Here is presented the first volume of the VEDIC VARIANTS. The aim of this work is to present a grammatical and stylistic study of the entire mass of the variant readings in the repeated mantras of the Vedic tradition, as revealed primarily by Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance. That book presents a complete 'index to every line of every stanza of the [then] published Vedic literature [and of some works not yet published at the time), and to the liturgical formulas thereof. Of its some 90,000 entries, not far from a third occur more than once, either in the same text or in different texts. Of the repeated text-units, again, it is estimated that about one-third show variations. The VEDIC VARIANTS are concerned with the variant readings of these repeated mantras, numbering roughly 10,000.

As to extent, the variations range all the way from change of a single letter in a single word, to radical rearrangements of the whole text. They may or may not be accompanied by shift of meaning, great or slight. They may be assumed to have been made sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. As to character, they are of the most varied sort. They concern phonetics, the interrelation of different sounds and sound-changes; various departments of morphology, such as formation of stems of nouns, pronouns, and verbs, their inflection, and suffixation; syntax; order of words in the sentence; synonyms; meter; etc. There is hardly an important paragraph in Vedic grammar, or a department of the textual criticism and exegesis of the Veda, on which they fail to throw light.

Furthermore, it is believed that the Variants will have great interest and value for general linguistics. The literature of the world happens to contain no analogous body of material which can compare with them in size and scope. The tradition of the Veda was at first oral; and incomplete. Under the circumstances I must perforce accept entire responsibility for the final form of the work as printed, as well as for that of all the volumes to follow. In them, unhappily, Bloomfield's share will be much smaller than in this volume; altho I am glad to say that some of the others, notably that on Phonetics, received considerable attention from him.