Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s1.t4: 3.1.4 Later inscriptional Prakrits
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s1.t4
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3.1.4 Later inscriptional Prakrits
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3.1.4.1 Inscriptions in the west-midland dialect
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After the Mauryan period there is a major shift in the linguistic features of the inscriptional Prakrits. The predominance of the eastern dialect of the Aśokan and other inscriptions of the Mauryan period ends abruptly; in fact, not a single inscriptional record in eastern dialect has been found from the post-Mauryan era. The dominant role in all regions except the northwest and Sri Lanka falls hereafter to a variety of Prakrit which most resembles, among the Aśokan dialects, the western dialect of the Girnār rock edicts, and which among literary languages has the most in common with Pāli and archaic forms of Śaurasenī. In other words, this dialect partakes of the typical characteristics of the western and central MIA languages: nominative singular masculine in *-o*, retention of Sanskrit *r* and *l*, predominance of the sibilant *s*, and so on.¹⁷ Like the Aśokan Prakrits, this central-western epigraphic Prakrit is still relatively archaic, with only occasional intervocalic voicing of unvoiced stops and elision of voiced stops. But unlike some of the Aśokan inscriptions, consonant groups from Sanskrit are nearly always assimilated.¹⁸
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¹⁷ For a specimen of this common epigraphic Prakrit, see Appendix, no. 3 (Bhārhut label inscriptions).
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¹⁸ An apparent exception is the Besnagar pillar inscription of Hēliodōros (Appendix, no. 2), which contains conjuncts such as *tr* (*putreṇa*, l. A–3) and *dr* (*bhāgabhadrasa*, l. A–6). But these examples would seem to fall into the category of early orthographic Sanskritisms (see 3.2.3.2) rather than of phonetic archaisms.
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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.¹⁹ 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 (SI I.213–21), while in the south it is abundantly attested in inscriptions from such sites as Nāgārjunakoṇḍa and Amarāvatī. This central-western MIA dialect was, in fact, virtually the sole language in epigraphic use in the period in question, and therefore seems, like Pāli, to have developed into something like a northern Indian lingua franca, at least for epigraphic purposes, in the last two centuries b.c.
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¹⁹ See the comments of Mehendale, HGIP, xxxvii.
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This is not to say that the inscriptions in this dialect, which Senart called “Monumental Prakrit,”²⁰ are totally devoid of local variations. On the contrary, we do occasionally find, in the southern inscriptions, for example, instances of the influence of the local (Dravidian) language, as in *ayira-haghāna* = *ārya-saṅghānām* at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa (*Āyaka*-pillar ins. C–2; SI I, 232, l. 10). There are also considerable variations in orthography, with inscriptions from the later part of the period in question, that is, those of about the third and fourth centuries a.d., showing an increasing precision, most notably in indicating geminate consonants which had hitherto almost always been represented by the corresponding single consonant (see examples cited in SIE 43–4). Stylistically too, there is a considerable range of variation, from the brief and unadorned style of the donative inscriptions from Buddhist *stūpa* sites such as Sāñcī and Bhārhut to the quasi-literary compositions of the Hāthīgumphā inscription of King Khāravela or the Nāsik inscription of the time of Vāsiṣṭhīputra Puḷumāvī (SI I.203–7). But all in all, the standard epigraphic or “Monumental” Prakrit can be treated as essentially a single language whose use spread far beyond its place of origin, and which should not be taken to represent the local vernacular of every region and period where it appears.²¹
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²⁰ IA 21, 1892, 258.
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²¹ For this reason, the methods of analysis followed by Mehendale in HGIP are misleading. His classification of Prakrit inscriptions of the post-Mauryan epoch into geographical groups (western, southern, central, and eastern) is valid only with reference to their findspots; but to trace separate linguistic developments within and influences among the various groups, as Mehendale does, is based on the misconception that each of them constitutes a distinct linguistic entity. As Senart showed in *Les Inscriptions de Piyadassi*, this is not the case, and most of the conclusions drawn by Mehendale concerning the trends and directions of phonetic and morphological change cannot be accepted. A definitive historical linguistic treatment of the post-Aśokan epigraphic Prakrit, bearing in mind the complientire question of the subdialects of Gandhari remains unanswered, due at least in part to the problems of the casual orthography which is characteristic of the Kharosthi/Gandhari inscriptions.
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3.1.4.2 Inscriptions in other MIA dialects
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3.1.4.2.1 *Gāndhārī
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Grammatical descriptions: S. Konow, CII 2.1, xcv–cxv; J. Brough, GD 55–118; G. Fussman, “Gāndhārī écrite, Gāndhārī parlée.”
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In the northwest and adjoining regions, inscriptions of the post-Mauryan era (see 4.3.2) continued to be written in essentially the same language as the Aśokan rock edicts from this area, that is, the MIA dialect which used to be referred to as “Northwestern Prakrit” but which is nowadays more commonly called “Gāndhārī,” following H. W. Bailey’s suggestion.²² The inscriptions in this language are invariably written in Kharoṣṭhī script and are virtually all Buddhist in content. They range in date from approximately the second century B.C. to the third or possibly fourth century A.
