Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/164

clvi ⌊Table of verse-totals for the hymns of division II.—The following table may be worth the space it takes, as giving perhaps a better idea of the make-up of the division than does the table on p. cxliv. Opposite each of the five prose paryāya-hymns is put a P, and opposite the hymn x. 5 (partly prose) is put a p. Disregarding the hymns thus marked, the verse-numbers are confined, for books viii.-xi., within the range of variation from 21 to 44, and from 53 to 63 for book xii.

General make-up of the material of this division.—Whereas division I. contains a hymn or hymns of every number of verses from one to eighteen and none of more, division II. consists wholly of hymns of more than twenty verses, and contains all the hymns of that length occurring in books i.-xviii. except such as belong of right (that is, by virtue of their subject) to the third division. The forty-five hymns of this division have been grouped into books with very evident reference to length and number, as shown by the table just given: the five longest have been put together to form the last or twelfth book, while each of the four preceding books contains an even quarter of the preceding forty or just ten hymns. Disregarding ix. 6 and xi. 3 (paryāya-hymns), books viii.-xi. contain all the hymns of from 21-50 verses to be found in the first two grand divisions, and book xii. contains all of more than 50 in the same divisions. Anything more definite than this can hardly be said respecting the arrangement of the several books within the second division. From the tables it appears that no such reference to the length of the hymns has been had in division II. as was had in division I. None of the books viii.-xii. is without one of the longer, formular, and mainly non-metrical pieces (marked with P or p in the table above); and this fact may point to an inclination on the part of the text-makers to scatter those prose portions as much as possible among the poetical ones.