The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language v1.c16.126

v1.c16.126

By the 1st century A.C., however, the fact of dialectal difference became a noticeable thing in the social life of Aryan India. If the writers in the Midland during the late OIA. period (800—600 B.C.) casually told us about the purity of the speech of the Northerners (Udīcyas), and seemed to have hinted at the Prakritic speech habits of the Vrātyas of the East (pp. 45, 47), dramatists and their audiences from the time of Christ (or earlier) keenly appreciated the variations in local dialects; and in Indian drama the practice of employing a local dialect to suit the social position of the speaker came into being. The Midland dialect, Śaurasenī, was thought most fitted to be the speech of the best and most cultured classes who did not speak Sanskrit. The Mahārāṣṭrī or southern dialect, with its mellifluous nature brought about by early dropping of the intervocal stops, was utilised as the dialect *par excellence* for songs by those who employed Śaurasenī in ordinary speech. And Māgadhī, as an uncouth provincial dialect spoken in the extreme eastern frontier of Aryandom, a dialect which showed a wide deviation from the common MIA. norm, was thought suitable for the lowest and least cultured classes. In the Buddhist drama fragments Ardha-māgadhī is also used, but Ardha-māgadhī ceased to be employed in later dramas, Śaurasenī apparently taking its place. In the main, these three dialects—Śaurasenī, Mahārāṣṭrī and Māgadhī, became established in drama in the transitional and second MIA. periods. Later, other dialects were sparingly used: and as something resembling a local dialect would satisfy the author or the people, the specimens in the dramas do not have the importance of genuine dialectal documents. The earliest Prakrit grammarian, Vararuci (5th century A.C. ?), seems already to be actuated by ideas as to what the Mahārāṣṭrī, Māgadhī, Śaurasenī, and Paiśācī speeches in a drama *ought to be*, rather than what they *actually were* in current usage. Later grammarians are much more influenced by these theories; and later writers of Sanskrit drama follow the grammarians as models, more than anything else.