{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/sbe32/sbe3205.htm","path":"hin/sbe32/sbe3205.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe32/sbe3205.htm","text":"Vedic Hymns, Part I (SBE32), by Max M\u00fcller, [1891]\nFar be it from me to say that the editio princeps of the text thus constituted was printed without mistakes. Aufrecht's Romanised Reprint of the Rig-veda.But most of these mistakes are mistakes which no attentive reader could fail to detect. Cases like II, 35, 1, where g\u00f3gishat instead of g\u00f3shishat was printed three times, so as to perplex even Professor Roth, or II, 12, 14, where sasam\u00e2n\u00e1m occurs three times instead of sasam\u00e2n\u00e1m, are, I believe, of rare occurrence. Nor do I think that, unless some quite unexpected discoveries are made, there ever will be a new critical edition, or, as we call it in Germany, a new recension of the hymns of the Rig-veda. If by collating new MSS., or by a careful study of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, or by conjectural emendations, a more correct text could have been produced, we may be certain that a critical scholar like Professor Aufrecht would have given us such a text. But after carefully collating several MSS. of Professor Wilson's collection, and after enjoying the advantage of Professor Weber's assistance in collating the MSS. of the Royal Library at Berlin, and after a minute study of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, he frankly states that in the text of the Rig-veda, transcribed in Roman letters, which he printed at Berlin, he followed my edition, and that he had to correct but a small number of misprints. For the two Mandalas which I had not yet published, I lent him the very MSS. on which my edition is founded; and there will be accordingly but few passages in these two concluding Mandalas, which I have still to publish, where the text will materially differ from that of his Romanised transcript.\nNo one, I should think, who is at all acquainted with the rules of diplomatic criticism, would easily bring himself to\ntouch a text resting on such authorities as the text of the Rig-veda. What would a Greek scholar give, if he could say of Homer that his text was in every word, in every syllable, in every vowel, in every accent, the same as the text used by Peisistratos in the sixth century b.c.! A text thus preserved in its integrity for so many centuries, must remain for ever the authoritative text of the Veda.\nTo remove, for instance, the eleven hymns 49-59 in the eighth Mandala from their proper place, or count them by V\u00e2lakhilya Hymns.themselves as V\u00e2lakhilya a hymns, seems to me, though no doubt perfectly harmless, little short of a critical sacrilege. Why S\u00e2yana does not explain these hymns, I confess I do not know b; but whatever the reason was, it was not because they did not exist at his time, or because he thought them spurious. They are regularly counted in K\u00e2ty\u00e2yana's Sarv\u00e2nukrama, though here the same accident has happened. One commentator, Shadgurusishya, the one most commonly used, does not explain them; but another commentator, Gagann\u00e2tha, does explain them, exactly as they occur in the Sarv\u00e2nukrama, only leaving out hymn 58. That these hymns had something peculiar in the eyes of native scholars, is clear enough. They may for a time have formed a separate collection, they\nmay have been considered of more modern origin a. I shall go even further than those who remove these hymns from the place which they have occupied for more than two thousand years. I admit they disturb the regularity both of the Mandala and the Ashtaka divisions, and I have pointed out myself that they are not counted in the ancient Anukraman\u00ees ascribed to Saunaka; (History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 220.) But, on the other hand, verses taken from these hymns occur in all the other Vedas b; they are mentioned by name in the Br\u00e2hmanas (Ait. Br. V, 15; VI, 24), the \u00c2ranyakas (Ait. \u00c2r. V, 10, p. 445), and the S\u00fbtras (\u00c2sv. Srauta S\u00fbtras, VIII, 2, 3), while they are never included in the manuscripts of Parisishtas or Khilas or apocryphal hymns, nor mentioned by K\u00e2ty\u00e2yana as mere Khilas in his Sarv\u00e2nukrama. Eight c of them are mentioned in the Brihaddevat\u00e2, without any allusion to their apocryphal character:\n\u2018The next eight hymns belong to Rishis of keen intellect d; they are addressed to Indra, but the 26th Prag\u00e2tha\n[paragraph continues] (VIII, 54, 3-4, which verses form the 26th couplet, if counting from VIII, 49, 1) is addressed to many gods. The last verse (of these eight hymns), VIII, 56, 5, beginning with the words akety agnih, is addressed to Agni, and the last foot celebrates S\u00fbrya. Whatsoever Praskanva and Prishadhra gave (or, if we read prishadhr\u00e2ya, whatever Praskanva gave to Prishadhra), all that is celebrated in the two hymns beginning with bh\u00fbr\u00eet. After the hymn addressed to Agni (VIII, 60), there follow six hymns addressed to Indra, beginning with ubhayam.