Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/131

Rh of book xx., excepting in the Munich text of xviii. and xx., as stated on p. 4 of the Index Verborum. ⌊It is used also in SPP's pada-mss.: see his Critical Notice, pages 11-14.⌋ This special AV. sign has been imitated in our transliteration in the Index and in the main body of this work ⌊cf. page c⌋; but it may be noted that SPP. employs in his pada-text the sign usual in the RV.

Founded on the manuscripts and the Prātīçākya.—Our method is of course founded primarily upon the usage of the manuscripts; but that usage we have, within certain limits, controlled and corrected by the teachings of the AV. Prātīçākya.

That treatise an authority only to a certain point.—The rules of that treatise we have regarded as authority up to a certain point; but only up to a certain point, and for the reason that in the AVPr., as in the other corresponding treatises, no proper distinction is made between those orthographic rules on the one hand which are universally accepted and observed, and those on the other hand which seem to be wholly the outcome of arbitrary and artificial theorizing, in particular, the rules of the varṇa-krama or dīrgha-pāṭha. ⌊Cf. Whitney's notes to AVPr. iii. 26 and 32 and TPr. xiv. 1.⌋

Its failure to discriminate between rules of wholly different value.—Thus, on the one hand, we have the rule ⌊AVPr. iii. 27: see W's note⌋ that after a short vowel a final n̄ or ṇ or n is doubled before any initial vowel, a rule familiar and obligatory not only in the language of the Vedas but in the classical dialect as well; while, on the other hand, we have, put quite upon the same plane and in no way marked as being of a wholly different character and value, such a rule as the following:

The rule ⌊iii. 31⌋ that after r or h an immediately following consonant is doubled; ⌊as to these duplications, the Prātīçākyas are not in entire accord, Pāṇini is permissive, not mandatory, and usage differs greatly, and the h stands by no means on the same footing as the r: cf. W's Grammar, §228; his note to Pr. iii. 31; and Pāṇini's record, at viii. 4. 50-51, of the difference of opinion between Çākaṭāyana and Çākalya.⌋

Another such rule is the prescription that the consonant at the end of a word is doubled, as in triṣṭupp, vidyutt, godhukk; this is directly contravened by RPr., VPr., TPr.—Yet another is the prescription that the