________________
APRIL 1903.)
MAHARASHTRI AND MARATHI.
181
It will, therefore, be necessary to deal with the matter from a philological point of view. In the first place we shall have to state the mutual relationship between the various Prakrit dialects. It will then be necessary to define the position of Marath among the modern vernacalars of India, and only then we shall be prepared to decide whether Maharashtri and modern Marathi are related in such a way as the names of the two dialects and Indian tradition would naturally lead us to believe. Before doing so it will, however, be of use to state what the meaning is of the word Prakrit.
The so-called Prakrits are literary languages based on the vernaculars of various parts of ancient India. They were at an early date described by the grammarians whose works became the sources from which later anthors learned Prakrit. In this way those dialects gradually ceased to be real vernaculars. Several rules laid down by the grammarians were probably only generalisations of tendencies in the spoken language so as to make them the common rule. On the other hand, one and the same Prakrit may be influenced by more than one spoken dialect. This was due to the fact that the Prakrits very early lost their character of local forms of speech and became the universal languages of varions kinds of literature. Maharashtri almost monopolised the lyrics and the Kavya so far as this latter kind of literature was written in Prakrit; Saurasent and Magadh bocame the dialects used by various characters in the dramatic literature. It is clear that a language such as Maharashtrt, which was used by lyrical poets from all parts of India, would in course of time adopt words and perhaps also inflexional forms from other vernaculars than that which was its original base. On the other hand, it would naturally influence the spoken vernaculars. The language of lyrical poetry is, of course, more apt to exercise such an influence than that of any other branch of literature. Every Prakrit, and especially Mâhârâshtri, should therefore be expected to be of a more or less mixed character. And this is also undeniably the case.
On the other hand, the Prakrits were no mere grammatical fictions, and the more we learn about the linguistic conditions of old India, the more we see that the differences between the various Prakrit dialects correspond to actual differences in the spoken vernaculars.
The principal Prakrit dialects described by the old grammarians are as follows:
1. Mihirashtri, according to tradition based on the vernacular of the Maratha country. It is tbe language of lyrics and the Kavya, and, in the dramatical literature, it is used in songs by those persons who are represented to speak Saurasêni in the prone passages.
2. Saurasênt, based on the dialect of Saarasêna, the country about Mathura. It is used as the prose dialect of certain categories of people in the plays.
3. Magadht, based on the dialect of the Magadha country, and used in the plays as the dialect of certain lower classes, both in the prose passages and in the songs.
4. Ardhamagadht, the dialect in which the sacred books of the Jains are written, probably based on the old vernacular spoken about and to the east of the modern Allahabad.
of these dialects, Mâhârâshtrt and Ardhamågadh are best known, less Saurasêni, and Mågadhi only very unsatisfactorily.
Saurasêni is more closely related to classical Sanskrit than the other Prakrit dialects. The vocabulary is essentially the same and free from the many provincial words which often makes the understanding of other Prakrit dialects so difficult. The inflexional system also agrees with Sanskrit in its simplicity, while other dialects show the rich variety of various forms an the old Vedic dialects. The oldest Prakrit grammarian, Vararuchi, was already aware of this olose relation between Sanskrit and Saurasêni, and he expressly states that the latter is based on the former.