\u2019\nBut the most important point of all is this, that these hymns, which exist both in the Pada and Samhit\u00e2 texts, are quoted by the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, not only for general purposes, but for special passages occurring in them, and nowhere else. Thus in S\u00fbtra 154, het\u00e1yah is quoted as one of the few words which do not require the elision of a following short a. In order to appreciate what is implied by this special quotation, it is necessary to have a clear insight into the mechanism of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya. Its chief object is to bring under general categories the changes which the separate words of the Pada text undergo when joined together in the \u00c2rsh\u00ee Samhit\u00e2, and to do this with the utmost brevity possible. Now the Sandhi rules, as observed in the Samhit\u00e2 of the Rig-veda, are by no means so uniform and regular as they are in later Sanskrit, and hence it is sometimes extremely difficult to bring all the exceptional cases under more or less general rules. In our passage the author of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya endeavours to comprehend all the passages where an initial a in the Veda is not elided after a final e or o. In ordinary Sanskrit it would be always elided, in the Samhit\u00e2 it is sometimes elided, and sometimes not. Thus the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya begins in S\u00fbtra 138 by stating that if the short a stands at the beginning of a p\u00e2da or foot, it is always elided. Why it should be always elided in the very place where the metre most strongly requires that it should be pronounced, does not concern the author of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya. He is a statistician, not a grammarian, and he therefore simply adds in S\u00fbtra 153 the only three exceptional passages where the a, under these very circumstances,\nhappens to be not elided. He then proceeds in S\u00fbtra 139 to state that a is elided even in the middle of a p\u00e2da, provided it be light, followed by y or v, and these y or v, again followed by a light vowel. Hence the Samhit\u00e2 writes to \u093dv\u0103dan, so\u093dy\u0103m, but not s\u00eekshanto\u093dvratam, for here the a of avratam is heavy; nor mitramaho\u093dvady\u00e2t, for here the a following the v is heavy.\nThen follows again an extension of this rule, viz. in the case of words ending in \u00e2vo. After these, a short a, even if followed by other consonants besides y or v, may be elided, but the other conditions must be fulfilled, i. e. the short a must be light, and the vowel of the next syllable must again be light. Thus the Samhit\u00e2 writes indeed g\u00e2vo\u093dbh\u012dtah, but not g\u00e2vo\u093dgman, because here the a is heavy, being followed by two consonants.\nAfter this, a more general rule is given, or, more correctly, a more comprehensive observation is made, viz. that under all circumstances initial a is elided, if the preceding word ends in aye, ayah, ave, or avah. As might be expected, however, so large a class must have numerous exceptions, and these can only be collected by quoting every word ending in these syllables, or every passage in which the exceptions occur. Before these exceptions are enumerated, some other more or less general observations are made, providing for the elision of initial a. Initial a, according to S\u00fbtra 142, is to be elided if the preceding word is vah, and if this vah is preceded by \u00e2, na, pra, kva, kitrah, savit\u00e2, eva, or kah. There is, of course, no intelligible reason why, if these words precede vah, the next a should be elided. It is a mere statement of facts, and, generally speaking, these statements are minutely accurate. There is probably no verse in the whole of the Rig-veda where an initial a after vah is elided, unless these very words precede, or unless some other observation has been made to provide for the elision of the a. For instance, in V, 25, 1, we find vah preceded by akkha, which is not among the words just mentioned, and here the Samhit\u00e2 does not elide the a of agnim, which follows after vah. After all these more or less general observations as to the elision of\nan initial a are thus exhausted, the author of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya descends into particulars, and gives lists, first, of words the initial a of which is always elided; secondly, of words which, if preceding, require under all circumstances the elision of the initial a of the next word, whatever may have been said to the contrary in the preceding S\u00fbtras. Afterwards, he gives a number of passages which defy all rules, and must be given on their own merits, and as they stand in the Samhit\u00e2. Lastly, follow special exceptions to the more or less general rules given before. And here, among these special exceptions, we see that the author