ATHAKVA-YEDA SAMHITA. 1103

once started on it, space and time would both be far too much occupied. In closing these desultory remarks on the work of Messrs. Skeat and Blagden, I would like to record an appreciation of the honesty, fairness, accuracy, and completeness, so far as this last is at present possible, with which it has been compiled, rendering it an important contribution to our knowledge of the inhabitants of the south-eastern corner of the Asiatic continent. R. C. TEMPLE.

ATHARVA-VEDA SAMHITA. Translated with a critical and exegetical commentary by WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY. Edited by CHAKLES ROCKWELL LANMAN. Harvard Oriental Series, vols. vii and viii. (Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, 1905.) The appearance of the present posthumous work is the outcome of a most fortunate combination of circumstances. The late Professor Whitney began his career as a Sanskrit scholar at Berlin in 1851, when he copied a MS. of the Atharva-veda. He then proceeded to publish, in collaboration with Professor Roth, the editio princeps of that text in 1856. Following this up with various contributions to the elucidation of the Atharva-veda, he devoted the last ten years of his life (1885-94) mainly to preparing a translation which embodied the results of his lifelong labours and was intended to fulfil a pledge given in the provisional preface to the edition of 1856. The work had so far progressed by 1892 as to justify an announcement in regard to its publication at no distant date, but the execution of this purpose was soon afterwards arrested by the hand of death. It seemed a peculiarly deplorable misfortune for Vedic studies that a scholar endowed with so clear and penetrating an intellect and with such sanity of judgment should die before being able to give to the world his final researches on a book which is second only to the Rig-veda in importance as a source for the history of Indian antiquity. It luckily Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 22 May 2018 at 06:46:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00037138 1104 NOTICES OF BOOKS.

turned out that the main body of Whitney's work was fully written out, though it was by no means systematically complete. Luckily, too, the scholar best qualified for the task of putting into shape the material left by his old teacher was ready to undertake the work. Fortunately for us he has not been content to publish the MS. practically as he found it, but has, by adding introductions and innumerable details, spent much time and toil on making the book as valuable as possible to the student and researcher. I do not think anyone could deny that the work has been admirably done. No user of the book can fail to recognize the saving of time effected by Professor Lanman's method of arranging and supplementing the material with which he deals. The labour which his method of editing implies is, I think, not as a rule sufficiently appreciated. And when, as in the present case, an editor supplies far more accessory material than is generally considered adequate, he is sometimes even blamed for not having done more! It may safely be said that never before has the material for the critical study of an extensive Vedic text been so comprehensively and systematically gathered from sources so multifarious. And it cannot be doubted that the combined labours of author and editor will place the whole discipline of Vedic criticism upon a broader and firmer basis. Having had occasion to make very considerable use of these two volumes, I have constantly found their value in checking both the grammatical forms and the meanings of words which one frequently finds quoted from the Atharva-veda without any indication that they may be of a highly doubtful character. Whitney and Roth's edition of the Atharva-veda contained only the bare text. Owing to the carelessness of the Atharvan tradition the editors had to emend many passages. Critical notes were therefore peculiarly necessary. These were, however, not supplied, and then only to a limited extent, till many years afterwards, when Whitney published his Index Yerborum to the Atharva-veda (1880), in which he indicated various readings and conjectures. Such Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 22 May 2018 at 06:46:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00037138 ATHARVA-VEDA SAMHITA. 1105

material is now much more fully given in the critical notes added after the translation of each verse in the present volumes. It is only possible here to touch on a few of the numerous points that arrest one's attention in perusing these volumes. In the first part (which is by Professor Lanrnan) of the general introduction there is a section on the orthographic method pursued in the edition of the text. Whitney's use of ch to represent t + § in separate words (as brhdchanti'== brhat-santi) against the Pratisakhya seems unsound, as the ch here represents S, and t is assimilated as c to this ch. To write ch for the Sandhi form is therefore very misleading. Internally ch (as in gdcha) has a different origin, representing an Indo-European s + k or kh. Here one seems justified in following, as Whitney does, the practice of the MSS. by way of distinction. Some scholars, however, as Wackernagel, would write cch everywhere. Further on Professor Lanrnan touches on the important question, what value the ritual Sutras have for the exegesis of the Samhita. The efforts of some distinguished scholars to explain texts of the Rig-veda and the Atharva-veda by means of the Sutras do not appear to have been at all successful hitherto. The extraordinary way in which the Sutras tear the Mantras from their context and often distort them in their application seems conclusive as to the Mantras having normally at least preceded the ritual.1 In some cases, of course, the Mantra and ritual would have been contemporary, as Professor Lanman thinks of viii, 8 (pp. 502-3), though Whitney (p. 507) here, too, regards the ritual as later. Professor Lanman (p. cxxvi f.) calls attention to the extreme irregularity of metrical form in the Atharva-veda. The facts stated by him should be considered a warning against arguments for greater antiquity based on irregularity of metrical forms. Thus the Rig-veda has many regular verses which are distorted in the other Samhitas, and it

