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A History of Sanskrit Literature c7: I. Sanskrit, Prākrit, and Apabhraṁça

A History of Sanskrit Literature c7

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English

Contents

I. Sanskrit, Prākrit, and Apabhraṁça

1. The Origin of Sanskrit

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SOMETIME in the course of the second millennium B.C. Indo-European tribes occupied, in varying degrees of completeness, vast areas in Iran, Asia Minor, and north-west India.¹ The problems of their movements and affiliations are still far from solution, but on linguistic grounds we postulate a group conveniently styled Aryan, whose speech can be regarded as the ancestor of the speeches of India and Iran. Of these Indian speeches² our oldest evidence is the *Ṛgveda*, and the language of this great collection of hymns is obviously a hieratic and conventional one. It testifies to the cultivation of sacred poetry by rival families of priests among many distinct tribes during a considerable period of time, and in various localities. Some of the hymns were doubtless composed in the Panjāb, others in the region which in the Brāhmaṇas is recognized as the home of the Kurus and Pañcālas, tribes representing the consolidation of units familiar to us in the *Ṛgveda*. It is even claimed that Book vi is the poetry of the period before the tribes entered India proper, though the contention is still implausible. That, under these circumstances, the speech of the *Ṛgveda* should show dialectic mixture is only to be expected, and, despite the great difficulties involving the attempt to discriminate, some progress is possible towards determining the characteristics of the dialect which lies at the basis of the *Ṛgveda*. It was marked by the open pronunciation of intervocalic *dh*, *bh*, *ḍ*, and *ḍh* as *h*, *ḷ*, and *ḷh*; by the change of *l* into *r*; and by the intrusion of the pronominal instrumental plural termination *ebhis* into the nominal declension. Borrowings from other dialects can here and there be confidently asserted; in some cases the forms thus found may be regarded as of equal age with those of the *Ṛgveda*, as in the case of words in *l* and *jajjhatī*, with *jjh* in lieu of *kṣ* for Aryan *g̑žh*, but in other instances we find forms¹ which are phonetically more advanced than those normal in the *Ṛgveda*, and attest loans either from tribes whose speech had undergone more rapid change, perhaps as the result of greater admixture with non-Aryan elements, or from lower classes of the population. Thus we have irregular cerebrals as in *kaṭa* beside *kṛta*, *kāṭa* beside *karta*; *ch* for *pṣ* in *kṛchra*; *jy* for *dy* in *jyotis*; *i* for *ṛ* in *çithira*; *busa* for *bṛça*, and many other anomalous forms. To localize these dialects is in the main impossible; the rhotacism of the *Ṛgveda* accords with its western origin, for the same phenomenon is Iranian. The use of *l* is later a sign of eastern connexion, and in one stereotyped phrase, *sūre duhitā*, we perhaps find *e* for *az*, as in the eastern Prākrit.

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¹ Cf. Keith, *Religion and Philosophy of the Veda*, Chap. I.

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² Cf. Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.*, i, pp. ix ff.; H. Reichelt, *Festschrift Streitberg* (1924), pp. 238 ff.; Macdonell, *Vedic Grammar* (1910); Meillet, IF. xxxi. 120 ff.; JA. 1910, ii. 184 ff.; *Mélanges Lévi*, p. 20; Grammont, MSL. xix. 254 ff.; Bloch, *Formation de la langue marathe* (1920); S. K. Chatterji, *Bengali* (1926).

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¹ In some cases, no doubt, forms have been altered in transmission.

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From the language of the *Ṛgveda* we can trace a steady development to Classical Sanskrit, through the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas. The development, however, is of a special kind; it is not the spontaneous growth of a popular speech unhampered by tradition and unregulated by grammatical studies. The language of the tribes whose priests cherished the hymns of the *Ṛgveda* was subject doubtless to all the normal causes of speech change, accentuated in all likelihood by the gradual addition to the community of non-Aryan elements as the earlier inhabitants of the north, Muṇḍā or Dravidian tribes, fell under their control.² But, at least in the upper classes of the population, alteration was opposed by the constant use of the sacred language and by the study devoted to it. Parallels to such restricted evolution are not hard to find; the history of the Greek Koine, of Latin from its fixation in the first century B.C., and of modern English, attests the power of literature to stereotype. In India the process was accentuated by the remarkable achievements of her early grammarians whose analytical skill far surpassed anything achieved until much later in the western world. In the normal life of language a constant round of destruction and reconstruction takes place; old modes of expression disappear but new are invented; old distinctions of declension and conjugation are wiped out, but new differentiations emerge. In Sanskrit the grammarians accepted and carried even farther than did contemporary vernaculars the process of the removal of irregularities and the disuse of variant forms, but they sanctioned hardly any new formations, producing a form of expression well ordered and purified, worthy of the name Sanskrit which the *Rāmāyaṇa* first accords to it. The importance of the part played by religion in preserving accuracy of speech is shown by the existence of a special form of sacrifice, the Sarasvatī, which was destined to expiate errors of speech during the sacrifice, and in the *Mahābhāṣya* of Patañjali (150 B.C.) it is recorded that there were at one time seers of great knowledge who in their ordinary speech were guilty of using the inaccurate *yar vā ṇas tar vā ṇaḥ* for *yad vā nas tad vā naḥ*, but who, while sacrificing, were scrupulously exact.

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² Cf. W. Petersen, JAOS. xxxii. 414-28; Michelson, JAOS. xxxiii. 145-9; Keith, *Camb. Hist. India*, i. 109 ff. Common sense renders Dravidian and Muṇḍā influences inevitable, though proof may be difficult; Przyluski, MSL. xxii. 205 ff.; BSL. xxiv. 120, 255 ff., xxv. 66 ff.; Bloch, xxv. 1 ff.; Lévi, JA. cciii. 1-56. Przyluski endeavours to prove Austroasiatic influence on culture; JA. ccv. 101 ff.; ccviii. 1 ff.; BSL. xxvi. 98 ff. Cf. Poussin, *Indo-européens*, pp. 198 ff.; Chatterji, i. 170 ff., 199.