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*meridarkha* = μεριδάρχης; Swāt ins., CII 2.1, 4) and Saka (*erjhuṇa* = *alysānaile’ysānai*; Takht-i-bāhī ins., l. 5, CII 2.1, 62 and xcvii).
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The Kharoṣṭhī documents from central Asia (see 4.3.7.12) provide specimens of a separate dialect of Gāndhārī used far beyond its native region. These documents show that Gāndhārī became the official language of the Indianized kingdom of Shan-shan or Kroraina in the southeastern Tarim basin in about the third century a.d. (cf. 2.3.1 and 2.3.2). This “Niya Prakrit” or “Kroraina Prakrit,” which was analyzed in detail by T. Burrow in *The Language of the Kharoṣṭhi Documents from Chinese Turkestan*, agrees on the whole fairly closely with the language of the post-Aśokan Gāndhārī inscriptions from India,²⁵ but also differs from Indian Gāndhārī in several significant particulars, such as the following:
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²⁵ See also Burrow, “The Dialectal Position of the Niya Prakrit” (see n. 10), 419–35 (esp. 423–5); and recently, Colette Caillat, “Connections Between Asokan (Shahbazgarhi) and Niya Prakrit?” IIJ 35, 1992, 109–19.
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1. Certain phonetic tendencies, such as a confusion between voiced and unvoiced consonants (more pronounced than in Indian Gāndhārī), and particularly a tendency to deaspirate Indic aspirates, apparently reflecting the phonetic structure of the (unattested) local dialect (Burrow, *Language*, 5 and 9).
2. The loss of distinction between endings for the nominative and accusative endings. The ending is generally *-a*, in both the singular (<*-e* according to Burrow, “The Dialectal Position,” 421 and 424) and the plural (presumably for *-ā*).
3. The use of an ending *-tu* for the second person singular of all tenses of the verb; for example, *labhiśatu* ‘you will get’. According to Burrow (*Language*, 43), this is “probably taken from the 2nd person of the pronoun.”
4. The development of a periphrastic construction for the preterite active, consisting of the past participle plus the personal endings of the present, except for the third-person singular where the ending is omitted; for example, *triṭhemi* = *\*dṛṣṭaḥ* + *-mi* ‘I saw’; *taḍita* = *\*tāḍitaḥ* ‘he beat’ (*Language*, 50–3).
5. The frequent use of the infinitive in *-amnae* (also occasionally found in Indian Gāndhārī; Burrow, *Language*, 49); for example, *karamnae* ‘to do’.
6. The frequent use of postpositions not found in other MIA dialects, such as *prace* ‘concerning’ (<*\*pratyayam*) and *vamti* ‘to, with’ (<*upānte*; *Language*, 42).
7. The extensive use of loanwords from various non-Indic languages, especially from Iranian languages (*Language*, vii–viii), from the local “Krorainic” language which apparently was closely related to Tocharian (*Language*, viii–ix), and occasionally from Greek (e.g., *milima* = μέδιμνος; *Language*, 111).
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3.1.4.2.2 *Sinhalese Prakrit
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Grammatical descriptions: S. Paranavitana, *Inscriptions of Ceylon*, I.xxvii–xlv; Wilhelm Geiger and D. B. Jayatilaka in Jayatilaka et al., eds., *A Dictionary of the Sinhalese Language* (Colombo: The Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, 1935), I.1, xxiv–xxvii; Saddhamangala Karunaratne, *EZ* 7, 39–44.
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The language of the Old Sinhalese or Sinhalese Prakrit inscriptions of about the third century b.c. to the third or fourth century a.d. (see 4.3.7.1) is characterized by several unusual phonological features. Palatal *ś* generally predominates over the other sibilants, but Sanskrit sibilants also are frequently reflected by *h*. Sanskrit aspirates are generally represented by the corresponding nonaspirates (e.g., *dama* = *dharma*), but *jh* regularly replaces *j* (e.g., *rajha* = *rājā*; Paranavitana, xxxi; Karunaratne, 9). Otherwise, consonants in intervocalic position are generally preserved as in Sanskrit, though they are often subjected to voicing. Long vowels are commonly shortened, though according to some authorities this is merely a graphic device (Geiger and Jayatilaka, xxv–xxvi; contra, Paranavitana, xxviii).
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The morphology of Sinhalese Prakrit is on the whole not much different from that of the other old inscriptional Prakrits. The nominative singular ends in *-e* and the genitive in *-sa*, *-śa*, or *-ha*.²⁶ In these respects, as in others such as the predominance of the palatal sibilants, the dialect appears to have been influenced by the Māgadhī of the Buddhist missionaries sent to Sri Lanka from northeastern India in the Mauryan period (Geiger and Jayatilaka, op. cit., xx).
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²⁶ Due to the brevity and formulaic character of the Sinhalese Prakrit inscriptions, there is almost no material for the study of finite verb morphology; such few verb forms as do appear are nearly all participial.