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