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VEDIC HYMNS.
guilty in delaying the publication of the last volumes of my edition of the text and commentary. Nor could anything have been more honourable than the way in which Professor Aufrecht speaks of the true relation of his Romanised text to my edition. That there are misprints, and I, speaking for myself, ought to say mistakes also, in my edition of the Rig-veda, I know but too well; and if Professor Aufrecht, after carefully transcribing every word, could honestly say that their number is small, I doubt whether other scholars will be able to prove that their number is large. I believe I may with the same honesty return Professor Aufrecht's compliment, and considering the great difficulty of avoiding misprints in Romanised transcripts, I have always thought and I have always said that his reprint of the hymns of the Veda is remarkably correct and accurate. What, however, I must protest against, and what, I feel sure, Professor Aufrecht himself would equally protest against, is the supposition, and more than supposition of certain scholars, that wherever this later Latin transcript differs from my own Devanagarî text, Professor Aufrecht is right, and I am wrong; that his various readings rest on the authority of new MSS., and constitute in fact a new recension of the Vedic hymns. Against this supposition I must protest most strongly, not for my own sake, but for the sake of the old book, and, still more, for the sake of the truth. No doubt it is natural to suppose that where a later edition differs from a former edition, it does so intentionally; and I do not complain of those who, without being able to have recourse to MSS. in order to test the authority of various readings, concluded that wherever the new text differed from the old, it was because the old text was at fault. In order to satisfy my own conscience on this point, I have collated a number of passages where Professor Aufrecht's text differs from my own, and I feel satisfied that in the vast majority of cases, I am right and he is wrong, and that his variations do not rest on the authority of MSS. I must not shrink from the duty of making good this assertion, and I therefore proceed to an examination of such passages as have occurred to me on
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| SR No. | 007673 |
| Book Title | Zend Avesta Part 03 |
| 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 |