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The influence of the grammarians, whose results were summed up in Pāṇini’s *Aṣṭādhyāyī*, probably in the fourth century B.C., is seen in the rigid scheme of euphonic combination of the words within the sentence or line of verse. This is clearly artificial, converting a natural speech tendency into something impossibly rigid, and, as applied to the text of the *Ṛgveda*, often ruining the metrical effect. Similar rigidity is seen in the process which substitutes in many cases *y* and *v* for the *iy* and *uv* of the earlier speech. Dialectic influence may be traced in the recognition of *l* in many words in lieu of *r*, and a certain distinction between the dialect which underlies the *Ṛgveda* and that of Pāṇini is revealed by the absolute ignoring by the latter of the substitution of *ḷ* and *ḷh* for *ḍ* and *ḍh*.¹ Otherwise the chief mark of progress is the growth of the tendency to cerebralization, possibly under Dravidian influence.

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¹ Cf. Lüders, *Festschrift Wackernagel*, pp. 294 ff.

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In morphology there was elimination of double forms; *ā* as a variant for *ena* in the instrumental singular of *a* stems disappeared, *a* and *ā* yielded to *au* in the dual, *āsas* to *ās*, *ā* to *āni*, *ebhis* to *ais*, *ām* to *ānām* in the plural; *ni* alone is permissible in the locative singular of *an* stems; the effective distinction of root and derivative stems in *ī* disappears; the intrusion of weak forms into the place of strong and vice versa is banished; the irregular *vas* of the vocative of *vant* stems is abandoned, and by eliminating the nominative *yuvam* and ablative *yuvat* the pronominal declension is harmonized with the simplicity of the three forms of the nominal. Similarly, in verbal forms the variant *masi* in the first plural active is laid aside, the *e* of the third singular middle yields to *te*, *dhva* in the second plural to *dhvam*, and forms in *r* in the third plural are confined to the perfect and the root *çī*; in the imperative *dhvāt* is dropped, and *dhi* is no longer permitted to rival *hi* in the second person. Far more important is the laying aside of the subjunctive, whose functions were felt to be adequately performed by the optative, save in so far as a complete set of forms was made up for the imperative by utilizing the first persons. Even in the optative the wealth of forms is seriously diminished, only the present and a specialized precative being allowed. The rich variety of infinitives is steadily lessened; the final result allows only that in *tum*, while of the gerunds that in *tvā* supersedes *tvī* and *tvāya*. Against these losses can be set little more than the development of two forms of periphrasis, the future middle in *tāhe*, and the perfect¹ composed of a nominal accusative form with the auxiliaries *kṛ*, *bhū*, or *ās*, the extended use of gerundives in *tavya* and *anīya*, the creation of a perfect active participle in *tavant*, the invention of a new third singular aorist passive as in *adāyiṣi*, and the development of tertiary verbal forms.

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¹ On changes in the use of verbal forms see L. Renou, *La valeur du parfait dans les hymnes védiques* (1925), pp. 88 ff., 188 ff.

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In some of these losses Sanskrit keeps pace with popular speech, but the evidence is conclusive against ascribing too much weight to this fact. While such categories as the dual of noun and verb alike, the middle, and the past tenses, practically vanished from popular speech, Sanskrit rigidly retains them. On the other hand it rejects irregularities which popular speech permitted to survive, such as the *ā* of the instrumental singular and nominative plural neuter of *a* stems, the *āsas* of the masculine plural, the form *gonām*, the pronominal plurals *asme* and *yuṣme*, the short forms *yāt* and *tāt*, and verbal forms in *r*. Traces of the subjunctive, the infinitive in *tave*, the aorist *akar*, the instrumental in *ebhis* exist in Prākrit, but are banned in Sanskrit. On the other hand, although Pāṇini recognizes fully the Vedic accent, it can hardly be doubted that already by his time in actual speech in many regions it had yielded in part to an expiratory accent. The tendency to such a result is already visible in the *Ṛgveda*, where *duhitā* by the testimony of the metre must at times be read *dhitā*, comparable with Pāli *dhītā*;¹ the weakening of *bh* and *dh* to *h* occurs there normally after unaccented syllables,² and the curious mode of notation of the accent in the *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa* has with some ground been ascribed to a stage of transition from the musical to the expiratory accent.³

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¹ Lüders, KZ. xlix. 236 f.

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² Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.*, i. 252 f.

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³ Leumann, KZ. xxxi. 22 f.

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We must not, however, exaggerate the activity of the grammarians to the extent of suggesting with some writers that Classical Sanskrit is an artificial creation, a product⁴ of the Brahmins when they sought to counteract the Buddhist creation of an artistic literature in Pāli by recasting their own Prākritic speech with the aid of the Vedic language. It is, in point of fact, perfectly obvious that there is a steady progress through the later Saṃhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, and the Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads, and that the Bhāṣā, the spoken language of Pāṇini's grammar, is closely related to, though not identic with, the language of the Brāhmaṇas and the older Upaniṣads. Nor in point of fact does Classical Sanskrit present the appearance of an artificial product; simplified as it is in comparison with the redundant luxury of the Vedic texts, it yet presents no artificial symmetry, but rather admits exceptions in bewildering profusion, showing that the grammarians were not creators, but were engaged in a serious struggle to bring into handier shape a rather intractable material.

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⁴ Hoernle and Grierson, *Bihārī Dict.*, pp. 33 ff.; Senart, JA. sér. 8, viii. 318 ff. Contrast Franke, *B. Beitr.*, xvii. 86; Boxwell, *Trans. Phil. Soc.* 1885–7, pp. 656 ff. Poussin (*Indo-européens*, pp. 191 ff.) stresses the literary character of Sanskrit.

