PARAGRAPHS IN LIEU OF A PREFACE BY WHITNEY
⌊Announcement of this work.—The following paragraphs from the pen of Professor Whitney, under the title, "Announcement as to a second volume of the Roth-Whitney edition of the Atharva-Veda," appeared about two years before Mr. Whitney's death, in the Proceedings for April, 1892, appended to the Journal of the American Oriental Society, volume xv., pages clxxi–clxxiii. They show the way in which the labor done by Roth and Whitney upon the Atharva-Veda was divided between those two scholars. Moreover, they state briefly and clearly the main purpose of Whitney's commentary, which is, to give for the text of this Veda the various readings of both Hindu and European authorities (living or manuscript), and the variants of the Kashmirian or Pāippaladā recension and of the corresponding passages of other Vedic texts, together with references to, or excerpts from, the ancillary works on meter, ritual, exegesis, etc. They are significant as showing that in Mr. Whitney's mind the translation was entirely subordinate to the critical notes. Most significant of all—the last sentence makes a clear disclaimer of finality for this work by speaking of it as "material that is to help toward the study and final comprehension of this Veda."—C.R.L.⌋
When, in 1855–6, the text of the Atharva-Veda was published by Professor Roth and myself, it was styled a "first volume," and a second volume, of notes, indexes, etc., was promised. The promise was made in good faith, and with every intention of prompt fulfilment; but circumstances have deferred the latter, even till now. The bulk of the work was to have fallen to Professor Roth, not only because the bulk of the work on the first volume had fallen to me, but also because his superior learning and ability pointed him out as the one to undertake it. It was his absorption in the great labor of the Petersburg Lexicon that for a long series of years kept his hands from the Atharva-Veda except so far as his working up of its material, and definition of its vocabulary, was a help of the first order toward the understanding of it, a kind of fragmentary translation. He has also made important contributions of other kinds to its elucidation: most of all, by his incitement to inquiry after an Atharva-Veda in Cashmere, and the resulting discovery of the so-called Pāippalāda text, now well known to all Vedic scholars as one of the most important finds in Sanskrit literature of the last half-century, and of which
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