+१४

To Mr. Thomann of Zürich I am indebted for a collation of E. I. H. 309 (E) concerning several passages in the two first प्रपाठकाः, and to my dear and learned friend Dr. W. Pertsch for a very minute collation of M., which beautiful ms. does however not exhibit the whole काण्ड - as I have in the Preface (p. IX) erroneously stated–but contains only the बृहदारण्यक portion, beginning with the third प्रपाठक.

The accentuation of the बृहदारण्यक, especially in its three last अध्याया-s, is in a very strange state and offers much cause of perplexity, the accentual signs being frequently either wholly wanting or strangely misplaced. The thorough coincidence of M. with A. (Chambers 15) in almost all these blunders leads me to suspect, that the fault is not exclusively that of the copists, but partly an original one, such as might be ascribed to the later addition of these last chapters to the more ancient body of the work. I feel authorized to this assumption by similar instances in the परिशिष्टा-s to the several वेदसंहिता-s as well as in the निरुक्ति and (as I learn from Dr. Pertsch) in the तैत्तिरीयारण्यक, and moreover by the fact, that the वंश-s which are unquestionably of a late origin particularly abound in such blunders and mistakes (see already the वंश at the end of the tenth काण्ड p. ८२६.).

The reason of this strange circumstance may be sought for either in a less careful preservation of these portions before their becoming a canonical part of the holy text, or in a partial misapplication of the accentual rules by their authors themselves. I should like to adopt at once both these views, as I have no doubt, that the codification as well as the composition of these portions reach in part down to a time, when the language of the ब्राह्मण-s was no longer the spoken dialect of the people or even of the ब्राह्मण-s, but though in common use with the latter as their medium of disputations and literary pursuit still by them even was only learned by exercise and study.

In consequence of the constant fluctuation of these readings some of which bear the appearence of having been produced by a mingling of the different systems of denotation of the संहितस्वरः and the ब्राह्मणस्वरः I have generally thought myself authorized to remove all evident blunders from my text, yet carefully recording as follows all those anomalies from the common mode of accentuation as might be more than mere mistakes of the copists. The exceptions I have made occur in the वंश-s which I have given throughout in their original form - in some words which in the same passages are constantly accentuated in the same way, though differently from their usual accentuation, as for instance पा᳘प वेद᳘ – and finally in a few others which are also likely to have really fluctuated between different accents.