Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde
(ENCYCLOPEDIA OF INDO-ARYAN RESEARCH)
BEGRÜNDET VON G. BÜHLER, FORTGESETZT VON F. KIELHORN.
I. BAND, 4. HEFT.
VEDIC GRAMMAR
BY
A. A. MACDONELL.
INTRODUCTION.
I. General Scope of this Work.—Vedic grammar has never till now been treated separately and as a whole. Both in India and in the West the subject has hitherto been handled only in connexion with Classical Sanskrit. Hundreds of Pāṇini's Sūtras deal with the language of the Vedas; but the account they give of it is anything but comprehensive. In the West, BENFEY was the first, more than half a century ago (1852), to combine a description of the linguistic peculiarities of the Vedas with an account of the traditional matter of Pāņini; but as Vedic studies were at that time still in their infancy, only the Sāmaveda[1] and about one-fourth of the Rgveda[2] having as yet been published, the Vedic material utilized in his large grammar[3] was necessarily very limited in extent. In Whitney’s work[4] the language of the Vedas, which is much more fully represented, is treated in its historical connexion with Classical Sanskrit. Partly for this reason, his work does not supply a definite account of the grammar of the Samhitas as compared with that of the later phases of the language; thus what is peculiar to the Brāhmaṇas or to a particular Samhita is often not apparent. Professor Wackernagel’s grammars[5], which when finished will present the ancient language of India more completely than any other work on the subject, deals with the combined Vedic and post-Vedic material from the point of view of Comparative Philology. Different sections or individual points of Vedic grammar have been the subject of separately published treatises or of special articles scattered in various Oriental and philological journals or other works of a miscellaneous character. It is advisable that all this as well as additional material[6] should now be brought together so as to afford a general survey of the subject.
In view of the prominent position occupied by the Indo-Aryan branch in Comparative Philology and of the fact that the language of the Vedas
¹ Edited by Benfey, with German translation and glossary, Leipzig 1848.
2 Vol. i edited by Max Müller, London 1849, vol. vi 1875; 2nd ed. London 1890—92; edited by Aufrecht, Berlin 1861 and 1863 (vols. vi and vii of Indische Studien), 2nd ed. Bonn 1877.
3 Vollständige Grammatik der Sanskritsprache, Leipzig 1852.
4 A Sanskrit Grammar, Leipzig 1879; 3rd ed. 1896.
5 Altindische Grammatik von Jacob Wackernagel, I. Lautlehre, Göttingen 1896; II, I. Einleitung zur Wortlehre. Nominalkomposition, 1905. (Cp. Bartholomae, Beiträge zur altindischen Grammatik, ZDMG. 50, 674-735).
6 Such additional material is supplied in this work from collections made for me by my pupils Prof. H. C. NORMAN (Benares) from the Vajasaneyi Samhita, and Mr. A. B. KEITH from the Taittiriya Samhita, the Mantras in the Aitareya Aranyaka, and the
Khilas of the Rgveda.
