of the Rig-veda, which is presupposed by Sâyana's commentary and even by earlier works, is in many places palpably corrupt, we cannot resist the same conviction with regard to the text of the Upanishads. In some cases the metre, in others grammar, in others again the collation of analogous passages enable us to detect errors, and probably very ancient errors, that had crept into the text long before Saṅkara composed his commentaries.
Some questions connected with the metres of the Upanishads have been very learnedly treated by Professor Gildemeister in his essay, 'Zur Theorie des Sloka.' The lesson to be derived from that essay, and from a study of the Upanishads, is certainly to abstain for the present from conjectural emendations. In the old Upanishads the same metrical freedom prevails as in the hymns; in the later Upanishads, much may be tolerated as the result of conscious or unconscious imitation. The metrical emendations that suggest themselves are generally so easy and so obvious that, for that very reason, we should hesitate before correcting what native scholars would have corrected long ago, if they had thought that there was any real necessity for correction.
It is easy to suggest, for instance, that in the Vâgasaneyi-samhitâ-upanishad, verse 5, instead of tad antar asya sarvasya tadu sarvasyâsya bâhyatah, the original text may have been tad antar asya sarvasya tadu sarvasya bâhyatah; yet Saṅkara evidently read sarvasyâsya, and as the same reading is found in the text of the Vâgasaneyi-samhitâ, who would venture to correct so old a mistake?
Again, if in verse 8, we left out yâthâtathyatah, we should get a much more regular metre,
Kavir manîshî paribhûh svyambhûh
arthân vyădădhâk khâvătîbhyah samâbhyah.
Here vyădă forms one syllable by what I have proposed to call synizesis[1], which is allowed in the Upanishads as well as in the hymns. All would then seem right, except
- ↑ Rig-veda, translated by M. M., vol i, Preface, p. cxliii.
