TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

In this case, the Eastern feature (typical is ŚBM, AB 6-8), with a two-fold
opposition aorist : perfect(/impf.), is fused with the Central/Western one (TB,
AB 1-5) with a retention of the older three-fold opposition aorist : imperfect :
perfect, and the Southern one (JB) with a new, two-fold opposition aor. :
perf.(/impf.).
In late Vedic, a restructuring of the use of the past tenses seems to have
taken place (see above §5.2); a distinction is made between the value of the
augmented forms (impf., aor., conditional) in "pluperfect meaning"
(vorzeitig), and the unaugmented forms (perf., pres., future, subj., opt.,
imp.). 290
In early Middle Indian, the perf. is found only in a few remnant forms of
Pāli; it has almost disappeared in the other languages. The impf. is extinct,
except for a few remnants in Pāli (like āsī < āsīt), which have been classified
with the aorists as preterite. The situation in Pāli, which developed from the
Buddhist Middle Indian in (0artly) the same area (Pañcāla/Ujjain, etc.) as the
lost Śāṭy. Br. and JB, is still comparable to that of the Jaim. texts. Instead of
an opposition (impf.)/perf. : aor., Pāli has almost no impf. left at all, 291 and
rarely a perf. (and then only in the older text level, in the Gāthās;
O.v.Hinüber, Überblick, § 480). The normal past tense is the aorist. When
compared to even late Vedic, Pāli is one or two steps ahead. The survival of
the aor. in Pāli (more rarely in A.-Mg., and in a few cases in J.-Māh.) fits the
situation encountered in the Jaim. texts (JB and JUB) quite well, where the
aor. is the most prominent past tense (next to the perfect). 292
One can imagine the following pattern of innovation for (part of) the area
where Pāli developed from Buddhist Middle Indian. As an example, the
Southern text, JB, which was (re)composed/ redacted on the basis of a lost
(Central, i.e., Pañcāla) Śāṭyāyana Br. in Avanti, Bundelkhand, Malva, lends
itself for comparison, as the other Central texts, TB/TĀ, KB are either more
conservative or do not show the same kind of development. JB uses the
imperfect tense to narrate events of a (long distant) past and also for those
290 Note that there is no functional distinction between augmented and unaugmented forms
in Pāli, but that this is a remnant of older forms regulated acc. to the length of the form and
its origin in one of the aor. types. The same uncertainty occurs in Pāli: On prohibitives /
injunctives with mā which employ augmented "injunctives" in Pāli and Epic, see C. Caillat,
Some idiosyncracies of language and style in Asoka's rock edicts at Girnar, in: Hinduismus
und Buddhismus, Fs. U. Schneider, ed. H. Falk, Freiburg, p.97 sq. with lit; cf. ann 132. Cf.
the restructuring of tenses in Young Avestan, see Kellens, Le Verbe Avestique, Wiesbaden
1984, p.431 sqq.
291 O.v. Hinüber, Überblick § 479.
292 Cf. O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, p.192 § 477-488, esp. § 478.
106