Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/107

Rh of xix. 47 is an exceptionally coherent and pleasing one. I presume that the idea of sending the fever as a choice present to one's neighbors (v. 22. 14) is intended to be jocose. Witchcraft and healing are serious businesses. If there is anything else of jocular tone in this extensive text, I do not remember that any one has recognized and noted it. The gravity of Whitney's long labor is hardly relieved by a gleam of humor save in his introduction to ii. 30 and his notes to vi. 16. 4 and 67. 2 and x. 8. 27, and the two cited at p. xcvii, line 4 from end, and p. xciv, l. 23.

General scope of the list.—The following list is intended not only to explain all the downright or most arbitrary abbreviations used in this work, but also to explain in the shortest feasible way all such abbreviated designations of books and articles as are more or less arbitrary. The former generally consist of a single initial letter or group of such letters; the latter, of an author's name or of the abbreviated title of a work.

The downright abbreviations.—These are for the most part identical with those used by Whitney in his Grammar and given and explained by him on p. xxvi of that work: thus AA. = Āitareya-Āraṇyaka. —Whitney's omission of the macron proper to the A in AA., AB., AÇS., AGS., BAU., and TA. was doubtless motived by a purely mechanical consideration, the extreme fragility of the macron over a capital A; that he has not omitted it in Āpast. or Āp. is a pardonable inconsistency. —The sigla codicum are explained at p. cix, and only such of them are included here as have more than one meaning: thus, W. = Wilson codex and also = Whitney.

Abbreviated designations of books and articles.—For these the list is intended to give amply sufficient and clear explanations, without following strictly any set of rules of bibliographers. In the choice of the designations, brevity and unambiguousness have been had chiefly in mind. —An author's name, without further indication of title, is often used arbitrarily to mean his most frequently cited work. Thus "Weber" means Weber's Indische Studien. With like arbitrariness are used the names of Bloomfield, Caland, Florenz, Griffith, Grill, Henry, Ludwig, Muir, Winternitz, and Zimmer: cf. the list. —Where two coördinate reference-numbers, separated by a comma, are given (as in the case of Bloomfield, Grill, and Henry), the first refers to the page of the translation, and the second to the page of the commentary. Of similar numbers, separated by "or" (as on p. 286), the first refers to the original pagination, and the second to the pagination of the reprint.