A Vedic Concordance c4.s3.5

c4.s3.5

4. It is a repertory of the most archaic Hindu prose.—The Concordance presents, for the first time and in a form ready and convenient for systematic study, the prose mantras as distinguished from the metrical mantras of the Vedic hymns on the one hand, and from the rest of the early prose on the other. It seems to me that these prose formulas are in a dialect or in a style that differs not a little from the narrative or descriptive prose of the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras. The formulas abound, at any rate, in poetic or other archaisms that deserve to be collected and treated by themselves. There is also good reason to believe that the prose of the formulas is the oldest Hindu prose and so the oldest Indo-European prose. The study here suggested seems to me likely to prove to be a not unfruitful one.