A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s2.28

c7.s2.28

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.