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wrote. This usage is not the mere use of it by low characters in Sanskrit dramas as during Bharata's days. In that case, Dandin would scarcely have been jnstified in making a whole division of literature as consisting of Apabhramsa. He expressly mentions certain metres employed in Apabhamsa poetry, i. g. āsāra etc. The Apabhramba in the dramas is mostly very scanty and scrappy prose and even then, very few dramas have it as a Tule. The line 'Ābhīrādigisah' etc. only indicates the general nature of Apabhramba, viz. whatever in Kāvya is put in the mouth of such low people as the Ābhiras is that. It is hardly scientific to conclude from such references that the Apabhramba, or for the matter of that any other language, is a tribal language. In the first place there is the word 'Adi' to show that the Ābbīras had no monopoly of the Apabhramba. They certainly did not. bring it with them from wheresoever they came a few centuries before the Christian era. The fact is that wherever they and others with them went, they picked up the regional Prākrit current there, and in the nature of things changed its form to a great extent. It is this change or decay that is indicated by the words 'Apabhramśa', 'apabhrasta,' even.
vibhrasta' of Bharata. (2) That bebind this literary Apabhramsa, there was the language, not of small literary groups, or learned men such as philosophers, grammarians, astronomers, mathematicians, poets and professors, in short of the elite, but of the lowly, humble, commonest of the common people like Ābhīras, Sabaras, Candālas etc. It goes without saying that as the region, occupied by these people changed either from time to time or at the same time, their Apabhramsa also differed, thus making up the different varieties of A pabhramsa mentioned by some later Prākrit grammarians.
Unfortunately the date of Dandin is not yet finally settled. But so far is certain that he cannot have flourished earlier than the seventh and later than the eighth century. Thus, then, what was recognised as a dialect of certain tribes and named Ābhīrī, developed, during the four or five centuries between Bharata and Bhāmaha-Dandin, into the Apabhramsa language. both spoken in various dialects and employed in recognised literature. This was also the period of Ābhīra supremacy over a considerable part of the country, It is natural to suppose that it was during this period, 3rd century A. D. to the 6th century A. D., that the name Apabhramsa" must have been given to the dialects which developed out of the regional Prākrits owing to the assimilation of the Abhiras in Hiduism.
(6) Rudrata, who belongs to the 9th century A. D. refers to the Apabhamsa in his Kavyalamkara. After dividing 'Vākya' into prose and.
See page below. 2 Ed. Kavyamila, No. 2.
