Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.5

c12.s12.5

About the speech of the Udīcya tract, the popular opinion in the Midland in the age of Brāhmaṇas has been thus expressed in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa (vii 6) : tasmād udīcyāṃ prajñā- tatarā vag udyate : udañcau eva yanti vācam śikṣitum ; yo vā tata āgacchati, tasya vā śuśrūṣante ‘therefore speech is uttered in the North with mere discernment ; they go to the northern lands to learn speech ; and people like to listen to him who comes from there.’ Thus the people of the other tracts acknowledged the Aryan language as spoken in the north-west as being the best and purest form of it. About Prācya or the east some stray and rather obscure references in the Brāhmaṇas would suggest that the Aryan speech was becoming altered or debased there : it was the land inhabited by the Vrātyas, who did not follow the Vedic religion—they were adikṣitas or uninitiated people, but spoke the language of those who were dikṣitas or followers of Vedic rites and customs, and at the same time declared words or sentences not articulated with difficulty as being articulated with difficulty (a-durukta-vākyam duruktam āhuḥ, a-dikṣitā dikṣita-vācam vadanti). This statement about the speech of the Vrātyas of the East would appear to suggest the presence already of Middle Indo-Aryan or Prākṛitic habits of speech, which found the characteristic consonant combinations of the old Aryan speech difficult, and brought in consonant assimilation and cerebralisation on a large scale. In the Brāhmaṇas there is no hint about a Dākṣiṇātya or southern land as being largely inhabited by Aryan speakers, and nothing about any dialectal or linguistic speciality there.