Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c9.9

c9.9

**Conservation of its Text.** Secondly, besides showing their skill of selection on the basis of their acquaintance with the vast body of hymns then extant, the editors of the Saṁhitā were at pains to think out some mechanical linguistic devices by which the sacred text handed down from time immemorial could be conserved in their pristine purity and original forms and ensured against the interpolations of later ages. The traditional orthodox respect for the sacred word was already responsible for the high standard of verbal authenticity which had been observed in the long interval between the rise of the hymns and the constitution, by grammatical editors, of the extant phonetic text called the Saṁhitā. These editors thus inherited an established tradition and literary practice which they further improved and confirmed. They began by a rigid adherence to the words of the old seers and even to their most minute irregularities of accent or alternate forms not supported by the grammatical rules of a later age, except where changes in phonetic forms were necessary to make them understandable. Thus, to take an instance, the word *sumna* was retained in the Saṁhitā text and not replaced by its later equivalent *dyumna* but the old expression *tuam hı Agne* was changed into *tvaṁ hy Agne*, "For Thou, O Agni."