Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/89

Rh Roth's Kashmirian nāgarī transcript (Nov. 1874).—A nāgarī copy of the original birch-bark manuscript was made at Çrīnagara in 1873. This copy is No. 16 of Garbe's Verzeichniss, and we may call it Roth's Kashmirian nāgarī transcript. It came into Roth's hands at the end of November, 1874. The year of its making appears from Roth's essay, Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir, pages 13-14; and the date of its arrival in Tübingen, from p. 11 of the same essay. With great promptness, Roth gave an account of it in his essay, just mentioned, which was published as an appendix to an invitation to the academic celebration of the birthday (March 6, 1875) of the king. —It would appear that Roth's Kashmirian transcript was not the only one made from the birch-bark original in India: S. P. Pandit seems also to have had one; for he cites the Pāippalāda in his edition, vol. iv., p. 369. The copy used by him is doubtless the nāgarī copy procured by Bühler, and listed as VIII. 1 of the collection of 1875-76, on p. 73 of the Catalogue of the Deccan College manuscripts. See also Garbe's Verzeichniss, under No. 17, for the description of another copy (incomplete).

Arrival of the birch-bark original in 1876 at Tübingen.—The original seems to have come into Roth's hands in the early summer of 1876. The approximate date of its arrival appears from Whitney's note to p. xiii of the pamphlet containing the Proceedings of the Am. Oriental Society at the meetings of May and Nov., 1875, and May, 1876 (= JAOS. x., p. cxix): "As these Proceedings [that is, the pamphlet just mentioned] are going through the press, it is learned from Professor Roth that the original of the Devanāgarī copy, an old and somewhat damaged ms. in the Kashmir alphabet, on highly fragile leaves of birch-bark, has reached him, being loaned by the Government of India, which had obtained possession of it. It corrects its copy in a host of places, but also has innumerable errors of its own. It is accented only here and there, in passages."

Roth's Collation (ended, June, 1884) of the Pāippalāda text.—This is written on four-page sheets of note-paper numbered from 1 to 44 (but sheet 6 has only two pages); the pages measure about 5½ × 8½ inches, and there are some 9 supplementary pages (see p. lxxxii, top), sent in answer to specific inquiries of Whitney. As appears from the colophon added by Roth (see below, p. 1009), this Collation was finished June 25, 1884. Since Roth's autograph transcript described in the next paragraph was not made until some months later, I see little chance of error in my assuming that Roth made his Collation for Whitney from his Kashmirian nāgarī transcript, and that he used the birch-bark original to