The History of Indian Literature c8.431

c8.431

East. In time it will certainly be possible, in the Atharva-Saṃhitá also, to distinguish between pieces that are older and pieces that are more modern, although upon the whole geographical data are of rare occurrence. Its language exhibits many very peculiar forms of words, often in a very antique although prákṛitized shape. It contains, in fact, a mass of words used by the people, which from lack of occasion found no place in the other branches of the literature. The enumeration of the lunar asterisms in the nineteenth *káṇḍa* begins with *kṛittiká*, just as in the Taittiríya-Saṃhitá, but otherwise it deviates considerably from the latter, and gives for the most part the forms of the names used in later times.¹⁶² No direct determination of date, however, can be gathered from it, as Colebrooke imagined. Of special interest is the mention of the Asura Kṛishṇa \* Keśin, from the slaying of whom Kṛishṇa (Áṅgirasa ?, Devakíputra) receives the epithets of Keśihan, Keśisúdana in the Epic and in the Puráṇas. In those hymns which appear also in the Ṛik-Saṃhitá (mostly in its last *maṇḍala*), the variations are often very considerable, and these readings seem for the most part equally warranted with those of the Ṛik. There are also many points of contact with the Yajus.