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xxvi While making his London collations in 1853 (see below, p. lxxii), Whitney made also a transcript of the Major Anukramaṇī, and subsequently he added a collation of the Berlin ms. thereof (preparative for item 5).—In the course of his long labors upon Atharvan texts, Whitney had naturally made many observations suitable for a general introduction (item 6). Roth had sent him a considerable mass of exegetical notes (item 7).—Furthermore, during the decades in which Whitney had concerned himself with this and the related texts, he had noted in his Collation-Book, opposite each verse of the Atharvan Saṁhitā, the places in the other texts where that verse recurs, in identical or in similar form, in whole or in part; thus making a very extensive collection of concordances, with the Atharvan Saṁhitā as the point of departure, and providing himself with the means for reporting upon the variations of the parallel texts with far greater completeness than was possible by means of the Table and Index mentioned above under item 3.

The critical notes.—Of all the eight promised items, the one of most importance, and of most pressing importance, was doubtless the eighth, the critical notes, in which were to be given the various readings of the manuscripts. In his Introductory Note to the Atharvan Prātiçākhya (p. 338: year 1862), Whitney says:

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The apparatus for ascertaining in any given passage just what the mss. read was not published for more than two decades. Complaints on this score, however, were surely estopped by the diligence and effectiveness with which both editors employed that time for the advancement of the cause of Indic philology. In his Introduction to the Index Verborum (p. 2: year 1880), Whitney says:

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