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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1892.
Its use, born spontaneously with the first attempts at writing, continually developed, fom the edicts of Kapur di Giri to the epigraphs of Mathura. Used specially by the Buddhiste, it stimulated the Brahmans to the codification and diffusion of a more consequent, more refined language, profane Sanskrit. The coming into use of Literary Sanskrit marks its disappearance. It had, in the meantime, owing to its diffusion in the reign of Kanishka, assured its own survival, as a semi-literary dialect, in certain Buddhistio schools.
4. There remain the Prakpits. Popular in their origin, they have, in the form in which they have been employed, and which has come down to us, undergone a process of fixation, and of orthographical and grammatical reform. It is Sanskrit, and the exactly analogous process of learned labour to which Sanskrit owes its own existence, that inspired and guided this process. It cannot have taken place before the end of the 2nd century, and towards the end of the 4th we may suppose it & completed operation. None of the grammars which teach the literary Prakrits, and none of the books couched in one or other of these dialects, can, under its existing form, be of earlier date than this period. At the same time, it must be clearly understood that, far from excluding the existence of literary attempts and of a more ancient tradition, this theory supposes them as an indispensable preparation. It only excludes the idea of works having received a definitive form, of a canonically arrested tradition, the existence of which would have rendered all grammatical reform both superfluous and impossible.
It is needless to say that the correctness of the dates which I have just now mentioned depends, to a very high degree, on the correctness of the dates which wo attributed to the inscriptions. The chronological series of the monuments appears to me to be well established, and if we suppose that some corrections in it are necessary, I do not imagine that they can be found to be of sufficient extent to modify the main lines which I have sketched out.
Everything, in this system, depends on, and follows, one natural and well-connected movement. The same tendencies, which we see at work in the earliest times, continue their action to the end. Throughout evolutions, each of which pre-supposes and engenders the next, the main motors remain identical. The continuation of the linguistic history during the period which we have surveyed, is the logical development of the tendencies which are revealed by the most ancient monuments. In this sense, this last chapter is closely connected with the direct object of our studies, the Inscriptions of Piyadasi.
FINIS.
THE DATES OF THE VAGHELA KINGS OF GUJARAT.
BY G. BÜHLER, PH.D., LL.D., C.L.E. In my review of Dr. Bhânțarkar's most valuable Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS., 1883-84, (ante, Vol. XVIII, p. 184ff.), I expressed strong doubts as to the correctness of the Vaghela dates, given in his new historical Fragment, p. 12, and by the Dharmasagara in his Pravachanapariksh, op. cit. p. 150. But I was unable to furnish strict historical proof that Dr. Bhandarkar's two authorities post-date the accession of Vi saladeva and of two of his Baccessor's by two years. Lately Râo Saheb D. P. Khakar, who has already furnished numerous valuable contributions to the history and archæology of Kachh, has kindly sent me an eye-copy of a mutilated inscription, which settles the question. It is incised on & Palia at Khokhra in Kachh, of which Râo Saheb Khakar gives the following account:
"The Palia has a figure of a cow, feeding probably on Indian corn (maize) and suckling her calf. This Pâliâ is stated to have been in the Fort of Bhadrëshwar. But a Thadéjà daughter of the village of Khokhrá, near Angår, having married in Bhadresh war, she thought that the cow might be worshipped in the Mahadeva temple in her father's village, and so she sent it there, where the inscription was all buried, and the cow was worshipped. When I learnt of it in Sam. 1939, I got with great difficulty the buried portion of the Pâliâ excavated,
