Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c6.24

c6.24

The literature of Sanskrit presents, as ordinarily considered, two varieties of the language; but a third may also, as I shall presently endeavour to show, be clearly distinguished. Of these the most ancient is that found in the hymns of the Rigveda Saṃhitâ. These were composed at different times and by different Rishis, and were transmitted from father to son in certain families. Thus the third of the ten collections, which make up the Saṃhitâ, bears the name of Vis'vâmitra, and the hymns contained in it were composed by the great patriarch and his descendants. The seventh is ascribed to Vasisṭhtha and his family. The composition of these hymns therefore, extended over a long period, the language is not the same throughout, and while some of them present a variety so close to the later Sanskrit that there is little difficulty in understanding them, the style of others is so antiquated that they defy all efforts at interpretation, and their sense was not understood even by the Rishis who flourished in the very next literary period, that of the Brâhmaṇas. Still for our purposes we may neglect these differences and consider the Vedic variety of Sanskrit as one.