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Vol. XV, No. 4
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This survey will give us some ideas about the antiquity of the language. From the 4th/3rd century B.C. till the 10th century A.D., there was a flow of the use of language among the speakers of the then India. They can be grouped in three ways. In the first stage, the earliest specimens are represented by Aśokan Inscriptions in Dhauli and Jaugada edicts. In this stage all the features of Mg. as given by the later prakrit grammarians are not fully developed. In the second stage, still archaic, the Mg. prakrit as represented by Ašvaghoşa and Bhāsa are notfully developed, but there are some more Mg. features in them than Aśokan Inscriptions in the third stage, beginning from Sūdraka down to Bhațța Nārāyaṇa the Mg. passages are more or less of the same type as described by the grammarians. Though the variety of Mg, prakrit as found in the Macchakafik are not available anywhere else in the Sanskrit dramas, the question of their antiquity can not be ascertained owing to any definite proof. It is a fact worth noting here that the features of Mg. as given by all the prakrit grammarians, both eastern and western, are not fully available in the existing Sanskrit dramas even though the grammarians have described the features sometimes at a great length. However, for the present purpose, I have considered these literatures as are available in Sanskrit dramas.
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References :
1. bhūta-bhāṣāmayim prähur adbhutārthām b$hatkathām-Kävyādarśa 1. 2. Ananta Prasad Banerjee Shastri, Evolution of Magadhi, Oxford, 1922. 3. As edited by Hultzsch in his Inscription of Asoka, Vol. I, Oxford, 1922. I also
have given here the notes inserted by Hultzsch in the footnotes of his edition. 4. nat (i) Bübler.
5. apalamta Bühler. 6. Here, and at the end of section L, Franke (VOJ, 9.349 f.) joins viyāpatāse into
one word, and takes it as an equivalent of the Vedic nominative plural in asaḥ. In the pillar edict VII, Y (twice) and CC, viyāpatase actually occurs. But as pointed out by Michelson (AJP, 32.442 f ), the casc may after all be differenta Dhauli, because the other versions have te in the place of se. 7. pa (ja) Bühler.
8. bhātinam Bühler. 9. R.G. Basak, Asokan Inscriptions, p. 27. 10. Can this name be due to a misreading of the word of gajetame, which is engraved
below the figure of an elephant on the north face of the Kalsi rock, and which
might have been originally engraved on the Dhauli rock too ? 11. JASB, 7 (1838), 435-7. For a sketch of the elephant see id., plate 25, and for a
photogradh of it, the frontispiece of V.A. Smithe's Early History of India. 12. The commence-ment of each fresh edict is marked by a short horizontal dash, 13. Inscriptions of Asoka, pp. 16,20. 14 Hultzsch, Inscription of Asoka, Introduction, 15. W.F, Grahame in IA, I (1872), 219.
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