TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

If one compares this with such details as the prominence of the Aśvala Hotṛ
at Janaka's court (in BĀU, ŚB), the emergence of the Āśvalāyana Sūtra in the
East (cf. the Pāli texts on Assalāyana), or the detailed knowledge in the later
AB of the udantya tribes (Śabara and other Muṇḍa peoples), 124 it is evident
that this portion of the text was composed in Eastern India.
If all of this is correct, the extraordinary percentage of narrative perfects--
1.5 times that of the imperfects-- is not surprising. The Eastern Aitareyins
have adjusted to Eastern dialect features and have, in this respect, followed
the lead of the Vājasaneyins in their later books.
While the diffusion of the narrative perfect had reached the Western
territories of the Kaṭha school by the time of the late Brāhmaṇas, this
development largely excluded such Western texts as the comparatively late
PB (o.76 %, but KaṭhB > TBk 28.9 %) and did not reach Pāṇini's bhāṣā (in
the extreme North-West).
The exceptional position of PB is surprising. It has been mentioned already
that this text is a very brief, short-hand summary of the Brāhmaṇa teaching
of the Sāmavedins. When PB is compared with JB, the same relationship
surfaces as that betwen the short-hand version of tales and discussions in TS
versus the longer, detailed ones in MS/KS. When judging the nature of PB,
one can therefore suspect that PB is a comparatively later text, a
reformulation made on the basis of older material (as preserved in JB).
Unfortunately, one cannot support this with independent textual evidence, as
older materials of the Kauthuma/Rāṇāyanīya school of the Sāmaveda do not
survive.
However, grammar is again an impartial judge. There are a number of
clearly late forms to be found in PB which show beyond doubt that PB is very
young when compared to the rest of the Brāhmaṇa texts. 125
The use of the imperfect in PB therefore must be a mannerism of the
Kauthumas; they apparently wanted to preserve the old-fashioned narrative
124 Note that these tribes are, for the first time, made part of an Indo-Aryan realm; in the
Śunaḥśepa story of AB 8.18, this is expressed in the guise of their origin as sons of the Ṛṣi
Viśvāmitra. Though they still are looked down upon, their inclusion into the power base of
the Magadha kingdom would agree with the politics of the future empire.
125 Pers. pronoun yuvām, etc. for Vedic yuvam, see Caland, introd. PB.XX; Wack.III.2 p.
463, Aufrecht, AB, p.428, Caland, Over en uit het JB, p.16 sqq. Further material, below
§6.6
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