TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

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