TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

chapter, per text or text level, those forms necessary for a certain
investigation. 16
Preference should, of course, be given to those items of the language which
change automatically in the course of time, like sounds, certain grammatical
categories (disappearance of forms like the injunctive, subjunctive), and new
formations (like the periphrastic aor.).
Furthermore, a clear distinction must be made between (metric or prose)
Mantras and the actual prose text of the YV Saṃhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, and
some later texts. The Mantras (of the AV, SV, YV, and later RV texts) are
usually more archaic than the surrounding prose, but they have undergone a
separate change which is not always directly linked to linguistic development
alone, but often due to the oral tradition of the texts; by Vedic times,
perseverence has taken place. The Mantras, therefore, have to be treated not
only as a separate level in Vedic, but even require their own type of
philology. 17 Therefore, it will (often) be better to avoid this particular stage of
Vedic as a starting point for investigations of the kind undertaken here. In
any case, one must present the materials concerned in several steps: e.g., YV
Mantras, followed by YV Saṃhitā prose, YV Brāhmaṇa prose, (see below, §
4.2.2 sqq.).
As for the practical problem of procedure in the selection and presentation
of the material, one may either use that of chronological order, i.e., listing
peculiarities from the RV, then the AV, the YV prose, the Brāhmaṇas, etc.; or
one may start with an area-wise arrangement of the facts regardless of text
level. The best results, however, will be gained by a combination of both
criteria when various single peculiarities are studied both in time and space,
as, for example, the use of a combination of two particles or the occurrence of
a particular infinitive form. Certain developments are best visible when
viewed in both dimensions, that of time and geographical spread. This
method has been followed in the sequel.
As for the criteria to be used in this study, a few remarks have to be added.
* Phonetic peculiarities are to be used with caution. One has to
separate the Vedic ones among them from such later developments as
the changes effected by the transmitters and redactors of the texts (e.g.,
16 Earlier statistics help occasionally, notably those of Whitney and his school: see
Whitney's and Avery's statistical accounts in JAOS.
17 See especially the treatment of Mantra variants in J.Narten's and K. Hoffmann's works,
and cf,. already Oldenberg, ZDMG, 42, p. 246 and Keith,TS transl. p. CLIX sqq.
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