Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c32.88

c32.88

The account of the Vedic schools shows that Vyāsa's successors exercised individual liberty in dealing with the text of the Vedas as arranged by him, and so there grew up a multitude of modifications which constituted different 'uses'. Five Puranas explain briefly how that happened.⁴ The differences arose from the idiosyncrasies (dṛṣṭi-vibhrama) of the various teachers, and consisted in their arrangement of the mantras and Brāhmaṇas and in their transposition of tones and syllables (svara-varṇa), but the essential text itself remained fixed apparently.¹ The multiplicity and variance of the different uses must have worked their own remedy in the gradual selection of the best versions and the elimination of the rest, until at length one use became generally accepted as the established Saṃhitā text.² The table shows that the growth of diversities continued during at least eight successions of teachers, that is, nearly two centuries according to the above estimated dates. The reverse process could hardly have taken much less time. The two processes therefore probably occupied nearly four centuries, and this may be suggested as one reason why ‘the Saṃhitā text did not come into existence till after the completion of the Brāhmaṇas’ or about 600 B.C.³