Satapatha Bramhana Part 05

Author(s): Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford

Page 52

SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
(eighth) adhyâya of kânda XIII of the Madhyandina recension, and is stated to include also the Pravargya section (Madhy. XIV, 1-3). Now it is a strange fact that the six adhyâyas of the Brihadaranyaka (XIV, 4-9 in the Madhyandina text) are counted 3-8 in the Kanva text,-a circumstance which manifestly can only be explained by the Pravargya section being taken to form the first two adhyâyas of the last book of that version. This, indeed, is probably implied in the remark added to the description of a MS. of the Kânva text in the catalogue of the MSS. of the Sanskrit College, Benares (p. 44), according to which Pravargyakândasya patrâni' are 'bhinnapramânâksharâni,' --that is, the leaves of the Pravargya section have a special pagination' (? i. e. they are numbered independently of the section on funeral rites preceding them).
And now my task is done, and I must take leave of this elaborate exposition of the sacrificial ordinances of Indian theology. For well-nigh a score of years the work has
dragged its slow length along,' and during that time it has caused me-and, I doubt not, has caused some of my readers, too-not a few weary hours. In the early stages of the work, my old teacher, Professor Albrecht Weber, than whom no one is more deeply versed in the intricacies of the sacrificial ritual, wrote to me: 'You have undertaken a difficult, a most difficult task; and I can only hope that your courage and patience will not fail you before you are through with it.' And, indeed, I must confess that many a time I felt as if I should never be able to get through my task ; and but for Professor Max Müller's timely exhortations and kindly encouragement, the work might perhaps never have been completed. 'I know,' he once wrote to me, you will thank me one day for having pressed you to go on with your work ;' and now I do indeed thank him most sincerely and with all my heart for the kindness and patience he has shown me these many years. But, strange to say, now that the work is completed, I feel as if I could not do without working at it; and certainly, if
1 Cf. A. Weber, Satapatha-brâhmana, p. xi.
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