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262
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(SEPTEMBER, 1892.
attribute to such causes only a very secondary action. It, in any case, assigns to Monumental Prakrit & place apart, nigh to, but independent of the Prakrits of the books.
In order to be more accurate, it is indispensable to examine more closely those Pråkpits of the books, - the Literary Prakrits.
It has long been recognized that the Prakrits of the grammarians and of literature are, to a greater or less extent, languages which possess an artificial and & learned character. The very coinmencement (v. 2) of the collection of Hala is significant:
Amian páüa kavvain
padhiuri soun a jé na jananti kámassa tavitatantin
lunanti, té kaha na lajjarhti ? It could, therefore, very well happen that people were unable to understand Prakrit poetry. A special study was required to follow it. This is not the only piece of evidence, but the very appearance, the nature of the language, and the way in which it was used, furnish, in this respect, still more decisive arguments.
The more fact that the plays, even those reputed to be the most ancient, employ at the same time, dialects which have reached very different stages of phonetio decay, will not allow us to admit that these dialects have been really and simply conveyed from real life into literature. The way in which they are employed and their allotment amongst the characters of the play are regalated, not according to the birth-place of the speakers (who in general are supposed to belong to the same country), but in conformity with a comparative scale which assigns each dialect, according to its degree of corruption, to each character according to his social rank. It is needless to shew how arbitrary is such a state of affairs, and how it cannot have been a direct imitation of the truth. If the Maharashtri dialect is exclusively reserved for poetic use, it is so because it has been adapted to the purpose by special manipulations, so that it no longer really and exactly represents the language of Maharashtra. On this point, opinion is, I believe, unanimous, and no one doubts that literary custom and convention are in great part responsible for the emascalation of this language, which appears unable to bear a single strong articulation, and which is resolved into a confused murmur of vowels following one after the other. Even those dialects, which, like the Saurasêni, have not been deliberately reduced to this degree of weakness, have certainly not escaped a certain amount of retouching. Languages do not, by their organic movement, go again up the stream, down which they have been carried by the natural action of phonetic decay. If the languages spoken in India at the present day possess articulations which have disappeared in the Prakrits, the grammatical constitution of which is infinitely more archaic, the use in literature of which is anterior by twelve or fifteen centuries, it is evidently so because the orthography of these Prakrits does not absolutely represent the condition of the language at the time at which they were employed or fixed. In this respect the Prakrit grammarians themselves supply significant indications. It is exactly those disdained dialects, which were considered as inferior, that have had their forms least altered, and that are nearest to their étymological origin. The Paisachi preserves the medial consonants which the superior dialects elide (Hêmachandra, IV, 324), and the Apabhramsa retains the articulation of rafter a consonant (ibid. IV. 398), which is everywhere else suppressed in the uniform level of assimilation.
The names of the dialects, too, contribute their testimony. Titles, such as Apabhramba, i.e. corruption,' or perhaps, corrupted dialect,' Paisachi, the dialect of demons,' are not names of definite languages, really existing in a precise region. When we found further distinguished, the Chulika-Paisacht, or 'Little Paisachi,' the Ardha-Magadht, or SemiMagadhi,' we can scarcely doubt, à priori, that we have to do with dialects which are something quite different from simple provincial idioms. I know that my learned fellow-worker and
