TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

In the Vedic texts, with their long history of oral transmission, and the
changes made by the collectors, redactors, and at the time of the final
canonisation, it is necessary to be attentive at every step to such warning
signals; they occur, however, time and again, if one is careful enough to notice
them. Even if the Kauthumas had intended to produce a "perfect
Brāhmaṇa" text, they would hardly have succeeded in cases like yuyām,
anuvyam, etc.
While it is surprising to find the intrusion of late grammatical forms into a
Brāhmaṇa text, it is, on the other hand, well known that the outward shape,
the Sandhi form, of the texts is a late one, and that it has been established only
by the orthoepic diaskeuasis of the RV and other texts. It has, so to speak,
veiled the older state of things by a thin phonetical layer which lets the texts
appear more uniform than they are. In the sequel, I will try to further
indicate the influence of the redaction, taking the abhinihita sandhi as an
example.
§6.7 Abhinihita Sandhi: -e/-o a-
It is well known that the Vedas have not reached us in their original form.
Just as many other Indian texts, like the Pāli canon, the Mahābhārata, etc.,
they have gone through a period of oral transmission which was followed by a
redaction. In the case of the various Vedic texts, this has been well studied
only for the Ṛgveda, notably by Oldenberg in his Prolegomena. 231 The text of
the RV has been transmitted by only one school, the Śākala śākhā. The other
two prominent schools, that of the Bāṣkalas and Māṇḍukeyas, have, for all
practical purposes, been lost. As far as the other Vedas are concerned, this
process has not been studied and understood very well. 232 Just as in the case
of the Ṛgveda, however, there are a number of indications which show that
these texts had a pronunciation which was different from the form that the
texts have now, in their post-redactional shape.
One typical example, just as in the Ṛgveda, is the Abhinihita Sandhi, of final
-as/ -e before a-. In the the Vedic texts, in the language Pāṇini uses in his own
231 After what has been said above on the history of some Eastern texts, a detailed
investigation of PB, ŚBK, ŚBM is in order; for PS, see for the time being, ZDMG,
VI.Suppl.Bd., p.256 sqq., 1985.
232 Especially PS, PB, ŚBK, ŚBM should be studied in detail.
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