A Vedic Concordance c4.s1.2

c4.s1.2

Conditions of the problem which the Concordance involves.—The Vedic mantras represent parts of a mass of traditional material which was more extensive even than that which has come down to us,—material current in the various schools of Vedic learning, preserved from generation to generation by memory, and handed down from teacher to pupil by word of mouth. I have, for my part, little doubt that this oral tradition was supported at a comparatively early time—when we cannot say—by written tradition (see AV. xix. 72). As a natural consequence of the fallibility of both oral and written tradition, what was originally and essentially one and the same stanza or formula was handed down in the texts of the various schools in more or less varying forms. The variants are often of the same general character as those which appear in the various forms of ballads, or in recensions of church hymns: there are simple differences in the order of the words; differences due to the substitution of a more familiar, handy, or modern word or grammatical form for an archaic, inconvenient, or obsolescent one of equivalent meaning or function. To this must be added the very important point that there are also many cases in which a given mantra passage, composed under certain definite circumstances, was later on adapted and changed to serve a new purpose.