पृष्ठम्:बृहद्देवता.djvu/१७

Introduction] EXTERNAL TEXTUAL EVIDENCE [xxi one of extraordinary interest. This external evidence has enabled me, in many cases, to decide on the correct reading, which, judged by the MS. evidence alone, would have remained conjectural. It has, at the same time, shown that B has occasionally preserved the original reading, even if in a corrupt form. It has further enabled me to emend with certainty some passages which are corrupt in the MSS. of both recensions ¹. It has in particular enabled me to restore several passages occurring in B only, which, without this aid, would have been desperate. But in what does this outside evidence consist? In the first place, about one-fifth of the whole Brhaddevata is quoted by Sadgurusisya, Sāyaṇa, and the author of the Nitimañjarī taken together. In the second place, its text bears an intimate relation to that of the Naighantuka, the Nirukta, the Sarvanukramani, the Ärṣãnukramani, the Anuvākānukramanī, and the Rgvidhana; owing to the very nature of the work its connexion with the text of the Rg-veda is necessarily very close; the Maitrāyaṇī Samhitã, the Kausitaki and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas occa- sionally throw light on it; and several of its legends are historically linked with those of the Mahabharata. 9. Intimate relationship to the Nirukta and the Sarvānukramanī. By far the most important relationship among all these works is, however, that which the Brhaddevată bears to the Nirukta and the Sarva- nukramanī. For it is historically wedged in between these two works in such a way that while it borrows largely from the former, it is borrowed from still more largely by the latter. There are many passages in which the exact words of the Nirukta are repeated, and others in which the diction is only so far modified as is required by the exigencies of metre. The wording of the Sarvānukramanī, in all that concerns the deities of the Rg-veda, is based on that of the Brhaddevata throughout; and though the Sarvānukramanī is a Sutra work, there are found embedded in its text fifteen anustubh padas of the Brhaddevata unaltered, besides about seventy- five others which are only slightly modified, by the omission of a particle, the transposition of a word, or the substitution of another word. There are, moreover, about ten passages which are clearly based in each case on a half-śloka of the Brhaddevata. There is, finally, at least one clear instance of a whole śloka of the Brhaddevatã having been adapted by the author of the Sarvänukramanī 2. In other words, what amounts to at least thirty Examples of such are: rausamaḥ (v. 34), satpatiḥ (iii. 70), antaḥparidhi (vii. 98), aindragni (vii. 119), anupāniyāḥ (v. 110), rbise (v. 84), viśvä (v. 144). See the notes on these passages. 2 All the evidence for this will be found collected in Appendix vi, pp. 147-153.