2. The Character and Extent of the Use of Sanskrit

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We have seen that the Sanskrit of the grammarians is essentially a legitimate development from the Vedic speech; it remains to consider the extent of its use, in the time of Pāṇini and later. In examining the matter it is essential to remember the social conditions of India. In Britain to-day the varieties of English spoken and written are complex and numerous; in India, where caste, clan, and racial distinctions were far more prominent and important, linguistic facts were far more complicated still. What is clear¹ is that Sanskrit represents the language of Brahmanical civilization, and the extent of that civilization was ever increasing, though the Brahmanical religion had to face competition from new faiths, in special Buddhism and Jainism, from the fifth century B. C. The Buddhist texts themselves afford the most convincing evidence of all of the predominance of Brahmanism; the Buddha is represented as attempting not to overthrow the ideal of Brahmanism, but to change its content by substituting merit in place of birth as the hall-mark of the true Brahmin. The public religious rites and the domestic ritual were recorded and carried out in Sanskrit, and education was in Brahmin hands. The Buddhist texts repeatedly confirm the Brahmanical principle that instruction of the people (*lokapakti*) was the duty of Brahmins, and the tales of the Jātakas² show young men of all classes, not merely Brahmins but boys of the ruling class, Kṣatriyas, and children of the people, Vaiçyas, seeking instruction in the north from Brahmin teachers. Sanskrit was the language of science, not merely grammar, prosody, astronomy, phonetics, etymology, but doubtless also of more magic arts, such as the physiognomy and demonology recorded in the Buddhist texts and confirmed by the inclusion of magic, Sarpajanavidyā, and Devajanavidyā in the list of the subjects taught by the Brahmin to the people given in the *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa*.³ The same text⁴ mentions also Anuçāsanas, Vidyās, Vākovākya, Itihāsa, Purāṇa, Gāthās, and Nārāçaṅsīs, and the continuity of tradition is attested by the *Mahābhāṣya*¹ which includes under the range of Sanskrit speech the four Vedas with their Aṅgas and Rahasyas, the Vākovākya, Itihāsa, Purāṇa, medicine. The *Āçvalāyana Gṛhyasūtra*,² probably not far removed from Pāṇini in date, repeats in the main the list of the *Çatapatha*, but adds Sūtras, Bhāṣyas, *Bhārata*, *Mahābhārata*, and the works of the Dharmācāryas. Other sciences such as those of the bow, music, architecture, and politics are recorded in the *Mahābhārata*,³ and, so far as they were in the hands of the Brahmins, we need not doubt that Sanskrit here also had its place.

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¹ Thomas, JRAS. 1904, pp. 465 ff.

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² Fick, *Sociale Gliederung*, p. 131.

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³ xiii. 4. 3. 9 ff.

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⁴ xi. 5. 6. 8. Cf. *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad*, ii. 4. 10; iv. 1. 2; 5. 11; *Chāndogya*, vii. 1. 2; Faddegon, *Act. Or.* iv. 4 ff., 133. Vākovākya perhaps denotes the dialogues which develop into philosophy.

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¹ i. 9.

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² iii. 3. 1; 4. 1. Cf. Utgikar, POCP. 1919, ii. 46 ff.

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³ Hopkins, *Great Epic*, pp. 11 ff.

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These facts are not in dispute, and the predominance of Sanskrit in the sphere in question remained unchallenged until the Mahomedan invasions brought a new literary language into prominence. The evidence indicates clearly that Sanskrit must have been in constant use as a means of teaching and performing religious duties among the Brahmins at least. It has been denied that it was really even their vernacular in the time of Pāṇini, and *a fortiori* later, but the evidence for this view is unsatisfactory. Pāṇini has rules⁴ which are meaningless for anything but a vernacular, apart from the fact that the term Bhāṣā which he applies to the speech he teaches has the natural sense of a spoken language. Thus the doubling of consonants is expressly forbidden in passionate speech, as in the term of abuse *putrādini* applied to a cruel mother; he prescribes the use of prolongation in the case of calling from a distance, in greeting, question, and reply; he gives information on the terminology of dicing and the speech of herdsmen; he cites expressions redolent of real daily life. Indeed, it is the grammarians alone who preserve for us such usages as the repetition of the second person imperative followed by the present indicative to express intense action: *khāda khādeti khādati*, ‘eagerly he eats’, whence we have in colloquial Marāṭhī *khā khā khāto*; other popular uses are *udarapūram bhuṅkte*, ‘he eats filling his belly’; *daṇḍādaṇḍi keçākeçi*, ‘a struggle in which sticks are brandished and hair is pulled’; *atra khādatamodatā vartate*, ‘eat and enjoy’ is the rule here; *jahistambo ’yam*, ‘he is one who says “strike the sheaves of corn”’. They record also the parenthetical use¹ of *manye*, ‘I think’; the humorous *apacasi*, ‘you’re no cook’; and authorize such quaint forms² as *yāmaki*, ‘I go’. The elaborate rules regarding the accent reflect also actual speech.

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⁴ Wackernagel, i, p. xliii; Bhandarkar, JBRAS. xvi. 330.

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¹ As in Pāli; Franke, ZDMG. xlvi. 311 f.

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² Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 502 ff.

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Confirmatory evidence can also be adduced from the references of Yāska,³ Pāṇini, and Kātyāyana to particular usages of the northerners and the eastern peoples; Kātyāyana also recognizes as a matter of notoriety the existence of local variations, which Patañjali illustrates by reference to the practice of the Kambojas, Surāṣṭras, Prācyamadhyas, &c. Here too may be mentioned the references of Kātyāyana and Patañjali to changes in usage after Pāṇini’s time, as when the former⁴ finds fault with Pāṇini for not giving *nāma* as well as *nāman* as the vocative, for not mentioning that pronominal forms are permitted in the masculine as well as in the feminine singular of *dvitīya* and *tṛtīya*, and for allowing only the feminines *upādhyāyī*, *āryā*, *kṣatriyā*, and *mātulānī*. Patañjali shows us that in his time participial phrases had superseded the second person perfects such as *tera*, *ūṣa*, *peca*, a fact specially characteristic of a genuine living speech.⁵

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³ *Nirukta*, ii. 2; v. 5, *Mahābhāṣya*, i. 9; v. 8 on vii. 3. 45.

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⁴ Bhandarkar, JBRAS. xvi. 273. Cf. Macdonell, *Vedic Grammar*, p. 307, n. 2.

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⁵ Bloch, MSL. xiv. 97; L. Renou, *La valeur du parfait*, p. 189.

