The History of Indian Literature c8.13.3

c8.13.3

Here and there perhaps in India some fragments may still be found; in general, however, here as everywhere in Indian literature, we encounter the lamentable fact that the works which, in the end, came off victorious, have almost entirely supplanted and effaced their predecessors. After all, a comparatively large number of Bráhmaṇas is still extant—a circumstance which is evidently owing to their being each annexed to a particular Veda, as well as to the fact that a sort of petty jealousy had always prevailed among the families in which the study of the different Vedas was hereditarily transmitted. Thus in the case of each Veda, such works at least as had come to be considered of the highest authority have been preserved, although the practical significance of the Bráhmaṇas was gradually more and more lost, and passed over to the Sútras, &c. To the number of the Bráhmaṇas, or recensions of the Saṃhitás, which were thus lost, belong those of the Váshkalas, Paiṅgins, Bhállavins, Śátyáyanins, Kálabavins, Lámakáyanins, Śámbuvis, Kháḍáyanins, and Śálaṅkáyanins, which we find quoted on various occasions in writings of this class; besides all the Chhandas works (Saṃhitás) specified in the *gaṇa* ‘Śaunaka’ (Páṇ., iv. 3. 106), whose names are not so much as mentioned elsewhere.