TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

were composed on the basis of an earlier version using the imperfect. It was
only by the time of the assembly of the materials and the actual composition
of this Brāhmaṇa (during the late Br. period), that the usual narrative tense
became the perfect, at least in the East.
Yet the use of the perfect can be found in the Centre as well. KB, a text of
the Pañcālas, and closely related in ritual to the Baudhāyanas, shows the
perfect prominently, though a little less in degree (56%) when compared to
the typically Eastern books 1-5 of ŚB (85%). It is interesting to note,
however, that although KB contains more or less the same material as AB 1-5,
albeit in reformulated form (a situation similar to the relationship of
MS/KS:TS, PB:JB, etc.), it differs greatly in its use of the perfect from the
older parts of AB. 117
If one therefore surmises an origin of the narrative perfect in the East at the
time of the Brāhmaṇa prose (level 4), then it is obvious that this usage had
spread to the Central area by the time of the late Brāhmaṇa (KB), and had
also heavily affected an originally Central, and subsquently Southern, text,
JB, which varies to a great extent in the use of the narrative tenses.
It must be noted here that JB is based on a mostly lost text, Śāṭyāyana Br.,
which was composed in the (Kuru-) Pañcāla area. 118 Some indications of an
originally Central, rather than Southern, location of JB are:
-- It has both the traditional formulas about the contest 119
of the gods and the Asuras (devāś cāsurāś ca saṃyattā
āsan / āsuḥ :: aspardhanta/ paspṛdhire).
-- It fluctuates in the use of the tenses of narration. 120
-- It prefers (Central) ha (vai) to (Eastern) u hai vai; but
there are cases of u ha vai as well.
-- It shows the (early) Central (and late Eastern) genitive
fem. in -ai.
-- It has the (late) North-Western and
Eastern Central ḷ- for -ḍ- (RV of Śākalya's time,
117 Why is there a difference between TB, TĀ, and KB, altough they belong to the same
geographical area? Was the formulation of KB late, like VādhB, or are Taitt. texts
intentionally traditional, cf., the use of suvar instead of svar, etc., see Kuiper IIJ 30.1 and §
6.5; see the summary on this and related topics, below §10.2 .
118 See Festschr. Eggermont; cf. Caland, tr. PB, p. XVIII: "Perhaps the original
Śāṭyāyanaka... was taken over by the Jaiminīyas...."
119 See author in Festschrift U. Schneider, Freiburg 1987 and Fel. Vol.Eggermont.
120 Caland, in: Over en uit het JB, p. 20; similarly, Oldenberg on the Brāhmaṇas as a 7hole,
Prosa p.27: "bald werden bestimmter(e) oder unbestimmter(e) Motivierungen der
Tempuswahl sichtbar, bald verschwimmt alles." See already Whitney, TAPA 23, summary
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