Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c17.10

c17.10

Lastly, in the two right-hand columns is given the number of occurrences of early and late ‘linguistic variations,’ including both grammatical forms and words, according to the lists given in Appendix I. This linguistic evidence, being mainly directed to the difference between the Rigveda proper and the popular Rigveda, has only an indirect bearing upon the different periods of the former. But when applied to large groups of hymns, this indirect evidence is of great value, because it is entirely independent of the metrical evidence.