Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.1

c12.s12.1

By 600 B.C., a little before Buddha, the Aryan speech would appear to have spread from Gandhāra to Videha and Campā in Eastern India, and to have been the common language of Indian Aryandom of the times that embraced the Mahājanapadas. The hill and forest tracts of Central India just to the south of the tracts watered by the Ganges were unquestionably Austric and Dravidian in speech; also Bengal and Assam and Orissa; and within the Aryandom of the upper Gangetic area and the Punjab, particularly within the former, there were still large areas, or small pockets, of non-aryan speech which were fast becoming smaller and smaller. In the Jātakas for instance, we read of Caṇḍāla villages where they spoke the Caṇḍāla speech, and we are told of an incident in which a Caṇḍāla masquerading as a Brahmin was discovered when he unconsciously cried out giligili in the Caṇḍāla language when he put some very hot rice-milk within his mouth in a Brahman feast which he had joined.