Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 357

SEPTEMBER, 1931)
HISTORICAL
[$ 67
used for the ordinary spoken Skr. of the time, i.e., for classical, as distinguished from Vedic Sanskrit. Patañjali extends it to include the more or less correct Skr, used in conversation concurrently with the Secondary Prakrits of his day.1 As R. G. Bhandarkar (287) points out, the root from which the word is derived means 'to speak,' and therefore the original meaning of the word as a proper noun was the speech'or the spoken language. We see this meaning of the word in the Srihargacarita of Bāņa (sixth century A.D.), in which, in a list of Bana's companions is mentioned his dear friend Isana, a bhāgā-kavi, or poet in the bhāsā, who is differentiated from Vāyuvikāra, a Prakrit poet. Here evidently bhäşā means the common spoken language of the sixth century, as opposed to the artificial literary Prakrit. In other words, sāna wrote in the local Apabhramsa. In this connexion we may point out that Rājasekhara (tenth century A.D.) mentions (Balabharata, i, 11) four literary languages, Skr., Pr., Ap., and Bhutavacana (i.e., P. Pr.) as used in his time. Still later (twelfth century A.D.) Kalhanas describes Harsadēva of Kasmir (eleventh century) as aśēgadēšabhāṣājña, and as a good poet sarvabhāgāsu. Kalhana's very name is either an Ap. or a Tertiary Pr. form, and here we may safely conclude that by the desabhāsās are meant the local tertiary dialects or languages spoken over northern India, including Kāšmiri iself. In a prosody entitled the Pingalarthapradipa, composed in 1601 A.D., the examples of metre consist of verses selected from various older works, and several of these are in praise of princes who were contemporary with the respective writers. The date of these princes are known, and the verses are in various languages. Bhn, points out that some are in Mahārāştri Prakrit, which was evidently at the time that they were written as classical as Sanskrit itself. Others were written in Apa bhramsa, and one of these was in honour of a prince named Karna of Cēdi, who reigned in the first half of the eleventh century. Finally, others are in Tertiary Prakrit, and are in honour of Hammira, who reigned in the thirteenth century. The poet Cand, who is said to be the author of the Hindi Prithiraj Răsau, died at the end of the twelfth century. From these data we gather that the IAVs., were employed for literary purposes by at least the beginning of the thirteenth century A.D., and that Apa bhramsa was used for similar purposes as late as the eleventh. Allowing the time necessary for any language to gain such favour as to be deemed worthy of being employed for literature, we may safely consider that the TAVs. had developed from the Secondary Prakrits by the year 1000 A.D.,' the year in which Mabmüd of r'a na (Ghazni) made the first of his seventeen invasions of India.
Bhn., 27, 286. Wk., xlii. * Bomb. Ed., p. 47, 11, 6, 7. 3 Rajatarangint, vii, 610. 4 Stein, Tr. Rajatarangiai, I, 13, and footnotae.
6 Kašmirl was certainly in existence in Kalhapa's time, and pomuibly so far back as the tenth century. See Stein, Tr. RT., V, 397-8 * (I, p. 228).
Described by R.G. Bhandarkar in Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS. in the Bombay Presidency for 1887-91 (Bombay, 1897).
1 On this point, cf. Bhn., 302. Bhn. pute the commencement of Ap. at the sixth or soventh century A.D.
67. Concurrent with this long development of the Tertiary Prakrits, and down to the present time, there has existed classical Sanskrit, with all the prestige that religion and learning oould give it. It too, underwent changes in the course of time, but on the whole has remained faithful to the rules laid down by Panini and his successors. It gradually changed from being a polite language to becoming a school language, occupying much the same position as that taken by Latin in the Middle Ages or by Hebrew amongst the Jews. Even in Vedio Skr. we find examples of words borrowed from the spoken Primary Prakrit, and so, in later