1 Cf. ii, H (p. 58), 29 (p. 70), 31 (p. 73) ; iii, 20 (p. 121), 26 (p. 131;. Downloaded fromJ.R.A.S https://www.cambridge.org/core. 1907. . University of Warwick, on 22 May 201874 at 06:46:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00037138 1106 NOTICES OF BOOKS.

would be absurd to argue the priority of the latter. This consideration has to be borne in mind when it is argued that Pali versions in irregular metre are older than the epic versions. Again, the errors in the text of the Atharva-veda are frequently corrected by the Paippalada.1 The evidence adduced on p. cxli and pp. 895 if. seems to be conclusive as to the lateness of Book xix, and as to the former existence of an Atharva-veda which was limited to Books i-xviii. At the same time it is noteworthy that the material of Book xix appears in great part in the Paippalada text, and on an equality with the rest. In AV. i, 252 (p. 25), the word hrddu occurs. Not only is its meaning quite uncertain, but even its form, the MSS. showing some eight variations. The etymologies mentioned on p. 26 are therefore quite valueless, and Halevy's suggestion that it is a Sanskritization of ^Xco/ao'?, ' greenish yellow,' is especially wild. It would have been better to omit all reference to such conjectural philology. Whitney himself would have been the first to reject it. AV. xi, 7 (p. 643), is devoted to the laudation of Ucchista, the ' remnant of the offering.' Professor Deussen's view is quoted that the meaning of Ucchista here is rather ' residuum in general,' the remainder that we get after subtracting from the universe all the forms of the world of phenomena. This interpretation will probably be regarded by most scholars as reading more into the hymn than seems justified. It is interesting to note that mention is already made in the AV. (viii, 1028, 29) of Dhrtarastra, of Kubera, son of Visravana, and of the serpent Taksaka. Unfortunately, in the absence of any real characterization of these names, no light is shed on their history. In view of Whitney's knowledge of astronomy, his remarks are specially valuable regarding the futility of astronomical discussions about maghd and attempts to extract a date from such indefinite material as is supplied by AV. xiv, I13 (p. 742).

1 Cf. vii, 1132 (p. 468); also xiii, 226 (p. 723), where the AV. is distorted in sense and metre, but the Paippalada text is in some degree better. So the VS. "wantonly defaces " the metre in xix, 65 (p. 904). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 22 May 2018 at 06:46:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00037138 THE TABERNACLE. 1107

The student of these volumes cannot fail to be struck by the sound sense repeatedly displayed by Whitney both in the notes and the translation. This, for instance, appears in his rejectionl of the attempt which has been made to prove that the famous verse of the funeral hymn (AV. xviii, 32 = RV. x, 188), "Arise, 0 woman," was originally a part of the ritual of the human sacrifice (purusa - medhd) for which it is prescribed in the Sahkhayana Srauta Sutra. Another example is the very sane reasoning with which he refutes, in AV. xix, 398, Weber's emendation of ndva prabhrdmsanam (Padapatha nd \ dva \ pra-bhrdmsanam), 'not falling downwards,' to nava - prabhrdmsanam, which he then translated 'descent of the ship,' and connected with the later Brahmana myth of the Deluge. Such conjectures may lead to grave chronological errors. I myself accepted this emendation, and the consequent connexion with the later legend, in my " History of Sanskrit Literature " (p. 144) ; but now, after reading Whitney's note, I withdraw the name and the identification without reservation. In taking leave of this work, with its large amount of well - digested and well-arranged material, I cannot help expressing the conviction that every student who uses it will find it a first-class tool in all special investigations connected with the Atharva-veda. A. A. MACDONELL.

THE TABERNACLE, ITS HISTORY AND STRUCTURE. By the Rev. W. SHAW CALDECOTT, with a commendatory preface by Professor A. H. SAYCE, D.D., LL.D. Second edition, with the author's final corrections. (London: Religious Tract Society, 1906.) SOLOMON'S TEMPLE, ITS HISTORY AND ITS STRUCTURE. By the Rev. W. SHAW CALDECOTT, with a preface by Professor A. H. SAYCE, D.D., LL.D. (Religious Tract Society, 1907.) Beginning with a description of the journey of the Israelites from Sinai to Shiloh, Mr. Caldecott gives all the

1 See above, pp. 226, 946, n. 3. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 22 May 2018 at 06:46:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00037138