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SEPTEMBER, 1892.)
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
271
Without being in a position to state with positive accuracy, we cannot be far wrong in asserting that the second and third centuries are the earliest time at which it can have been brought forward into practice. It is clear that this work cannot have been contemporaneous for all the dialects, and that, for several, it has only been carried out at a much later period.
These conciusions compel us to accept an important consequence. This consequence is that all the Pali-Prakrit literature which we possess is, in the orthographical form in which we now have it, later than the grammatical reform of the Prakrits, and later than the 2nd or 3rd century.
I must here do away with a scruple which might arise in the reader's mind, and suggest one explanation.
My last inductions are principally founded on the date of the doubling of congonants in writing. Am I not exaggerating the importance of an orthographical detail ?
It will first be remarked that the argument drawn from doubling, if I have been right in insisting upon it on account of facts which allow as to treat it with a striking degree of accuracy, comes simply to confirm and to circumscribe, from the point of view of chronology, a proposition which a priori compelled its own acceptance. Or can any one doubt that the regalarisation of the Prakrits, such as we find it both in grammatical manuals and in literary works, was not necessarily later than the final elaboration and diffusion into common life of Sanskrit, or that it was not inspired by and modelled on it? This imitation of Sanskrit perforce carries us, after what has been said above, to at least the second century.
Moreover, we must take care not to minimize too much the importance of this graphic phænomenon. For several centuries, through minor modifications, a certain orthographical system was maintained in the Pråkşit of the monuments, without undergoing any attack, or submitting to any compromise. All at once, we find, one day, this system modified, and modified in & regular, constant manner, in one of its most characteristic traits. The incident, from a grammatical point of view, is not so petty. By its very suddenness, by the strictness with which the new principle is applied, it indicates that a revolution of some magnitude has intervened.
This doubling may pass for a detail, but it is not an isolated one. It forms an integral part of a more general reconstruction. It is one of the most apparent manifestations, but it is far from exhausting them. The fixation of the Prakrits by the learned has also touched other points. There is no appearance or indication of its having been executed in successive stages, and, so to speak, in several acts. It can only be understood & Taicing place at a single blow in the first dialects which were subjected to it. It could subsequently bave extended to the others by & natural process of imitation. If we prove the application of one characteristic feature of the system, we may be assured that that system in its entirety has just, for the first time, been put in practice.
A decisive fact testifies to the importance of this moment in the history of the Prakrits. It is natural that one graphic system shonld disappear from use on the arrival of a system, which was more complete and more consistent to itself. That is what happened to Mixed Sanskrit in the presence of Sanskrit. Now, with the 3rd century, Monumental Priiksit disappears without return. The Pallava inscriptions are in puro Pali, and after that epoch, Sansksit remains, alone amongst the tongues of Aryan stoek, as the language of epigraphy.
The objection, therefore, appears to me to be divested of serious importance. As for the explanation, I can be brief.
Of Prakrit of earlier date than the grammatical reform, we possess no positive documents other than epigraphic evidence. All the literary works are written according to the system established by the grammarians, and they all bear evident traces of the levelling process whicu followed the scholastic reform. I conolude from this that all, from the Sinhalese canon the canon of the Jainas to the verses of Hals and to the dramas, are, in the actual torm
