A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s3.20

c7.s3.20

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.