Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/159

Rh is, why have not the diaskeuasts made eight books of the first division, including not only one for the one-versed hymns, but also another for the two-versed?⌋

⌊With reference to the last question, it is clear that the amount of material composing the two-versed hymns (30 hymns with only 60 verses: see p. cxlix, note) is much too small to make a book reasonably commensurate with the books of the first division; it is therefore natural that the original groupings of the text-makers should include no book with the norm of two.⌋

⌊Exceptional character of book vii.—The first two questions, concerning group Y or books vi. and vii., are closely related, inasmuch as they both ask or involve the question why book vii. does not precede book vi. By way of partial and provisional answer to the second, it is natural to suggest that perhaps the scrappy character of the one-versed and two-versed hymns militated against beginning the Vedic text with book vii. And indeed this view is not without indirect support from Hindu tradition: for according to the Bṛhad-Devatā, viii. 99, the ritualists hold that a hymn, in order to be rated as a genuine hymn, must have at least three verses, tṛcādhamaṁ yājñikāḥ sūktam āhuḥ. It may well be, therefore, that the diaskeuasts did not regard these bits of one or two verses as real hymns, as in fact they have excluded them rigorously from all the books i.-vi. From this point of view our groups X and Y have no significance except for the momentary convenience of the discussion, and the true grouping of books i.-vii. should be into the two groups, A, containing books i.-vi., and B, containing book vii.⌋

⌊The exceptional character of book vii. is borne out by several other considerations to which reference is made below. Its place in the saṁhitā is not that which we should expect, whether we judge by the fact that its norm is one verse or by the amount of its text (p. cxliii). If we consider the number of its hymns that are ignored by Kāuçika (see pp. 1011-2), again we find that it holds a very exceptional place in division I. Many of its hymns have a put-together look, as is stated at p. cliv; and this statement is confirmed by their treatment in the Pāippalāda recension (p. 1014, l. 15). Just as its hymns stand at the end of its grand division in the Vulgate, so they appear for the most part in the very last book of the Pāippalāda (cf. p. 1013, end). As compared with the great mass of books i.-vi., some of its hymns (vii. 73, for instance) are quite out of place among their fellows.⌋