Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c12.72.3

c12.72.3

About the time when the inscriptions in the cave-temples were composed, the Pâli was, as I have stated, a sacred and literary language. The longer and more important of the inscriptions are therefore in that language. But in a good many of the shorter inscriptions, especially of private individuals, we have words exhibiting Prâkṛit characteristics.¹ The growth of the specific Prâkṛits, therefore, must be referred to the early centuries of the Christian era; and we may therefore infer that about the time our first dramatic plays were written they were actually the spoken dialects of those classes of the people whose representatives use them in those works. About the sixth or seventh century the Apabhraṁśa was developed in the country in which the Brajabhâshâ prevails in modern times; or, if the speeches in that dialect contained in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaśî were really composed by Kâlidâsa, which, as remarked in a former lecture, we have the gravest reasons for doubting, its growth must be assigned to a somewhat earlier period. Daṇḍin mentions the Apabhraṁśa, and a good many verses from his Kâvyâdarśa are found in Vâmana’s Alaṁkâravṛitti; and if this be the same Vâmana that lived at the court of Jayâpîḍa, king of Kaśmîr, who reigned from 751 A. C. to 782 A. C., Daṇḍin must have flourished before the eighth century. The modern vernaculars seem to have begun to assume a distinctive character about the tenth century.