Beitraze zur Sudasienforschung, vol 163, Parisiksa und Sarvasammatasiksa: Rechtlautlehren der Taittiriya-Sakha.

• Author: Jamison, Stephanie W.

The utilitarian impulses of linguistic analysis are nowhere as clear as in the phonological literature attached to the various Vedic schools. Existing in partial independence of the vyakarana tradition, these treatises have as their purpose to insure and preserve the accurate recitation of the Vedic text of the sakha to which they are attached. The founding phonological treatise in each case is the pratisakhya, but in addition each sakha may be provided with a series of ancillary texts, collectively known as siksas. The Taittiriya Sakha of the Black Yajur Veda is especially rich in this material.

These texts treat everything deemed relevant to correct recitation - matters of general phonetics (the inventory of speech sounds and their physical production), the adjustments necessary to produce continuous recitation (samhita text) from independently cited forms (pada text) (esp. segmental and accentual sandhi), syllabification, and the doublings of segments and insertions of transitional segments that affect an underlying form in a particular recitation tradition. (The latter will, for example, transform a word like asman in Taittiriya Samhita into assppman.)

The pratisakhya, in sutra style, will treat all of these matters as comprehensively as possible; the later siksas attached to it, in verse, pick and choose their topics, restating the doctrines of the pratisakhya, developing them in detail, or even modifying the pratisakhya, possibly under the impetus of later changes in recitation practice. The necessary commentaries to both types of texts provide examples and limiting counter-examples, drawn from the appropriate Veda, to the rules given, in addition to explicating the rules themselves.

The siksa literature has been more spottily treated in modern scholarship than the pratisakhyas, which early attracted the attention of eminent Western Indologists (e.g., M. Muller, A. Weber, W. D. Whitney). The book under review helps remedy this situation, with an edition of two siksas of the Taittiriya school and the commentaries thereon, along with a translation of these siksas and outline of their contents, a faithful but not exact rendering of the commentaries, and numerous cross-references to other pratisakhya and siksa treatments of the same topics. This schema closely follows that of Whitney's 1868 edition and translation of the Taittiriya Pratisakhya (TPr.), with paraphrase and discussion of its commentary, the Tribhasyaratna. Needless to say...