Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/120

cxii manuscript, Bp.2b, contains books v.-ix. This manuscript, though one in paper, size, and hand, has by some means become separated into two parts, the one (Chambers, 109; Weber, 333) containing only book v., and the other (Chambers, 107; Weber, 334: both p. 83 of Cat.) containing books vi.-ix. They are less independent than Bp.2a, representing the. same proximate original as Bp. (though they are not copied from Bp., nor are they its original); but they are decidedly more accurate than Bp., and also more carefully corrected since copying. There is no colophon to either part, but they are as old, apparently, as Bp.2a, or as Bp.; their mode of accentuation agrees throughout with that of the latter.

B. or Bs. This is the Berlin manuscript (Chambers, 115; Weber, 338: pp. 84-85 of Cat.) of books xi.-xx. in saṁhitā-text. It is rather incorrect and somewhat worm-eaten. It bears the date A.D. 1611. In the Berlin Library is (Chambers, 120; Weber, 339: p. 85 of Cat.) a modern copy ⌊B.″⌋ of it, having value only as having been made before its original was so much worm-eaten as at present.

P. and M. These are virtually one manuscript, being two copies of the same original, by the same hand, and agreeing precisely in form and style. P. is in the Paris Library, and is in two volumes, marked D 204 and D 205. M., also in two volumes, belongs to the Mill collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. By some curious and unexplained blunder, the copy of books vii.-x. that belonged to M. was sent by mistake to Paris with P., so that P's first volume contains books i.-x., and its second vii.-xx., while of M. the first volume contains i.-vi., and the second xi.-xx. In the references made in the notes below, the copy of vii.-x. included in the first volume of P. is accounted as M. The differences of the two are not altogether such as are due only to the last copyist; since P. has been collated and corrected (winning thereby some false readings). P. is also more carefully copied than M., but both are rather inaccurate reproductions of a faulty original. A colophon copied in both at the end of book xi. gives saṁvat 1812 (A.D. 1756) as the date, doubtless of the original; the copies are recent, probably since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Their mode of accentuation is by strokes, not dots; that of P. is defective from xiii. 1 to xix. 10.

W. This also, like M., belongs to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and is a saṁhitā-manuscript of the whole Atharvan, excepting only book