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Further information of a precise character is incidentally given us by Patañjali.⁶ He insists that grammar does not exist to create words, but to make clear what are correct uses; in ordinary life (*loke*) a man thinks of a thing and uses the appropriate word without going to a grammar; the words of Sanskrit are of ordinary life (*laukika*). We find a grammarian and a charioteer (*sūta*) engaged in a discussion conducted in Sanskrit, and the latter has decided opinions of his own on the etymology of his designation and on that of the term *prājitṛ*, driver. The norm of speech is that of the Çiṣṭas, and these are people who speak correct Sanskrit without special tuition; the purpose of grammar is to enable us to recognize who are Çiṣṭas, and thus to apply to them to find the correct form of such terms as *pṛṣodara*, which do not fall under the ordinary rules of grammar. The Çiṣṭas are further defined as Brahmins of Āryāvarta, the region south of the Himālayas, north of Pāriyātra, east of the Ādarça, west of the Kālakavana, who are not greedy, who do good disinterestedly, and who store only so much grain as a pot can hold. Other persons may make errors; thus they may pronounce *ṣaṣa* for *çaça*, *palāṣa* for *palāça*, *mañjaka* for *mañcaka*; or they may commit graver errors by using incorrect forms (*apaçabda*) such as *kasi* for *kṛṣi*, *disi* for *dṛçi*, *gāvī*, *goṇī*, *gotā*, *gopotālikā* for *gaus*, or even verbal forms such as *āṇapayati*¹ for *ājñāpayati*, *vaṭṭati* for *vartate*, and *vaḍḍhati* for *vardhate*. But from the Çiṣṭas they could acquire the accurate forms. This suggests a close parallel to modern conditions in England, where an upper educated class sets the norm to all those in lower social classes; the speech of that class is clearly a living language, and Sanskrit was so in much the same sense. The standard comparison of Latin in the Middle Ages is somewhat unsatisfactory; in the earlier period of the use of Sanskrit it is clear that it was much more closely similar to the speech of the lower classes in its numerous varieties than was Latin in medieval Europe. Comparison of Sanskrit with the dialects of the inscriptions of Açoka is significant in this regard; their differences are not essential nor such as to hinder mutual comprehension, and could easily be paralleled in English speech to-day.

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⁶ vi. 3. 109; Bhandarkar, JBRAS. xvi. 334 ff. Grierson (JRAS. 1904, pp. 479 ff.) misunderstands the passage to mean that Çiṣṭas require to be taught Sanskrit.

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¹ So Açoka's Brahmagiri inscr. 1; *vaḍhati* (the usual single consonant is merely graphic; CII. i, p. lix; Grierson's argument (JRAS. 1925, p. 228) from the writing of other conjuncts is clearly untenable) occurs in Delhi-Toprā, iv. 20.

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Moreover, the conclusions thus attained are directly supported by the evidence of the drama, in which Brahmins and kings and other persons of high station and education use Sanskrit, while inferior characters employ some form of Prākrit. It has been attempted to argue against this view on the score that the drama was originally in Prākrit, and that Sanskrit was introduced only when it became essentially the general language of culture. But this contention ignores the fact that on one side at least the drama is closely connected with the epic in Sanskrit; Bhāsa, indeed, has one drama without Prākrit, and there is little of it in his other dramas based on the epic. Nor was the Sanskrit unintelligible in early times at least to the audience, which might be one including persons of quite humble rank; the *Nāṭyaçāstra* expressly lays it down that the Sanskrit is to be such as is easily intelligible to every one. The denial that realism was ever aimed at in the use of language by the characters in the drama is negatived by the facts; the Prākrits used by the dramatists show a steady advance from those of Açvaghoṣa through those of Bhāsa to the dialects of Kālidāsa, who introduced to the stage the Māhārāṣṭrī which, earlier unimportant, had won fame in India as the medium of erotic lyric.¹ The evidence of Açvaghoṣa is of special value, for it attests the fact that about A. D. 100 the stage tradition was so firmly in favour of the use of Sanskrit by the persons of the highest rank that he adopted it in his plays despite their Buddhist theme, and despite the fact that the Buddha himself, according to tradition, had forbidden the employment of Sanskrit as the medium for preserving his sayings.²

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¹ Keith, *Sanskrit Drama*, pp. 72 ff., 85 ff., 121 f., 140, 155.

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² *Cullavagga*, v. 33. 1; Keith, IHQ. i. 501.

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The extent to which Sanskrit was used or understood is further attested by the epics. It is perhaps hardly necessary now to do more than mention the implausible conjecture³ which ascribes the writing of the epics in Sanskrit to some period after the Christian era and sees in them translations from some Prākrit. The silence of antiquity on this vast undertaking is inexplicable, and it is incredible that the translation should have taken place at a period when Buddhism was triumphant and Brahminism comparatively depressed. The language itself has a distinctive character which renders the idea of translation absurd;⁴ we have in Buddhist literature of the so-called Gāthā type abundant evidence of the results produced by efforts to Sanskritize, and the arguments which are adduced to establish the reality of translation would suffice to prove that Vedic texts were likewise translations. Moreover, there is conclusive evidence that Pāṇini⁵ knew a *Mahābhārata* or at least a Bhāratan epic in Sanskrit, and that the bulk of the *Rāmāyaṇa*⁶ was composed long before Açoka. Now, though the Brahmins made the epics largely their own, they were not the earliest composers of this form of literature, and the fact is attested in the simpler, more careless, language which shows indifference to many of the refinements of Brahmanical speech. Pāṇini ignores these deviations from his norm; it was no part of his aim to deal with the speech current outside the hieratic circle, and in the epic speech we have doubtless the form of language used by the Kṣatriyas and the better educated of the Vaiçyas during the period when the poems took shape. Both the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa* are, it must be remembered, essentially aristocratic; they correspond to the *Iliad* and the *Odyssey*, and like them became the objects of the deep interest of wider circles. In recent times, no doubt, the epics have been unintelligible to the audience, to whom interpretation has been requisite, though delight is still felt in the sound of the sacred language. But this doubtless was not the case in older times; we must postulate a long period when the epic was fairly easily intelligible to large sections of the people.

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³ Grierson, IA. xxiii. 52; Barth, RHR. xxvii. 288.

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⁴ Jacobi, *Rāmāyaṇa*, p. 117; ZDMG. xlviii. 407 ff.; Keith, JRAS. 1906, pp. 2 ff.

