TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

area (purovasu-) and the Eastern area (if ŚB is, as it seems, a late text:
punarmṛtyu and pāpa). Just like developments in grammar, such matters of
style spread in various directions from the original centre of innovation.
§9. THE RELATION OF THE VEDIC DIALECTS WITH THE EARLY
PRĀKṚTS 269
In this section, the peculiarities of the (Post-Ṛgvedic) language will be
compared with those features which link or distinguish it from the Middle
Indian dialects.
Given what has been established above in §§ 1-8, it will be clear that a
number of developments can be traced in the history of Vedic which are
based on forms of actually spoken Vedic language, and which are not the
result of simple matters of style, as, for example, the fem. gen. in -ai (as
opposed to cases like the use of spṛdh or sam.yat in traditional tales of the
gods).
If this is so, it should not be surprising if some of these Middle and Late
Vedic developments could be found in the various Prākṛts, especially in the
older forms of these Prākṛts, and preferably in those MIA dialects which
occupy the same area as the Vedic dialects in question. Vedic forms that are
comparable to Pāli and other MIA forms have recently been treated by
C.Caillat and O.v. Hinüber. 270
In the sequel, I will rely mainly on forms from the recent, up-to-date
treatment of the early Middle Indian by O.v. Hinüber, Das altere
Mittelindisch im Überblick (SB d.Oester. Akad. d. Wiss., phil.-hist. Kl., Bd.
467, Wien 1986, abbreviated O.v.Hinüber, Überblick, in the sequel). This has
the additional advantage that many of the forms listed by Geiger and Pischel
and used by later scholars for comparisons with Ṛgvedic Skt. have been
reviewed, and the forms, wrongly attributed by earlier grammars to the
various Pkt.s, are eliminated from this paper. As has long been noticed, the
269 For a summary of facts see O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, §7-12
270 See Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung, hg.H.Bechert, Göttingen,
1980, p. 50; Fs. I.B.Horner, Dordrecht 1974, p.49, ann.49; O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, passim;
and his rev. of Bechert, Die Sprache...IF 88, 1983, p.307 sqq.
100