बौधायन श्रौतसूत्रम् (कृष्ण यजुर्वेद तैत्तिरीय शाखा - सम्पूर्ण प्रश्न एवं श्रौत-याग कल्प सटीक)

xii PREFACE. Now, as all the MSS. give different divisions, most of them not giving even any praśna numbers, I had to choose that division which seemed to be most in accordance with the rest of the work. The difficulties mentioned above become still more complicated by the question, where the pravargya is to be put in. Bhavasvāmin treats of it before the agniṣṭoma and the Bombay and Tanjore MSS. place it before; other MSS. (J, F, P, and the Benares MS. No. 63, mentioned Sūcipattra, page 70) give it after the agniṣṭoma. As the analogy of the other Sūtras and the contents of the pravargya section itself seem to point to placing this praśna after the soma praśnas, I have not followed in this respect the Vivaraṇa and the Bombay and Tanjore MSS. Another consideration seems to stand for this arrangement; there is more chance that the tradition of the pravargya section became mutilated, when it was put at the close of the agniṣṭoma as it is actually found in most of our MSS., than when it was handed down at the beginning. As the cayana seems to be the 10th praśna, the vājapeya being the 11th (this number is given to the vājapeya in the Haug MS.), there is room left for only four praśnas between the cāturmāsya and the cayana praśnas Now, if the pravargya section is to be taken as one of these, then the soma proper cannot have contained more than three praśnas. The division adopted by me agrees, as to the 2nd and 3rd soma praśna, with the order given by F and by Keśa- vasvāmin in his prayogasāra, although in his numbering (accord- ing to the MS. of the India Office Library, at least) there are slight inaccuracies. A short note, communicated to me by Mr. A. Venis, found at the end of the agniṣṭoma MS. of the Benares Sanskrit College, gives as numbers of the praśnas (here called adhyāyas) of the agniṣṭoma portion, including the pravargya at the end, the numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, thus agreeing with the arrangement accepted by me. The separate pravargya MS. No. 50 of the same collection bears also the number 9. The collection of various readings in this edition does not aim at being complete. Wherever the comparison of the Vivaraṇa and the evidence of corresponding passages make the reading evident, I omitted to give the varietas lectionum. The anunāsikā I put only before sibilants and before v and h, although the MSS. do not all agree in this respect. In accordance with the common use in the MSS., I omitted the visarga before the combination of sibilant with tenuis, although the MSS. are always consistent in this. The repetition of the words finishing an adhyāya and the anticipation of the words of the following khaṇḍa at the close of a khaṇḍa have not been taken into account, as these repetitions are only met with sporadically. As the text of the Baudhāyana Sūtra has been handed down in sandhi form, without any trace of division into sūtras, I have not divided what the ancient Brāhmans had united, and not followed the example of other editors of ritualistic texts. I only separated