TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
We therefore witness, as the outcome of this constant travelling, a Koine<br />
type of spread of dialect features, often limited to one Veda. This has to<br />
be distinguished from the movement of whole schools, a few cases of<br />
which have been mentioned above, passim: The sudden Eastern<br />
displacement of the Kāṇva, Śāṇḍilya (ŚB 6-10), Aitareyin (AB 6-8)<br />
brought many of the major dialect features of their respective areas to<br />
the East (Kosala, Videha), while these immigrants were increasingly<br />
influenced by the local (Eastern) peculiarities.<br />
***<br />
In future, when many more dialect features have been recorded and<br />
compared and when a much closer grid of interlocking or overlapping<br />
dialectal patterns has been established, we will probably be able to point<br />
out even the origin of the spread of such developments limited to the<br />
schools of one Veda like the Opt. in -īta of a- stem verbs. At present, we<br />
can only wonder whether the origin of this feature is in the AB area (E.<br />
Panjab) or in the KB area (U.P), and whether in the latte2 case, the<br />
Central (Kauṣ.) peculiarity influenced at first only the later text level of<br />
AB (6-8) and subsequently, at the time of its redaction, even the older<br />
parts (AB 1-5): To solve this and similar problems, we will have to learn<br />
more, first of all, about the final redaction of AB which took place in the<br />
East and was executed either by Śākalya or someone else of his school. 325<br />
But in spite of these minor divergencies regarding only some of the<br />
numerous features found within the large dialect areas mentioned above,<br />
the general pattern of the major dialects of Vedic Sanskrit (Kuru,<br />
Pañcāla, Eastern), is prominent enough, I believe, as to establish their<br />
individual characters.<br />
§10.3 Successive waves of Indo-Aryan immigration<br />
325 Note the same problem with regard to text variants already in the Mantras. This<br />
indicates that right down from post-RV mantras, there existed a "mīmāṃsā" type activity<br />
inside one Veda and that certain texts were changed right down to the Br.period. Only at<br />
the time of the collection/ redaction of a text did the particular form of a Mantra become<br />
"sacrosanct" and was 'pushed through' everywhere in a particular school, especially to<br />
distinguish the text from that of other schools. Note, for example how ŚBM/ŚBK treat the<br />
Caraka quotations quite differently, each text according to its own phonetic rules (see StII<br />
8/9).<br />
125