A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c3.6

Language: English

c3.6.1

Not only in fairly early times was Prākṛt used for the edicts and the *praśastis* but it was also used in writing poetical and prose *kāvyas* in later times. The word *Prākṛta* is seldom used in early Sanskrit in the sense of a language. Its real meaning is 'original', 'natural', 'normal', and it has been used in this sense in the Vedic literature in the *Prātiśākhyas* and the *Śrautasūtras* and also in Patañjali's *Mahābhāṣya*. The word *prākṛtamānuṣa* is used in the sense of 'an ordinary man' or 'a man in the street.' Hemacandra says that *Prākṛta* is so called because it has been derived from Sanskrit which is the *prakṛti* or source (*prakṛtiḥ saṃskṛtam tatra bhavam tata āgatañca prākṛtam*). But there is another view as held by Pischel where the Prākṛt is derived as 'coming from nature' without any special instruction, i.e., the folk language. But it is impossible for us to decide in what way the Prākṛt language grew. In the writings of the Prākṛt grammarians and writers on Poetics, the term denotes a number of distinctly artificial dialects, which, as they stand now, could hardly have been spoken vernaculars. Sir George Grierson divides Prākṛt into 3 stages, first, the primary Prākṛt, from which the Vedic language and Sanskrit were derived; second, secondary Prākṛt, consisting of Pāli, the Prākṛts of the grammarians and literature and the Apabhraṃśas; the third, Prākṛt consists of the modern vernaculars.

c3.6.2

But the inscriptions of Aśoka show at least the existence of three dialects, the Eastern dialect of the capital which was the official *lingua franca* of the Empire, the North-western and the Western dialects. We next find the post-Aśokan Prākṛts in the inscriptions and the Prākṛt of Aśvaghoṣa of the 1st century A.D. Here we find the old Ardha-māgadhī, the old Śaurasenī and old Māgadhī. According to the current tradition the Jaina doctrines preached by Mahāvīra were delivered in Ardha-māgadhī but the scriptures of Śvetāmbara Jainas that are now available have been very much influenced by the Mahārāṣṭrī and the later texts were written in Jaina Mahārāṣṭrī, while the Digambara scriptures are in Śaurasenī. The Paiśācī is also a from of Prākṛt though only few books written in this dialect are now available. Paiśācī was probably the language current in the Vindhya region. The characteristics of the old Prākṛts consist largely in the transformation of the vowels ṛ and ḷ, ai and au, and in the reduction of the sibilants and nasals with also other changes in consonants. Literature of a secular character might have been composed in old Prākṛts until the 2nd century A.D. But about that date new changes were effected leading to the transformation of the old Prākṛt to a new stage of development.

c3.6.3

This resulted in the formation of the Mahārāṣṭrī in the dominions of the Sātavāhanas in the South-west and the rise of the Māgadhī and the Śaurasenī, as may be noticed in the dramas of Bhāsa and Aśvaghoṣa on the one hand and Kālidāsa on the other. By the 2nd century A.D. we find the Mahārāṣṭrī lyric in the pomes of Hāla. The Mahārāṣṭrī Prākṛt became important as the Prākṛt of the dramas and of the epic poetry. The Śaurasenī was but occasionally used in verse and sometimes in the drama. The Śaurasenī is more closely allied to Sanskrit than the Mahārāṣṭrī and it was generally used in dramas by men of good and noble position. The Māgadhī on the other hand was reserved for people of low rank. The *Nāṭya-śāstra* speaks, however, of different types of Prākṛt such as *Dākṣiṇātyā*, *Prācyā*, *Āvanti* and *Ḍhakkī*, which are the different types of the Śaurasenī, though *Cāṇḍālī* and *Sākārī* are types of the Māgadhī. The Prākṛt of the verses of the *Nāṭya-śāstra* need not be assumed to be the Prākṛt of a different type but it may well be regarded as a variant of the Śaurasenī. The poetry of Śaurasenī Prākṛt is closely akin to the Mahārāṣṭī. A separate note has been added regarding the Apabhraṁśa, the impotance of which for literary purposes may now be ignored.