interval separating the younger parts of the Satapatha and the beginnings of Buddhist literature can hardly be supposed to have been very great. Among those coincidences I cite sarvâvat, a word which as yet has not been discovered in the whole range of Sanskrit literature except Satap. XIV, 7, 1, 10, and in Northern Buddhist writings, as well as in Pâli (sabbâvâ). The ἂπαξ λεγόμενον ekoti Satap. XII, a, 2, 4 recurs in ekoti-bhâva, Lalita-vistara, p. 147, 8[1]; p. 439, 6; Pâli ekodi-bhâva[2]. The expression samîrita in the sense of 'equipped, furnished with' occurs in Satapatha thrice[3], in Atharva-veda once, in Saddharma-pundarîka several times, e.g. in pattaghantâsamîrita, chap. xxii. We may add the Prâkritism iñg in samiñgayati, Brihad-âranyaka VI, 4, 23, the usual form in Buddhist works in Sanskrit, Gâthâ dialect, and Pâli; further manku, Satap. V, 5, 4, 11; manda in the compound naumanda, Satap. II. 3, 3, 15 ; cf. bodhi-manda. An archaic trait in the stanzas is the expletive use of the particle u, e.g. in teno, yeno, tasyo, adyo, for tena, yena, tasya, adya. Both in prose and poetry[4] we meet with no, sometimes in the sense of Sansk. no, which etymologically of course is identical with it, at other times in that of Sansk. na. An analogous case is Sansk. atho, almost imperceptibly differing from atha. Perhaps the most curious of similar forms in the Gâthâs is ko, in meaning exactly coinciding with ka; this ko I take to be the older form of the Mâgadhî ku in the Asoka edicts.
From the occurrence of peculiar old words and forms we may draw inferences as to the age of certain compositions in ordinary cases; but it is not safe to apply the same test, if there is sufficient reason to suppose that the work, the date
- ↑ Ekâbhibhâva of the Calc. text is a clerical blunder.
- ↑ See Childers' Pâli Dict. p. 134, where the Thero Subhûti's etymology ekoudeti proves that he does not know the origin of the word; nor is it likely that the writer of the Pâli passage cited by Childers knew more, for had he recognised the word, he would have written ekoti, because a Prâkrit d between two vowels, if answering to a Sanskrit t, usually requires a t in Pâli.
- ↑ III, 5, 1, 31; VIII, 2, 6; XIV. 1, 3, 31.
- ↑ Also in the inscriptions of Asoka.
