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VEDIC HYMNS.
long before we find that it would be hopeless to try to crush the Gayatri verses of the Vedic Rishis on this Pro
para crustean bed. Even Professor Kuhn very Gayatra Padas.
soon perceived that this was impossible. He had to admit that in the Gayatrî the two first pådas, at all events, were free from this rule, and though he tried to retain it for the third or final pâda, he was obliged after a time to give it up even there. Again, it is perfectly true, that in the third påda of the Gayatrî, and in the second and fourth pådas of the Anushtubh strophe, greater care is taken by the poets to secure a short syllable for the penultimate, but here, too, exceptions cannot be entirely removed. We have only to take such a single hymn as I, 27, and we shall see that it would be impossible to reduce it to the uniform standard of Gayatri pâdas, all ending in a dijambus.
But what confirms me even more in my view that such strict uniformity must not be looked for in the ancient
Conjectural hymns of the Rishis, is the fact that in many emendations. cases it would be so very easy to replace the irregular by a regular dipodia. Supposing that the original poets had restricted themselves to the dijambus, who could have put in the place of that regular dijambus an irregular dipodia ? Certainly not the authors of the Prátisakhya, for their ears had clearly discovered the general rhythm of the ancient metres ; nor their predecessors, for they had in many instances preserved the tradition of syllables lengthened in accordance with the requirements of the metre. I do not mean to insist too strongly on this argument, or to represent those who handed down the tradition of the Veda as endowed with anything like apaurusheyatva. Strange accidents have happened in the text of the Veda, but they have generally happened when the sense of the hymns had ceased to be understood ; and if anything helped to preserve the Veda from greater accidents, it was due, I believe, to the very fact that the metre continued to be understood, and that oral tradition, however much it might fail in other respects, had at all events to satisfy the ears of the hearers. I should
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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 |