of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya finds it necessary to quote a passage from a V\u00e2lakhilya hymn in which het\u00e1yah occurs, i. e. a word ending in ayah, and where, in defiance of S\u00fbtra 141, which required the elision of a following initial a under all circumstances (sarvath\u00e2), the initial a of asya is not elided; VIII, 50, 2, Samhit\u00e2, sat\u00e2\u00b4n\u00eek\u00e2 het\u00e1yo asya. It might be objected that the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya only quotes het\u00e1yah as an exceptional word, and does not refer directly to the verse in the V\u00e2lakhilya hymn. But fortunately het\u00e1yah occurs but twice in the whole of the Rig-veda; and in the other passage where it occurs, I, 190, 4, neither the rule nor the exception as to the elision of an initial a, could apply. The author of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya therefore makes no distinction between the V\u00e2lakhilya and any other hymns of the Rig-veda, and he would have considered his phonetic statistics equally at fault, if it had been possible to quote one single passage from the hymns VIII, 49 to 59, as contravening his observations, as if such passages had been alleged from the hymns of Vasishtha or Visv\u00e2mitra.\nIt would lead me too far, were I to enter here into similar cases in support of the fact that the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya makes no distinction between the V\u00e2lakhilya and any other hymns of the Rig-veda-samhit\u00e2 a. But I doubt whether the bearing of this fact has ever been fully realised. Here we see that the absence of the elision of a short a which follows after a word ending in ayah, was considered of sufficient importance\nto be recorded in a special rule, because in most cases the Samhit\u00e2 elides an initial a, if preceded by a word ending in ayah. What does this prove? It proves, unless all our views on the chronology of Vedic literature are wrong, that in the fifth century b.c. at least, or previously rather to the time when the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya was composed, both the Pada and the Samhit\u00e2 texts were so firmly settled that it was impossible, for the sake of uniformity or regularity, to omit one single short a; and it proves \u00e0 fortiori, that the hymn in which that irregular short a occurs, formed at that time part of the Vedic canon. I confess I feel sometimes frightened by the stringency of this argument, and I should like to see a possibility by which we could explain the addition, not of the V\u00e2lakhilya hymns only, but of other much more modern sounding hymns, at a later time than the period of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khyas. But until that possibility is shown, we must abide by our own conclusions; and then I ask, who is the critic who would dare to tamper with a canon of scripture of which every iota was settled before the time of Cyrus, and which we possess in exactly that form in which it is described to us by the authors of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khyas? I say again, that I am not free from misgivings on the subject, and my critical conscience would be far better satisfied if we could ascribe the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya and all it presupposes to a much later date. But until that is done, the fact remains that the two divergent texts, the Pada and Samhit\u00e2, which we now possess, existed, as we now possess them, previous to the time of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya. They have not diverged nor varied since, and the vertex to which they point, starting from the distance of the two texts as measured by the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, carries us back far beyond the time of Saunaka, if we wish to determine the date of the first authorised collection of the hymns, both in their Pada and in their Samhit\u00e2 form.\nInstances abound, if we compare the Pada and Samhit\u00e2 texts, where, if uniformity between the two texts had been the object of the scholars of the ancient Parishads, the lengthening or shortening of a vowel would at once have removed the apparent discordance between the two traditional\ntexts. Nor should it be supposed that such minute discordances between the two, as the length or shortness of a vowel, were always rendered necessary by the requirements of the metre, and that for that reason the ancient students or the later copyists of the Veda abstained from altering the peculiar spelling of words, which seemed required by the exigencies of the metre in the Samhit\u00e2 text, but not in the Pada text. Though this may be true in some cases it is not so in all. There are short vowels in the Samhit\u00e2 where, according to grammar, we expect long vowels, and where, according to metre, there was no necessity for shortening them. Yet in these very places all the MSS. of the Samhit\u00e2 text give the irregular short, and all the MSS. of the Pada text the regular long vowel, and the authors of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khyas bear witness that the same minute difference existed at their own time, nay, previous to their own time. In VII, 60, 12, the Samhit\u00e2 text gives:\nThis primacy, O (two) gods, was made for you two, O Mitra and Varuna, at the sacrifices!