A History of Sanskrit Literature c27.s1.1

c27.s1.1

IN India, at any rate, science, Çāstra or Vidyā, arises in very close connexion with religion. The Vedic period saw the development of definite sacrificial schools, which preserved the tradition of one or other of the four Vedas, sometimes developing a special recension of that Veda, sometimes showing their individuality by producing a Brāhmaṇa, or, much more often, a Sūtra of their own. These Vedic schools, however, gradually passed away, though we have evidence that in an attenuated form they persisted for many centuries after their importance had greatly diminished. What happened was the inevitable rise of specialization. As life went on, more and more topics arose which the schools could not adequately master, and special schools arose which cut across the old divisions, though we may conjecture that in their origin they were formed within the Vedic schools as specialists in one branch of the work of the school itself. If so, it was inevitable that they should tend to expand and to take into consideration the similar issues arising in regard to the work of other schools. If, for instance, in a Ṛgvedic school the need for grammatical study produced a special school of Vaiyākaraṇas, grammarians, they would tend to amalgamate with any grammarians who studied the *Yajurveda* and to extend their interest to the Vedas in general. At any rate Yāska, perhaps *c.* 500 B.C., knows of schools of Vaiyākaraṇas, of Nairuktas, etymologists, and of Yājñikas, persons who concerned themselves with the sacrifice, and the grammar of Pāṇini is sufficient proof that there existed a grammatical school which was willing to include in its work usages of different Vedas and different schools of the same Veda. The Vaiyākaraṇas are, of course, the direct ancestors of the science of Grammar in classical times; the Nairuktas, though they give an impulse to lexicographical studies, can hardly be said to be the direct cause of the existence of the Koças, which were largely influenced by the necessity of the writers of Kāvya, who required to have collections of words for aid in composing their poetry.