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INTRODUCTION
popular dialects probably due to tribal groups, social strata etc. and arising out of literary and home usage or the use of Aryan speech by indigenous groups. The book-language has often to be distinguished from the spoken dialects. The Vedic literature gives some glimpses of popular speeches, the primary Prakrits, but no literature in them has come down to us. The classical Sanskrit, as standardised by Panini and his commentators, respectfully shelves all that was obsolate in the Vedic speech and studiously eschews all that belongs to the popular tongue: the such a rigorously standardised language was the job for selected intelligence; it is the language of the hieratic academy and not of the populace at large; and its fine specimens are seen in our Kavyas, Nāṭakas, Campus and Nyaya treatises.
use of
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The ancient Indian drama presents a striking picture of the mixed use of language, different characters speaking different languages and dialects in the same play. This is looked upon by some as something analogous to the use of Doric ond Aeolic in certain parts of Greek plays. If we look at the drama in the light of the above remarks, we find some explanation for the use of different Prakrit languages. It bears resemblance, so far as its beginning is concerned, to the natural use of local or vulgar forms of speech in the mouths of uncultured persons. Broadly speaking Sanskrit is spoken by men of high rank and by religious personages, while women, queens not excepted, speak one kind of Prakrit with ordinary characters, minor dialects being used by inferior or special classes.
According to their advocacy of secular or religious origin for the Indian drama, scholars hold that it was entirely either in Prakrit or Sanskrit in the beginning. Neither the earliest treatise on dramaturgy nor the oldest specimens of drama bear out the exclusive claim of one or the other: they admit Sanskrit and Prakrit side by side.
The details about the use of Sanskrit, Prakrit dialects and other languages by different characters look more like a compilation of stray practices and prescriptions than a systematic codification of rules: one feels all the more convinced about this, when the details
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1 Keith: The Sanskrit Drama, pp. 72-75, 85-89, 120-22, 140-42, 166, 181, 185, 203, 211-12219. 286. 257. 334-38.500.c. 4 चं. ले.
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