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प्राकृतसर्वस्वम् ।
used only in stage plays, and is there allotted to special characters whatever locality they may belong to.
It will be seen that Pu regards Vibhāṣā as subdialect or as deviations of certain standard dialect.86 Except in the case of Sākārī he does not inform us as to which Vibhāṣā should be spoken by whom in stage pluys. This is significant in as much as it indicates that Vibhāṣās were not merely confined to particular characters in a play, but they were once in vogue as regional dialects. In fact as the names indicate and as we have seen in case of Śākāri, Śābari, Cāņdāli, Ābhiri and Tākkī, they refer to dialects of particular groups of people in particular areas. So is the case of bhāşū such as M, S, Prācyā, Avanti and Mg.87 As we have seen under this latter group the bhāṣās except M ( which is specified for lyrical poems as well as for songs in a play ) have been treated by Mk as being assigned to particular characters in stage play. From this we can safely conclude that not only Vibhāṣās but also Bhāṣās are to be taken as charcter dialects. But for that their currency in the society at a particular stage should not be lost sight of. The dialects of bhāṣā group once spoken were stereotyped by Pkt grammarians with the result that what we understand by M, S, Mg etc. is no more than those represented in Pkt literature and in the Pkt portion of the Skt dramas. Similar was the fact of the dialects coining under the Vibhāşā group. That originally they represented regional dialects is borne
86. Observe the following Sūs, of Pa regarding the so-called Vibhāṣās XIII 1, XV 1, XVI. I. and XX. 1.
87. The portion nāfake smrtā or nāțakāśrayā should be taken collectively to apply to both bhāşã and vibhāṣā as enumerted by Bh, to be used in a stage play.
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