The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s3.40

c8.s3.40

But Mahārāṣṭra was the last country occupied by the Indian Āryas, 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 Marāṭhī language is as much an offshoot of the Sanskrit as the other languages of Northern India. The ancient representatives of these dialects—the Mahārāṣṭrī, the Śaurasenī, and the Māgadhī, as well as an earlier form of speech, the Pāli—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 Prākṛit 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,