A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s1.10

c19.s1.10

The dialect used was Paiçācī, and over this term a controversy has raged, accentuated by the fact that we really cannot be sure that we have a single relic of the *Bṛhatkathā*, still less that so late a grammarian as Mārkaṇḍeya (17th cent.) actually¹ had the text before him. A further confusion has arisen from Sir G. Grierson's decision to group a certain number of north-western dialects, spoken in Kafiristan, the Swat valley, Chitral, and Gilgit, as Piçāca languages, claiming both that they have a true relation to the ancient Paiçācī dialect, and were so called because the speakers were cannibals, and thus styled Piçācas, eaters of raw flesh, by their neighbours. The assertions of the grammarians are confused and unsatisfactory, nor is the matter improved by the existence of two schools of Prākrit grammar with divergent traditions and views, especially as these are represented by comparatively late texts. But, as we have seen, there is more probability that Paiçācī was a dialect rather of the Vindhyas than of the north-west; the hardening of *d* to *t* or of other soft letters is not, as Grierson's theory requires to make it plausible, solely a feature of the north-west, but occurs in other dialects including Pāli, and the fact that Paiçācī has but one sibilant prejudices its claim to be akin to the north-west dialects which in Açoka's time and later preserve distinctions.² Lacôte, however, while accepting connexion with the north-west, agrees with the view that the phenomenon of hardening is a sign of the use of an Aryan speech among a non-Aryan people, and holds that Guṇāḍhya adapted this dialect to literary purposes, avoiding any too serious deviations from Sanskrit, and, if we substitute a Vindhyan dialect spoken in a Dravidian area, we probably approach the truth. At least for the connexion with the Vindhya we have the clear assertions of the Kashmirian recension, which had no special motive for misrepresentation of the facts, and the testimony of Rājaçekhara¹ is clear in favour of the actual use of Paiçācī in a wide region, including the Vindhya area. This view is much more plausible than Lacôte's suggestion that Guṇāḍhya picked up the idea of the dialect from some visitors from the north-west, his sphere of work lying round Kauçāmbī and Ujjain, and Grierson admits that, even if originally a north-western dialect, Paiçācī might have been carried to the Vindhya.