Vedic Hymns, Part I (SBE32): Preface to the First Edition... | Internet Sacred Text Archive

Far be it from me to say that the editio princeps of the text thus constituted was printed without mistakes. Aufrecht's Romanised Reprint of the Rig-veda.But most of these mistakes are mistakes which no attentive reader could fail to detect. Cases like II, 35, 1, where gógishat instead of góshishat was printed three times, so as to perplex even Professor Roth, or II, 12, 14, where sasamânám occurs three times instead of sasamânám, are, I believe, of rare occurrence. Nor do I think that, unless some quite unexpected discoveries are made, there ever will be a new critical edition, or, as we call it in Germany, a new recension of the hymns of the Rig-veda. If by collating new MSS., or by a careful study of the Prâtisâkhya, or by conjectural emendations, a more correct text could have been produced, we may be certain that a critical scholar like Professor Aufrecht would have given us such a text. But after carefully collating several MSS. of Professor Wilson's collection, and after enjoying the advantage of Professor Weber's assistance in collating the MSS. of the Royal Library at Berlin, and after a minute study of the Prâtisâkhya, he frankly states that in the text of the Rig-veda, transcribed in Roman letters, which he printed at Berlin, he followed my edition, and that he had to correct but a small number of misprints. For the two Mandalas which I had not yet published, I lent him the very MSS. on which my edition is founded; and there will be accordingly but few passages in these two concluding Mandalas, which I have still to publish, where the text will materially differ from that of his Romanised transcript.

No one, I should think, who is at all acquainted with the rules of diplomatic criticism, would easily bring himself to

touch a text resting on such authorities as the text of the Rig-veda. What would a Greek scholar give, if he could say of Homer that his text was in every word, in every syllable, in every vowel, in every accent, the same as the text used by Peisistratos in the sixth century b.c.! A text thus preserved in its integrity for so many centuries, must remain for ever the authoritative text of the Veda.