Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s13.t2.3

c12.s13.t2.3

In this period the abundant variety of the Vedic morphology had got simplified considerably on both the declensional and conjugational sides and this process of simplification could be seen in progress through the Brāhmaṇas and the older Upaniṣads. It is such a Bhāṣā which Pāṇini codified in order to render it more handy. Even after him a certain amount of fluidity persisted, as evidenced by the necessity for the work of the many Vārttikakāras, but at the close of the period of our study, Patañjali's work finally fixed the language as the unchanging Saṃskṛta. The language had become sufficiently distant from that of the Vedas to be characterised as classic Sanskrit, through its employment all this time in a growing body of epic and poetic literature. The Vedic accent had changed and the free use of verbal forms had given place to what may be called the nominal style characterised by participles; a small loss of vocabulary is to be seen, as also some amount of semantic change; a few new word forms were also added to the language in this period.