India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c10.s3.t1.128

c10.s3.t1.128

The term *Bhāshā* as used by Pāṇini is the language distinguished from the language of the sacred texts, *viz.* Chhandas and Brāhmaṇa literature. Patañjali states the true position when he says that Sanskrit was the standard speech of the *Śishṭas*, *i.e.* cultured persons, who even without instruction were capable of using the correct speech. He does not deny the co-existence of the speech of the common people called Apabhraṁśa of which there were variations (*ekaikasya* *śabdasya bahavo'pabhraṁśāḥ*, I.5). Patañjali could speak the language which was the medium of his literary expression, but a common herdsman would use one of the Prākrit dialects. Kātyāyana definitely mentions *Loka* (ordinary language of the *Śiṣṭas*) as the standard of grammatical norm, and at the same time refers in a *vārt.* to the existence of Prakrit roots like *āṇapayati* and others (I.3.1.12; I.269). Sanskrit and Prakrit should not be thought of as exclusive of each other in point of time. 'The matter is really to be viewed not in the light of a contrast between actual spoken language and a Hochsprache. It is rather a matter of class speeches; Yāska spoke Sanskrit much as he wrote it, and the officials of Asoka equally conversed in a speech essentially similar to that in which they wrote, while contemporaneously lower classes of the population spoke in dialects which were far further advanced in phonetic change'. (Keith, *H.S.L.*, p. XXVI).