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PREFACE.
It is now more than 25 years since the Prakrita Subhasitas first attracted my notice and I began collecting them more for the sake of pleasure they gave me than with any idea of publication which occurred as an after-thought.
I do not iutend' to enter into a lengthy discussion of the history and development of Prakrit language. Bat this can be said with a strong degree of probability, that the language existed side by side with Sanskrit, if not earlier to it. That Prakrit was the medium of every-day life and conversation is vouchsafed by the fact that the whole of the earlier texts of the Jain Shastras were written and their religious preachings carried on in this language for the better understanding of the mass. As time went on, however, Sanskrit was generally adopted by the medieval Jain writers, in annotations and commentaries on Jain Sutras, biographies of Tirthankars and Saints and other works on philosophy and religion.
Sanskrit and Prakrit seem to have reached the last stage of development on the eve of the Mabomedan invasion and the commencement of their decay synchrodises with the advent of the foreign hordes in India which gave & violent shock to the existing order of society. Language, along with other things, suffered
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