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LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
IS3
their form, though that forın never gives us the real vernacular, is an invaluable assistance in establishing the linguistic history of India. To treat that question at all fully, even in an elementary manner, would demand at least a volume. But the main features may be summarised as follows. We have, in the following order (as to time):
1. The dialects spoken by the Aryan invaders of India, and by the Dravidian and Kolarian inhabitants they found there.
2. Ancient High Indian, the Vedic.
3. The dialects spoken by the Aryans, now often united by marriage and by political union with the Dravidians, in their settlements either along the spurs of the Himālaya range from Kashmir to Nepal, or down the Indus Valley and then across to Avanti, or along the valleys of the Jumna and the Ganges.
4. Second High Indian, Brahinanic, the literary language of the Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads.
5. The vernaculars from Gandhāra to Magadha at the time of the rise of Buddhism, not so divergent probably as not to be more or less mutually intelligible.
6. A conversational dialect, based probably on the local dialect of Sāvatthi, the capital of Kosala, and in general use among Kosala officials, among merchants, and among the more cultured classes, not only throughout the Kosala dominions, but east and west from Delhi to Patna, and north and south from Sāvatthi to Avanti.
7. Middle High Indian, Pāli, the literary language
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
