Notes on Some Prakrit Words

Author(s): H C Bhayani
Publisher: Z_Nirgrantha_1_022701.pdf and Nirgrantha_2_022702.pdf and Nirgrantha_3_022703.pdf

Page 10

H. C. Bhayani
Nirgrantha
and Dandin, another literary theorist who followed the former after a century or less, we gather that the Apabhramśa was one of the four languages of literature, another three being Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Paiśācī. There are indications that the Apabhramśa literature began to be produced from about the sixth century when there already were three other literary languages and literatures with a history extending over several centuries and with a large number of works in several literary genres which can be subsumed under the general types of poetry, fiction, and drama.
We know that, by the sixth century before Christ, the Early Indo-Aryan or 'pre-Sanskrit' as used by the common people in the region of Magadha in East India had so much changed that Vardhamana Mahāvīra and Gautama Buddha, who were among the most prominent religious teachers of that period, had preached their message in the colloquial "Māgadhi' and not in the language current in the prestigious Vedic-Bralımanic circles. The dialect situation of a few centuries thereafter is reflected broadly in the inscriptions of emperor Asoka (3rd century B. C.) which show the distinctive features for the dialects of the eastern, western, and northern regions.
But what is noteworthy about this literary situation is the important fact that, of the then current three languages of literature, Sanskrit had been confined since over a thousand years to a limited class of élites, who employed it for learned discourse and for composing high literature. There existed a large volume of texts in Sanskrit - Śāstras (religio-philosophical and scientific treatises) and Kavyas (creative writings) also in the several literary genres: Mahākāvya (the ornate epic), Kathä (the fiction), Natya * (the drama), etc.
Sanskrit drama used a mixture of prose and verse and its performance was an organic structure of verbal text, dance and music combined. Over and above the Sanskrit language, it used for the speech of 'inferior' characters several regional colloquial dialects (Sauraseni, Mahārāstri, Māgadhi, etc.) in a highly stylized form so as to represent the sex and class differentiation of the language used in the society of those times. The preserved fragments of Aśvaghosa's dramas (second century after Christ) and Bharata's encyclopaedia of dramaturgy and dramatic performance (original portions datable to c. the third century of Christ) give us a picture of the situation.
Before the beginning of the Christian era, Gahā, Dhavala (short lyrics), etc., and Kahā (romantic fiction) began to develop as consciously composed literary genres in the language of the Mahārāstra region in the West (i.e. Mahārāstrī Prakrit), and by the fourth century, an ornare Mahākāvya (the