TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

of ŚB/BAU, definitely an Easterner, although his RV school was originally
from Eastern Panjab. Śakaṭāyana, unfortunately, is otherwise known only
from the Nirukta and the Prātiśākhyas. 238
The two sets of rules concern (Vedic) texts in their Saṃhitā form (see Pāṇ.
8.2.108 with 8.3.16 sqq., and 6. 1.109 sqq. with 6.1.72). The Vedic texts, even
the Eastern ones, cannot be expected to correspond exacatly to forms of early
Middle Indian or to the later Prākṛts. Otherwise, one would expect, for the
East, a special Sandhi rule, taught be Eastern grammarians, to take care of
the usual nom. pl. of i/u stems in -e (Eastern MIA bhikkave, see O.v.Hinüber,
§ 332) Or must we think of an older stratum, valid only for Brahmanical
speech, where -o was Eastern? On the other hand, even the Asuras (using
non-Brahmanical speech!) say in ŚB: "he 'lavo he 'lavo!" 239 This would
mean that even in "Pkt.," -o was the normal form of (nom.) voc.pl. of i/u
stems in the East at the time of ŚB. On the other hand, nom. pl. in -o is
typically Western MIA. - The majority of the Sandhi cases mentioned in
Pāṇ., however, will have come from nom. sg. in -as > -o in Sandhi like devaḥ >
devo, and also from s-stems: namas- > namo. The pressure of these forms
will have also set the rule for the nom./voc. pl. of i/u stems -as > -o, even in the
Brahmanical/'Asura' speech of the East. 240 (As another non-Eastern
phenomenon in the Asura quotation note the Sandhi -e '-). It seems that the
Western Sandhi in -o ', -e '- prevailed everywhere. Pāṇ. is, in this case, more
modern than some of his Eastern colleagues. 241 The older (Ṛg)Vedic practice
seems to have been closer to Śakaṭāyaṇa. This is evident if the abhinihita
sandhi of the Ṛgveda is reconstructed, for example:
RV 2.36.1 túbhya hinvānó | 'vasiṣṭa g apó / 'dhukṣan ... náraḥ // "having
been instigated for you, (Soma) has dressed (himself) with waters; the men
have milked...." The metre shows that the apostrophe, supplemented by K.
Hoffmann in his discussion of the verse (Inj. p.147), represents a syllable lost
in the Saṃhitā text based on Śākalya's reading.
Śākaṭāyana would probably have pronounced:
túbhya hinvānó | 'vasiṣṭa g apó / 'dhukṣan sīm ávibhir ádribhir náraḥ //
238 Is Śakaṭāyana an Easterner, cf.K.L.Janert, Śakaṭa, KZ 71, p. 108-9; otherwise, he is
known as author of the Ṛktantra, and some other texts, see Cardona, Pān., p. 149.
239 Cf. above ann. 2, 65, 289, 240.
240 That there was some difference in dialect we know from the statement of JB 1.333 §115,
mentioned in the introduction (§1) that the Eastern language was not regarded fit for the
son of a Kosala king.
241 Note as well the older vowel Sandhi in AB 3.12 uktham avāci indrāya, while the parallel
passages in the generally younger Kauṣītaki Br. 14.3 counts uktham avacīndrāyoktham
devebhyaḥ [avācīndrāyokthaḥ devebhyaḥ!] as 9 syllables; cf. ann. 201-202.
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