Upnishad

SR No.: 007670
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 1835
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 35 MB

Page 86

INTRODUCTION.
1xxvii
(all),' and amamhi te mahi, by we know thy great (shape),' which are again impossible forms.
But although there can be little doubt here that the reading of the Khandogya-upanishad gives us the original text, or a text nearest to the original, no sound critic would venture to correct the readings of the Brihadåranyaka. They are corruptions, but even as corruptions they possess authority, at all events up to a certain point, and it is the fixing of those certain points or chronological limits, which alone can impart a scientific character to our criticism of ancient texts. .
In the Kaushitaki-brâhmana-upanishad Professor Cowell has pointed out a passage to me, where we must go beyond the text as it stood when commented on by the Sankarananda. In the beginning of the fourth adhyâya all MSS. of the text read savasan, and this is the reading which the commentator seems anxious to explain, though not very successfully. I thought that possibly the commentator might have had before him the reading sa vasan, or so 'vasan, but both would be very unusual. Professor Cowell in his Various Readings, p. xii, conjectured samvasan, which would be liable to the same objection. He now, however, informs me that, as B. has samtvan, and C. satvan, he believes the original text to have been Satvan-Matsyeshu. This seems to me quite convincing, and is borne out by the reading of the Berlin MS., so far as it can be made out from Professor Weber's essay on the Upanishads, Indische Studien I, p. 419. I see that Boehtlingk and Roth in their Sanskrit Dictionary, s. v. satvat, suggest the same emendation.
The more we study the nature of Sanskrit MSS., the more, I believe, we shall feel convinced that their proper arrangement is one by locality rather than by time. I have frequently dwelt on this subject in the introductions to the successive volumes of my edition of the Rig-veda and its commentary by Sayanakarya, and my convictions on this point have become stronger ever since. A MS., however modern, from the south of India or from the north, is more important as a check on the textus receptus of
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