Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s2.t2.14

c8.s2.t2.14

Attempts to explain the motivations and linguistic forces shaping the development of the hybrids tend to focus on two main concepts. First, there is the idea, promoted by Joseph Mansion³⁹ and Filliozat,⁴⁰ that they essentially arose as a lingua franca enabling Buddhist monks from various regions of India to converse easily at a period in history when their local MIA dialects were beginning to diverge to the point where they were no longer easily mutually intelligible. This assumes, first of all, that the hybrid remains reflect an actual spoken language,⁴¹ which would be difficult to prove. Other elements of the theory too are less than totally convincing. For one thing, it is questionable whether the MIA dialects of the time were really so different; from the available literary and inscriptional data, it would appear that they were not yet so widely divergent as to present major difficulties of communication. Moreover, while it is true that the literary remains of the hybrid language are virtually all Buddhist, the inscriptional data, as we have seen, include hybrid documents of all three major religious traditions, that is, Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina; the statistical predominance of Buddhist records may simply reflect the predominance of Buddhism itself at the time in question. The development of hybrid Sanskrit may well have been influenced and promoted by the Buddhists, but the epigraphic evidence shows that hybridization was actually part of an overall linguistic trend which transcended sectarian divisions. In the words of Lamotte, “le sanskrit mixte n’est pas un phénomène strictement bouddhique, mais s’insère dans l’évolution générale de la langue indienne” (HBI 638).