happily, still flourishing. I am thankful to Sâyaṇa, my first guide to the hymns of the Rigveda; to my revered Master, Professor H. H. Wilson; to Professors Roth, Benfey, Weber, Ludwig, Max Müller, Grassmann, and Monier Williams, and Dr. John Muir and Mr. Wallis. I have also consulted, and shall probably make more use hereafter of, the works of M. Bergaigne and Dr. Oldenberg; nor can I omit to mention the Siebenzig Lieder des Rigveda by Geldner and Kaegi, Der Rigveda, by Kaegi, and Hymns from the Rigveda, by Professor Peterson of Bombay, all of which I have read with pleasure and profit.
But it must not be supposed that European students and interpreters of the Veda claim anything like infallibility, completeness, or finality for the results to which their researches have led them. All modern scholars will allow that many hymns are dark as the darkest oracle, that, as Professor Max Müller says, there are whole verses which, as yet, yield no sense whatever, and words the meaning of which we can only guess. As in the interpretation of the more difficult books of the Old Testament and the Homeric poems, so in the explanation of the Veda complete success, if ever attainable, can be attained only by the labours of generations of scholars.
The Hymns are composed in various metres, some of which are exceedingly simple and others comparatively complex and elaborate, and two or more different metres are frequently found in the same Hymn; one Hymn, for instance, in Book I. shows nine distinct varieties in the same number of verses. The verses or stanzas consist of three or more—generally three or four— Pâdas, semi-hemistichs or lines, each of which contains eight, eleven, or twelve syllables, sometimes, but rarely, five, and still less frequently four or more than twelve. As regards quantity the first syllables of the line are not strictly defined, but the last four are regular, the measure being iambic in the eight and twelve syllable verses and trochaic in these of eleven syllables. Partly by way of safeguard against the besetting temptation to
