Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 351

SEPTEMBER, 1931 ]
HISTORICAL
[$56-57
56. It stands to reason that no distinct border line can be drawn between the Primary Prakrit, or Prakrits, and the Secondary Prakrits,' or between the Secondary Prakrits and the Tertiary. If we exclude sporadic traces in the Vēda, the Secondary Prakrits first appear to us in literature in the inscriptions of Asoka (third century B.c.), and here we find them in their first phase, but in a state of full development. We know, on the other hand, that the transition from the Secondary to the Tertiary Prakrits was so gradual that, at or about the approximate border line, it is impossible to state to which stage the language belongs. At the same time there is no difficulty in recognizing the main characteristics of each stage. In the primary stage the language is synthetic and has no objection to harsh combinations of consonants. In the secondary stage, the language is still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations of consonants are eschewed, --so much so that, in the latest artificial literary phase,—the literary Māhārāstri Prakrit,-it arrives at a condition of almost absolute fluidity, becoming a mere emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on to an occasional consonant more lucky or more hardy than its brethren. This weakness brought its own Nemesis, and in the tertiary stage we find the hiatus between contiguous vowels abolish. ed by the creation of new diphthongs, declensional and conjugational terminations, consist. ing merely of vowels, worn away, and a new kind of language taking shape, no longer synthe. tic, but analytio, and again reverting to combinations of consonants under new forms, which had existed three thousand years before, but which two thousand years of attrition had worn away. Nay more, in the OuIAVs. we see the analytic form of language disappearing, and in the process of being replaced by a new synthetic form comparable, in its principles, with that of Primary Prakrit.
1 It is quito certain that oven in the Vedic period the popular speech of at least some classes of the people already contained many words in the same stage of development as Pali, 1.6., 88 the earliest phase of Secondary Prakrit. Cf. Wk. xviii, xxv.
It is always the Midland which has been behindhand in the race of development. Saurasēni Pr. is less developed than Mahārāetri Pr., just as the modern IAV. of the Midland is less developed than any of the Outer languages, including Marathi. Is this because the inhabitants of the Midland represent the latest Aryan immigrants (600 above), or is it due to the influence of literary Sanskrit,-itself a Midland language? Opportunity may here be taken to warn against one common error. It has often been stated that, because (e.g.) Sauraseni Prakrit is less developed than Maharastri, it is therefore earlier in point of date. Such an argument is fallacious. It is & well known fact that different languages of a common origin do not all develop at the same rate of progress. To take an example from the Romance languages,-- Italian is much less developed than French. To use Indian terms, we might almost say that Italian is in the Pāli stage, while French is in the Prakrit stage. Nevertheless they are contemporary.
57. We know that the Primary Prakrit had dialects, and it therefore follows that there must also have been dialects of the Secondary Prakrits even in their earlier phase, but we do not obtain any certain information on the point till we come to the Asöka inscriptions already mentioned. In them we find that the then existing Aryan vernaculars did include at least three main dialects, an Eastern, & Western, and a North-Western.1 As to whether there was at that time a Southern dialect we do not know.
I Cf., as the latost authority, Michelson, AJP., Xxx (1909), 284, 416, xxxi (1910), 55 ; JAOS, XXX (1909), 77, xxxi (1911), 223. Also Grierson, JRAS, 1904, 725. The Eastern dialect in the days of Asoka was the official imperial language, and was understood even where it was not spoken as a vernacular (JAOS. xxx, 77).
The Brahmagiri (Siddapura) Edict of the South is written in a mixture of Eastern and Western forms (Bühler, EI, iii, 135). But this, being in a Dravidian country, is not decisive. Cf., however, the close connexion between Marathi and Ardhamāgadhi Prakrit. Wk. (xxi) considers that there were probably in Vedic times an Eastern and a Western dialect. The Eastern, which was the language of the earlier Aryan immigranta, was then spoken on the banks of the Ganges. The literary language of the Vēda would in the main correspond to the Western dialect. We cannot trace in the Voda any marks of a dialect of the extreme North-West, but we can deduce nothing from their absence.
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