Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s1.t2.23

c8.s1.t2.23

All in all, the Aśokan inscriptions give a broad view of the dialect spectrum of MIA vernaculars in the third century B.C. But it must also be understood that they do not provide anything like a real dialect map of the time. For the geographical distribution of the dialects—especially of the eastern dialect—can hardly correspond with linguistic reality; the eastern dialect was obviously not the mother tongue of residents of the far north and the central south, though it was used for inscriptions (Kālsī, Erraguḍi, etc.) in those regions. Moreover, the languages as they are presented in the inscriptions are surely not exact renditions of the contemporary vernaculars. It has been suggested,¹⁵ for example, that such features as the retention of consonantal clusters reflect orthographic conservatism and the influence of Sanskrit, and that the actual stage of phonetic development of MIA in Aśoka's time could have been further advanced than it would seem from the inscriptions.