Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 353

SEPTEMBER, 1931)
HISTORICAL
[ $$ 60-81
2 Pr. Gr., $12.
3 C4. Pr. Gr., & 364. Regarding the changes which Pr. has undergone in becoming literary, see Pr. Gr., § 9, at end.
For the last, compare the change of pronunciation of Mg. Pr. 6 to 8 in Bihari, although é is invariably written.
60. Before dismissing this part of the subject, it is necessary to warn the reader that he must not expect to find the Secondary Prakrits or the IAVs. to be each shut up in a watertight compartment. There has always been much reciprocal borrowing among them, so that in one Prakrit or IAV. we often find words belonging to another. This was mainly due to the fact that there appears always to have been in India soine particular dialect which was used as a Kotví, at one period of history one, at another another. This depended largely on political and literary factors. In early times Sanskrit, so far as any Aryan language was spoken, was the universal language of polite society all over Northern India, and thus brought the influence of the West Midland to bear on the most distant vernaculars. In Açõka's time, the Kotrh was the eastern language of Magadha, as we know from numerous examples of Māgadhi in the most distant inscriptions. On the other hand, in the last centuries the Kotry has been Hindöstäni, essentially a Midland language, and even in tongues so different from it as Bengali many Hindöstāni words have been incorporated and admitted to full citizenship in more or less distorted forms. Similarly, Bihāri, which has always been historically connected with Awadh, the home of Eastern Hindi, has abandoned the Māgadhi Prakrit pronunciation of 8 as 8, although it always preserves the ó in writing. Again, the literary Prakrits, as time went on, lost their characters as local forms of speech, and each became the universal language of a special kind of literature, Mahārāstri Prakrit monopolized the Prakrit lyrics and kävya, and Saurasēni Prakrit and Magadhi Prakrit became the dialects used, not by natives of any country, but by partioular classes of characters in the drama. It is clear that a language such as Māhārāştri Prakrit, which was largely 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 influence than that of any other branch of literature. Every Prakrit, and especially Māhārāstri Prakrit, should therefore be expected to be more or less of a mixed character, and this is undeniably the case.'
1 Soe, for instance, Micholson, AJP., XXX, 285. ? Konow, IA., xxxii, 181.
61. Owing to their deformation at the hands of grammarians and their followers, & veil, which it is not always easy to lift, is drawn between the literary Secondary Prakrits in their Prakrit' stage, and the true vernaculars of their time. We are able, however, to distinguish, as in the Asoka inscriptions, an eastern and a western Prakrit, each possessing distinctly marked characteristics.1 The principal form of the western was Saurasēni, the language of the Midland, and of the eastern, Māgadhi, the language of Magadha, the present south Bihär. Between these two there was a kind of neutral ground, the language of which was Ardha-Māgadhi, or half-Māgadhi, partaking of the nature of both languages. Closely connected with the last-named, but leaning rather to the Eastern than to the Western, was Māhārāstri or the language of the present Varhāda (Berar) and the country adjoining. More. over, in the extreme North-West there was an unnamed speech, which was a development from the particular Primary Prakrit spoken on the banks of the Indus, and whose existence is vouched for by the reference to it in the next phase of the Secondary Prakrits to be immediately described.
For this division of the Prakrite, see Konow, Māhārāsnt and Marathi, IA., xxxi (1903), 181 f., with which I am in entire accord,
35