These literary forms, as given, are found in the earliest texts. But a mere casual reading of the texts will reveal also many variants; this makes evident the fact that a succession of stages or steps was gone through before the above forms were adopted as the regular ones. The simplest method to be followed in discovering what these successive stages of development were must be to begin with the earliest texts in which the variants were sometimes the rule, and follow the occurence of these variants in chronological order down into those texts in which they are exceptions; thus finally arriving at literary monuments in which no variants occur, but where they have been merged completely into the prevailing literary forms.