Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s4.13

c11.s4.13

The reality of the phenomenon we have been noticing will be more fully realized from the fact that it had led to the growth of the special class of literature called the *Prātiśākhyas* associated with what are known as the Vedic *Sākhās*. *Prātisākhya* does not mean a treatise on the phonetic peculiarities of each Veda but a collection of phonetic rules peculiar to one of the different *Sākhās* of the four Vedas, i.e. to one of those different texts in which each of the Vedas had been handed down for ages in different families and different parts of India. The *Sākhās*, as already explained, were not independent collections of the old hymns but different editions of one and the same original collection which in the course of a long continued oral tradition had become modified by slight degrees. The texts of the Veda as they existed and lived in the oral tradition of various sets of people became *Sākhās* differing from other *Sākhās* somewhat in the same way as the MSS. of the New Testament differ from one another. Indeed, most *Sākhas* differ merely in single words or verses, and not materially, in the arrangement of the hymns, and it is only in a few cases that we find one *Sākhā* containing some hymns more than another. Now along with this variety in the texts, there was also an inevitable variety in the methods of their pronunciation pursued by the different *Sākhās* or seats of Vedic learning. There thus grew up a certain number of local varieties in accent and pronunciation and in the recital of hymns, which were strictly and religiously adhered to out of the natural respect paid by each teacher, by each family, and by each Brahmanic community or guild to its own established oral tradition. Thus the *Prātisākhyas*, besides giving general rules for the proper pronunciation of the Vedic language as a safeguard against its further corruption—for already the idiom of the Veda was left far behind the spoken language of India as a kind of antique and sacred utterance so as to need for the preservation of its proper pronunciation a system of rules on metre, accent, and the like—were intended to record what was peculiar in the pronunciation of certain teachers and their schools in the absence of any criterion for determining what was the ancient and most correct way of reciting the sacred songs of the Veda. Even in cases where these Schools had become extinct, we find the names of their founders preserved as authorities on matters connected with the pronunciation of certain letters or words.