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Sanskrit and Prakrit Poetry') on Prakrit published in the Asiatic Researches in 1801 and 1808 respectively. In these articles he has practically given some information about Prakrit language and a survey of its literature, where books like Gatha Saptasati, Setubandha, Gauḍavaha and similar other Prakrit texts are mentioned. However, these two articles have a great impact on the scholars, in subsequent times, Colebrooke's later article 'Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus' (1832) also contains information about Prakrit and Jaina sects. In 1827 Horace Hayaman Wilson's (1784-1860) 'Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus' was published. There he puts the question whether the Prakrit "represents a language that was even spoken or is an artificial modification of the Sanskrit language, derived to adopt the latter to peculiar branches of literature" (p. Lxv). And he answered hesitatingly that "the latter seems to be the most likely".
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However, after this, there appeared a sensational work in 1837. It was the work of Christianus Lassen whose book, Institutiones Linguae Pracriticae (Bonnae ad Rhenum) had given for the first time the characteristic features of Prakrit in a modern linguistic method. He also had given some chapters of Vararuci's, Prākṛta-Prakāśa and some portions of Kramadisvara's Prakrit Grammar. It is a voluminous work containing 581 (=488+93) pages. Because it was written in Latin, very few people could consult it in a proper way. This book has a supplementary by Nicolaus Delius whose Radices Pracriticae (1839) gives the Prakrit roots where he has consulted mainly the roots of Vararuci's Prakrta-Prakasa and Kramadisvara's Prakrit Grammar. These two works are such that they are regarded as compliment and supplement to each other.
Then followed the edition of Prakrit prepared by different scholars. Though there was no systematic plan as to which of the texts or which klnd of the texts is to be edited first, simultaneous effort was going on to publish several Prakrit texts as they came in the hand of scholars. J. Stevenson's translation of Kalpasūtra along with a short exposition of the Nine Principles of Jainism (=Navatattva) in appendix appeared in 1847. Though he has translated the book from a manuscript, the reading of the text does not really differ very much from the text of the present day. The most monumental work done for the first time is Albert Weber's edition of Bhagavati-sütra (1866-67). This edition has shown the beacon light for the next generation and tells us how to edit a Prakrit text from a collation of several manuscripts. Then followed several other editions, of which Weber's Saptasati (1870), H. Jacobi's original work of the Kalpasūtra (1879) and Acarängasūtra (1889), Siegfried Goldschmidt's Setubandha (1846), Bühler's Paialacchināmamālā (1879), R. Pischel's
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