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59
"The above extracts presen varnacular speech in three forms. The older form i. e. the Mahārāṣṭrī Prakrit we have in I, II, III, (1), IV, and V (1). It had become classical as Sanskrit itself and could be used for literary purposes at any time. Then we have another form in VI, VII (1), (2), (3). This resembles the Apabhramsa form as we have it in the instances quoted by Hemacandra in his Prakrit Grammar and in the 4th act of Vikramorvasiya. A third stage is represented by III (2), (3), (4), (5), and V(2). This is what might be called the earliest form of modern Hindi, the forms Dhillimaha, 'Delhi' and Jakhana or Jakkhana' when,' being specimens of the new formations which became necessary after the old terminations had gradually faded away upto the Apabhramśa period. The last two forms must represent the vernacular speech of the period when the poet wrote and since they could not have praised the particular princes if they had died and been forgotten at the time when they lived, the conclusion is not unwarranted that the forms of the language used by them were the forms current about the time when the kings flourished. Thus about the time of Karna i. e. the first half of the eleventh century, the stage of development at which the vernacular language had arrived, was still that represented by the Apabhramsa, the origin of which is to be referred to about the seventh century; and they began to assume the modern character about the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, when the poet Chand flourished and that was the form they had in the time of the Chouhan Hammīra, i. e. 1283-1301 A. D."
(C) Apabhramśa and the Abhira migrations:
Now these results accord well with the history of the Abhira migration into India, which caused such a change in the spoken languages of the country. The Abhiras (now Ahirs) are mentioned in the Mahabharata1 as a people in the west of India on the Indus. They are recognised as a hated tribe, the disappearing of the Saraswati being ascribed to abhorrence of them. But they are fighters and given a prominent place in Drona's Suparṇavyuha. When Arjuna returns from Dwaraka with the widows of Krishna, the Abhïras attack him as he enters Pañcanada. They are here called freebooters, herdmen and Mlecchas. The Manusmrti mentions the Ābbīras as having sprung from Brahmin father and Ambaṣṭha mother.
These references make it quite clear that the Abhiras, who were nomadic fighters, had together with other tribes entered India and occupied part of the Punjab a little before the beginning of the Christian era (say
Mbh. II 32, 1192; IV 20, 798; IX 37, 2119; XVI 7,223. Adhyáya X 15 ब्राह्मणात्......... आभीरोम्बष्टकन्यायामू.
