texts. Nor should it be supposed that such minute discordances between the two, as the length or shortness of a vowel, were always rendered necessary by the requirements of the metre, and that for that reason the ancient students or the later copyists of the Veda abstained from altering the peculiar spelling of words, which seemed required by the exigencies of the metre in the Samhitâ text, but not in the Pada text. Though this may be true in some cases it is not so in all. There are short vowels in the Samhitâ where, according to grammar, we expect long vowels, and where, according to metre, there was no necessity for shortening them. Yet in these very places all the MSS. of the Samhitâ text give the irregular short, and all the MSS. of the Pada text the regular long vowel, and the authors of the Prâtisâkhyas bear witness that the same minute difference existed at their own time, nay, previous to their own time. In VII, 60, 12, the Samhitâ text gives:

iyám deva puróhitir yuvábhyâm yagñéshu mitrâvarunâv akâri.

This primacy, O (two) gods, was made for you two, O Mitra and Varuna, at the sacrifices!

Here it is quite clear that deva is meant for a dual, and ought to have been devâ or devau. The metre does not require a short syllable, and yet all the Samhitâ MSS. read devâ, and all the Pada MSS. read devâ; and what is more important, the authors of the Prâtisâkhya had to register this small divergence of the two texts, which existed in their time as it exists in our own a.

Nor let it be supposed, that the writers of our MSS. were so careful and so conscientious that they would, when copying MSS., regulate every consonant or vowel according to the rules of the Prâtisâkhya. This is by no means the case. The writers of Vedic MSS. are on the whole more accurate than the writers of other MSS., but their learning does not seem to extend to a knowledge of the minute rules of the Prâtisâkhya, and they will commit

occasionally the very mistakes against which they are warned by the Prâtisâkhya. Thus the Prâtisâkhya (Sûtra 799) warns the students against a common mistake of changing vaiyasva into vayyasva, i. e. by changing ai to a, and doubling the semivowel y. But this very mistake occurs in S 2, and another MS. gives vaiyyasva. See p. lvi.

Footnotes

xlvi:a The earliest interpretation of the name Vâlakhilya is found in the Taittirîya-âranyaka, I, 23. We are told that Pragâpati created the world, and in the process of creation the following interlude occurs:

sa tapoऽtapyata. sa tapas taptvâ sarîram adhûnuta. tasya yan mâmsam âsît tatoऽrunâh ketavo vâtarasanâ rishaya udatishthan. ye nakhâh, te vaikhânasâh. ye bâlâh, te bâlakhilyâh.

He burned with emotion. Having burnt with emotion, he shook his body. From what was his flesh, the Rishis, called Arunas, Ketus, and Vâtarasanas, sprang forth. His nails became the Vaikhânasas, his hairs the Bâlakhilyas.