Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c17.27

c17.27

(iii) The variations of which the occurrences are counted up in the six columns are those which are shewn in the Table in § 260, and include all those which have been shewn in the previous chapters to possess historical importance. The evidential value of the separate variations included in one column is approximately the same, as appears from the corrected statistics as given in that Table. But the different columns are by no means of equal value as evidence; column A which represents the ‘archaic’ variations has by far the most distinctive character, and column D which gives the occurrences of the ‘cretic break’ is the least important.