Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c15.4

c15.4

The antiquity of these hymns may cause irregularities in the text in various ways. Some are due to the lack of strict metrical principle which characterized the composers: others to the perplexities of the reciters and copyists in preserving the tradition of poems of which both the dialect and the metre were becoming strange to them. Hence in these hymns questions of emendation assume an importance unusual in the Rigveda, and it becomes impossible to feel confident as to the original form of many of the stanzas. Where however difficulties of metre and of interpretation occur in the same stanza, it will be justifiable to look to the composition of the hymn as a whole as a guide: and though it may not be practicable to restore with any certainty the original form, yet it will appear that there is little justification for the complete despair with which the metre of some of these hymns has been regarded by Western critics.