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⁵ Hopkins, *Great Epic*, p. 385.

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⁶ Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 318 ff.

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Doubtless, as time went on, the gulf between Sanskrit and the languages of the day became more and more marked; even between the epic language and that of the Brahmin schools there were differences to which express reference is made in the *Rāmāyaṇa*,¹ and both the practice of the dramas and such passages as that in Kālidāsa's *Kumārasambhava*,² in which Sarasvatī addresses Çiva and his bride, the one in Sanskrit, the other in Prākrit, attest dialectic differences based on rank, sex, and locality. In a sense doubtless Sanskrit came more and more to resemble Latin in the Middle Ages, but, like Latin, its vitality as the learned speech of the educated classes was unimpaired, and it won victories even in fields which were at first hostile to it.³ The medical textbook current under the name of Caraka tells us that Sanskrit was used in discussions in the medical schools of the day. A work of very different character, the *Kāmasūtra* of Vātsyāyana, bids its man of fashion in his conversation in polite society use both Sanskrit and the vernacular of his country (*deçabhāṣā*). Hiuen Tsang tells us in the seventh century that Buddhist disputants used officially Sanskrit in their debates; in his *Upamitibhavaprapañcakathā* the Jain Siddharṣi (A. D. 906) gives as his reason for preferring Sanskrit for this allegory of human life that persons of culture despise any other form of speech, and claims that his Sanskrit is so simple as to be understood even by those who preferred Prākrit. The writing of Sanskrit poems which even women and children—of course of the higher classes—can understand is contemplated by Bhāmaha in his treatise on poetics (*c.* A. D. 700). Bilhaṇa (A. D. 1060) would have us believe that the women even of his homeland, Kashmir, were able to appreciate Sanskrit and Prākrit as well as their mother tongue (*janmabhāṣā*). The famous collection of tales known as the *Pañcatantra* owes its origin in theory in part, according to one later version, to the importance of instructing princes in Sanskrit as well as in the conduct of affairs.

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¹ v. 30. 17 f.; iv. 3. 28 f.; ii. 91. 22; vii. 36. 44; Jacobi, *Rāmāyaṇa*, p. 115. Cf. Hopkins, *Great Epic*, p. 364.

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² vii. 87.

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³ Cf. Jacobi, *Scientia*, xiv. 251 ff.; Oldenberg, *Das Mahābhārata*, pp. 129 ff.

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There were, of course, spheres in which Sanskrit was at first rejected, beyond all in the early literatures of Jainism and Buddhism, which were probably couched in an old form of what became known as Ardhamāgadhī Prākrit. As has been shown,¹ however, the question was early raised, if we may trust the Buddhist tradition, whether Sanskrit should not serve as the medium to preserve the Master's instruction, a notice which bears emphatic testimony to the predominance of Sanskrit as a literary medium. In both cases, however, Sanskrit finally won its way, and first Buddhists, then Jains, rendered great services both to Sanskrit literature and grammar.

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¹ Keith, IHQ. i. 501 f.

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The Buddhist revolt against Sanskrit had, however, one important result. The edicts of Açoka, in which he impressed on his subjects throughout his vast realm the duty of practising virtue, were inevitably couched in Prākrit, not Sanskrit, and the epigraphic tradition thus established died hard. But it had to contend with facts; inscriptions were intended to be intelligible, and in the long run it proved that Sanskrit was the speech which had the best chance of appealing to those who could read inscriptions. In the second century B. C. traces of the influence of Sanskrit are apparent; in the next century on one view¹ is found the first inscription which on the whole may be called Sanskrit, and Samskritisms are on the increase.² In the first century A. D. Prākrit still prevails, but, though it is prominent also in the next century, we find the great Sanskrit inscription of Rudradāman which displays clearly the existence of an elaborate Sanskrit literature. In the next century Sanskrit and Prākrit contend, in the fourth Prākrit becomes rare with the Brahmanical revival under the Gupta dynasty, and from the fifth it almost disappears in Northern India. A parallel process was going on in literature; in such Buddhist works as the *Lalitavistara* and the *Mahāvastu* we find the results of an effort to convert a Prākrit into Sanskrit, and similar results are to be found in other fields, as in the medical treatises of the Bower manuscript. From this the Buddhists soon advanced to the stage in which Sanskrit proper was used, as in the *Divyāvadāna*, perhaps of the second century A. D.³ The Jains showed more conservatism, but even they ultimately accepted the use of Sanskrit as legitimate. Serious competition with Sanskrit as the language of literature again arose when the Mahomedan conquests brought Persian into play, and when the vernaculars in the period shortly after A. D. 1000 began first to influence Sanskrit and then to develop into literary languages.

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¹ On sacrificial post at Īsāpur, 24th year of Vāsiṣka, 33 B. C. acc. Fleet, JRAS. 1910, pp. 1315 ff.; Hoernle, *Bower MS.*, p. 65; *Ann. Rep. A. S., India, 1910–11*, pp. 39 ff. It is much more probably of the second century A. D. (? A. D. 102); an inscr. of Huviṣka shows almost correct Sanskrit; JRAS. 1924, pp. 400 ff.

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² Franke, *Pāli und Sanskrit*, pp. 13, 58; Rapson, JRAS. 1904, p. 449.

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³ Przyluski (*La légende de l'empereur Açoka*, pp. 14 ff.) ascribes much to the influence of Mathurā and its Sarvāstivādin school, and places its use of Sanskrit in the *Açokāvadāna* at least in the second century B. C. (cf. pp. 166 ff.).

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The true home of the Çiṣṭas is given by Patañjali as Āryāvarta, but even in his time the Dekhan was a home of Sanskrit; Kātyāyana himself seems to have lived there in the third century B. C. Yāska⁴ (*c.* 500 B. C.) already mentions a southern use of the Vedic word *vijāmātṛ*, and Patañjali records the love in the south for derivative formations and the use of *sarasī*, large pond. Even in Southern India, despite the existence of a vigorous Kanarese and Tamil literature, Sanskrit inscriptions appear from the sixth century onwards, often mixed with Dravidian phrases, attesting the tendency of Sanskrit to become a Koine, and Sanskrit left a deep impression even on the virile Dravidian languages. Ceylon fell under its influence, and Sinhalese shows marked traces of its operation on it. It reached the Sunda Islands, Borneo, the Philippines, and in Java produced a remarkable development in the shape of the Kavi speech and literature. Adventurers of high rank founded kingdoms in Further India, where Indian names are already recorded by the geographer Ptolemy in the second century A. D. The Sanskrit inscriptions of Campā begin perhaps in that century, those of Cambodia before A. D. 600, and they bear testimony to the energetic study of Sanskrit grammar and literature. Of greater importance still was the passage of Sanskrit texts to Central Asia and their influence on China, Tibet, and Japan.

