The History of Indian Literature c8.145

c8.145

A few other treatises have still to be noticed here, which, although they bear the high-sounding name of *Vedáṅgas*, or ‘members of the Veda,’ are yet, as above stated (p. 25), only to be looked upon as later supplements to the literature of the Rigveda: the *Śikshá*, the *Chhandas*, and the *Jyotisha*. All three exist in a double recension according as they profess to belong to the Rigveda or to the Yajurveda. The Chhandas is essentially alike in both recensions, and we have to recognise in it the Sútra on prosody ascribed to Piṅgala.⁵³ It is, moreover, like both the other treatises, of very recent origin. We have a proof of this, for instance, in the fact that, in the manner peculiar to the Indians, it expresses numbers by words,⁵⁴ and feet by letters, and that it treats of the highly elaborated metres, which are only found in modern poetry.⁵⁵ The part dealing with Vedic metres may perhaps be more ancient. The teachers quoted in it bear in part comparatively ancient names. These are: Kraushṭuki, Táṇḍin, Yáska, Saitava, Ráta, and Máṇḍavya. The recensions most at variance with each other are those of the Śikshá and Jyotisha respectively. The former work is in both recensions directly traced to Páṇini, the latter to Lagadha, or Lagata, an otherwise unknown name in Indian literature.∗—Besides the Páṇiníyá Śikshá, there is another bearing the name of the Máṇḍúkas, which therefore may more directly follow the Ṛik, and which is at any rate a more important work than the former. As a proof of the antiquity of the name ‘Śikshá’ for phonetic investigations, we may adduce the circumstance that in the Taitt. Áraṇy., vii. 1, we find a section beginning thus: “we will explain the Śikshá;” whereupon it gives the titles of the topics of the oral exposition which we may suppose to have been connected therewith (*I. St.*, ii. 211), and which, to judge by these titles, must have embraced letters, accents, quantity, articulation, and the rules of euphony, that is to say, the same subjects discussed in the two existing Śikshás.⁵⁶