A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s2.38

c7.s2.38

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.