TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

* Finally, the occurrence of rare words and their diffusion in the various
areas of Vedic Sanskrit can be studied.
Examples of all of these categories will be found in the sequel.
§ 3. DISCUSSION OF THE MATERIALS
A problem in this context is 25 the definition of 'dialect'. When the situation
of Old Indo-Aryan is compared with that of the Old (and Middle) Iranian
languages and dialects, Vedic appears to be a uniform language. It is the
educated speech of the Brahmins, socially separated from popular speech,
only traces of which appear since the RV in such forms as jyotiṣ, words with
'popular' l, etc. 26
This applies especially to the post-RV texts, i.e., the Middle Vedic texts. The
earliest occurrence of Middle Indian inscriptions (Aśoka +) and texts (Pāli
canon +) shows that popular speech existed in various dialects, the earlier
forms of which must have concurred with Vedic Sanskrit. 27
Their influence can occasionally be traced (see above §1 ), yet even though
some such 'popular' elements do occur, the question is: how many of them
possibly c a n appear in the texts? Popular and local forms generally are
avoided in poetry and in learned 'theological' discussions, like that of the
Brāhmaṇa texts. An exception is provided, as is well known, by the two
Artharvaveda Saṃhitās which contain a great number of rare or otherwise
unknown words, like the names of various sorts of snakes etc., but these texts,
too, have been reformulated by priestly poets.
Yet even given such influence from the more popular forms of Vedic, from
other Old Indian dialects (lost to us), and from the early forms of Middle
Indian occasionally visible in the texts, Vedic seemed to be too uniform, and
the cases of divergence from the norm to be too few, to justify a division of
Vedic Sanskrit into various dialects. Below, I will try, on the basis of
examples from various categories of grammar and style mentioned above, to
show that this can indeed be done.
25 As has also been felt by many participants in this conference.
26 Summed up O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, § 7-12.
27 This has been noticed from time to time, see the summary by O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, §
7 -9.
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