TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

A similar development can be witnessed in the spread of the combination of
pronoun and noun which reminds one of the Greek article. Not prominent in
the RV, phrases like té devḥ spread from the Kuru-Pañcāla centre (MS, KS,
TS) to all areas; they are found in all later Vedic texts. 282 They also survive in
the Epic to some extent, and one can now add the similar Pāli construction so
'ham = Vedic so 'ham, sa tvam, etc., as well as Pāli taṃ tam = Vedic taṃ
tvām. 283
§9.3 Instr. pl. -ebhiḥ: 284
In the RV, the stems in -a have the pronominal ending -ebhiḥ in the instr. pl.
next to the nominal ending -aiḥ. This innovation (cf. O. Pers. -āibiś but Av. -
āiś) spread to all the Prākṛts, while it disappeared in the post-Ṛgvedic texts.
The local Prākṛts, however, have -ehi (Aśoka, Pāli, Pkt.s; see O.v.Hinüber,
Überblick. §189), with the sole exception of some remnants in Pāli, where -ais
> -e (O.v.Hinüber, Überblick, 145 §316). The crux is to determine whether
this form is a Vedic remnant or a Middle Indic innovation, based on the
analogy of other declensions (O.v.Hinüber, Überblick §316).
Comparing the close connection between the various Vedic dialects and the
Prākṛts (see below), it is surprising that the Madhyadeśa form -aiḥ is not
more prominent than its survival in a few limited cases of Pāli. It might seem,
therefore, that MIA -ehi is a new formation.
On the other hand, the Pañcāla innovation of gen. fem. -ai (see below) was
not accepted into Pāli, the representative of early Western Middle Indo-
Aryan. It may be, therefore, that in the case of some nominal endings, the
older state of affairs was preserved by the Pkt.s, i.e., instr. pl. -ebhiḥ (RV
stage) and gen.fem. in -āyāḥ (RV & Mantra stage). If this is true, then the
"first wave of immigration" had already spread this usage to all the areas of
Northern India settled by IA speakers; this usage, then, was already too
established in popular speech to be replaced by Kuru (MS, KS) or
282 Cf. Delbr., Syntax p.214. Note that stories often begin with devā vai..., but that AB has
te devāḥ... 3.22, 3.26., 3.27. Note as well the change from a RV usage devāḥ > devatāḥ; cf.
K.Hoffmann, Aufs., p.213.
283 Cf. C.Caillat, in: Sprache der alt.buddh.Überl., ed. H.Bechert; O.v. Hinüber, rev. of
SÄBÜ in IF 88, 107 sqq.; - for the Mbhār., cf. Holzmann, Gramm. aus dem Mahābhārata,
and K. Meenakshi, Epic Syntax, Delhi 1983. Note the frequent cases in PS and ŚS of taṃ
tvā "[To] you, as such (and such) a person ...," usually misunderstood in the ed. of PSOr.
284 O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, p. 145 § 316
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