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⁴ vi. 9. Cf. Bühler, WZKM. i. 3. For Āryāvarta, see IA. xxxiv. 179 (Madhyadeça) and *Kāvyamīmāṅsā*, p. xxiv.

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It is characteristic of the status of Sanskrit as the speech of men of education that in one sphere of use it only slowly came to be widely employed. Coins were meant for humble practical uses, and even Western Kṣatrapas, like Rudradāman, who used Sanskrit for their inscriptions, were contented with Prākrit for coin legends; but even in this sphere Sanskrit gradually prevailed.¹

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¹ Bloch, *Mélanges Lévi*, p. 16.

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The results which we have attained are in accord with the evidence afforded by Greek renderings of Indian terms.² These are neither wholly based on Sanskrit forms nor on Prākrit. Derived doubtless from the speech now of the upper, now of the lower classes, they remind us of the salient fact that at any given moment in India there were in active use several forms of speech varying according to the class of society. The denial of the vernacular character of Sanskrit³ rests largely on a failure to realize the true point at issue, on a confusion between the earlier period when Sanskrit was far more close to the speech of the lower classes and later times, or on the fallacious view that the only speech which deserves the style of a vernacular must be the language of the lower classes of the population. Still less plausible is the suggestion¹ that Sanskrit as a vernacular was preserved in Kashmir during its eclipse in India generally, a view which has no support either in tradition or in the form of the Kashmirian vernacular. What we do find is that the Buddhism which penetrated Kashmir was strongly influenced by Mathurā, where the new faith had fallen into the hands of men trained in the Brahmanical schools, who applied their own language to the propagation of the faith. We have in this one more proof of the hold which Sanskrit had in Brahmanical circles, and of the obvious fact that it was far better fitted as a language of theology and philosophy than Ardhamāgadhī or any similar dialect.

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² Lévi, BSL. viii, pp. viii, x, xvii; Franke, ZDMG. xlvii. 596 ff.; Bloch, *Mélanges Lévi*, pp. 1 ff.

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³ Grierson, JRAS. 1904, p. 481. On this view standard English would not be a vernacular.

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¹ Franke, *Pāli und Sanskrit*, pp. 87 ff.

3. The Characteristics and Development of Sanskrit in Literature

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It is a characteristic feature of Sanskrit, intimately connected with its true vitality, that, unlike Medieval Latin, it undergoes important changes in the course of its prolonged literary existence, which even to-day is far from ended. Moreover, we must note the existence of two streams of movement, the Sanskrit of the Brahmanical schools as summed up in the grammar of Pāṇini, and the less formal language of the ruling class and the Brahmins in their entourage as shown in the epics. The works of Classical Sanskrit literature show the clearest evidence of influence in both directions; the Brahmins, to whom or to whose influence and tradition we owe most of the literature, were schooled in grammar and were anxious to avoid solecisms, but they were also under the literary influence of the epics, and in special of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, and it was not possible for them to avoid assimilating their language in great measure to that of their model.

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Hence it follows that much of what is taught by Pāṇini and his followers has no representation in the literature. As we have seen, Kātyāyana and Patañjali recognize the disuse of certain verbal forms; there disappear also many idioms,² such as *anvāje-* or *upāje-kṛ*, strengthen, *nīvacane-kṛ*, be silent, *mano-* or *kaṇe-* *han*, fulfil one's longing, *celaknopam vrṣṭaḥ*, 'rained until the clothes were wet'; many words are no longer used, such as *anvavasarga*, allowing one his own way, *niravasita*, excommunicated, *abhividhi*, including, *utsañjana*, throwing up, *abhreṣa*, equitableness. The pronominal base *tya* disappears; in the verb the infinitive *tavai* is lost, many formations such as *jajanti* disappear, and the perfect participle middle in *āna* is disused. The adverbial form in *trā*, as in *devatrā*, and the old word *parut* are lost. Many nominal derivatives are not exemplified, and the use of such phrases as *çuklīsyāt* disappears. Many syntactical rules are obsolete, such as the use of the accusative with adjectives in *uka*; the instrumental with *saṁjñā* or *saṁprayam*; the dative with *çlāgh* and *sthā*; *tṛṇaṁ man* or *çune* or *çvānaṁ man*; the ablative with words denoting far or near; the genitive with verbs of remembering other than *smṛ*, with *nāth*, hope, with *jas* and other verbs denoting injury, and impersonally with expressions of illness, *caurasya rujati*; the instrumental with *prasita* and *utsuka*; *uta* in simple interrogations, and many other usages.

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² Bhandarkar, JBRAS. xvi. 272; Speijer, *Sansk. Synt.*, pp. 39, 45, 61 f., 65 f., 72, 89 f., 108.

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It is, however, true that beside this feature we have the deliberate employment by poets of usages, prescribed in the grammar, but so rare as to reveal themselves as purely learned reminiscences. From Açvaghoṣa on, the great authors are fond of displaying their erudition; Kālidāsa has *anugiram*, 'on the mountain', though this is given by Pāṇini¹ merely as an optional form, and *sausnātaka*, 'asking if one has bathed well', from a Vārttika.² Māgha is adept in these niceties; he has *khalu* with the gerund to denote prohibition; *mā jīvan*, 'let him not live'; he distinguishes *vi-ṣvan*, eat noisily, and *vi-svan*, howl; he affects the passive use of the perfect, revives aorist forms and gerunds in *am*, including *vastraknopam*, and uses *klam* as a finite verb. Çrīharṣa, author of the *Naiṣadhīya*, is responsible for the solitary example of the first person periphrastic future middle, *darçayitāhe*, yet cited.³ The case is still more extreme with Bhaṭṭi, whose epic is at once a poem and an illustration of the rules of grammar and rhetoric, and who has imitators in Bhaumaka's *Rāvaṇārjunīya* and Halāyudha's *Kavirahasya* (10th cent.). Even in writers of the folk-tale knowledge of grammar sometimes is exhibited quite unexpectedly in the shape of recondite forms culled from Pāṇini or his successors. So serious a philosopher as Çaṅkara resorts to the use of the negative with finite verbs—which originally must have been merely a comic use—and he is guilty also of the employment of the comparative of a verb, *upapadye-tarām*, a linguistic monstrosity of the worst kind.

