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INTRODUCTION
prose dialect of the plays. The case of Vidūşaka stands on a slightly different footing. He is essentially a creation of the popular theatre, whence, just for mirth and joke, he was received and retained, even in court plays, as a conventional figure crystallised into a permanent type. Whatever may be his other traits, Vidūşaka is a king's companion and guide through thick and thin. I think, he represents a caricature of the learned Purohita who was the sole adviser of the king in almost all home-affairs. The king depends on this confidant in all his affairs of the heart; and Vidūşaka claims that he is a learned Brāhmana. This claim is confirmed by his name also. The name Vidūşakaḥ is just a hyper-Sanskritic back-formation of Prākrit viuso or viusao ( with k-suffix) which is to be connected with vidvas. There could be no better proof for his being a popular creation than the Prākritic basis of his name ; and it is in the fitness of things that he speaks in Prākrit.
We need not hesitate to believe that the origin of the mixed usage of Sanskrit and Prākrit in the drama might have started as a reflection of the actual practice in real life. Conversations in simple Sanskrit and Prākrits could be easily understood by all : this points out to a period long before the rise of the form of court-poetry which assumed an artistic, dignified and elaborate style in the hands of authors like Kālidāsa, Bāņa and Bhavabhūti. This style was first evolved in epics, lyrics, Kāvyas and prose romances; and side by side with them it cannot but affect the drama too. Even by the time of Bharata's Nātyaśāstra the use of Prākrits had become just a matter of conventional fixing; and it was mechanically followed by most of the authors. In view of the characters introduced therein and the society for which they were meant, plays might have been composed by certain authors solely in Sanskrit or Prākrit. The Sanskrit plays like the Dūtavākya of Bhāsa and some of the early Bhānas have come down t but natural that the early specimens of entirely Prākrit plays have not survived: they were popular creations of unlettered masses; Prākrit compositions have been uniformly neglected all along, and even some of the best Prākrit poems, only the names of which are known to us, are lost beyond recovery; and the orthodox theorists perhaps never liked to give a status to them among the recognised types of drama.
1 Words like ajjukā, dauvärika, bhattidārikā, märsa or mārisa eto, definitely
possess a Prăkrit tinge; and ama is a Deśi word of Tamil origin.
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