A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v3.c17.7

v3.c17.7

simplification. Indeed, we may be permitted to hold that some, at least, of the forms laid down in the works of Sanskrit grammarians, were never actually in use in the spoken language, and with all due deference to the opinions of scholars, it may be urged that much of this elaborate development arose in an age when the speech of the people had wandered very far away from the classical type. Even if it were not so, even if there ever were a time when the Aryan peasant used polysyllabic desideratives, and was familiar with multiform aorists, it is clear that he began to satisfy himself with a simpler system at a very distant epoch, for the range of forms in Pali and the other Prakrits is far narrower than in classical Sanskrit.