Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/98

xc It needs here to be noted that Whitney, in reporting variants from the Māitrāyaṇī, has disregarded what are (as explained by von Schroeder in his introduction, pages xxviii-xxix) mere orthographical peculiarities of that text. Accordingly, at iii. 14. 3, he treats the nā (= nas) ā́ gata of MS. as if it were na ā́ gata. Again, the MS. correspondent of iii. 19. 3 has, in saṁhitā, sváṅ, and in pada, svā́n; Whitney reports svā́ṅ, and quite properly, although it is neither the one thing nor the other. So at ii. 34. 3, he reports ṭā́ṅ, although MS. has, in s., ṭaṅ, and in p., tā́n.

The completeness of the reports far from absolute.—Secondly, as for its completeness, it may be asked whether Bloomfield's great work, the Vedic Concordance, will not show Whitney's parallels to be far from exhaustive. To this I reply that the primary purpose of Bloomfield's Concordance is to give the concordances, and to do so with as near an approach to completeness as possible, even for the less important texts, a task of which the preliminaries have required the assiduous labor of years. In Whitney's work, on the other hand, the giving of concordances is only one of many related tasks involved in his general plan, and is, moreover, only incidental to the discussion of the variants. I have tested the two works by comparison of random verses in the proof-sheets, and find (as I expected) that Bloomfield does indeed give very many references which are not given by Whitney; but that these references (apart from the Kāṭhaka) are concerned prevailingly with the numerous subsidiary or less important texts which fall within the purview of the Concordance. Whitney had excerpted all the texts, so far as published (see the list, above), which were of primary importance for his purpose. The parallels to which Bloomfield's additional references guide us will have to be reckoned with in due course by Whitney's successors; but I surmise that they are not likely upon the whole greatly to affect the sum of our critical judgments respecting the Atharvan text.

The reports are presented in well-digested form.—Thirdly, as to the form of the reports. It is one thing to give numerical references to the places where the pādas and their variants are to be found. It is another to rehearse, in full for each text concerned, the readings containing variants; and the result of this process is in a high degree space-consuming and repetitious for the author, and time-consuming and confusing for the user. It is yet another and a very different thing to compare these readings carefully, to note the points of agreement, and to state briefly and clearly the points on which they differ. The result of this last procedure is a