A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s12.2

v1.c8.s12.2

"*Śikṣā*" actually means "instruction," then in particular "instruction in reciting," *i.e.* in the correct pronunciation, accentuation, etc., of the Saṃhitā texts. The earliest mention of this Vedāṅga is to be found in the Taittirīya-Upaniṣad (I, 2), where the teaching of the letters, the accents, the quantity (of syllables) the stress, the melody and the combination of words in continuous recitation, are enumerated as the six chapters of the Śikṣā. Like the doctrine of the ritual, the Śikṣā also arose out of a religious need. For in order to perform a sacrificial act correctly it was not only necessary to know the ritual, but also to be able to pronounce the sacred texts accurately and recite them without errors, just as they were handed down in the Saṃhitās. This presupposes that, at the time when the text-books of the Śikṣā originated, the Vedic Saṃhitās were already established as sacred texts, that they had already obtained a definite form by the agency of editors trained in phonetics. It can actually be proved that, for instance, the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā does not give the hymns in the form in which they were composed by the ancient singers. Though the editors did not alter the words themselves, yet in the matter of pronunciation, the initial and final sound of the words, the avoidance of the hiatus, and so on, they were led by their phonetic theories into deviating from the original manner of recitation. Thus, for instance, we read in our Saṃhitā *tvam hyagne*, but can prove (on the ground of metre), that the old singers said *tuam hi agne*. The Vedic Saṃhitās themselves are then already the works of phoneticians. But beside the *Saṃhitā Pāṭhas*, *i.e.* the Saṃhitā-texts, as they had to be recited according to the teaching of the Śikṣā, there are also the so-called *Pada Pāṭhas* or "word-texts," in which the individual words appear separate from the phonetic connection in which they are presented in the Saṃhitā-text. One example will suffice to make the difference between Saṃhitā-Pāṭha and Pada-Pāṭha clear. A verse in our Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā runs :