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46
प्राकृतसर्वस्वम् । attaining a refined state at the time of Pāņini did not lose its status of being a spoken language. Its refined form was surely based on Vedic as well as Prākrit.: Now if we compare Vedic with Prākrit, great affinity of forms and idioms of the former will be found in the latter. Some of the points of striking similarity are given below :*
1. Scarcity of visarga and the substitution of 'o' in the Nom. Sing. of stems ending in 'a'.
2. Retention of the suffis 'bhis' in the instrumental plural.
3. The omission of final consonants.
4. Scarcity of dative case and its replacement by the genitive.
5. The hiatus or absence of sandhi.
The Prākrit languages have a series of common grammatical and lexical characteristics with the Vedic, and these are significantly missing from classical Sanskrit.10 Thus a greater affinity of Prākrit with the Vedic than with classical Sanskrit is establised. This has led the scholars to opine that the Prakrits were offshoots, not of the classical Sanskrit but of the Vedic dialect itself.11 “For the dialects that preceded the Vedic language did nut die after giving birth to the
: 8 Cf. Development of Language and Sanskrit-Wilson Philolo gical Lectures, p. 263, in Collected works of Sir R. G. BHANDARKAR, Vol. III.
9 Cf. On the origin of Sanskrit and Prākrit by Prof. Devendra Kumar BANERJI, K. B. Pathak Comm. Vol. p. 327, published by BORI, 1934,
10 For a detailed account of such phenomena, see Grammatik, 6, 11 Intro, to Pkt, by A. C. WOOLNER, P. 4.
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