Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 2.djvu/46

Rh These considerations will show that it is necessary to allow for Âpastamba a much higher antiquity than the first century B. C.

The same inference may also be drawn from another series of facts, viz. the peculiarities of the language of his Sûtras. The latter are very considerable and very remarkable. They may be classed under four heads. In the Âpastambîya Dharma-sûtra we have, first, archaic words and forms either occurring in other Vedic writings or formed according to the analogy of Vedic usage; secondly, ancient forms and words specially prescribed by Pânini, which have not been traced except in Âpastamba's Sûtras; thirdly, words and forms which are both against Vedic usage and against Pânini's rules, and which sometimes find their analogies in the ancient Prakrits; and fourthly, anomalies in the construction of sentences. To the first class belong,, I, 7, 21, 15, carnivorous, formed according to the analogy of  ; the frequent use of the singular  , e.g. II, 1, 1, 17–18, a wife, instead of the plural    , I, 3, 10, 19, for  ; the substitution of l for r in  , I, 11, 31, 14;