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that respect they are exactly like classical sanskrit but certainly inferior to the language of the Brāhmanas. A prakrit has no other existence but by the will of the writer who uses it is born the day when it pleases those who invent it to create it for literary life. This is the reason why the number of prakrits has a prior no limit and has never ceased to increase. The Prākrtaprakāśa knows only four of them but, the more we go on in literary history, the more of them we meet in wonderful steadiness. It is generally admitted to day that the variety of prakrits used in a dramatic works is not a sign of antiquity. This very fact, which was formally brought out in favour of the antiquity of the Mrcchakatika, for instance, now serves as an argument against it. If we had all the texts and if we were able to restore the complete history of prakrits we would be able to assign to each, at least as far as it is a literary language with fixed grammatical rules, so to say, and a date of birth.
It is impossible to arrive at such precision. We shall content ourselves to define a prakrit with the help of three data the name which indicates the local dialects of which it is an adaptation, the rules given by the native grammarians, lastly the texts. Paiśācī is one of the oldest prakrits it is mentioned by the Prākrtaprakāśa by the side of Maharaştri, of Māgadhi and of Sauraseni, but it is not, by far, so well known as the other three. Its name - an exception-does not seem to be local the information given about it by grammarians is very scanty. Lastly, the only fraguments of connected text which are still extant, are the few quotations we find in the Grammar of prakrits of Hemacandra (IV 303-28) and are believed to have been borrowed from the Brhatkathā.
The Extension of Paisāci
Paisacī seems to have existed very little in a literary form, it is regularly mentioned in the treatises of grammar, and it has been subdivided into numerous varieties, but as a matter of fact, we never find it used in works of literature. It is even difficult to affirm that this is due to chance alone and that time has caused the texts to disappear, and we are not at all sure that Paicāci has been used in any other work but he Bșhatkathā. The Tibetans, voicing in this what they say is the doctrine of the Sarvästivādins, affirm that, in olden times, the Sthaviras, one of the four great schools, used to read their sacred books in the picācika dialect, whereas the Sammitiyas used to read them in apabhramsa, the Mahāsamghikas in prakrit and the Sarvāstivādins in sanskrit. That would tend to prove that Paiśācī, as a written language, has had a certain extension, if it were not evident that, for the authors of the division of languages - it is attributed by Tārānatha to a certain Vinitadeva-the word Paisācī designates in a very vague manner an
Trat El Gal-HTE, 2004
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