Page:The Hymns of the Rigveda (English Translation).pdf/5

Rh for the appearing complexes as well as for the treatment of strophe-structured songs, the compilation of excerpts in the other Vedas, and the complete collection of citations of all songs, song parts, and verses in the Aitareya and Kaushitaka, along with those in our edition, provide an indispensable foundation. It seemed necessary to pay particular attention to the dissection of song complexes into songs and the strophe songs into strophes. Nothing can compel us, out of respect for the traditional form of the text, to withhold those dissections that have such a decisive impact on the appearance of the songs, especially when we are often able to proceed with almost mathematical certainty. However, one of the tasks of our introductory investigations is to bring that level of certainty in the process of song dissection to the highest achievable degree and to exclude any suspicion that it is a matter of subjective opinion.

Another major task of Vedic text treatment concerns the phonetic appearance of the text, which has undergone profound alterations in transmission. It was necessary to investigate the procedure of the ancient diacritics directed towards phonetic form comprehensively. We had to attempt, one could say, from our perspective, to write a Pratisakhya for the Rigveda or, in a broader sense, to provide an explanation of the old Pratisakhya, discussing to what extent its laws apply to the Rik text because they were indeed in effect in the language of its authors, and to what extent they were introduced into the text by the transmitters. The approach mentioned here for examining various phonetic phenomena