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A NOTE ON PRAKRITS, APABHRAMŠA AND GUJARATI
The Indo-Aryan languages can be conveniently classified into three categories, namely, ancient, medieval and modeın. The language that was spoken during the old Indo-Aryan period is represented by the languages of the Rgveda and also of the later Vedic literature. The language of the Epics, the language of Pāņini and Patanjali as also the languages used by Kalidasa and the writers who followed him took their shape after the various vernaculars spoken in this period.
Middle Indo-Aryan period is represented by Pali and Prākrit which appeared on the stage from the time marked by phonetic and grammatical changes which, occuring as usual with the passage of time, produced a language which was not essentially different from the language of the aforesaid old Indo-Aryan period. These pali and Prākrits sustained its continuance upto about 1100 A.D. When, due to the natural phenomenon of phonetic and grammatical transformations, this time almost complete, a new type of language was born. It was just similar to the language of the modern vernaculars. For our knowledge of these Prāktit of the Middle Indo-Aryan periods we are, more or less, dependent on the records, in the form of the Inscriptions and literary works, preserved at different times and places and chiefly consisting of Asokan Edicts, Pāli canon of the Hinayāna Buddhists, Prākrit canon of the Jains, Prakrita of the plays, and the Prākrita grammers.
It is difficult to trace the beginning of the third or modern period. However it can be assumed with some reason that it lay roughly somewhere between the latest form of Prākrita, named Apabbramğa by Hemcandra (twelfth century A.D.), and the earliest poetry of the Old Verpaculars.
The middle Indo-Aryan period consists of three stages : (1) Old Prāksta; (2) Middle Prāksta; (3) Late Prakrta or Apabhramsa. The Inscriptions from the 3rd century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D., Pāli of the Hinayana cannon, the Jatakas, the canon of the Jainas and the Prākrita of the early plays of Asvaghosa, form the planks of the Old Prākrta stage, with the dialects varying only in form in accordance with time and place. We know of the Middle Prākrta stage as consisting of Mahārāştri, the language of the lyrics of the Deccan, the Dramatic Prakṣits, namely, Sauraseni, Māgadhi etc. found in the plays of Kālidāsa and his successors as also in the Prākşta Granimars, the dialect of the post-canonical Jaina works and of Paišācı employed in the Byhatkathā of Guņāļhya, and lastly of the Apabhramsas standing for the old colloquial speech that supplanted the Prākrta type of speech used in the plays as it had become already archaic.
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