\nHere it is quite clear that deva is meant for a dual, and ought to have been dev\u00e2 or devau. The metre does not require a short syllable, and yet all the Samhit\u00e2 MSS. read dev\u00e2, and all the Pada MSS. read dev\u00e2; and what is more important, the authors of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya had to register this small divergence of the two texts, which existed in their time as it exists in our own a.\nNor let it be supposed, that the writers of our MSS. were so careful and so conscientious that they would, when copying MSS., regulate every consonant or vowel according to the rules of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya. This is by no means the case. The writers of Vedic MSS. are on the whole more accurate than the writers of other MSS., but their learning does not seem to extend to a knowledge of the minute rules of the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, and they will commit\noccasionally the very mistakes against which they are warned by the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya. Thus the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya (S\u00fbtra 799) warns the students against a common mistake of changing vaiyasva into vayyasva, i. e. by changing ai to a, and doubling the semivowel y. But this very mistake occurs in S 2, and another MS. gives vaiyyasva. See p. lvi.\nxlvi:a The earliest interpretation of the name V\u00e2lakhilya is found in the Taittir\u00eeya-\u00e2ranyaka, I, 23. We are told that Prag\u00e2pati created the world, and in the process of creation the following interlude occurs:\nsa tapo\u093dtapyata. sa tapas taptv\u00e2 sar\u00eeram adh\u00fbnuta. tasya yan m\u00e2msam \u00e2s\u00eet tato\u093drun\u00e2h ketavo v\u00e2tarasan\u00e2 rishaya udatishthan. ye nakh\u00e2h, te vaikh\u00e2nas\u00e2h. ye b\u00e2l\u00e2h, te b\u00e2lakhily\u00e2h.\nHe burned with emotion. Having burnt with emotion, he shook his body. From what was his flesh, the Rishis, called Arunas, Ketus, and V\u00e2tarasanas, sprang forth. His nails became the Vaikh\u00e2nasas, his hairs the B\u00e2lakhilyas.\nThe author of this allegory therefore took b\u00e2la or v\u00e2la in v\u00e2lakhilya, not in the sense of Child, but identified it with b\u00e2la, hair.\nThe commentator remarks with regard to tapas: n\u00e2tra tapa upav\u00e2s\u00e2dir\u00fbpam, kimtu srashtavyam vastu k\u00eedrisam iti pary\u00e2lokanar\u00fbpam.\nxlvi:b A similar omission was pointed out by Professor Roth. Verses 21-24 of the 53rd hymn of the third Mandala, which contain imprecations against Vasishtha, are left out by the writer of a Pada MS., and by a copyist of S\u00e2yana's commentary, probably because they both belonged to the family of Vasishtha. See my first edition of the Rig-veda, vol. ii, p. lvi, Notes.\nxlvii:a S\u00e2yana (RV. X, 88, 18) quotes these hymns as V\u00e2lakhilya-samhit\u00e2. In the Mah\u00e2bh\u00e2rata XII, 59; 110 seq. the V\u00e2lakhilyas are called the ministers of King Vainya, whose astrologer was Garga, and his domestic priest Sukra; see Kern, Brihat-samhit\u00e2, transl. p. 11.\nxlvii:b This is a criterion of some importance, and it might have been mentioned, for instance, by Professor Bollensen in his interesting article on the Dvipad\u00e2 Vir\u00e2g hymns ascribed to Par\u00e2sara (I, 65-70) that not a single verse of them occurs in any of the other Vedas.\nxlvii:c S\u00e2yana in his commentary (RV. X, 27, 15) speaks of eight, while in the Ait. \u00c2r. V, 10, the first six are quoted (containing fifty-six verses, comm.), as being used together for certain sacrificial purposes.\nxlvii:d Lest Saunaka be suspected of having applied this epithet, tigmategas, to the V\u00e2lakhilyas in order to fill the verse (p\u00e2dap\u00fbran\u00e2rtham), I may point out that the same epithet is applied to the V\u00e2lakhilyas in the Maitry-upanishad 2, 3. The nom. plur. which occurs there is tigmategas\u00e2h, and the commentator remarks: tigmategasas t\u00eevrategaso\u093dty\u00fbrgitaprabh\u00e2v\u00e2h; tegas\u00e2 ityevamvidha etakkh\u00e2kh\u00e2sa\u1e45ketap\u00e2thas kh\u00e2ndasah sarvatra. See also Maitr. Up. VI, 29.\nl:a The Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya takes into account both the S\u00e2kala and B\u00e2shkala s\u00e2kh\u00e2s, as may be seen from S\u00fbtra 1057.\nlii:a See Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, S\u00fbtra 309 seqq., where several more instances of the same kind are given. I should prefer to take devapurohiti as one word, but that was not the intention of the authors of the Samhit\u00e2 and Pada texts.","title":"Vedic Hymns, Part I (SBE32): Preface to the First Edition: Part 3","type":"page"}