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" "... Consequently we can safely infer that wherever the general scheme has been disturbed we have reasonable grounds for suspecting interpolations .... To give an ins- tance, the original Indra collection of the III Mandala was . hymns 30-50, the first hymn (30) containing 22 verses, and the last (50) only 5; the three supplementary Indra hymns (51-53), having respectively 12, 8 and 24 verses, seem to have been added in two instalments, hymn 53 (24 verses) having been added some time after hymns 51 (12 verses) and 52 (8 verses) had been appended to the original Indra collection. There are many more such additions, in some cases of entire groups of hymns. Now these later additions are not necessarily all later compositions. They may have been added later, because they were discovered later. But some of them certainly can be compositions of later times. Then there are six verses in the accepted text of the Rgveda-Samhita, 1.99.1, VII.59.12, X.121,1O, X.190.1-3, whose Pada-Piitha is wanting. The only inference that we can make from this fact is that these verses did not form part of the Rgveda-Samhiui when Sakalya compiled its Pada-Piuha. Consequently they have been added even so late as after the time of Sakalya. In this case too it is not possible to say that they were all composed after Sakalya, particularly when VII.50.12 and X.121.10 are found in the various Yajurveda-Samhitas. But we can presume this for X.190.1-3, which bear on their very face the impression of lateness. We do not find these three cosmogonic verses, showing knowledge of the Kalpa theory, till the very late Taittiriya Aranyaka (X.1.13), a text which shows know- ledge of Smrtis (1.2.1) ....
Kshetresa Chandra Chattopadhyaya (1896–1974) was a distinguished scholar of Sanskrit from India.
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The name Varuna is not found outside India. Its equation with Greek Ouranos, though accepted by philologists, must be rejected on account of two differences, the quality of the second vowel and the place of the accent. The second vowel in Varuna is U and it is a in ouranos. The former word is accented on the first syllable and the latter on the final syllable, though accenting it on the syllable third from the end would not have militated against the special law about the place of the accent in the Greek language. Either discrepancy would not have by itself gone against the equation but their combination makes it extremely difficult to connect Varuna and Ouranos .... Varuna appears to be a purely Indo-Aryan word, formed in the same way as karuna, taruna, dharuna, etc.
Continuity of hieratic or bardic tradition preserves many old forms and in religious texts antique forms are generally preferred. ... The chief ground for taking the Rgveda-Samhita as the earliest Vedic. text is the archaic character of its language as compared with much of the remaining Vedic literature. Another ground for this conclusion is the fact that a large number of verses which are in their proper contexts in the Hymns of the Rgveda are found utilised in the mantra collections of the other Vedas, from which one may infer that they were borrowed from the Rgveda-Samhita. Both these grounds make the comparative antiquity of-large portions of the Rgveda-Samhita almost certain. But they do not entitle us to assume that the whole of the Rgveda- Samhita is older than the other Vedic texts .... Scholars have always recognised that this Samhita has older and later portions....
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I have said above that the chief ground for placing the greater portion of the Rgveda-Samhita in a very early period is the archaic character of its language. But the Samhita is not lacking in late linguistic features as well. It well known that the word usura means "a good spirit", "a god" or "God" in the Rgveda-Samhiui as its cognate ahura means in the Avesta, and that in the later Vedic literature and in classical Sanskrit the word has undergone semantic deterioration, acquiring the sense of "demon".