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INTRODUCTION
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some more facts.: Prākrit grammarians give it an elaborate treatment, and accepting it as a standard, note the deviations from it in the case of other dialects; rhetoricians quote plenty of verses in this dialect; and many more Kāvyas, than those available today, were written in it. Delineating its back-ground, Jacobi' has suggested its influence even on Sanskrit poetry: “It was probably through its contact with a popular poetical art, the one in Māhārāștrī, that the Sanskrit poetry of the Renaissance' also gained those qualities of freshness and naturalness which are praised in the case of Vaidarbhī.” The Prākrit metre Gāthā appears as Aryā in Sanskrit; and Somadeva in his Yaśastilaka and Jayadeva in his Gītagovinda imitated some popular Apabhramsa metres.
According to early dramatic theory, to a very great extent confirmed by the Prākrit speeches in plays, Sauraseni was put in the mouth of ladies etc. Saurasenī is mentioned by Bharata (c. 3rd century A. D.) who does not mention the name of Māhārāştri. The dramatic tradition of Bharata gives a place of recognition to Saurasenī. Phonetically it belongs to the transitional stage in the evolution of Middle Indo-Aryan; but with the gradual popularity of Māhārāștrī, it was sure to be affected by it as a literary language. Jacobi has already detected a Pre-classical Prākrit, which was used in place of Māhārāștri in early days, in the Dhruvas of the Nātyaśāstra. In some respects it is akin to Saurasenī,a name already given to it by Bharata himself. It possesses many a trait of transitional character. The dialect of the sūtras of Dhavală etc., the Prākrit prose commentaries therein, and of the Pro-canonical texts of Digambaras is more akin to Sauraseni than to classical Māhārāştrī. Any way Saurasenī, possibly a literary language based on the popular speech of Sūrasena country, has to be accepted as an eminent Prākrit of the plays.
The Indian dramas, almost from the beginning, contain both
1 Ausgewählte Erzälungen in Māhārāştri, Intro. p. XVII. 2 See Jacobi's discussion in his Essay on the Younger Literary Prākrit,
Bhavigattakahā (München 1918), Intro. pp. 81-89. M. Ghosh : Präkrta Verses of the Bharata-Nătya-śāstra, section 4, Indian H. Q., vol. VIII, 1932; The Date of the Bharata-Nātyaśāstra, p. 29,
Journal of the Department of Letters, vol XXV, Calcutta 1934. 4 A. N. Upadhye: Pravacanasāra (Bombay 1935 ) Intro. p. 124 f.
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