Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/105

Rh send(?) all,' although it is a corruption (and a most interesting one) of the very clear line dúraç ca víçvā avṛṇod ápa svā́ḥ. So purudámāso (vii. 73. 1), 'of many houses,' although the Çrāuta-Sūtras offer purutamāso. At RV. vi. 28. 7 the cows are spoken of as 'drinking clear water and cropping good pasture,' sūyávasaṁ riçántīḥ: the AV. text-makers, at iv. 21. 7, corrupt the phrase to -se ruçántīḥ, but only in half-way fashion, for they leave the RV. accent to betray the character of their work. Even here Whitney renders by 'shining (rúçantīḥ) in good pasture.' The AV., at xviii. 4. 40, describes the Fathers as ā́sīnām ū́rjam úpa yé sácante; Whitney is right in rendering the line by 'they who attach themselves unto a sitting refreshment,' although its original intent is amusingly revealed by HGS., which has (juṣantām) māsī ’mām ūrjam uta ye bhajante, 'and they who partake of this nourishment every month.' For other instances, see the notes to iv. 21. 2 a; iii. 3. 1; iv. 16. 6 (rúçantas for ruṣántas), 8 (váruṇo); 27. 7 (viditám); vi. 92. 3 (dhā́vatu); ii. 35. 4; iii. 18. 3; iv. 2. 6; 15. 5; vii. 21. 1; and so on.

Cases of departure from the text of the Berlin edition.—These are always expressly stated by Whitney. They include, first, cases in which the Berlin edition does not present the true Atharvan text. An example may be found at xix. 64. 1, where the editors had emended wrongly to ágre and the version implies ágne. At xix. 6. 13, the editors, following the suggestion of the parallel texts, had emended to chándāṅsi the ungrammatical corruption of the AV. chándo ha (jajñire tásmāt); but since Whitney held that the latter reading "has the best right to figure as Atharvan text," his intentionally ungrammatical English 'meter were born from that' is meant to imply that reading.

Here are included, secondly, cases in which the Berlin reading, although it has to be recognized as the true Atharvan reading, is so unmanageable that Whitney has in despair translated the reading of some parallel text or an emended reading. Thus at vii. 57. 2 c it is assumed that ubhé íd asyo ’bhé asya rājataḥ is, although corrupt, the true Atharvan reading. The corruption is indeed phonetically an extremely slight distortion, for the RV. has ubhé íd asyo ’bháyasya rājataḥ; and from this the translation is made. —Other categories might be set up to suit the slightly varying relations of mss. and edition and version: cf. xix. 30. 1; xviii. 4. 87; and so on.

Whitney's growing skepticism and correspondingly rigid literalness.—At xiii. 4. 54, Whitney says: "Our rendering has at least concinnity—unless, indeed, in a text of this character, that be an argument against its acceptance." The remark is just; but one does not wonder that its author has been called der grosse Skeptiker der Sprachwissenschaft. That