Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/88

lxxx birch-bark manuscript, and which, although excellent in many places, is extremely incorrect in very many. Systematic search will doubtless reveal the fact that the Pāippalāda recension, even in the defective form in which it has come down to us, often presents as its variant a reading which is wholly different, but which, as a sense-equivalent, yields nothing to the Vulgate in its claim for genuineness and originality: thus for the Vulgate readings tátas (x. 3. 8), iyāya (x. 7. 31), yā́ ca (x. 8. 10), kṣiprám (xii. 1. 35), amā́ ca (xii. 4. 38), respectively, the Pāipp. presents the sense-equivalents tasmāt, jagāma, yota, oṣam, and gṛheṣu.

The material selected by the makers of the two recensions is by no means coincident. The Kashmirian text is more rich in Brāhmaṇa passages and in charms and incantations than is the Vulgate. The coincident material, moreover, is arranged in a very different order in the two recensions (cf. p. 1015); and it will appear in the sequel that even the coincident material, as between the Kashmirian and the Vulgate forms thereof, exhibits manifold differences of reading, and that the Kashmirian readings are much oftener pejorations than survivals of a more intelligent version.

This, however, is not always the case: thus, of the two recensions, the Kashmirian has the preferable reading at xii. 2. 30 d. Or again, at v. 2. 8 and xiv. i. 22, the Kashmirian recension agrees with the Rig-Veda, as against the Vulgate, and, at xi. 2. 7, with the Kaṭha reading. In this connection it is interesting to note that the conjectures of Roth and Whitney for the desperate nineteenth book are often confirmed in fact by the Kashmirian readings: instances may be found at xix. 27. 8; 32. 4, 5, 8; 44. 2; 46. 3 (two); 53. 5; 56. 4.

The unique birch-bark manuscript of the Pāippalāda text.—This is described by Garbe in his Verzeichniss as No. 14. It consisted of nearly three hundred leaves, of which two are lost and eight or more are defective. They vary in height from 14 to 21 centimeters; and in width, from 11 to 16; and contain from 13 to 23 lines on a page. The ms. is dated saṁvat 95, without statement of the century. If the year 4595 of the Kashmirian loka-kāla is meant, the date would appear to be not far from A.D. 1519. A description of the ms., with a brief characterization of some of its peculiarities, was given by Roth at Florence in Sep. 1878, and is published in the Atti del IV Congresso internasionale degli Orientalisti, ii. 89-96. Now that the facsimile is published, further details are uncalled for. A specimen of the plates of the facsimile is given in the latter volume of this work. The plate chosen is No. 341 and gives the obverse of folio 187, a page from which have been taken several of the illustrative examples in the paragraphs which follow.