Indian Antiquary Vol 60

SR No.: 032552
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1986
Total Pages: 394
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 341

JUNE, 1931)
GENERAL VIEW
($ 36
Prakrit of Hēmacandra is a purely Indian language, although differentiated from other Prakrite by important peculiarities that still survive in the Dardic languages of the north-west ; and it is quite possible, nay probable, that the Pisācas in the course of their journey to central India lost those peculiarities of their language which were essentially non-Indian, and which are below classed as Eranian or Burušaski, while retaining those peculiarities by which Paisaci Prakrit is now known.
1 See Grierson, Pisaca = 'Quo dyos JRAS, 1905, 285 ff., ; P. L. Introduction ; Pidäcas in the Mahābharata in Festschrift für Vilhelm Thomson (1912), 138 ff.; on the other hand, Konow, The Home of Paidáci, ZDMG, lxiv, 112 fl., maintains that P4. Pr. was an Aryan language as spoken by Dravidians of Central India. The whole subject is again discussed in Grierson, Paitāci, Pidūcas, and Modern Paidāci, ZDMG, Ixvi, 49 ff. Paikāci Prakrit and the Pali of the Buddhist scriptures have much in common, and my own opinion is that the latter was originally a kind of literary, lingua franca, based on MĂgadhi Prakrit, which developod in the great university of Takpokila, situated in the heart of Kēkaya, the nidus of the former. Its development is exactly paralleled by that of literary Hindi, the original home of which was the country round Delhi, but which took its present form in Benares, far to the East. See my 'Home of Literary PAN' in R. G. Bhandarkar Oommemoration Volume, 117.
* Of. tho Kaiköya and Vrdoada P4. Prs. of the Sindh valloy (Pr. Gr., 27) and 526, n. 1. 3 ZDMG, lxvi, 76, 77.
• He is, however, contradictod by Märkandeya, xix, 9, in which some words are quoted from the Brhat Katha, the work supposed to be He's authority, as examples of Kēkaya-paibacild, i.e., of the Paidác! of North Western India.
36. These modern Pisāca (henceforth in these pages called 'Dardic ') languages are not purely Indian. They have several typioal phonetic rules that markedly differentiate them from the IAV8.1 Again, while in other respects they are generally in agreement with the IAVs., they occasionally present Eranian characteristics. Indeed so striking are some of these that Konow considered that one of these languages, Bašgali, is the modern represen. tative of an Eranian language, the oldest traces of which are found in the names of the Mitanni chiefs and other chieftains known from ouneiform inscriptions. In consideration of the fact that some Eranian characteristios are wanting in all of them, my own opinion is that Dardic forms a group of languages neither purely Eranian nor purely Indian, and that they probably left the parent Aryan stem after the Indo-Aryan languages, but before all the typical Eranian characteristios that we meet in the Avesta, had developed, or else that they are descended from a group of Aryan dialects intermediate between those that subse. quently became Eranian and those that subsequently became Indo-Aryan. R. G. Bhandarkar's opinion, though differently expressed, is much to the same effect. He says 5: ....perbape this (Ps. Pr.) was the language of an Aryan tribe that had remained longer in the original seat of the race......and emigrated to India at a very late period and settled on the borders. Or it might be that the tribe came to India along with the others, but living in the mountafnous countries on the border in a state of rude independence, it developed peculiarities of pronunciation.... Since under this supposition they could not have come into very close contact with their more civilized brethren of the plains, their language did not undergo those phonetic modifications which Sanskrit underwent' in becoming Prakrit. Finally, the fact that Dardio agrees in certain points with the Talcah languages6 tends to show that the speakers entered their present seats, not from the plains of India, but directly from the Pamirs, or northern Afyānistān, while the speakers of the most ancient forms of true Indo-Aryan entered the plains of India from the west. If this is the case, they formed a wave of Aryan immigration distinot from that of the main body.'