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xxviii
DESINAMAMALA
derived from earlier Prakrits is a conclusion which seems inevitable from the following considerations
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1. Literary languages are always and everywhere developed from spoken, popular dialects by literary culture and become at last fixed and stereotyped by grammar. Spoken dialects may be compared to a flowing stream. constantly changing in successive generations. Literary languages may be compared to branches or canals issuing out of it-in which the flow of the current has been arrested by dams and anicuts built across, causing the water to stagnate in the bed. The literary languages being thus separated from the parent stream of the spoken dialects gradually diverge from them-and at last their difference from the spoken dialects becomes so great that they cease to be intelligible to the common people speaking the popular dialects. Language being a creation of society to serve the purpose of communication of thoughts among its members, when a literary language owing to its divergence from the popular speech ceases to be intelligible to the people-it is discarded. and becomes a dead language. The need is then felt for creating new literary languages which arise from the stream of popular dialects intelligible to the people of those particular ages and after a short career die again like their predecessors. The history of the origin of Sanskrit, Prakrit and the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars illustrates this law of development of spoken and literary languages. The Indo-Aryan vernaculars of the successive ages, the spoken Prakrits form the everflowing parent stream. The literary languages of those ages-Vedic, Classical Sanskrit, Pali, Ardhamagadhi, the Prakrit dialects of the plays, the literary Apabhramsas, the modern Aryan vernaculars of India in their literary forms were all created successively from the spoken Prakrits of their own ages of the different provinces when the older
