Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/95

Rh to the present work. Roth's hope was that Whitney's strength might hold out long enough for him to finish this work without such a burdensome addition. Neither hope was fulfilled; and at that time, doubtless, even the thought of a facsimile reproduction was not seriously entertained. Bloomfield's difficult task of securing the needed funds once accomplished, the next step, unquestionably, was to issue the facsimile without any accessory matter. That too is now an accomplished fact; but the facsimile, apart from its large paleographic interest, is still, in default of certain accessories, a work of extremely limited usefulness. As to what should next be done, I have no doubt.

1. A rigorously precise transliteration.—First, the whole text, from A to izzard (as Roth says), should be printed in a rigorously precise transliteration. Conventional marks (other than those of the original), to indicate divisions between verses and pādas and words, need not be excluded from the transliteration, if only the marks are easily recognizable as insertions of the editor.

As to minor details, I am in doubt. In the prose parts, the transliteration might correspond page for page and line for line with the birch-bark original: the metrical parts might either be made to correspond in like manner line for line with the original; or else they might be broken up so as to show fully the metrical structure (and at the same time, with a little ingenuity, the Kashmirian vowel-fusions), in which case the beginning of every page and line of the bark leaves should be duly indicated by a bracketed number in its proper place. In case the transliteration corresponds with the original line for line throughout, then the obverse and reverse of each bark leaf might well be given together in pairs, the obverse above, and the reverse below it, on each page of the transliteration, since this would be especially convenient and would yield a page of good proportion for an Occidental book.

2. Marginal references to the Vulgate parallels.—Secondly, on the margin throughout, and opposite every Kashmirian verse that corresponds to a verse of the Vulgate, should be given the reference to the place in the Vulgate where the corresponding Vulgate verse is found.

3. Index of Vulgate verses thus noted on the margin.—Thirdly, in an appendix should be given, in the order of the Vulgate text, an index of all the Vulgate verses thus noted on the margin, with a reference to the birch-bark leaf and side (obverse or reverse—a or b) and line where its Kashmirian correspondent may be found.

These I conceive to be the essential features of a usable edition of the Kashmirian text, and I hold them to be absolutely indispensable. The text is often so corrupt that one cannot emend it into intelligibility without sacrificing too greatly its distinctive character. All