TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

Taken at face value, these statistics seem to indicate that a number of texts,
namely PB, TS, MS, 113 the older AB (1-5), and even the Brāhmaṇa texts of the
Taittirīyas (TB, TĀ), have virtually no narrative perfects. 114
Obviously there has been a linguistic development; imperfect has been
replaced by perfect. This probably developed from the normal usage of the
perfect, e.g., stating the outcome of an event/action: "this has happened/been
done," i.e., "now it is like this or that." Note especially the use of the perfect
in such sentences as "XY has said the following," in MS, KS (see above). 115
Oldenberg, (Prosa, p. 25 sqq.) pointed out the use of the perfect in narrative
prose in combination with the particle ha. This agrees with one of the
functions of the perfect, namely to state facts, and with the occurrence of the
perfect in texts otherwise relating in the past tense (MS, KS, TS). He believes
(ann. 2) that the change to a usage relating in the perfect tense had its origin
in a wish to indicate, during a narration, the (present) r e s u l t of one action,
or, in fact, one after another (which required the perfect in the YV
Saṃhitās). 116
Notably, all of these texts which use the imperfect in narrative sequences are
of a clearly Western origin, except for TS-TB-TĀ, which stem from the
central area (Pañcāla). Interestingly, ŚB 6-10, i.e., books which have been
known, since Weber's investigation in middle of the last century, to have been
imported from a more Western area to Eastern India, show a very low
percentage of perfects as well, especially when compared to the Eastern books
1-5.
The Eastern parts of ŚB clearly constitute the area of the usage of the
narrative perfect. However, the nearly equal distribution of perfects and
imperfects in the earlier books of ŚBM (1-5) indicates that even these texts
113 KS unfortunately has not been counted, but judging from experience, I think that KS
comes very close to MS/TS cf. the perfects: 31.2 :3.8 tad u ha smāhur Dārteyāḥ MS
4.1.3:5.4, KpS 47.2; KS 32.2:20.19 atha ha smāha Kapivano Bhauvāyanaḥ; KS 25.7:112.7
atha ha smāha-Argalaḥ Kāhoḍiḥ (cf.Kahoḍa); KS 26.10:135.3 atha ha smāha Āruṇa
Aupaveśiḥ; KS 34.17:47.2 etad dha vā uvāca Vāsiṣṭhaḥ; KS 26.9, end: uvāca Śyāparṇas
Sāyakāyano 'ṣāḍham Kaiśinam...(The Kuntis conquer the Pañcālas).
114 I quote part of the following section from my article in the Fs. U. Schneider.
115 Unless one wants to be especially archaic, cf.the development of the use of tenses in
recent modern German. While the brothers Grimm, adapting folktales, still use, together
with North (Low) German and Dutch the past tense actively, colloquial modern High
German largely avoids this tense and uses perfect instead.
116 Cf. Oldenberg, Prosa, p. 27 ann. 2, on the preference for sa hovāca, te hocuḥ, etc.; cf.
Delbrück, Syntax: impf. + vai; Whitney, TAPA 23.
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