictus only, in order to get a complete agreement between the two iambic diameters. i. 134, 5. ugra ishǎnantă bhūrvani, apâm ishantă bhūrvani. As ishanta never occurs again, I suspect that the original reading was ishananta in both lines, and that in the second line ishananta, pronounced rapidly, was mistaken for ishanta. Is not bhurváni a locative, corresponding to the datives in váne which are so frequently used in the sense of infinitives? See note to i. 6, 8, page 34. In i. 138, 3, we must read: ahelamână urusamsa sari bhava, In i. 129, 11, vage-vage sari bhava. adhā hi trả gănitā giganād vaso, rakshohanam tvā giganad vaso, we might try to remove the difficulty by omitting vaso at the end of the refrain, but this would be against the general character of these hymns. We want the last word vaso, if possible, at the end of both lines. But, if so, we must admit two cases of synizesis, or, if this seems too clumsy, we must omit tvâ. I shall now proceed to give a number of other examples in which the same consonantal synizesis seems necessary in order to make the rhythm of the verses perceptible to our ears as it was to the ears of the ancient Rishis. The preposition anu takes synizesis in i. 127, 1. ghrĭtasya vibhrashtim anu vashti sokishā. Cf. x. 14, 1. The preposition abhi: i. 91, 23. rẫyo bhāgam sahasavann abhi yudhya. Here Professor Kuhn changes sahasâvan into sahasvah, which, no doubt, is a very simple and very plausible emendation. But in altering the text of the Veda many things have to be considered, and in our case it might be objected that sahasvah never occurs again as an epithet of Soma. As an invocation sahasvah refers to no deity but Agni, and even in its other cases it is applied to Agni and Indra only. However, I do not by any means maintain that sahasvah could not be applied to Soma, for nearly the same arguments could be used against sahasâvan, if conjecturally put in the place of sahasvah; I only wish to point out how everything ought to be tried first, before we resort in the Veda to conjectural emendations. Therefore, if in our passage there should be any objection to admitting the synizesis in abhi, I should much rather propose synizesis of sahasâvan, than change it into sahasvah. There is synizesis in maha, e. g. i. 133, 6. avar maha indră dâdrihi srudhî nāh. Although this verse is quoted by the Prâtisâkhya, Sûtra 522, as one in which the lengthened syllable dhî of srudhî does not occupy the tenth place, and which therefore required special mention, the original poet evidently thought otherwise, and lengthened the syllable, being a syllable liable to be lengthened, because it occupied the tenth place, and therefore received a peculiar stress. The preposition pari : vi. 52, 14. mã vo văkamsi parikakshyāni vokam, sumneshv id vo antama madema. Here Professor Kuhn (Beiträge, vol. iv. p. 197) begins the last pâda with vokam, but this is impossible unless we change the accent of vokam, though even then the separation of the verb from mâ and the accumulation of two verbs in the last line would be objectionable. Hari is pronounced as hari: vii. 32, 12. yǎ yă indro harivân nă dăbhanti tam ripah. ii. 18, 5. ā katvārimsătā haribhir yuganah. Hence I propose to scan the difficult verse i. 167, 1, as follows: sahasram tă îndră-ûtayo nah, sahasram isho harivo gurtatamah*, sahasrina upa no yantu vāgah. That the final o instead of as is treated as a short syllable we saw before, and in i. 133, 6, we observed that it was liable to synizesis. We see the same in i. 175, 6. maya Ĭvâpo na trishyate băbhāthā. * As to the scanning of the second line see page cxxxv. |