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Māhārāștri Language and Literature
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Madhyadesa favours al122. He says that one should recite Sanskrit and - Apabhramsa with grace and Prākrit and Bhūtabhāsā with dignity. People living
in countries like Magadha, east of Benares, speak Sanskrit well but are not able to recite Prākrit to prove which Rājasekhara quotes a famous but ironical verse. The Lātas speak Prākrit charmingly but hate Sanskrit23. In the hall of the king Sanskrit poets should sit to the north, Prākrit poets to the east, Apabhramśa to the west and Paiśācī to the south, a distribution based upon the places where these languages were current24.
In his Bälarāmāyana25 Rājasekhera calls himself well-versed in all the languages and points out that one and the same thought becomes different if written in Sanskrit, Prākrit, Apabhramba and Bhūtabhāsā or even by their combinations. He describes Sanskrit as beautiful to hear, Prākrit as elegant and possessing natural sweetness, Apabhramsa as very smooth and the Bhūtavacana as well-formed. In the Karpūranañjarī26 he contrasts the tenderness of Prākrit with the harshness of Sanskrit.
rit.
From the information supplied by Rājasekhara it is difficult to conclude that he knew of Prākrit to mean Sauraseni only. He nowhere mentions Saurasenī, nor Māgadhī nor Māhārāstrī and the natural conclusion appears to be that under the generic name Prākrit he includes all these three languages. His four-fold classification of the language is an extension of the one of Dandin and Bhāmaha into the three-fold one with the addition of Paiśācī, which by this time became independent of Prākrit, for what reasons it is difficult to say. That Paiśācī was regarded as different from Prākrit and Apabhramsa is also known from the tradition of the four-fold division of Prākrits27 as preserved by the eastern school of the Prākrit grammarians in later days. Dandin knew of Paiśācī and Māhārāstrī28 and yet classified literature into Sanskrit, Prākrit and Apabhramśaa. So also Rājasekhara divided it into four and thus his use of Prākrit is not in a specific sense. His use of Sauraseni in the drama, Karpūramañjarī proves that he knew of it and did not identify it with Prākrit. His one quotation from the Gathāsaptaśati30 also shows that he knew of Māhārāstrī and included it under the general term Prākrit.
Even though Hemacandra does not mention Māhārāstrī by name, that he makes a distinction between Prākrit and Sauraseni follows from a number of considerations. His two Sutras sesam prākrtavat 31 and sesam saurasenivat32 make a difference between the two. His Kumārapālacarita makes it still more evident, while his Kāvyānuśāsana makes a distinction between the two varieties of the Bhāsāślesas Sanskrit-Prākrit and Sanskrit-Saurasena33. He