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INTRODUCTION
to guard oneself against dogmatic assertions and see the precise scope or vyāpti of these terms in the context in which they are used.
A large number of inscriptions beginning with those of Asoka in the middle of the 3rd century B. C. and almost upto the close of the 4th century A.D. has come to light.1 They are scattered practically all over India, and they show broad deviations according to regions: thus they do exhibit certain regional-dialectal distinctions. Though we have called their language by the name Präkrit, we have no information by what name or names the language or its dialects were known when they were written. The corresponding literary speech-forms are found in the Buddhist and Jaina canons, and we call them by the names Pali and Ardha-magadhi. The later, stereotyped literary forms of the Inscriptional Prakrits appear in religious texts, plays, lyrical songs and poems. The Prakrit grammarians and theorists on dramaturgy and poetics have not only taken a cursory cognizance of their broad outlines (only some of the latter) but also tried to give names for most of them. So far as the early grammarians are concerned, their treatment is not exhaustive and thorough, and they do not clearly disclose what works they had analysed: at the most they are writing manuals for practical purposes, and their performance can hardly satisfy a linguist. Among the treatises on dramatic and poetic theory, the Natyaśästra of Bharata describes the main traits of Prakrit; but it does not give any details about the bhāṣās and vibhāṣās, though seven of the former and six of the latter are named. The later theorists give names of different dialects and of characters who should speak them in the plays, but they give us hardly any aid to determine the linguistic nature of these dialects.
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The attitude of looking at Prakrit as a constantly evolving speech in different places and at different times is not in any way incompatible with our attempt to view it as some dialect or the other of a specific name
1
D. C. Sircar: A Grammar of the Prakrit Language, Calcutta 1943, especially the Introductory Note and the Notes on Epigraphic Prakrit ; M. A. Mehendale : Historical Grammar of Inscriptional Prakrits, Poona 1948, and also a summary of it in the Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute,
VI. 1-2.
Jain Education International
2 Natyasastra (Kavyamala 42, Bombay 1894), XVII. 48-9:
सूरसेन्यर्धमागधी । बाह्लीका दाक्षिणात्या च सप्त भाषाः प्रकीर्तिताः ॥ शवराभीर चण्डालसचरद्रविडोद्राजाः । हीने वनेचराणां च विभाषा नाटके स्मृताः ॥ See in this connection M. Ghosh Prakṛta Verses in the Bharata Natyasastra, Indian H. Q., VIII, 1932; also his essay on The Date of the Bharata Natyasastra, Journal of the Department of Letters, Calcutta 1934, pp. 16-29.
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