Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c6.2

c6.2

71. THE ‘popular Rigveda’ consists of hymns which contain about one-sixth part of the matter of the Rigveda, and are marked out from the remainder by differences of language, metre, and subject, and by their position in the collection. Of these hymns a large proportion are repeated in the first nineteen books of the Atharvaveda, often with slight differences in the arrangement of the stanzas and in phraseology: and in their general character these hymns can hardly be distinguished from the remaining verse portions of the Atharvaveda.