Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s3.t7.5

c8.s3.t7.5

These patterns should not, however, be uncritically extrapolated to nonepigraphic contexts. It should be kept in mind that, in the words of Burrow, “[T]he inscriptional evidence gives a very one-sided picture of the contemporary linguistic conditions. . . . Sanskrit was always, even when the use of Prakrit was most flourishing, the primary literary language of India.”⁵⁵ In other words, the limited and sporadic use of Sanskrit in inscriptions prior to the Gupta era does not mean that Sanskrit as a language of literature, culture, and ritual was in abeyance but simply that inscriptions were not yet felt to be literary documents worthy of its use. The gradual Sanskritization of inscriptions reflects, on the one hand, the formalization of inscriptions into a mode of literary expression, and on the other, the spread of Sanskrit into the administrative realm, which was fully accomplished under the Guptas and their contemporaries.