Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/25

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Plan and Scope and Design of this Work
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manuscripts) give valuable aid, but the commentary (which, of course, claims to be "Sāyaṇa's") also has very numerous various readings, all worthy to be reported, though seldom offering anything better than the text of the manuscripts. Second, the readings of the Pāippalāda version, in those parts of the Veda (much the larger half) for which there is a corresponding Pāippalāda text; these were furnished me, some years ago, by Professor Roth, in whose exclusive possession the Pāippalāda manuscript is held. Further, notice of the corresponding passages in all the other Vedic texts, whether Saṁhitā, Brāhmaṇa, or Sūtra, with report of their various readings. Further, the data of the Anukramaṇī respecting author­ship, divinity, and meter of each verse. Also, references to the ancillary literature, especially to the Kāuçika and Vāitāna Sūtras (both of which have been competently edited, the latter with a translation added), with account of the use made in them of the hymns and parts of hymns, so far as this appears to cast any light upon their meaning. Also, extracts from the printed commentary, wherever this seems worth while, as either really aiding the under­standing of the text, or showing the absence of any helpful tradi­tion. Finally, a simple literal translation; this was not originally promised for the second volume, but is added especially in order to help "float" the rest of the material. An introduction and indexes will give such further auxiliary matter as appears to be called for.

The design of the volume will be to put together as much as possible of the material that is to help toward the study and final comprehension of this Veda.


The purpose and limitations and method of the translation.—In a critique pub­lished some six years earlier, in 1886, in the American Journal of Philology, vii. 2–4, Whitney discusses several ways of translating the Upanishads. His remarks on the second "way" leave no doubt that, in making his Veda-translation as he has done, he fully recognized its provisional character and felt that to attempt a definitive one would be premature. His description of the "third way," mutatis mutandis, is so good a statement of the principles which have governed him in this work, that, in default of a better one, it is here reprinted.—C.R.L.⌋


One way is, to put one's self frankly and fully under the guid­ance of a native interpreter.... Another way would be, to give a conspectus, made as full as possible, of all accessible native inter­pretations—in connection with which treatment, one could hardly