Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c8.51.2

c8.51.2

But in a growing language which knows of no accidents in the course of its history, there is another principle which counteracts this, viz., the necessity of pronouncing words in a manner to be understood by others. Hence a wholesale elision is impossible; and the natural course is to soften sounds away, until finally they are elided. This of course must be a very slow process. But in the Prâkrit, and especially the Mahârâshtrî, we do not find it to be slow. Elision seems to be a distinguishing characteristic which strikes one very forcibly on reading a Prâkrit passage. It is too regular, systematic, and far-reaching, to have been the product of a long course of softening. In fact, because it is so systematic and general, some writers have doubted whether the Prâkrits were genuine dialects, and have expressed their belief that they are the creation of Pandits. But we shall find that the modern vernaculars retain the words shorn of their elements by the Prâkrits in this way; and that these latter dialects were the immediate parents of those we now speak in Northern India. If this general mutilation of words was brought about by a natural decay, we must suppose the process to have gone on for a great many centuries. The Prâkṛit vocables that have descended to the modern vernaculars have not, since the period when the Prâkṛits arose about fourteen centuries ago, suffered at all so much as Sanskrit words in passing into the Prâkṛits.