Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/140

cxxxii ⌊Subdlvisions of verses: avasānas, pādas, etc.—Concerning these a few words may be said. Avasāna means 'stop,' and so 'the verse-division marked by a stop.' The verse usually has an avasāna or 'stop' in the middle and of course one at the end. Occasionally, however, there are, besides the stop at the end, two others: and the verse is then called tryavasāna. Moreover, we have verses with more than three stops, and sometimes a verse with only one (ekāvasāna).—The next subordinate division is the pāda or 'quarter.' As the name implies, this is commonly the quarter of a four-lined verse or verse with two avasānas; but sometimes, as in a verse with an odd number of pādas (like the gāyatrī), a pāda may be identical with an avasāna. The division into pādas is recognized by the ritual, which sometimes prescribes the doing of a sequence of ceremonial acts to the accompaniment of a verse recited pāda by pāda (pacchas) in a corresponding sequence. —Even the pāda is not the final possible subdivision, as appears from KB. xxvi. 5, ṛcaṁ vārdharcaṁ vā pādaṁ vā padaṁ vā varṇaṁ vā, where the verse and all its subdivisions receive mention.⌋

Numeration of successive verses in the mss.—In this matter, the mss. differ very much among themselves, and the same ms. differs in different books, and even in different parts of the same book; so that to give all details would be a long, tedious, and useless operation. A few may be given by way of specimen. In books iii. and v. the enumeration in our mss. is by hymns only. ⌊Sometimes it runs continuously through the anuvāka: above, p. cxxix.⌋ In vi. it is very various: in great part, 2 hymns are counted together; sometimes 4; also 10 verses together, or 9, or 8. In book vii., some mss. (so P. and I.) number by decads within the anuvāka, with total neglect of real sūktas; and the numbering is in all so confused and obscure that our edition was misled in several cases so as to count 5 hymns less in the book than does the Anukr., or than SPP's edition. The discordance is described at p. 389 and the two numberings are given side by side in the translation.

⌊Groupings of successive verses into units requiring special mention.—The grouping of verses into units of a higher degree is by no means so simple and uniform in the mss. as we might expect. It is desirable, accordingly, to discriminate between decad-sūktas and artha-sūktas and paryāya-sūktas. The differences of grouping are chargeable partly to the differences of form in the text (now verse, now prose) and partly to the differences in length in the metrical hymns.⌋

'''Decad-sūktas or 'decad-hymns. ' '''—With the second grand division begins (at book viii.) a new element in the subdividing of the text: the metrical hymns, being much longer than most of those in the first division, are themselves divided into verse-decads or groups of ten verses, five or