Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/29



Whitney's labors on the Atharva-Veda.—As early as March, 1851, at Berlin, during Whitney's first semester as a student in Germany, his teacher Weber was so impressed by his scholarly ability as to suggest to him the plan of editing an important Vedic text. The impression produced upon Roth in Tübingen by Whitney during the following summer semester was in no wise different, and resulted in the plan for a joint edition of the Atharva-Veda. Whitney's preliminary labors for the edition began accordingly upon his return to Berlin for his second winter semester. His fundamental autograph transcript of the Atharva-Veda Saṁhitā is contained in his Collation-Book, and appears from the dates of that book to have been made in the short interval between October, 1851, and March, 1852. The second summer in Tübingen (1852) was doubtless spent partly in studying the text thus copied, partly in planning with Roth the details of the method of editing, partly in helping to make the tool, so important for further progress, the index of Rig-Veda pratīkas, and so on; the concordance of the four principal Saṁhitās, in which, to be sure, Whitney's part was only "a secondary one," was issued under the date November, 1852. During the winter of 1852–3 he copied the Prātiçākhya and its commentary contained in the Berlin codex (Weber, No. 361), as is stated in his edition, p. 334. As noted below (pp. xliv, l), the collation of the Paris and Oxford and London manuscripts of the Atharvan Saṁhitā followed in the spring and early summer of 1853, just before his return (in August) to America. The copy of the text for the printer, made with exquisite neatness in nāgarī letters by Mr. Whitney's hand, is still preserved.

The Edition of the text or "First volume."—The first part of the work, containing books i.–xix. of the text, appeared in Berlin with a provisional preface dated February, 1855. The provisional preface announces that the text of book xx. will not be given in full, but only the Kuntāpa-hymns, and, for the rest of it, merely references to the Rig-Veda; and promises, as the principal contents of the second part, seven of the eight items of accessory material enumerated below.—This plan, however, was changed,