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SEPTEMBER, 1892.]
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
261
The frequent inconsistencies of the methods of writing shew that we, nevertheless, are not dealing with a language which is rigorously subject to minuto rules, and fixed by studies so definitive that their authority had cut short all individual caprices. Nor can we, on the other hand, see in it the spontaneous efflorescence of local dinlects freely expanding in their native diversity.
The language is, therefore, neither purely popular, nor entirely subject to rulos. Taking all in all, it is to Mixed Sanskrit that the Prakrit of the inscriptions can be most exactly compared. Both, by the general use to which they were subjected, and by their relative stability, were raised above the character of simple local dialects. In each case each represented an analogous effort, - though arrested at unequal stages, - to compass a regularity, a unification, which, not being yet defined, left more or less room to hesitation and to caprice.
We have just now had to investigate the relationship which united Mixed Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit; it is no less necessary to determine what, in the linguistic series, were the respective positions which we should assign to this Monumental Prakrit, and to the Literary Prakrits.
People are accustomed to call this dialect of the inscriptions, which I designate by the name of Monumental Prakrit, simply Prakrit, or, more often, Pâli. This name lends itself to serions misunderstandings. If all that is meant is that in its constituent elements it is very analogous to the Prakrits, of which Pali is only a particular form, that is all right; but, so great is the danger arising from the use of ternis, which are either imperfectly defined or inaccurately employed, that people are ordinarily prepared to go much farther. They admit, as proved, or simply as self-evident, the identity between the two dialects; and such an identity in no way exists.
It is, on the contrary, a very reinarkable fact, the explanation of which will have to be methodically searched for, that the literary Prakpits never appear in the epigraphic monu. monts: and that the Prakrit of the monuments never appears in literature.
The material elements being in each case identical and drawn from the same popular source, the points of difference deal more with the form than with essentials. They have less to do with inflexion than with orthography, but they, none the less, certainly exist. Compared with monumental Prakrit, two features above all others characterize the Prakrits of literature: on the one hand the regularity with which the orthographical rules peculiar to each are applied, and on the other, the invariable custom of writing double those homogeneous consonants whose doubling is etymologically justiflable, or which results from the assimilation of a non-homogeneous group of consonants.
The few examples given above are sufficient to shew how unstable in its orthography is the Prakrit of the inscriptions. A reference to the monuments themselves will shew plenty of other proofs. Sometimes a medial consonant is elided, sometimes it is retained : a hard consonant is usually maintained unchanged, but is sometimes softened the cerebral n and the dental n are sometimes distinguished, and sometimes one is used alone to the exclusion of the other. The palatal ji is by turns used or abandoned in words of identical formation. What need we say about the perpetual omissions and confusions which affect the notation of the long vowels P There is nothing like this in the Prakrit of the books. In them the value of the vowels is everywhere strictly fixed. Does this Prâksit weaken a medial hard letter to a soft one? Then it does so always. Does that elide a medial soft letter? Then it elides it in every instance. One dialect exclusively employs the dental nasal, another no less exclusively adopts the cerebral. If they use both, they do so under distinct and clearly defined circumstances. I know that in several of these peculiarities people have sought for traces of dialectic or of chronological variations, but we have seen what confusion reigns in a number of inscriptions which belong to the same region and to the same epoch. That confusion allows us to
