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Prakrits', is mainly based on the works of Prakrit grammarians and the dramatic and rhetorical works of Sanskrit writers. The Sanskrit dramaturgists, such as, Bharata, Dhananjaya, Viśvanatha, Singhabhupala, Sagaranandi and others, have given in their respective treatises only the names of Prakrit dialects which should be or is to be spoken by persons belonging to different strata of the society. The distribution of Prakrit dialects in Sanskrit dramas is therefore, based on a sort of socio-linguistic pattern, no matter whether the author of a particular drama belongs to any particular region of India and speaking a particular dialect of Prakrit. While distributing the Prakrit dialects in a Sanskrit drama, not a single author has shown any lack of knowledge by which the prescriptions of the dramaturgists are generally violated. But at the same time, it should be borne in mind that not a single dramaturgist has ever given any characteristic features of the dialect that they are prescribing for the dramatists. Bharata, of course, has given some general features of Prakrit, but nothing about dialects. So where do the Sanskrit authors get the characteristics from? Did the dramatists know the characteristic features of Prakrit dialects from their own personal experience, or from books current at their times?
Our knowledge about Prakrit and its dialects is mainly based on the grammarians beginning from Vararuci (4th or 5th Cent. A. D.) down to Markaṇḍeya (16th or 17th Cent. A. D.)-Vararuci and Hemacandra being the oldest and the best representatives of Prakrit grammarians. Although most of the Prakrit grammarians are later than the Prakrit literature, the features of Prakrit including dialects as prescribed by the grammarians are in major, if not in all cases, preserved in the works of the Prakrit writers and Sanskrit dramatists as them printed to-day.
we find
But to a scholar, it seems, there are works where features of dialects as described by the grammarians are not fully preserved, not even in essential forms. Herein lies the main difficulty in handling a Prakrit passage in a text. When a scholar opens up a Prakrit book and peruses a few passages, he can easily detect that such book is written mainly in X dialect, but it is also interspersed with other Y and Z forms. As a result what happens is this that we assume a different dialect for the justification of variety of forms. This assumption may be partly true at times, but sometimes it seems too much adherence to the manuscripts forgetting that some forms might be scribal errors or wrong representation of spelling, unless they can be justified historically. Therefore, in editing a Prakrit text, the problems which a linguist faces are mainly
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