Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c9.12

c9.12

But though Mahârâshṭra was the last country occupied by the Indian Âryas, their subjugation of it was no less thorough than that of all the northern countries Here, as there, they drove some of the aborigines to the fastnesses of mountains and jungles, and incorporated the rest into their own society The present Marâṭhî language is as much an offshoot of the Sanskrit as the other languages of Northern India The ancient representatives of these dialects—the Mahârâshṭrî, the Saurasenî, and the Mâgadhî, as well as an earlier form of speech, the Pâlî—show extensive corruptions of Sanskrit sounds, reducible however to a few general laws These cannot be accounted for by the natural operation of the causes which bring about the decay of a language spoken throughout its history by the same race For, this operation is slow and must be in continuance for a very long time in order to produce the wide-going phonetic changes which we observe in those Prâkṛit dialects, as they are called This long-continued process must at the same time give rise to a great many changes in other respects Such, [5] however, we do not find in those dialects, and they do not in those respects show a very wide departure from the Sanskrit