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¹ v. 4. 112 (Senaka).

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² iv. 4. 1, v. 3.

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³ Cf. grammatical similes; Walter, *Indica*, iii 38.

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The influence of the grammarians explains also the free use of the aorist in the writers of elaborate prose · Bāṇa and Daṇḍin, moreover, observe the precise rule for the use of the perfect in narration prescribed by the grammarians. It has been suggested that this may be explained by the derivation of prose from a different tradition than poetry, but the suggestion appears needless.¹ Subandhu ignores the rule as to the perfect, and the simple explanation of the accuracy of the other writers is the desire to display their skill in grammar, which was naturally facilitated by the absence of metrical restrictions. The same liberty explains their practice in postponing the verb to the end of the sentence, unquestionably its traditional resting-place, but one impossible to observe in verse.

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¹ Speijer, *Sansk. Synt.*, §§ 328 ff.; Renou, *La valeur du parfait*, pp. 86 ff.

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Very different was the effect on Classical poetry of the influence of the epics.² They show, with special frequency in the case of the *Mahābhārata*,³ the tendency of uncultivated speech to ignore fine distinctions and by analogical formations to simplify grammar. Thus rules of euphonic combination are not rarely ignored; in the noun the distinction of weak and strong case-forms is here and there forgotten; there is confusion of stems in *i* and *in*; by analogy *pūṣāṇam* replaces the older *pūṣaṇam*; there is confusion in the use of cases, especially in the pronoun; in the verb primary and secondary endings are sometimes confused; active and middle are often employed for metrical reasons in place of each other; even the passive is found with active terminations; the delicate rules affecting the use of the intermediate *i* are violated at every turn; the feminine of the present participle active is formed indifferently by *antī* or *atī*; the middle participle of causatives and denominatives is often formed by *āna*, partly doubtless on grounds of metrical convenience; the rule that the gerund is formed by *tvā* in simple, in *ya* in compound, verbs is constantly disregarded; minutiae such as the substitution of *dhāvati* for the present of *sṛ* are habitually neglected. The tendency to prefer *a* bases is seen in the verb and the noun alike, giving such forms as *diçā* and *duhitā*.

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² For the *Rāmāyaṇa* cf. Böhtlingk, BSGW. 1887, pp. 213 ff.; ZDMG. xliii. 53 ff.; Roussel, *Muséon*, 1911, pp. 89 ff.; 1912, pp. 25 ff., 201 ff.; JA. 1910, i. 1-69; Keith, JRAS. 1910, pp. 468 ff., 1321 ff.

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³ Holtzmann, *Gramm. aus d. M.* (1884).

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It was inevitable that so distinguished models as the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa* should deeply affect later poets, and Patañjali, in citing an epic fragment containing the irregular term *priyākhya* in lieu of *priyākhyāya*, expressly asserts that poets commit such irregularities (*chandovat kavayaḥ kurvanti*). We find, therefore, occasional errors such as the confusion of *anti* and *atī*, of *tvā* and *ya*, of active and middle, as well as regular disregard of the specific sense of the past tenses as laid down by the grammarians but ignored in the epic. As in the epic, the perfect and imperfect freely interchange as tenses of simple narration without nuance of any kind. Even Kālidāsa permits himself *sarati* and *āsa* for *babhūva*, and Çrīharṣa with the *Rāmāyaṇa* uses *kavāṭa* for the *kapāṭa* of Pāṇini. Lesser poets, especially the poetasters who turned out inscriptions, are naturally greater sinners by far against grammatical rules, especially when they can plead metrical difficulties as excuse.

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Neither the epic nor the grammarians, however, are responsible for the fundamental change which gradually besets the Kāvya style, in the worst form in prose, but in varying degree even in verse. This is the change from the verbal to the nominal style, as Bhandarkar¹ not inaptly termed it. In the main, Vedic and epic Sanskrit show a form of speech closely akin to Greek and Latin; verbal forms are freely used, and relative clauses and clauses introduced by conjunctions are in regular employment. The essential feature of the new style is the substitution of the use of compounds for the older forms.² In its simplest form, of course, the practice is unobjectionable and tends to conciseness; *hataputra* is less cumbrous than 'whose sons have been slain'. But when new members are added there are soon lost the advantages of an inflective language with its due syntactical union of formed words into sentences; brevity is attained at a fatal cost in clearness. A compound like *jalāntaçcandracapala*, 'fickle as the moon reflected in the water', is comparatively innocuous, but even a stylist like Kālidāsa permits himself such a phrase as *vīcikṣobha-stanitavihagaçreṇikāñcīguṇā*, 'whose girdle-string is a row of birds loquacious through the agitation of the waves'. True, in such a case there is no real doubt as to the sense, but often this is not the case, and in point of fact it is one of the delights of the later poets to compose compounds which contain a double entendre, since they can be read in two ways; of such monstrosities Subandhu is a master. Moreover, the nominal forms of the verb are given a marked preference; the expression of past time is regularly carried out by a past participle passive in form of an intransitive verb, such as *gatas*, he went, or if the verb is active the subject is put into the instrumental and the past participle passive is employed, as in *mṛgeṇoktam*, the deer said. Or an active past participle is created by adding *vant* to the passive participle, *kṛtavān*, he did; a distant parallel in the grammarians has been seen in the sanction by Pāṇini of the use of such forms as *dāçvāṅs* in lieu of a finite verb. Or the use of any save a verb of colourless kind may be avoided by substituting such an expression as *pakvaṁ karoti* for *pacati*, he cooks, or *pakvo bhavati*, it is cooked, for *pacyate*. Similarly the periphrastic future is preferred to the finite verb. Or the verb may wholly disappear as when for *ayaṁ māṅsaṁ bhakṣayati* we have *māṅsabhojako 'yam*, he is a meat eater. In harmony with this is the tendency to lay great stress on case relations as expressing meaning, a practice which in the later style in philosophy, exegesis, and dialectics results in the occurrence of sentences passim with no verb and practically only the nominative and ablative cases of abstract nouns. Frequent, and indeed in some forms of composition, such as the folk tale, tedious in its reiteration, is the use of gerunds in lieu of subordinate clauses.

