The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c11.96

c11.96

the tone are given as follows :—" Just as after creeping up to the top of a high tree (a man) gradually comes lower and lower so, &c."* The word for lowering in the text in *nedīyas saṅkramāt*, and there is no possibility of mistaking its meaning. In the Tāṇḍya Brāhmaṇa ii. 1. 3 the raising of the tone is described as ascending from top to top (*agrāt agram*); and *nedīyas saṅkrama* must, therefore, mean a gradual lowering of the voice. In fact, *nedīyas saṅkrama* represents the same idea as *lowering*, that is, not taking a sudden leap down but descending from the highest point to the next lower, and so on. In all these places Sāyaṇa explains *nedīyas* as meaning 'nearer' according to Pāṇini, but in every case he has to strain the words to suit the context. It was not, however, Sāyaṇa's fault; for after *nedīyas* was once assigned to *antika*, all traces of its old meaning were naturally lost, and none dared to question Pāṇini's authority. But we now know that in other languages *neath* means low, and in several passages in the Brāhmaṇas, we find *nedīyas* contrasted with 'upper' or 'top.' This, in my opinion, is sufficient to prove that *nedīyas* meant lower in the Vedic times. I have already shown that the authority of Pāṇini is not against understanding the word in this way. All that he has laid down is that *nedīyas* having no positive form should be derived from *antika* without saying whether *nedīyas* was or was not used in any other sense. I am therefore inclined to think that *nedīyas* might have had more than one meaning even in Pāṇini's time, but he took the most ordinary meaning and derived the comparative form from *antika*. This is course of time served in its turn to restrict the denotation of the word only to one meaning, *viz.*, ‘nearer.’