Page:The Hymns of the Rigveda (English Translation).pdf/6

VI leading this within the limits of this volume was not possible; however, the treatment presented here of most, and I believe, the most complex of the relevant problems, will also provide the necessary guidance for what is not explicitly discussed.

If the explanations, which have been discussed so far, can be collectively referred to as a textual history of the Rigveda, or at least as the main chapters of such, it also seemed, as it need not be explicitly justified, indispensable to present the Rigvedic meter in context. For some other areas of investigation that should have been addressed in these introductory studies, the author can refer to discussions he has provided elsewhere: for the characterization of several of the main types of Vedic poetic techniques, the song of reciting and the song of singing priests, the prosaic-poetic narrative (Akhyana), and the Danastuti, to two articles in the journal of the German Morgenland Society (XXXVIII, 439 fgg., XXXIX, 52 fgg.). For the discussion of Vedic peoples and tribes, he can refer to an excursus in his "Buddha" (p. 399 fgg.), and for the conditions of Vedic song composers, especially for their chronological explanation, to another article in the aforementioned journal (XLII, 198 fgg.). The author did not find it necessary to re-examine the question of the impact of script usage on the Rigvedic textual tradition; he considers this issue resolved, and the intervention of script usage for the only times that matter, in which there was a history of the text at all, as excluded.

The orthography followed in these prolegomena could,