The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c6.58

v1.c6.58

The authorities quoted above clearly shew that Orissa was well known to the Indian Aryans from a very early period, but only as the abode of a primitive, non-Aryan, or a fallen, race. It had no reputation for sanctity, and never was thought of as a holy place of pilgrimage for the Hindus. It was first selected by the Buddhists as a very promising field for their operations, for the aboriginal races of India doubtless offered to them, as they have since proved to others, better and more pliant subjects for proselytism than the Aryans, and Aśoka gave it great importance by recording his edicts and building temples in different parts of it. The Khaṇḍagiri rock-cut caves which were excavated about that time, bear unmistakable evidence of the position which Buddhism had attained in the country, and it would not be unreasonable to suppose that for some time afterwards the bulk of the people professed the faith of Sākya Siṃha. It would from the above, follow that the people belonged to a non-Aryan race, but the vernacular character of the language of Aśoka’s edicts would imply that the population for whom they were designed, were of Aryan extraction. This difficulty may be explained away, either by supposing that at the time in question, Aryan colonists had so extensively mixed with the Oḍs as to give the whole an Aryan character, or that the ancient Pali was not the vernacular of Orissa. The last supposition seems the most probable, as the Pali of the edicts, though vernacular in appearance, is all but identically the same in Tirhut, Delhi, Guzerat, and Peshāwar, the only difference noticeable being confined to the spelling of a few words, such as *lājā* for *rājā*, whilst it is impossible for the spoken language of such diverse and distant places, though proceeding from a common source, to retain its unity in the mouths of different nationalities and under dissimilar physical conditions. The Prakrits of the time of Vikramāditya, which are nothing but advanced stages of the vernaculars which had resulted from the disintegration of the original Sanskrit, show very marked differences in spelling and construction and the same may be expected in the Pali of different places. This difference being wanting, the inference, is that the edicts were designed and written out in the language current in the court at Delhi, or at Pāṭaliputra, and thence despatched for record in the different parts of Aśoka’s dominion without reference to provincial peculiarities of speech, and that the variations in spelling occurred during their transition from paper or palm leaf to stone under the superintendence of local officers, and the manipulation of local artificers.