The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.s1.4

v1.c15.s1.4

In the sixth century b.c., after Indo-Āryan influence had penetrated eastwards beyond the limits of ‘the Middle Country,’ there arose in Oudh (Kosala) and Bihār (Videha and Magadha) a number of religious reactions against the sacerdotalism and the social exclusiveness of Brāhmanism. The two most important of these, Jainism and Buddhism, survived; and, as they extended from the region of their origin, they everywhere gave an impulse to the formation of literary languages from the Prākrits or spoken dialects. The scriptures of the Jains have been preserved in various forms of Māgadhī, the dialect of Bihār, Çaurasenī, the dialect of Muttra, and Māhārāshṭrī, the dialect of the Marāthā country. The Buddhist canon exists in two chief forms—in Pāli, the literary form of an Indo-Āryan Prākrit, in Ceylon; and in Sanskrit in Nepāl. Pāli Buddhism has spread to Burma and Siam. The Sanskrit version of the canon has, in various translations, prevailed in Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestān, and other countries of the Far East.