Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 514

xlviii
(VIII, 54, 3-4, which verses form the 26th couplet, if counting from VIII, 49, 1) is addressed to many gods. The last verse (of these eight hymns), VIII, 56, 5, beginning with the words akety agnih, is addressed to Agni, and the last foot celebrates Surya. Whatsoever Praskanva and Prishadhra gave (or, if we read prishadhrâya, whatever Praskanva gave to Prishadhra), all that is celebrated in the two hymns beginning with bhûrît. After the hymn addressed to Agni (VIII, 60), there follow six hymns addressed to Indra, beginning with ubhayam.'
But the most important point of all is this, that these hymns, which exist both in the Pada and Samhitâ texts, are quoted by the Prâtisâkhya, not only for general purposes, but for special passages occurring in them, and nowhere else. Thus in Sûtra 154, hetáyah is quoted as one of the few words which do not require the elision of a following short a. In order to appreciate what is implied by this special quotation, it is necessary to have a clear insight into the mechanism of the Prâtisâkhya. Its chief object is to bring under general categories the changes which the separate words of the Pada text undergo when joined together in the Arshi Samhitâ, and to do this with the utmost brevity possible. Now the Sandhi rules, as observed in the Samhita of the Rig-veda, are by no means so uniform and regular as they are in later Sanskrit, and hence it is sometimes extremely difficult to bring all the exceptional cases under more or less general rules. In our passage the author of the Prâtisâkhya endeavours to comprehend all the passages where an initial a in the Veda is not elided after a final e or o. In ordinary Sanskrit it would be always elided, in the Samhitâ it is sometimes elided, and sometimes not. Thus the Prâtisâkhya begins in Sûtra 138 by stating that if the short a stands at the beginning of a pâda or foot, it is always elided. Why it should be always elided in the very place where the metre most strongly requires that it should be pronounced, does not concern the author of the Prâtisâkhya. He is a statistician, not a grammarian, and he therefore simply adds in Sutra 153 the only three exceptional passages where the a, under these very circumstances,
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VEDIC HYMNS.