Pali Literature and Language c5.19

c5.19

VI. Westergaard,⁴ and after him E. Kuhn,⁵ consider Pāli to be the dialect of Ujjayinī, because it stands closest to the language of the Aśoka-inscriptions of Girnar (Guzerat), and also because the dialect of Ujjayinī is said to have been the mother-tongue of Mahinda who preached Buddhism in Ceylon. R. O. Franke reached a similar conclusion by altogether different means.⁶ In his attempt to locate Pāli by eliminating all those Indian popular dialects which on account of their peculiar linguistic features cannot be regarded as the source of Pāli, he finally reached the conclusion that its original home was "a territory, which could not have been too narrow, situated about the region from the middle to the western Vindhya ranges." Thus it is not improbable that Ujjayinī was the centre of its region of expansion. Sten Konow ¹ too has decided in favour of the Vindhya region as the home of Pāli. In his opinion there is a closer relationship between Pāli and Paiśācī, and differing from his predecessors in the field, particularly from Grierson,² he seeks the original home of Paiśācī not in North-West India but in the region of Ujjayinī.