Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s3.t5: 3.3.5 Prakrit of the cave inscriptions

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s3.t5

Language: English

3.3.5 Prakrit of the cave inscriptions

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Prakrit, in the widest sense of the term, comprises all Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) languages including those recorded in the inscriptions of Asoka and the post-Mauryan period, the canonical languages of the Buddhist and Jaina religions, and the Literary Prakrits found in the Sanskrit plays. An attempt has been made in the present study to determine the type of Prakrit from which the loanwords in the cave inscriptions are derived.²

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(i) *Loanwords not derived from Asokan dialects*

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Most of the inscriptions of Asoka are in the Eastern Dialect which was the Mauryan court language. However, such distinctive features of the Eastern Dialect as the substitution of *r* with *l* and the use of the nominative singular ending *-ē* are not found in the loanwords. It is now generally accepted that the Tamil caves were occupied by the Jaina monks and have no Buddhist vestiges.³ Thus, the available evidence indicates that the loanwords in the cave inscriptions are not derived from the language of the Asokan inscriptions, though they share some features common to most dialects.

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(ii) *Loanwords mostly from standard epigraphic Prakrit*

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The data compiled in the Etymological Indexes (Appendices V-VI) indicate clearly that most of the loanwords in the Corpus are derived from standard epigraphic Prakrit based on the dialect of the central and western regions. The circumstances in which this dialect rose to become the common epigraphical language for almost the whole of India in the post-Mauryan period are well brought out by Richard Salomon in his recent book *Indian Epigraphy*:

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The causes of the abrupt dialectal shift from east to west undoubtedly lie in political and historical developments, that is, the decline of Magadha as the center of power in northern India after the collapse of the Mauryan empire and the movement of the center of political power in the following centuries toward the west and northwest. Like the eastern dialect under Aśoka, the central-western dialect of the post-Mauryan era was used far beyond what must have been its original homeland. Thus we find inscriptions in this standard epigraphic Prakrit as far afield as Orissa in the east, for instance, in the Hāthīgumphā inscription, while

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The distinguishing features of standard epigraphic Prakrit as reflected in the loanwords in the Corpus are as follows.

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i) Nominative masculine singular *-ō* (as in *satiyaputō*).

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ii) Retention of the distinction between *r* and *l* (as in *āritaṉ*, *sālakaṉ*, etc.).

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iii) The exclusive use of the sibilant *s*.

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However, the loanwords are radically transformed by the local language, namely Tamil, and adapted to its phonetic pattern as discussed earlier. Further, there are also minimal influences on the loanwords from two other dialects of Prakrit as noticed below.

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(iii) *Loanwords from Jaina Prakrit (Ardhamāgadhī)*

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Considering the exclusive association of Jaina monks with the Tamil caves, it is somewhat surprising that the influence of Ardhamāgadhī (AMg.), the language of the earliest Jaina canonical literature, is minimal on the loanwords occurring in the inscriptions. From among more than a hundred IA stems, only five may be regarded as derived from AMg. based on the special characteristics of that dialect (Table 3.³). The first four loanwords occur in the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions, and the last in an Early Vaṭṭeluttu inscription.

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(iv) *Loanwords from Sinhala-Prakrit* While most of the loanwords in the Tamil-Brāhmī cave inscriptions are naturally from Indian Prakrits, there are a couple of items for which Sinhala inscriptional Prakrit seems to be the proximate source.

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*kaṇa-* 'scribe'.¹ In the Early Brāhmī cave inscriptions of Sri Lanka, *kaṇa* occurs with the meaning 'scribe'. It is derived from Skt. *karaṇa*.² The form *kaṇa* does not occur in Indian Prakrits in this sense. In later Tamil inscriptions, the corresponding expressions *karaṇa* (> *karṇam*) are directly borrowed from Sanskrit.