The Samaveda consists of 1549 stanzas, distributed in two books called archikas or collections of rich verses. The principle of arrangement in these two books is different. The first is divided into six lessons (prapathaka), each of which contains ten decades (daçat) of stanzas, except the sixth, which has only nine. The verses of the first twelve decades are addressed to Agni, those of the last eleven to Soma, while those of the intermediate thirty-six are chiefly invocations of Indra, the great soma-drinker. The second book contains nine lessons, each of which is divided into two, and sometimes three sections. It consists throughout of small groups of stanzas, which, generally three in number, are closely connected, the first in the group being usually found in the first book also. That the second book is both later in date and secondary in character is indicated by its repeating stanzas from the first book as well as by its deviating much less from the text of the Rigveda. It is also a significant fact in this connection that the verses of the first book which recur in the second agree more closely with the readings of the Rigveda than the other verses by which they are surrounded. This can only be accounted for by the supposition that they were consciously altered in order to accord with the same verses in the second book which were directly influenced by the Rigveda, while the readings of the first book had diverged more widely because that book had been handed down, since the original borrowing, by an independent tradition. We know from statements of the Çatapatha Brahmana that the divisions of the first book of the Samaveda existed at least as early as the period when the second part of that Brahmana was composed. There is, moreover, some reason to believe that the Samaveda as a collection is older than at least the Taittiriya and the Vajasaneyi recensions of the Yajurveda. For the latter contain verses, used also as Saman chants, in a form which shows the variations of the Samaveda in contrast with the Rigveda. This is all the more striking as the Vajasaneyi text has an undoubted tendency to adhere to the readings of the Rigveda. On the other hand, the view expressed by Professor Weber that numerous variants in verses of the Samaveda contain archaic forms as compared with the Rigveda, and were therefore borrowed at a time before the existing redaction of the Rigveda took place, has been shown to be untenable. The various readings of the Samaveda are really due in part to inferior tradition, and in part to arbitrary alterations made in order to adapt verses detached from their context to the ritual purpose to which they were applied.