122 The Sri-Mta, or Litany to Fortune. [No. 2. 



That some of them are aucient, we have so good an authority as the 

 compiler of the Laws of the Manavus ;* and Yaska, while citing a 

 fragment of a khila, does not afford the slightest indication that it 

 was regarded, in his age, as spurious, or even as deutero-canonical.t 

 A dissertation of a recent speculator would impress the conviction, 

 which is commonly entertained by the Hindus, that the S'ri-srilcta 

 was once comprehended in some portion, now lost, of the Atharva- 

 veda.% 



ness, the benefit to be derived from repeating the words to which it is attached. 

 Oblivion or disregard is, however, manifested, in this permission, of the fami- 

 liar declaration : 



•^ *» 



' Women, serviles, and merely titular Brahmans are not to listen to the three 

 Vedas. Hence was the history of the Bhdrata devised by Vyasa the holy sage.' 



* III., 232. Kulluka Bhatta instances, in exemplification of a IcMla, a S'ri- 

 sukta ; the very one, it may be, now published. In company with it he names 

 the S'iva-sanJcalpa. The beginning of the thirty-fourth chapter of the Vdja- 

 saneyi-sanhitd is still popularly known by that designation. 



t Professor Rudolph Roth's Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Weda, p. 31 ; 

 and NiruMa, Erlauterungen, p. 58. 



% I here extract a part of Govinda S'astri's commentary on the forty-fifth 

 couplet of the Atharvana-rahasya \ cftX^f^jg ^T^ft^T ^TT^^m^T^t^:- 



^^ft s^fjt ^rcTcf ^r^Trrt sre*§i 11 



«r^ft srcffe ^Tcrci -iT^fcff sis:^ 11 

 ^(1 WNnhfPurort ^^?fiK*iiT^^ip?*reirT Tr^Sr 



