have been much less surprised if all irregularities in the metre had been smoothed down by the flux and reflux of oral tradition, a fact which is so apparent in the text of Homer, where the gaps occasioned by the loss of the digamma, were made good by the insertion of unmeaning particles; but I find it difficult to imagine by what class of men, who must have lived between the original poets and the age of the Prâtisâkhyas, the simple rhythm of the Vedic metres should have been disregarded, and the sense of rhythm, which ancient people possess in a far higher degree than we ourselves, been violated through crude and purposeless alterations. I shall give a few specimens only. What but a regard for real antiquity could have induced people in VIII, 2, 8, to preserve the defective foot of a Gâyatrî verse, sămâ̄nē ădhĭ bhâ̄rmān? Any one acquainted with Sanskrit would naturally read sămâ̄nē ădhĭ bhâ̄rmănī. But who would have changed bhârmani, if that had been there originally, to bhârman? I believe we must scan sămâ̄nē ădhĭ bh̆â̄rmān, or săm̄ănē ădhĭ bhâ̄rmān, the pæon tertius being a perfectly legitimate foot at the end of a Gâyatrî verse. In X, 158, 1, we can understand how an accident happened. The original poet may have said: S̆û̄ryō nō dĭvās pâ̄tŭ pâ̄tŭ vâ̄tō āntărī̆kshâ̄t, āgnīr nāh pâ̄rthĭvēbhy̆āh. Here one of the two pâtu was lost. But if in the same hymn we find in the second verse two feet of nine instead of eight syllables each, I should not venture to alter this except in pronunciation, because no reason can be imagined why any one should have put these irregular lines in the place of regular ones.

In V, 41, 10, grĭnî̄tē āgnĭr ētărî̄ nă sû̄shāih, sōkīshkēsō nĭ rĭnâ̄tĭ vănâ̄, every modern Pandit would naturally read vanâni instead of vanâ, in order to get the regular Trishtubh metre. But this being the case, how can we imagine that even the most ignorant member of an ancient Parishad should wilfully have altered vanâni into vanâ? What surprises one is, that vanâ should have been spared, in spite of every temptation to change it into vanâni: for I cannot doubt for one moment that vanâ is the right reading, only