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¹ JBRAS. xvi. 266 ff.; cf. Bloch, MSL. xiv. 27 ff.; Renou, *La valeur du parfait*, pp. 90 ff.; Stchoupak, MSL. xxi. 1 ff.; Jacobi, IF. xiv. 236 ff.

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² Jacobi (*Compositum und Nebensatz*, pp. 25, 91 ff.) points out that they are properly used for ornamental description, not for important qualifications, and also suggests poetic convenience as a cause of popularity; cf. Chap. II, § 4. See also Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.*, II. i. 25, 27, 159; Whitney, *Sansk. Gramm.*, § 1246.

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We are reduced to conjecture as to the cause of this tendency. The desire for brevity is already seen in the style of the Vedic Sūtras, and the grammarians carried it to excess; their works furnish abundant instances of insistence on using cases in a pregnant sense and in affecting compounds; gerunds are frequent in the ritual texts. It has been suggested that the love for participial forms is partly explained by Dravidian influence;¹ the periphrastic future in both Sanskrit and Dravidian uses the auxiliary verb only in the first and second persons; the type *kṛtavān* has a parallel in *çeydavan*; the rule of the order of words in which the governed word precedes and the verb is placed at the end of the sentence is Dravidian. Unhappily, the arguments are inconclusive;² the omission of the auxiliary in the third person is natural, for in that person in any sentence whatever it is commonly omitted as easily understood; the order of words in Sanskrit has parallels in many other languages than Dravidian and rests on general rules of thought.

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¹ Konow, LSI. iv. 279 ff.; Grierson, BSOS. I. iii. 72; Carnoy, JAOS. xxxix. 117 ff.; Chatterji, i. 174 ff.

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² Cf. R. Swaminatha Aiyar, POCP. 1919, i, pp. lxxi ff., who legitimately points out that the evidence of Dravidian is very late in date, and these languages probably borrowed from Aryan. K. G. Śaṅkar (JRAS. 1924, pp. 664 ff.) points out that the *Tol-kāppiyam*, the oldest Tamil work, must be after 400 A. D. as it refers to the *Poruḷadhikāramsūtra*, horary astrology, and that the Moriyas of the Sangam are the Mauryas of the Koṅkaṇa, who date after 494 A. D.

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Beside the correct or comparatively correct Sanskrit of the poetic literature we find, especially in technical and non-Brahmanical works, abundant evidence of a popular Sanskrit or mixed Sanskrit in various forms. Generically it can be regarded as the result of men who were not wont to use Sanskrit trying to write in that language, but there are different aspects. Thus the early Buddhist writers who decided to adapt to the more learned language the Buddhist traditions probably current in Ardhamāgadhī were hampered by the desire not to depart unduly in verse at least from their models, a fact which explains the peculiar forms found especially in Gāthās, but also in prose in such a text as the *Mahāvastu*.³ Traces of this influence persist even in much more polished Buddhist writers such as Açvaghoṣa, and much of it may be seen in the *Divyāvadāna*, though that work marks in part a successful attempt to adapt Sanskrit prose, as known at Mathurā and elsewhere, to Buddhist use. The degree of cultivation of those who endeavoured to write in Sanskrit might vary greatly; thus the Sanskritization of the treatises in the Bower Manuscript, perhaps of the fourth century A.D., is comparatively good in the case of those on medicine, and decidedly poor in those on divination and incantation. In part the deviation from Sanskrit as laid down in the grammars is purely a case of Prācritic forms intruding scarcely disguised into the texts, but in other instances popular influence reveals itself in a Sanskrit which ignores delicate distinctions and confuses forms. The distinction between Prākritisms and careless Sanskrit is not absolute, but it is convenient and legitimate.

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³ Cf. Senart, i, pp. iv, xiii ff.; Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.*, i, p. xxxix. Contrast F. W. Thomas, JRAS. 1904, p. 469, who regards the mixed Sanskrit as representing middle-class speech. Poussin (*Indo-européens*, p. 205) stresses convention as stereotyping usage.

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Thus we have in the phonology of this popular Sanskrit as seen in the Bower MS. some confusion of *ṛ* and *ri*, of *n* and *ṇ*, of *ç*, *ṣ*, and *s*; metrical lengthening and shortening of vowels is not rare; *ml* becomes *mbl*, and rarely *a* is prefixed as in *alatā*. In Sandhi hiatus and hyper-Sandhi, even to the extent of an elided consonant (*açvibhyānumataḥ*), are known, while *ā* is occasionally elided when initial. In declension we find *īs* and reversely *ū* as feminine nominatives for *ī* and *ūs*; *īs* is often replaced by *yas* as the accusative feminine, and *in* stems are treated as *i* stems, as in *pittīnām* for *pittinām*. In the verb we have simplification in class, as in *lihet* for *lihyāt*, *piṣet* for *piṁṣyāt*; and, as in the epic, very free interchange of active and middle forms; the gerunds in *tvā* and *yā* are confused. Stem formation shows frequently the mixture of bases in *a*, *i*, or *u* for those in *as*, *is*, or *us*, and, rarely, such a base as *hantāra* from the accusative of *hantṛ*; there is confusion in feminine suffixes, as in *ghnā* for *ghnī*, *caturthā* for *caturthī*, while ordinals in composition are sometimes replaced by cardinals. Very characteristic is confusion of gender, especially between masculine and neuter, more rarely between masculine and feminine or feminine and neuter. Case confusion is common, as is non-observation of rules of concord and confusion of numbers, while the interpolation of particles within compounds or sentences, absolute constructions, and very loosely compacted clauses are common.

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