Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c9.2

c9.2

We have now traced the gradual decay of Sanskrit from the form in which it is presented to us in the oldest literary records to that which it assumed in the Apabhraṁśa dialect. We have seen how words lost some of their vocal elements on account of the natural tendency of men to economize effort, as well as in consequence of the fact that the vocal organs of the people, who through historical accidents had to speak that language though it was not theirs, were untrained to utter the sounds of that language, and that they imported into it some sounds to which they themselves were previously accustomed. We have also observed the effects of the operation of the law of analogy in simplifying the grammar of the language—an operation, the range of which, in consequence of the ignorance of those same foreigners, was very extensive. The declensions and conjugations gradually lost their variety and became reduced to one or two types by the generalization of the rules originally applicable only to the nouns and verbs frequently used in ordinary intercourse. At the same time the terminations themselves of some of the cases, tenses, and moods came through numberless analogies to have the same or similar forms, and their vocal body gradually became attenuated and in some instances they were altogether dropped. Thus these processes of simplification were carried on much further than was consistent with intelligibility in ordinary intercourse. Hence the necessity arose of inventing new modes of expression for those relations which came to be imperfectly expressed or ceased to be expressed in the old way. As observed in the last lecture such new expressions are to be met with in the Apabhraṁśa dialect. If the Prâkṛits and the Apabhraṁśa which we have examined really represent the speech of the Indian people at certain periods of their past history, we should expect to find a relation of continuity between them and the prevailing speech of modern times. The words and grammatical forms in the modern vernaculars should either be the same as those existing in those dialects, or should be easily deducible from them by laws which we have observed to be in operation; and if in the Apabhraṁśa the grammatical forms came to be in a condition in which reconstruction was necessary, and if accordingly it was begun, we should find it carried on much further in the vernaculars and on principles used in the Apabhraṁśa and the older dialects and out of materials existing in them. We will therefore proceed now to the examination of the vernaculars with a view to trace this continuity.