ive years copying and collating, and my
first volume of the Rig-veda was progressing, but it was only when all
was settled that I realized how much there was still to do, and that I
should have very hard work indeed before the printing could begin. I
must enter into some details to show the real difficulties I had to
face.

I felt convinced that the first thing to do was to publish a correct
text of the Rig-veda. That was not so difficult, though it brought me
the greatest kudos. The MSS. were very correct, and the text could
easily be restored by comparing the Pada and Sanhita texts, i. e. the
text in which every word was separated, and the text in which the
words were united according to the rules of Sandhi. Anybody might have
done that, yet this, as I said, was the part of my work for which I
have received the greatest praise.

When my edition of the Rig-veda containing text and commentary was
nearly finished, another scholar, who had assisted me in my work, and
who had always had the use of my MSS., my Indices, in fact of the
whole of my _apparatus criticus_, published a transcript of the text
in Latin letters, and thus anticipated part of the last volume of my
edition. His friends, who were perhaps not mine, seemed delighted to
call him the first editor of the Rig-veda, though they ceased to do so
when they discovered misprints or mistakes of my own edition repeated
in his. He himself was far above such tactics. He knew, and they knew
perfectly well that, whatever the _vulgus profanum_ may think, my real
work was the critical edition of Sayana's commentary on the Rig-veda.
I had determined that this also should be edited according to the
strictest rules of criticism. I knew what an amount of labour that
would involve, but I refused to yield to the pressure of my colleagues
to proceed more quickly but less critically.

Sayana quotes a number of Sanskrit works which, at the time when I
began my edition, had not yet been edited. Such were the Nirukta, the
glossary of the Rig-veda; the Aitareya-brahmana, a very old
explanation of the Vedic sacrifice; the Asvalayana Sutras, on the
ceremonial; and sundry works of the same character. Sayana generally
alludes very briefly only to these works and presupposes that they are
known to us, so that a short reference would suffice for his purposes.
To find such references and to understand them required, however, not
only that I should copy these works, which I did, but that I