[paragraph continues] Our only difficulty would be the termination bhih of rishtimat-bhih. I cannot adopt Professor Kuhn's suggestion to drop the Visarga of bhih and change i into y (Beiträge, vol. iv, p. 198), for this would be a license without any parallel. It is different with sah, originally sa, or with feminines in ih, where parallel forms in î are intelligible. The simplest correction would be to read răthēbhīh yâ̄ta ̄͡rishtĭ-māntah ̄͡asvă-pārnaih. One might urge in support of this reading that in all other passages where rishtimat occurs, it refers to the Maruts themselves, and never to their chariots. Yet the difficulty remains, how could so simple a reading have been replaced by a more difficult one?

In the two Gâyatrî pâdas which follow I feel equally reluctant to alter. I therefore scan

â̄ vārshīshthăyâ̄ năh ĭshâ̄ văyāh nă pāpt̅̆a̅t̅̆a sŭ-mâ̄yâ̄h,

taking the dactyl of paptata as representing a spondee, and admitting the exceptionàl bacchius instead of the amphimacer at the end of the line.

The last line of verse 6 should be scanned:

ăstōbhăyāt vrĭthâ ̄͡âsâ̆m̄ ănū svădhâ̄m găbhāsty̆ōh.

There are two other verses in this hymn where the metre is difficult. In the last pâda of verse 5 we have seven syllables instead of eleven. Again, I say, it would be most easy to insert one of the many tetrasyllabic epithets of the Maruts. But this would have been equally easy for the collectors of the Veda. Now the authors of the Anukramanîs distinctly state that this fifth verse is virâdrûpâ, i. e. that one of its pâdas consists of eight syllables. How they would have made eight syllables out of vi-dhâvatah varâhûn does not appear, but at all events they knew that last pâda to be imperfect. The rhythm does not suffer by this omission, as long as we scan vĭ-dhâ̄vătāh vărâ̄hû̄n.

Lastly, there is the third pâda of the second verse, rukmah na kitrah svadhiti-vân. It would not be possible to get eleven syllables out of this, unless we admitted vyûha not only in sv̆ădhĭtĭvâ̄n or sv̆ădhĭtî̄-vâ̄n, but also in kĭtrăh̄. Kuhn (Beiträge, vol. iv, p. 192) proposes to scan rukmaü na kitarah svadhitivân. Nothing would be easier than to insert eshâm after kitrah, but the question occurs again, how could eshâm be lost, or why, if by some accident it had been lost, was not so obvious a correction made by Saunaka and Kâtyâyana?

No verse of this hymn occurs in SV., VS., AV., TS., TB.

Verse 1.

Note 1. Alluding to the music of the Maruts, and not to the splendour of the lightning which is mentioned before. See Wolf, Beiträge zur Deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii, p. 137. 'Das Ross and den Wagen des Gottes begleitet munterer Hörnerschall, entweder stösst er selbst ins Horn,