Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c11.2

c11.2

133. IN the present chapter it is proposed to deal with all the instances in which it seems desirable to correct the Saṃhitā text so as to alter the number of syllables in a word. In the great majority of cases the result is to restore hiatus within the word, as in the last chapter the result was to restore hiatus at the end of the word or prior element of the compound. The historical problem under investigation in the two chapters is therefore essentially the same: and the Sanskrit Grammar has reason when it treats of the combination of a stem with a case or personal termination as a problem of ‘Sandhi.’ As however the treatment of the interior structure of words involves many difficulties and complications, it has seemed better to deal first with the simpler problem of the combination of words, and thus to have a starting-point for the further enquiry. Now that we have found that the Vedic poems admit every kind of hiatus, occasionally after -a -ā and between similar vowels, and regularly after the semivowels before dissimilar vowels, at the end of words, we shall be prepared to find similar phenomena within words: but it must not be expected that the historical developement will be precisely the same. We shall endeavour first to ascertain and group the facts, as to which the margin of doubt is comparatively small, and afterwards to interpret them as far as possible in the light of our general view of the history of the Rigveda (§§ 153, 154).