Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/125

Rh ⌊In 1871, Haug had noted, p. 45 of his Brahma und die Brahmanen, that the Mahābhāṣya, in rehearsing the beginnings of the four Vedas, gives çam etc. as the beginning of the AV., and that both of his mss. (our O. and Op., as just stated) prefix the stanza. In 1873, ''Ind. St.'' xiii. 431-3. Weber again called attention to the fact concerning the Mahābhāṣya, and to a similar one concerning the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa. In 1874, Indian Antiquary, iii. 1 32, Bhandarkar speaks of our stanza as representative pratīka of the AV. in the Brahmayajña or daily devotional recitation of the Hindus. For further discussion of the matter, see Bloomfield, Kāuçika, Introduction, pages xxxvii and xxxviii, and the references there given, and his note to 9. 7, and his §§13-14 in the Grundriss, p. 14. We may add that in 1879 Burnell observed, on p. 37 b of his Tanjore Catalogue, that the real South Indian mss. of the Mahābhāṣya ignore the AV. and omit the çáṁ no devī́r.⌋

⌊Description of the two volumes that form the Collation-Book.—The Collation-Book is the immediate source of the statements of this work concerning the variants of the European mss. of the Atharva-Veda. It contains, in Whitney's handwriting, the fundamental transcript (in Roman transliteration) of the text, and the memoranda of the subsequent collations. It is bound in two volumes: of these, the second, comprehending books x.-xx., appears to have been written first, since it is dated "Berlin. Oct 1851-Jan 1852"; while the first, comprehending books i.— ix., is dated "Berlin. Jan-March 1852," and thus appears to have been written last. The volumes are of good writing-paper (leaves about 8 by 10 inches in size), the first containing 334 leaves, and the second, 372.⌋

⌊Whitney's fundamental transcript of the text.—In copying book x. (the first book copied), Whitney has written the text on both sides of the leaf; but for the books subsequently copied, books xi.-xx. and i.-ix., he has written the text on the verso only and used the recto of the next leaf for various memoranda. For all the first eighteen books except book v., this fundamental copy is a transcript of the pada-text contained in the two Berlin pada-mss. (see the table on page cxi), called Chambers, 8 and 108, and designated above as Bp. For book v., he copied from one of the four mss. to which the designation Bp.2 is applied, to wit from Chambers, 109.⌋