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Introduction
119
Prakrit, because they constantly studied their canonical works and post-canonical ones like Nijjuttis and Cūrņīs, all in Prakrit, which were sufficiently large in bulk; and moreover they took up Sk. rather late. Just as the Jaina Sauraseni is influenced by Sk., so the Sanskrit used by Svetāmbara writers, because of their partiality towards and constant study of their texts in Prakrits, is greatly influenced by Pk. idiom; and that is why we find non-Sanskritic elements in many of the Svetāmbara Sk. works. The conspicuous absence of Desi words in Pravacanasára, possibly indicates that the Jaina Sauraseni was nourished, or rather preserved, in the extreme South, isolated from the growing varnaculars of the Aryan tongue in the North; and further, the South Indian vernaculars like Tamila, Kannada etc., perhaps phonetically, or due to small stock of vocabulary in early days, were inadequate to give loan words etc.; while the AMg. canon in the North was being nourished on parallel lines with the growing vernaculars and hence the possibility of more Debi words etc. therein. I would call these early Jaina Sauraseni works as the Pro-canonical texts of the Jainas.
JAINA SAURASENT AND JACOBI'S PRE-CLASSICAL PRAKRIT.--Now remains one point as to the relation of Jaina Sauraseni with the pre-classical Prakrit postulated by Dr. Jacobi.1 Māhārāstri, as its name possibly indicates, had its cradle in Mahārāstra, though it is difficult to define its boundaries at the beginning of the Christian era. It was from the region of its birth that it must have spread into Northern India. It does not appear in the dramas of Bhāsa, but, by the time of Sūdraka and Kālidāsa, its place appears to be recognised for verses. This comparatively late appearance of Māhārāstri in literature does give rise to a question as to what possibly might have occupied (p. 125:] the place of this dialect in early days. Dr. Jacobi postulates that there must have been some Prakrit, which he calls pre-classical Prakrit; and further he shows that he finds the traces of this Prakrit dialect in the Natyaśāstra of Bharata. This pre-classical Prakrit was marked by the optional retention, change or loss of intervocalic consonants; by the softening of t to d and the gerund in iya; and by some kinship with the dramatic Sauraseni: and also, according to Dr. Jacobi, it shows some traces of Māhārāştri in the Loc. sg. in -ammi and gerund in ūna. But, in view of the fact that the Sauraseni of the fragments of Buddhistic dramas does not yet show the softening of t to d, Dr. Jacobi suspects that originally it must have been foreign to dramatic Sauraseni, but later on adopted therein from the pre-classical Prakrit, partial glimpses of which are traceable in Nātyaśāstra. This postulation of pre-classical Prakrit is really ingenious and explains many otherwise conflicting facts; but the question remains whether Dr. Jacobi would have come to these very conclusions, if he had compared the so-called Pali phonology with his postulated preclassical Prakrit. This he has not done. The so-called old Sauraseni elements in the fragments of Buddhistic dramas can well be possible in Pali, such as the retention of intervocalic consonants, the change of ny to ññ and so forth; in almost all the three dialects called Old AMg., Old Sauraseni and Old Māgadhi by Dr. Lüders, 2 we find that there is no tendency towards cerebralisation of n; and this might be a Pali influence on the various dialects, as a whole, as handled by Asvaghosa. What then is
1 Dr. Jacobi: Bhavisatta Kahā von Dhanapāla pp. 81*-89*. 2 Dr. Lüders: Brüchstücke Buddhistischer Dramen pp. 33-34.
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