Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/96

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lxxxviii
General Introduction, Part I.: by the Editor

conjectures, accordingly, should be relegated to a second and separately bound volume.

4. Accessory material: conjectures, notes, translations.—The accessory material of the second volume should be arranged in the form of a single series of notes and in the sequence of the Kashmirian original, and it should have such numbers and letters at the outside upper corners in the head-lines, that reference from the original to the notes and from the notes to the original may be made with the very utmost ease and celerity. This accessory material should comprehend all conjectures as to the more original Kashmirian form of manifestly corrupt words or passages, in so far as they point to readings not identical (compare the next paragraph) with those of the Vulgate; indications of word-division, especially the word-division of corrupt phrases and the resolution of the very frequent double sandhi; a running comment, proceeding verse by verse, giving any needed elucidatory matter, and explaining the rationale of the blunders of the Kashmirian version where feasible (as is often the case), pointing out in particular its excellences, and the many items in which it serves as a useful corrective of the Vulgate or confirms the conjectural emendations of the latter made in the edition of Roth and Whitney;—and all this in the light of the digested report of the variants of the parallel texts given by Whitney in the present work and in the light of the other parallels soon to be made accessible by Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance. An occasional bit of translation might be added in cases where the Kashmirian text contains something peculiar to itself or not hitherto satisfactorily treated.

For the cases (hinted at in the preceding paragraph) where corrupt Kashmirian readings point simply to readings identical with those of the Vulgate, a simple reference to the latter will sometimes suffice to show the true reading and sense of what the Kashmirian reciters or scribes have corrupted into gibberish. Thus the Kashmirian form of xii. 3. 36 b, found at folio 226 b1 3, is yāvantaḥ kāmān samitāu purasthāt. Apart from the aspiration (overlooked by Roth) of the prior dental of purastāt, each of these four words by itself is a good and intelligible Vedic word; but taken together, they yield far less meaning than do the famous Jabberwock verses of Through the Looking-glass.[1] Their presence in the Kashmirian text is explained by their superficial phonetic resemblance to the Vulgate pāda yāvantaḥ kā́māḥ sám atītṛpas tā́n, of which they are a palpable and wholly unintelligent corruption. It is evident that, with the Vulgate before us, conjectural emendation of the Kashmirian text in such cases

  1. For the sake of fathers to whom English is not vernacular, it may be added that this classic of English and American nurseries is the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll") and is a pendant to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.