Kansvaho

Author(s): Rama Paniwada, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 41

KAMSAVAHO
and Päli, the canonical languages of the Jainas and Buddhists, can also be grouped under Prākrit. According to Dandin the pre-eminent Prākrit is Māhārāştri (mahārāştrāśayā bhāşā) and in Mịcchakațikam the Sūtradhāra, remarking that he would then speak in Prakrit begins to speak in Sauraseni. Mähärāştri and Sauraseni being the popular dialects of the dramatic group of Prakrits, the term Prakrit often stood for them. Further, as PISCHEL37 has remarked, the Māhāräştri is the language meant when one speaks of Prākrit in general ; and it is also considered to be the best Prākrit in which we have classical poems like Ravanavaho, Gaüdavaho etc. and compilations of lyrical songs like Gathāsaptaśati which has become a veritable treasure of quotations drawn by later rhetoricians. Now and then the term Prākrit is used even to indicate some of the Modern Indian languages like Marāthi and Kannada38 thereby distinguishing them from Sanskrit.
As we can imagine the territorial divisions and social groups in India in early days and as indicated by dialectai names like Magadhi, Sauraseni and Māhārāşțrī, it is clear that some of these dialects derived their names from territorial units. It appears that even by the time of Vararuci, if not earlier, they had become stereotyped literary languages in the sense that the writers of these dialects did not write so much from their personal touch with the spoken dialects as from the grammars and the works they studied. Such a procedure has its advantages as well as disadvantages : on the one hand the dia. lects gradually assume a standardised form and dignity and on the other they get isolated from the currents of spoken languages which evolve or degenerate in the popular mouths in their own way. Time, place and usage have created such barriers now and the evidence to the point is so meagre that to-day it
37 38
Grammatik etc. § 12. S. B. JOSHI : Kannadada Nele (Dharwar 1939) p. 28.