Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/64

 of the text, having been composed for the purpose of exhibiting exactly all the changes necessary for turning the Pada into the Saṃhitā text.

Finally, the class of supplementary works called Anukramaṇīs, or "Indices," aimed at preserving the Rigveda intact by registering its contents from various points of view, besides furnishing calculations of the number of hymns, verses, words, and even syllables, contained in the sacred book.

The text of the Rigveda has come down to us in a single recension only; but is there any evidence that other recensions of it existed in former times?

The Charaṇa-vyūha, or "Exposition of Schools," a supplementary work of the Sūtra period, mentions as the five çākhās or "branches" of the Rigveda, the Çākalas, the Vāshkalas, the Āçvalāyanas, the Çānkhāyanas, and the Māṇḍūkeyas. The third and fourth of these schools, however, do not represent different recensions of the text, the sole distinction between them and the Çākalas having been that the Āçvalāyanas recognised as canonical the group of the eleven Vālakhilya or supplementary hymns, and the Çānkhāyanas admitted the same group, diminished only by a few verses. Hence the tradition of the Purāṇas, or later legendary works, mentions only the three schools of Çākalas, Vāshkalas, and Māṇḍūkas. If the latter ever possessed a recension of an independent character, all traces of it were lost at an early period in ancient India, for no information of any kind about it has been preserved. Thus only the two schools of the Çākalas and the Vāshkalas come into consideration. The subsidiary Vedic writings contain sufficient evidence to show that the text of the Vāshkalas differed from that of the Çākalas only in admitting eight additional hymns, and