Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s13.t11.2

c12.s13.t11.2

The Buddhistic canon was in Pāli which had close affinities with Paiśāci. Pāli-Paiśāci, and in fact all the later Prākṛits, owe their origin, according to Hoernle¹ to the ways in which the non-Sanskritic populations of the different localities spoke the Sanskrit tongue. Konow² draws attention to the fact that according to a Tibetan tradition the Sthaviras or Theras had their books in Paiśāci, and that according to Pischel these Paiśāci books may be the Pāli canon. Pāli-Paiśāci dialects with slight local variations were current in wide parts of India from the north-west to the Deccan, and it is this language which influenced or bore affinities to the Dravidian.³