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2. O foe-destroyer, (through thy favour) even our enemies speak peaceably to us, the possessors of wealth; what wonder then if other men do so. ever enjoy the happiness which springs from Indra's blessing.

Let us

Professor Benfey translated:

1. And let the scoffers say, They are rejected by every one else, therefore they celebrate Indra alone.

2. And may the enemy and the country proclaim us as happy, O destroyer, if we are only in Indra's keeping.

Professor Roth, s. v. anyátah, took this word rightly in the sense of 'to a different place,' and must therefore have taken that sentence move away elsewhere' in the same sense in which I take it. Later, however, s. v. ar, he corrected himself, and proposed to translate the same words by 'you neglect something else.'

Professor Bollensen (Orient und Occident, vol. ii. p. 462), adopting to a certain extent the second rendering of Professor Roth in preference to that of Professor Benfey, endeavoured to show that the 'something else which is neglected,' is not something indefinite, but the worship of all the other gods, except Indra.

It might, no doubt, be said that every one of these translations contains something that is right, though mixed up with a great deal that is wrong ; but to attempt for every verse of the Veda to quote and to criticise every previous translation, would

be an invidious and useless task. In the case just quoted, it might seem right to state that Professor Bollensen was the first to see that aríh should be joined with krishtáyah, and that he therefore proposed to alter it to arîh, as a nom. plur. But on referring to Rosen, I find that, to a certain extent, he had anticipated Professor Bollensen's remark, for though, in his cautious way, he abstained from altering the text, yet he remarked: Possitne arih pluralis esse, contracta terminatione, pro arayah?

After these preliminary remarks I have to say a few words on the general plan of my translation.

I do not attempt as yet a translation of the whole of the Rig-veda, and I therefore considered myself at liberty to group the hymns according to the deities to which they are addressed. By this process, I believe, a great advantage is gained. We see at one glance all that has been said of a certain god, and we gain a more complete insight into his nature and character. Something of the same kind had been attempted by the original collectors of the ten books, for it can hardly be by accident that each of them begins with hymns addressed to Agni, and that these are followed by hymns addressed to Indra. The only exception to this rule is the eighth Mandala, for the ninth being devoted to one deity, to Soma, can hardly be accounted an exception. But if we take the Rigveda as a whole, we find hymns, addressed to the

same deities, not only scattered about in different books, but not even grouped together when they occur in one and the same book. Here, as we lose nothing by giving up the old arrangement, we are surely at liberty, for our own purposes, to put together such hymns as have a common object, and to place before the reader as much material as possible for an exhaustive study of each individual deity.

I give for each hymn the Sanskrit original in what is known as the Pada text, i. e. the text in which all words (pada) stand by themselves, as they do in Greek or Latin, without being joined together according to the rules of Sandhi. The text in which the words are thus joined, as they are in all other Sanskrit texts, is called the Sanhitâ text. Whether the Pada or the Sanhitâ text be the more ancient, may seem difficult to settle. As far as I can judge, they seem to me, in their present form, the product of the same period of Vedic scholarship. The Prâtisâkhyas, it is true, start from the Pada text, take it, as it were, for granted, and devote their rules to the explanation of those changes which that text undergoes in being changed into the Sanhitâ text. But, on the other cases clearly pre

hand, the Pada text in some

supposes the Sanhitâ text. It leaves out passages which are repeated more than once, while the Sanhitâ text always repeats these passages; it abstains from dividing the termination of the loca

tive plural su, whenever in the Sanhitâ text, i. e. according to the rules of Sandhi, it becomes shu; hence nadishu, agishu, but ap-su; and it gives short vowels instead of the long ones of the Sanhitâ, even in cases where the long vowels are justified by the rules of the Vedic language. It is certain, in fact, that neither the Pada nor the Sanhitâ text, as we now possess them, represent the original text of the Veda. Both show clear traces of scholastic influences. But if we try to restore the original form of the Vedic hymns, we shall certainly arrive at some kind of Pada text rather than at a Sanhitâ text; nay, even in their present form, the original metre and rhythm of the ancient hymns of the Rishis are far more perceptible when the words are divided, than when we join them together throughout according to the rules of Sandhi. Lastly, for practical purposes, the Pada text is far superior to the Sanhitâ text in which the final and initial letters, that is, the most important letters of words, are constantly disguised, and liable therefore to different interpretations. Although in some passages we may differ from the interpretation adopted by the Pada text, and although certain Vedic words have, no doubt, been wrongly analysed and divided by Sâkalya, yet such cases are comparatively few, and where they occur, they are interesting as carrying us back to the earliest attempts of Vedic scholarship. In the vast majority of cases the divided

text, with a few such rules as we have to observe in reading Latin, nay, even in reading Pali verses, brings us certainly much nearer to the original utterance of the ancient Rishis than the amalgamated text.

The critical principles by which I have been guided in editing for the first time the text of the Rig-veda, require a few words of explanation, as they have lately been challenged on grounds which, I think, rest on a complete misapprehension my previous statements on this subject.

of

As far as we are able to judge at present, we can hardly speak of various readings in the Vedic hymns, in the usual sense of that word. Various readings to be gathered from a collation of dif ferent MSS., now accessible to us, there are none. After collating a considerable number of MSS., I have succeeded, I believe, in fixing on three representative MSS., as described in the preface to the first volume of my edition of the Rig-veda. Even these MSS. are not free from blunders,-for what MS. is?-but these blunders have no claim to the title of various readings. They are lapsus calami, and no more; and, what is important, they have not become traditional*.

* Thus x. 101, 2, one of the Pada MSS. (P. 2) reads distinctly yagñám prá krinuta sakhâyah, but all the other MSS. have nayata, and there can be little doubt that it was the frequent repetition of the verb kri in this verse which led the writer to substitute krinuta for nayata. No other MS., as far as I

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