A History of Sanskrit Literature c12.59

c12.59

Of a supplementary character are also the class of writings called Anukramaṇīs or Vedic Indices, which give lists of the hymns, the authors, the metres, and the deities in the order in which they occur in the various Saṃhitās. To the *Rigveda* belonged seven of these works, all attributed to Çaunaka, and composed in the mixture of the *çloka* and *trishṭubh* metre, which is also found in Çaunaka's *Rigveda Prātiçākhya*. There is also a General Index or *Sarvānukramaṇī* which is attributed to Kātyāyana, and epitomises in the Sūtra style the contents of the metrical indices. Of the metrical indices five have been preserved. The *Ārshānukramaṇī*, containing rather less than 300 *çlokas*, gives a list of the Rishis or authors of the *Rigveda*. Its present text represents a modernised form of that which was known to the commentator Shaḍguruçishya in the twelfth century. The *Chhandonukramaṇī*, which is of almost exactly the same length, enumerates the metres in which the hymns of the *Rigveda* are composed. It also states for each book the number of verses in each metre as well as the aggregate in all metres. The *Anuvākānukramaṇī* is a short index containing only about forty verses. It states the initial words of each of the eighty-five *anuvākas* or lessons into which the *Rigveda* is divided, and the number of hymns contained in these *anuvākas*. It further states that the *Rigveda* contains 1017 hymns (or 1025 according to the Vāshkala recension), 10,580½ verses, 153,826 words, 432,000 syllables, besides some other statistical details. The number of verses given does not exactly tally with various calculations that have recently been made, but the differences are only slight, and may be due to the way in which certain repeated verses were counted by the author of the index.