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 587

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
cxxi
VI, 24, 3; VII, 6, 2; X, 74, 14. Need we wonder then if we find that, on the other hand, they allowed themselves to pronounce prithivi as prithivī, I, 191, 6; VII, 34, 7; 99, 3; dhrishnava as dhrishnava, V, 52, 14; suvānā as suvāna ? There is no reason why we should change the spelling of suvāna into svāna. The metre itself tells us at once where suvana is to be pronounced as two or as three syllables. Nor is it possible to believe that those who first handed down and afterwards wrote down the text of the Vedic hymns, should have been ignorant of that freedom of pronunciation. Why, there is not one single passage in the whole of the ninth Mandala, where, as far as I know, suvâna should not be pronounced as dissyllabic, i.e. as súvānā; and to suppose that the scholars of India did not know how that superfluous syllable should be removed, is really taking too low an estimate of men like Vyali or Saunaka.
But if we once admit that in these cases two syllables separated by a single consonant were pronounced as one and were metrically counted as one, we can hardly resist the evidence in favour of a similar pronunciation in a large number of other words, and we shall find that by the admission of this rapid pronunciation, or of what in Plautus we should call irrational vowels, many verses assume at once their regular form without the necessity of admitting the suppression of final s, m, n, or the introduction of other prosodial licences. To my mind the most convincing passages are those where, as in the Atyashti and similar hymns, a poet repeats the same phrase twice, altering only one or two words, but without endeavouring to avoid an excess of syllables which, to our mind, unless we resort to synizesis, would completely destroy the uniformity of the metre. Thus we read : I, 133, 6. ápārúshāghno - pratītă sūră satvăbhih,
trisaptaih sūră satvăbhih.
• Professor Bollensen in some of these passages proposes to read rodasios. In 1, 96, 4, no change is necessary if we read visâm. Zeitschrift der D. M. G., vol. xxii, p. 587
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